Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

His life had been in shambles long before that day, but it’s only when he wakes up in the hospital with nothing but a hazy recollection of how he got there that he truly realizes how irreparably broken it is. How systematically he’d ruined it with his own two hands. 

When he’s well enough to speak, he turns to the attendant next to him and asks after his sons. 

He’s told, in gentle and even tones, that his eldest son is dead. 

He listens numbly as a police officer is brought in, and the man tells him there’s not even a body left to bury. Not even ashes. He’s told the haunting sapphire flames that Touya wrought upon them could not even be considered flames, too strong and too powerful; the forensic teams refer to it as plasma. An alchemy so violent and corrosive there’s nothing left to be found. He’s told it's a miracle he’s even alive. He has a burn scar from where Touya slugged him with a fire wreathed fist, a slice across his neck to the bottom of his jaw, but otherwise he’s merely dehydrated and suffering from oxygen deprivation. 

Horrified, he asks after Shouto. 

Shouto is here in the hospital as well. He’s even less injured than Endeavor. Neither the office nor the nursing staff can tell him how exactly Shouto ended up there— all they can say with certainty is that he was dropped off at the emergency care entrance, in the security system’s blindspot. Startled EMTs brought him in, but the only injuries Shouto carried were the ones Endeavor himself had given him during their training. He was exhausted, also dehydrated, and low on fluids, but otherwise perfectly unharmed. There are no answers as to how Shouto ended up there, in relatively good health, when he’d been consumed in that same hellscape as Endeavor and Touya had been. The officer mentions something about a local vigilante in these parts that’s stirred up a ruckus with the local precinct in the last few years, a mysterious upstart with a teleportation-quirk who might have managed it. Endeavor hardly pays it any mind, too hollowed out from his own circumstances. 

Touya was dead. 

His eldest son was dead, and he’d used his last words in this life to call Endeavor a disgrace and threaten him with patricide if he ever laid a hand on Shouto again. 

The police write the whole thing off as a tragic accident. 

There’s a short service for Touya, a small affair with only his family and the buddhist monks. Fuyumi and Natsuo are inconsolable, Shouto cries because they cry, and through it all Endeavor mostly ignores them and stares into the tiny photo of Touya placed on the mantle. That unsmiling boy in his school uniform is dead, and the police might call it an accident, but Endeavor knows the truth. Touya may have died in his own flames, but he did it to save his little brother from a life of misery under his father’s cruel hands. 

Endeavor is the only one to blame. 

//

FAMOUS LAST WORDS

// 

A harried newscaster’s voice overlays among the low din of bullets being fired.

“This footage is from Paris just minutes ago, where we have confirmed sighting of an unknown man appearing out of thin air and launching a one-man siege against the French Humarise headquarters—”

When Hawks glances away from the main screen to the other ones, he sees various international news stations all covering the same sudden turn of events. He immediately notices, however, that almost none of the locations in the footage appear to be the same. One of them has Dabi in a city that is recognizably Dubai; another has him blasting apart a gold-domed citadel in what looks to be somewhere in Europe; yet another has him walking through a hailstorm of gunfire— and even explosives— in what is unmistakably Shanghai. Hawks can’t make heads or tails of it. 

“Is this all footage from today?” Endeavor asks. Even he sounds a bit faint.

His aid hesitantly nods at him. “From— from the past hour, sir.” 

On the main monitor, Dabi storms the ruptured church without even responding to the gunfire. The bullets themselves are stuck fast in an invisible barrier surrounding him— a technique Hawks remembers Dabi referring to as Infinity. His pace is brisk but unhurried as he makes quick work of the remaining guards, and heads into the building proper. There’s no movement for a long moment, and no sound but for the heavy breathing of the cameraman and the frantic and distraught cries of nearby civilians. Then the remains of the cathedral shudder ominously. Before their eyes the structure implodes in on itself, dragged down into a massive crater as screams erupt in the air. The ensuing clouds of dust and dirt obscure most of the viewpoint, but Dabi’s starkly white hair gleams in the light as he seems to hover within the haze. And then he’s gone, winking out of view as if he’d never been there at all. 

“He can teleport?” Endeavor says, voice high with disbelief. 

Hawks shrugs. “Unconfirmed.”

The flame hero rounds on him, incredulous. “What about this is unconfirmed? We’re seeing it with our own eyes.”

Hawks stretches out his neck, wincing when he hears a pop by his ear. Man, he really needs to go to a chiropractor or something. “Well, it’s hard to say for certain whether he’s the one teleporting or if someone else we don’t see is the one doing it, right? So it really can’t be confirmed.”

Actually Hawks is dead sure, with a hundred percent certainty, that Dabi can teleport. He even knows from personal experience that the man can teleport with other people. But allegedly there’s no way to know, and especially not from what’s been written on Dabi in official reports. 

“Dabi always works alone,” Endeavor returns, frowning.

“Also unconfirmed,” Hawks says. 

Endeavor scowls. “This is absurd,” he announces, crossing his arms. “How can we know so little about someone with so much power?”

Because his powers are inexplicable and basically impossible, Hawks thinks, with no small amount of exhaustion. 

“He keeps things close to the chest, that guy. And there’s no public record of him— or his quirk.” Is what he says aloud instead.

His words seem to hit a mark he hadn’t intended to land on Endeavor. The larger man stiffens, hands balled at his sides. Then he jerks himself into action, turning to his employees.

“What exactly are we watching here?” He demands of them.

“News footage from all over the world,” his aid explains hastily. “There’s been a bit of a delay with the time differences and the lag between live footage and the satellites… but this is all from the last hour or so.”

“Why wasn’t I told of this immediately?”

“We weren’t aware, sir,” the aid replies. “Not until we were called by the government. They don’t believe Tokyo is on the list, but they want all the heroes in the area to be on alert anyway.”

So everyone knows about this, Hawks realizes, rapidly processing the evolving situation, and all its far reaching consequences. 

Theoretically speaking, Dabi should probably be considered one of the deadliest villains in the world. But since his presence has been mostly isolated to Japan, the WHA wouldn’t consider him a global threat like many of the international terrorists on Interpol’s most wanted are. He doubts that verdict will hold much longer; now that Dabi is showing up in cities all across the globe, he meets the WHA’s exact criteria for a global threat. In fact at this rate he’ll be at the top of their list. 

“So there’s nothing to do about it but watch,” Endeavor surmises, darkly. 

His aid nods, wringing her hands together. 

Endeavor looks like he wants to burst into flames at the response, and is only holding back out of deference to all the people around him. Hawks gets where the big guy is coming from— no hero likes sitting around on the sidelines while there’s things that need to be done. But as none of them have the capability to teleport to all these foreign locations, there’s really nothing else they can do. 

Hawks doesn’t know what exactly Dabi is up to right now, but he can piece together a rough estimation of what the aftermath of it is going to look like.

He was already a household name in Japan. Now he’s going to be top of mind for everyone on the planet. As the action dies down in Paris, one of the analysts switches the main feed over to New York, where helicopters capture footage of a building collapsing into a cloud of dust, a familiar scene of uniformed armed assailants massacred on the ground. Though it looks catastrophic from this viewpoint, Hawks can see how meticulously precise the damage truly is. The New York Humarise church was squeezed tight between two apartment buildings, neither of which were damaged in the attack. He remembers that night at the Kuat Shipyards— that perfectly angular pillar of destruction rising into the night sky. Dabi’s powers may look haphazard and explosive, but the technique lying beneath it must rely on magnificently precise mathematics. 

“There’s something inside those buildings he’s specifically after,” Hawks muses aloud, crossing his arms. 

Endeavor turns to look at him. 

“He’s not bothering with the guards. And he’s not bringing anything with him nor taking anything with him when he leaves. Whatever he’s after, it’s already in those buildings, and it's not something he would risk carrying out.” 

“Could he be searching for something in particular? And when he doesn’t find it, he blows up the buildings?” This comes from Endeavor’s sidekick Burnin’, arriving at the mouth of the room with a handful of other sidekicks.

Hawks considers it, then frowns. “Doesn’t explain why he’d blow them up.”

“Maybe he’s blowing ‘em up just to do it?” Burnin’ shrugs.

Hawks shakes his head. “Not his style.”

Endeavor side-eyes at him. Hawks ignores it. 

The flaming-haired sidekick crosses her arms. “Then what is?”

He debates his answer carefully. “He can seem like a superfluous kind of guy, but I don’t think he does things like that without reason. He’s not the sort to cause that level of destruction unnecessarily.”

“He blew up half an island in the Philippines,” Endeavor points out. “What was his reason for that?” 

Hawks winces. “That… might have been done out of anger.” He hesitates, before adding; “Dabi really doesn’t like when people hurt kids, and there had been a lot of them there. It’s personal to him, I think.”

Endeavor’s entire expression seems to shut down, the temperature in the room cooling noticeably. He says nothing.

“Makes sense, I guess,” Burnin’ admits, reluctantly.

Hawks withholds a sigh. He doesn’t normally think this, but— man, he’s really not paid enough to deal with this shit. 

He wants to blame it all on the HPSC and their stupid infiltration mission, but ultimately he knows this situation is his own fault. He’s the one who up and got attached to his mark. He’s the one who decided to lie for him, to keep his secrets from everyone else, even the Commission. He’s the one who worries for him, who lies awake at night with the intense urge to call him just to hear his voice again and make sure he’s alright. And he put himself in this position all on his own, HPSC orders be damned. 

He worries over Dabi even now, even though he’s well aware the man can handle himself. Although this does seem like a rather herculean undertaking, even for someone as powerful as he is. Hawks wonders what happened. All he knows is Dabi had been tasked to deal with Humarise by the King of Otheon directly. Apparently they’d met in the same hotel Hawks had been recovering in to hash out the arrangement. Hawks had pouted mutinously when he’d realized Dabi would have to do it all without him— Hawks couldn’t leave the country with the current levels of unrest and crime— even though Humarise had started out as their thing. It’s a silly thing to be jealous of. Hawks is needed here, and Dabi is needed… around the entire globe, evidently. 

Honestly, what he’s really worried about isn’t this mission itself, but the consequences. There’s no going back from this… for either of them. 

//

Izuku is almost too keyed-up to notice when the mood in the common room around him abruptly crashes from loudly chaotic if not mildly pleasant, straight into terror. He still can’t believe— did that really— someone asked him out! Him! Midoriya Izuku! Asked on a date!

And not just anyone. Todoroki Shouto, his classmate, son of the Number One Hero, one of the top students of their year, and one of the few people in his life he’s managed to strike up a genuine and deep friendship with. He also happens to be one of the few people in his life that he’s maddeningly, distractingly attracted to. Discounting Dabi (who really should not be counted, that man is too beautiful, it’s basically inhuman) Todoroki is the most stunning person he’s ever seen in his life. Izuku is still in awe that someone that cool and that impressive would want to go on a date with him!

He sits in a blissful daze and doesn’t get a single iota of homework done. Todoroki stays by his side, diligently scrawling through his own homework. At some point during his internal freakout and idle daydreams, Yui must have left to go back to her house or something, because when he comes back to reality she’s no longer next to him. The noise level in the common room had risen progressively over the afternoon as more of their classmates trickled in, but Izuku was still too numb with shock to notice and paid it no mind. 

It’s not until all the chatter suddenly stops, and Todoroki stiffens by his side, that he notices something is amiss. 

“Todoroki-kun?” When Izuku looks, his head is turned away from him. 

Izuku follows his gaze to where the rest of their class is gathered around the couches. From this distance he can just make out the sound of the television that they all must be crowded around. He thinks it might be the news, but the voices are muted and unintelligible. Then he hears the gunshots. 

He and Todoroki are up in a flash, ducking through the crowd to get a glimpse at the screen.

Izuku is thankful he’s ended up in front of the couch, because once he sees what it is his knees buckle and he drops like a puppet with its strings cut. 

There’s no denying who it is. 

On a foreign street of a city Izuku has never seen before, a familiar man walks through a blaze of explosives and gunfire. Mortar shells erupt around him, blackening the screen and tossing a haze of dust and debris across the footage; the quick pitter-patter of assault rifles ring sharp across the soundwaves, the angry shouts of men at war barely discernible over the din. None of this bothers Dabi, who strolls across the dilapidated street as if he has no care in the world. He cuts a figure immaculate and untouchable, without a single speck of dust or dirt on him. Powerful quirks and powerful weaponry attempt to make their mark on him, but they all fall in the wake of his unconquerable barrier. 

With a dismissive flick of his hand the throngs of assailants are tossed aside like toys, slammed into the surrounding buildings where they break and roll to the ground. The shaky bystander footage swings wide to capture his destination— a grand citadel-like structure surrounded on all sides by a handsome and well-kept city park. 

Izuku watches in disbelief as Dabi enters the now emptied church, and in what seems like only a few seconds obliterates the entire building. The whole thing shudders once, then twice, then collapses in on itself, towering steel beams and great metallic domes crumpling apart like wet paper. What truly astounds him though, is watching the surrounding scenery. Amidst the apocalyptic scene, he notices the nearby flower beds remain utterly untouched. There’s not even a stray breeze bending the flower stems to denote the presence of a catastrophe just beside them. 

This is it, then. The true power of Dabi’s quirk. 

Plenty of people could cause that level of destruction. In Izuku’s class alone, he can think of at least four he knows for sure. Himself, Yui, Kacchan and Todoroki could demolish a building of that size, albeit all through different means and perhaps not quite as instantaneously. Among top heroes, there are even more. 

But to cause such staggering destruction, such total annihilation, with that level of precision? It should be impossible. 

“And piecing together the timeline, we believe his next stop to have been Helsinki, where a similar scene played out.”

The footage minimizes into the corner of the screen, the newscast turning into a map of the globe. Red dots light up over cities across the world in accordance to the hypothesized timeline— Izuku notices immediately that the pattern of his movements resembles concentric circles. The center of the radius seems to be somewhere in central Europe. 

Even through his terror, his analytical mind pieces together information at a lightning pace. 

So that’s how he must do it… is its limitation distance based, or something else? His mind races despite himself. He’s always known Dabi could teleport. He’s made it a point to never ask anything about the man’s quirk, because he knows if he started he’d never stop, and he’d like to maintain some kind of plausible deniability about it in case he’s ever put in a position where he’s asked to reveal the man’s secrets. A situation that seems more and more likely as he watches this broadcast. 

Izuku rapidly shakes his head. This is exactly what he’s been trying to avoid doing. The science behind Dabi’s quirk is riveting and probably the stuff of legends, but that’s not a can of worms Izuku should be opening. 

He balls his hands into fists. They tremble noticeably as he rests them against his knees. 

He wishes Yui hadn’t gone home. Even if she was just as powerless in this situation as he was, the solidarity of having someone else who knows Dabi’s real identity would be reassuring. 

“—Seems to be a direct assault on Humarise at a global scale—”

“We don’t have a motive yet, but an official statement was released just minutes ago by the government of Otheon claiming the attacks as part of an ongoing, official investigation. The World Heroes Association appears to be involved, although no representatives were present at any of the Humarise headquarters as they were destroyed—”

“—This just in: we have official confirmation coming in now from the UN that the unknown assailant is indeed Japan’s top criminal, s-rank cremation villain Dabi. How and why he is part of a mission sanctioned by the WHA  has not yet been disclosed—”

Izuku squeezes his eyes shut, trying to remember the last time he’d spoken to the villain. Was it just a few days ago? Had Dabi already planned for all of this to happen, even as he spoke idly to Izuku on the phone about his new favorite pastry?

“This is insane!” Kaminari gushes from somewhere behind him. “How can one person be capable of all of this?!”

“We don’t know that for sure— he could be working with a team.” Is the rational, level-headed response from Yaomomo. 

They might not know, but Izuku does. He knows this is all Dabi, and Dabi alone. The sheer scale of destruction the villain is capable of is staggering. The range, the extent, the reach. It’s not an exaggeration to say Dabi could destroy the world. Even if every single hero on the planet banned together to defeat him, Izuku honestly couldn’t say they would manage it. 

“This guy is on a whole other level,” Sero mutters.

“His mastery over the darkness of chaos and destruction is truly unsurpassed,” Tokoyami agrees, sagely. 

“T— There’s no way anyone could defeat him!” Kirishima cries in dismay. “How are the heroes supposed to stop a guy like that?! This is crazy! …But so manly!!”

“No wonder he stopped that villain in Kamino without even getting a scratch on him,” Uraraka adds, sounding pensive. 

“So that’s what he looks like beneath the blindfold, huh? He’s pretty hot!” Ashido enthuses.

“Ashido!” Yaomomo says, scandalized. 

“What? It’s true! I’m still so bummed I didn’t even get to talk to him at the summer training camp when everyone else did!!”

“He’s a villain, not a celebrity.” Yaomomo frowns sternly.

“Shoji-kun said he was super nice!”

“I said he was helpful,” Shoji denies.

“That’s the same thing!” Ashido dismisses.

“It’s really not,” Sero sighs.

“That’s true… he really helped us out at the training camp. And he was at USJ, right? He was helping Aizawa-sensei,” Uraraka murmurs. “It was scary to witness, but he was helping us. Both times. So maybe he’s… not really a bad guy?”

“But then, what is he trying to do here?” Sero asks, frowning.

“Right, I mean, this is a little different… isn’t it?” Hagakure returns, hesitantly. “Just… the scale of it all…”

The class falls silent at that.

On screen the footage changes to a somewhat amusing scene of Dabi pantomiming elaborately with what looks to be the Hong Kong police. They’re not shooting at him, but they aim their rifles at him in a tense stand-off as Dabi and an officer seem to be locked in some kind of game of charades in lieu of a common language.

“Law enforcement at the scene have confirmed Dabi to be acting on orders as part of a greater mission to neutralize a global threat instigated by Humarise. The threat itself has not been confirmed yet by the WHA, but rumors from officials involved in the mission have placed it as some kind of weapon of mass destruction.”

Eventually they must find a translator, because a hapless looking young man in tactical gear is inserted between them and begins gesturing elaborately. The police slowly lower their weapons as Dabi hands something to their commanding officer. It looked like an ID card of some kind. The man takes it; they exchange a few words, and then Dabi is pulling his shades down and smiling at the man as he confirms his identity. 

Ashido whistles appreciatively. Uraraka stutters. Even Yaomomo gasps.

“Yeah, okay, he’s pretty hot,” Hagakure admits. 

This is really not the time, but Izuku has the hysterical urge to laugh. No matter what the situation, Dabi’s good looks are always criminally distracting. No one is ever immune when they finally get a good look at his face. 

His face.

With a horrified gasp. Izuku’s eyes snap open. 

He whips his head towards Todoroki, standing at the arm of the couch beside him. He’s watching the broadcast with a riveted look, expression tense but not particularly shocked or horrified. Izuku careens his neck to search Kacchan out of the crowd. He’s standing off to the side, almost blocked from sight by Shoji’s bulk in front of him. From what Izuku can see, his expression is something similar to Todoroki’s— apprehensive and intense, but not terribly surprised. Jirou, directly next to him, is the opposite. She’s covering her mouth with her hands, eyes as wide as saucers, looking as if she can’t believe what she’s seeing. Like she cannot fathom that the man who was so easy-going and kind to them at his concert just last month could be the same man inciting global panic on live TV. 

Perhaps it wouldn’t be so easy even as a No Scrubs fan to make a direct connection, if she had been just another person in the crowds at the venues. With the dim lighting, the distance from the stage, the outfit and the lack of cameras… But Jirou had met him personally, that day they’d all gone to see Yui before her show. There’s no way she could mistake him. There’s no way Todoroki or Kacchan would be able to mistake him either, yet they don’t seem so surprised.

“Todoroki-kun…” He whispers quietly, staring up at him. 

Todoroki glances down at him. He seems to read what Izuku can’t say aloud from his expression alone. He reaches out and rests a hand on Izuku’s shoulder, squeezing it gently. “I know,” he says, softly. 

Izuku nods dumbly. How long had he known Satoru was Dabi? And… does it even really matter anymore? 

He staggers to his feet, wobbly and lightheaded. Todoroki holds him upright with a firm grip on his arm, a look of concern crossing his features as he steadies him. 

“I— need some air.” He excuses himself, lurching towards the doors.

He wrenches them open with a gasp, sucking in greedy gulps of cold autumn air as he collapses to his knees again. 

He’s always known Dabi was powerful. It’s true it’s rather frightening to see the real extent of his abilities with his own eyes, but it’s the fear that truly unsettles him. The fear of the uncertain future— the fear of losing him. There’s no coming back from this. He’d thought that after Kamino, but Dabi had proved him wrong. This, though… He doesn’t think the world will ever stop searching for Dabi after this. 

“... Midoriya-kun?” A surprised, hushed voice whispers to him. 

Izuku’s head snaps up. He’s not alone on the porch. There, by the corner where the porch bleeds off into the treeline, is Yui. She has a phone to her ear, and her eyes are tight around the edges. Izuku doesn’t think he’s ever seen her this pale before, or this visibly shaken. For once, her expression is clear as day— and all Izuku can see on her features is a fear that mirrors his own. 

She darts a furtive look around, then urgently beckons him closer. He sways to his feet, and drags himself after her. 

She pulls him behind a robust tree trunk some paces into the forest, tucks herself into the hollow of its roots and jams him in next to her, so tightly they’re touching from leg to shoulder. This close, he can hear the low voice of the person on the line. 

“—just a fucking nightmare to deal with, too, you know what I mean? Seriously, this man is out here with no shame, no limits to his stupidity, and worst of all no hairline. My Otheon handler is gonna end up just as bald from all this stress by the end of it, poor dude.” 

Izuku’s eyes widen. “S—Satoru-san?” He whispers, furtively. 

There’s a pause in the rant. “Eh? Is that Izu-kun too? Oh, good. Keep me awake, both of you. I’m sooo tired but I can’t sleep yet.” 

Izuku turns an incredulous and borderline hysterical look Yui’s way. Yui just stares back, lips thinning into an unhappy line. She subtly shakes her head. 

“W—What, um… what should I do?” Izuku stutters out, hesitantly. “I don’t really know how to keep people awake…”

“Hmm~ tell me about your day? Oh, I heard something exciting happened to you!” He can hear the mischievous grin in Satoru’s voice.

His face lights on fire. “You told him?!” He wails to his dark-haired companion.

She shrugs. “Did you really think I wouldn’t?” 

Fair enough. He sighs, wringing his hands in his lap. It’s awkward to even think about, but even now he can barely summon up enough embarrassment to be mortified over the ordeal. His stomach is tied up in knots, and he’s too worried and fearful to truly get worked up about it right now. 

When he glanced nervously back towards Yui, her expression is equally as wary and concerned. He’s never seen her look so worried before, he thinks. Not even after USJ, when she’d admitted aloud that she was concerned for Dabi had she looked like this. The look she’s giving him is imploring and full of a strange, frenetic fear. 

So he takes a deep breath and tries to explain how a boy he thinks is cute asked him out this weekend as if this is any other normal day he’s talked to Satoru on the phone, doing his best to keep the trembling out of his voice. 

//

News trickles out in fits and starts all throughout the night. 

The hour is nearing early morning, but Endeavor is still in his office, dozens of foreign news outlets spread across the double monitor station he’d had IT set up for him earlier. His desk is a mess of notes as he scrabbles together an attempt at a timeline. Despite his best efforts, the nature of Dabi’s— Touya’s— abilities remains elusive and indefinable. Just as impossible and insensible as they always have been. If he hadn’t heard it straight from All Might’s mouth personally, hadn’t been there in the room and heard it with his own ears, he still wouldn’t be able to make himself believe it. A fire quirk. All Might confirmed it. The missing piece of the puzzle, or so he had assumed. 

In reality, it still makes no sense at all.

If Dabi has a fire quirk, then what exactly is Endeavor seeing right now? The logic-defying teleportation, the indomitable telekinesis, the shields and the pure destructive power? 

He rereads through Captain Celebrity’s official statement one more time, both the translated version and the original given in English. 

The American hero explains the situation from where it all unraveled— the throne room of Humarise’s secret headquarters, a massive steel structure hidden high in the Swiss Alps, with most of the base carving deep into the mountains. The heroes confronted Flect Turn, the mastermind behind Humarise. The tables turned as Flect ambushed them with his guards; dozens, if not hundreds in number, Captain Celebrity says. All armed, in addition to their quirks. Then Flect reveals his secret plan to stop his prophesied apocalypse; Ideo Trigger bombs tucked away in Humarise bases across every major city in the world, ready to be detonated by the remote in his hand. Endeavor is vaguely familiar with the concept of the bomb, on account of Hawks’s report on the Kuat Shipyards incident. A volatile substance transmitted through the air, it causes a person’s quirk to spiral out of control, turning them into a walking suicide bomb. If a hero like Endeavor, who already possessed a quirk with explosive and highly destructive capabilities, were to be hit with such a substance… they could easily take out half a city, if not more. 

Paralyzed by the threat and with no recourse, Captain Celebrity said he was willing to negotiate with Flect to stall for time as French pro hero Voyance, their official liaison with the WHA, called for backup. As deep in the mountain range as they were though, even the Otheon military waiting on standby would need at least half an hour to get to their location. 

During all of this, Dabi had been, apparently… on the phone, texting. 

While Captain Celebrity and the other assembled ‘main heroes’ were focused on Flect, their support heroes, Clair Voyance and Dabi— going by the hero name Six Eyes— were just behind them. Endeavor almost snorts aloud as he reads that. In what world would a man with Dabi’s powers ever be considered a support hero? But on a related note, why was the official quirk listed on his official hero license an optic quirk? There’s barely any information on it at that, and none of it lines up with the fire quirk Endeavor knows he was born with, nor the telekinetic one he displayed to the entire world on this mission. Pro Hero Six Eyes is listed as being able to see the quirks of others up to a certain radius. 

It utterly baffles Endeavor. 

It terrifies him, too, because he remembers exactly how haunting those eyes were up close. He could never bring himself to believe they were normal, no matter how much the doctors insisted there was nothing special about them. Indeed it would not come as a surprise to him to hear Touya had some kind of mutated dual-quirk. But the teleporting? The telekinesis? How was he— or anyone, really— meant to explain that? If All for One truly wasn’t involved, if Touya’s powers weren’t forced upon him by the man’s wretched abilities, then where did they come from? Could these monstrous powers of his truly have… always been there, this whole time? From the very first time he’d opened his eyes as a newborn infant?

He drags himself out of his thoughts before he spirals yet again into an endless pit of his own doubts, focusing back on the reports at hand.

Clair Voyance’s official statement has Dabi confirmed to be on his phone for most of the confrontation. While Dabi— or Six Eyes— has no official statement out to confirm or deny this, he sees no reason for the French hero to lie. Voyance reveals that Dabi had come up with the entire plot to stop Flect’s bombs within the five minutes he spent surveying the situation, after finally looking up from his phone. He destroyed the detonator while Flect was still holding it; Voyance’s eye witness account states he appeared to have obliterated it instantaneously, leaving no time for any of them to react. 

After that, the statements of pro heroes Voyance, Captain Celebrity, Elecplant and Pankration, all more or less follow the same story. 

Dabi uses his teleportation to get the drop on Flect. Flect’s quirk, reflection, fends him off at first. While he’s doing that he also uses his telekinetic powers to send a shockwave out to the assembled guards, stunning them and knocking them off their feet. The attack he levels at Flect after that is enough to break through Flect’s barrier in one hit, shattering it and even the surrounding atrium in one hit. The heroes were all too busy scrambling out of the blast radius to get a definitive look at the technique, but whatever it was had enough power to break through a powerful quirk in one blow, and stun Flect long enough for the heroes to arrest him. 

With their leader as a hostage, the Humarise members and the heroes ended up in a stalemate. 

Flect turned the tables by revealing he’d set the activation timer on the bombs long before the heroes had even confronted him. He’d activated them the moment they’d received word that heroes had stormed the base. The detonator had just been for show; there was now way to deactivate the bombs once Flect had turned them on. The only way to stop them was to find them in every single Humarise base across the world, and physically destroy them. 

To launch a counter-mission of that magnitude would require the work of hundreds of people over the course of many days, maybe even weeks, all working in unison. A massive undertaking even the World Heroes Association would struggle to get off the ground. 

And, laughing madly, Flect reveals he’d been stalling them this whole time. Having them chase him through the bowels of the base as he threw his best lieutenants at them to slow them down, leading them all to the throne room, the showdown with the guards, the grandstanding. It had all been a ploy for time. Now the bombs would have less than two hours until detonation, and all of them were stuck here, at his mercy. 

This is when Dabi acts.

He kicks Flect to the ground and drags him by the scruff of his robes towards the heroes. He has Voyance send him a compiled list of all the Humarise bases— something they apparently had investigated together over the course of the past month— and then promptly has all the heroes gather in a circle. Within an instant they’re teleported out of the Humarise base and returned to the same military airstrip they’d originally started their mission at, with Flect as their hostage.

Within the hour, the Otheon military launches a full-scale assault on the Humarise headquarters deep within their country’s mountain range, and Dabi systematically teleports across the world and destroys every single Ideo Trigger bomb himself, leaving a trail of death and destruction in his wake. 

The sheer breadth of his abilities, the staggering power he’s capable of unleashing, the length in which he can sustain it… all of it should be impossible. Even on top of the fact that he knows with personal certainty that Dabi was born with a fire quirk, it should still be impossible. No quirk is capable of that. There’s always drawbacks to any technique— there’s always limitations. 

But Dabi doesn’t seem to operate under limitations of any kind. 

He’s been reading through these reports for hours now— watching the footage for even longer— and still cannot come to terms with it.

There is little doubt in his mind now that Dabi is Touya, after seeing his face in full on live television. That somehow, despite the impossibility of it all, the boy he’d forced himself to accept as dead with his too-strong quirk and his too-weak body was the same man who could easily obliterate buildings within seconds and walk through storms of gunfire without a scratch. Who took down one of the world’s largest terrorist organizations entirely on his own. Who defeated Japan’s Emperor of Darkness, All for One, All Might’s arch nemesis, in one blow. It was an unfathomable concept, but deep in his heart he knew it was true. 

No matter how hard he tries to focus on the facts and not lose himself to his own fears and uncertainties, his thoughts turn in that direction nonetheless. 

When did these powers surface within Touya? If All for One was not the one who gave them to him, then how did he manifest them? The day of his birth? The day his fire quirk showed itself? If those powers had been there all those years ago, why had Endeavor never witnessed anything even remotely like them? 

They trained every day, and Endeavor never went easy on him. He hurt him, terribly, during those sessions. But Touya never went easy on him either, and even as a child he knew how to be vicious. He never flinched away from the pain, and despite his sickly constitution he was strong, and he was clever. He’d landed plenty of hits on Endeavor too, discrepancy in their sizes be damned, and his ability to read his opponent was superb, even at his young age. That had been why Endeavor continued to train him, despite knowing his quirk was subpar at best. At the time, Endeavor had thought he might not have had the body nor the quirk to be the Number One Hero, but he’d certainly had the talent. 

Then came the day Touya had stared up at him— bruises up and down his arms from deflecting Endeavor’s punches, training uniform torn and burned and hanging off his small frame — with those piercing, unbearably intense eyes of his, and told him in no uncertain terms that they were done with training for the day. 

Endeavor had raged at him that day. Touya had stood his ground. He truly thought it would come to blows, but something in that haunting gaze of his stayed his hand.

Now he wonders if it was his own impending death that had stopped him, if some instinctual part of him had known he was pushing too far, starting a battle he had no hope of winning. 

He’d let Touya go, that day. And Touya had walked away without another glance. 

Even though the man is his own flesh and blood, his own son, he doesn’t think he ever really knew Todoroki Touya at all. He remembers holding the boy in his hands for the very first time. His firstborn son. He remembers thinking how shockingly, terrifyingly small he was; Endeavor had been able to cradle him in one hand. Again that same child, older now but still shockingly small for his age, staring him down with searingly cold eyes as he dismissed himself from his own training and dared Endeavor to say anything about it. Then the child as a teenager, taller and healthier with the worst of his childhood sickliness behind him, forcing Endeavor to his knees with an overwhelming surge of power and heat that even the Number Two Hero in the country couldn’t withstand as he destroyed his father’s ambitions with words alone. 

A greater picture comes to light, as he gathers up more and more pieces of this enigmatic child. 

The officer leading the investigation on Touya’s tragic ‘death’ had mentioned a local vigilante with a teleportation quirk as the likely suspect behind Shouto’s appearance at the hospital. Endeavor had looked into it briefly after the fact, but never turned up any leads— the vigilante had either died or gone to ground, and was never seen again. Not long afterwards a criminal with a mysterious cremation quirk started to gain notoriety, and the police dubbed him ‘Dabi’. And now there’s international hero Six Eyes, who teleports and sees the quirks of others. All the pieces might be lining up, but none of it makes any sense. 

Endeavor closes his eyes with a weary sigh, elbows on the desk, resting his forehead on his tented fingers in front of him. 

“Touya,” he murmurs under his breath, eyes slowly opening as his unfocused gaze trains on the looping footage on his screen. The monitors are the only light in the room, casting an eerie blue gaze across his eyes. “Just who are you?” 

Chapter Text

One hour stuck in this godforsaken chair and one global catastrophe later, Gojo really, really needs a nap. And a drink. Also a cigarette. Doesn’t even have to be in that order. Really, he’s not picky here. 

He gives a long winded sigh, wondering if this briefing is going to be over at any point in the next thirty minutes, or if he should just use his teleportation for the umpteenth time this day and disappear to go find a vending machine. He’ll settle for any drink at this point, even the non-alcoholic kind. In fact, a highly-caffeinated, overly sweetened vending machine latte sounds perfect right now. He desperately needs the excessive sugar. His reversed-curse technique is working overtime right now. He’s also bored out of his fucking mind. 

Gojo genuinely doesn’t even know why he’s still here. 

He already gave his statement. They’ve interviewed all the heroes who had been on the mission with him to ad nauseam, have cross-examined him multiple times, have pulled Clair in at least seven directions as if the poor woman was at all responsible for him or his decisions, and have even dragged the Otheon ruling party into this. Now they’re all just stuck in this giant conference room arguing about all the things they’ve already argued about before. 

Otheon doesn’t care about what the WHA thinks. The WHA is ostensibly meant to follow the orders of the UN, who also aren’t particularly displeased over the results. The WHA themselves are crying foul over missed protocol, which is really just a blatant cover for their anger over Gojo— and by extension Otheon— stealing all the fame and glory right out from beneath their noses. Everyone in this room already knows that, but they’re letting them throw their weight around anyway. 

“He’s not even an actual hero,” the WHA representative argues, loudly, as Gojo reluctantly tunes back into the conversation as it once again returns to the subject of him.

“He’s a registered hero of Otheon,” returns the Otheon official, unmoved. 

“That’s a farce! Created for your own gains!”

“It’s a perfectly valid legal document,” the man from Otheon counters. “He’s a legal and recognized citizen and hero of the country of Otheon and further that, the European Union. Would you like to call into question the validity of a EU notarized document?”

“The World Heroes Association never approved of this,” the other man spits. 

A woman at the far end of the table clears her throat. “And it’s not under their jurisdiction to do so, Mr. Leonis,” she interjects, leaning forward; Gojo can barely make out the logo of the UN on the badge pinned to the pocket of her blazer. “The royal family of Otheon is recognized by the United Nations as the governing authority of that nation. Who they give citizenship to is under their discretion. And the qualifications of their hero program are the same standards as the rest of the EU. If you want to call into question the validity of his license, then you’ll have to call into question the validity of the Union’s entire hero program.”

Mr. Leonis, the WHA representative, turns the color of puce. “Then as a legally recognized hero, he acted without prior approval from the chain of command. That’s grounds for termination of his license.”

The woman nods satisfactorily. “That is indeed a valid accusation. What say you, Mr. Baumann?”

Baumann, the head of Otheon’s hero directive, pushes up his glasses. “There is legal precedent for his actions. We have reason to believe Mr. Gojo acted within the best interests of the mission and the safety of his fellow heroes. An investigation will be launched to judge the necessity of his actions, but I am confident no foul play will be discovered.”

“No foul play?” Leonis repeats, incensed. “He murdered hundreds of people across the world! Cities in shambles! Societies in chaos!”

“That’s an over exaggeration,” Baumann retorts, coolly. 

Gojo feels for the guy. He definitely didn’t sign up for this. Poor guy probably woke up this morning thinking he’d have a regular day at the office, only to be thrown into this madhouse and given the dubious honor of being the one responsible for Gojo’s decisions. Nonetheless, he handles all of Gojo’s chaos with an unflappable, if not resigned competence. With his sharp glasses and slicked back blonde hair, Gojo is fondly reminded of Nanami every time he looks at him.

“All his opponents were armed and actively engaged in assault— under international law, that’s not murder, that’s self defense,” Baumann continues. “That’s also acting in the best interest of the public. The damage done to the cities and injuries to the nearby civilians were all done by Humarise’s weapons and their personnel.” 

It’s a legal technicality, but one Gojo is likely to get away with. If this was Japan, a hero would lose their license and be thrown into jail for manslaughter, if not direct homicide. But most of the world isn’t like that, as many governments consider their hero task force part of law enforcement, and in some cases even the military. Since the WHA recognizes the stipulations of all countries in the UN, they have to follow that baseline. 

Leonis grits his teeth. “A massacre of this degree is grounds for war crimes.” 

“I will reiterate: Mr. Gojo did not engage with unarmed civilians. Those assailants willingly joined a recognized terrorist group and came at him with weapons and quirks with the intent to kill. If they just so happened to pick a fight with the wrong man, that’s not our problem.”

Gojo looks away, hiding his smirk under the pretense of clearing his throat. That little bite of sarcasm lurking beneath the man’s level tone reminds him so much of his former blonde kouhai, he can’t help but interrupt. 

“Are you my acting legal counsel now?” He asks, joking. 

Baumann side eyes him with an uninspired look. “I’m your apologist, not your defense lawyer,” he returns, voice dry. 

Gojo grins sharply. He stops leaning back in his chair in a lazy sprawl to rest his elbows on the table and stare the whole room down. They all seize up like rabbits locked under the gaze of a wolf, as if they’d forgotten the presence of a predator in their midst. 

“Look, if any of you can name me any other person on this planet that could have diffused over two dozen bombs scattered across the world with no civilian casualties in under two hours, alone, I will personally go and find them and ask them how they would have solved that problem in my stead. If you can’t, then you’re just going to have to accept that my course of action was the best available at the time, given the constraints I was working under.”

This successfully cows the room. The UN lady nods along solemnly; at his side, Baumann sighs and closes his eyes; Clair, on his other side, huffs softly under her breath. The other heroes in the room have nothing to say in response to that, the silence a bit awkward and uncomfortable as they exchange harried looks over the assembled bureaucrats. Even Captain Celebrity— the highest ranked hero in the room— just looks discomfited, his earlier bravado replaced with a more solemn and apprehensive air. Leonis looks like he’s about to spontaneously combust, face turning a bit purple.

He claps his hands. “No takers?” He makes a show of looking around the conference table one more time. No one meets his eyes. “Great. Well then, feel free to continue with all the jockeying over who gets to brag that they took down Humarise. I’m going to get a drink.”

He doesn’t bother waiting for a dismissal, pushing his chair back and sauntering out the door. 

The interior of the UN headquarters in Bern is sleek and minimalistic and vaguely rat-maze like, but like a small rodent ferreting about for cheese, Gojo does indeed eventually sniff out an empty break room with vending machines and a carafe of lukewarm coffee sitting on the counter. He helps himself to the rest of it and pours a generous amount of milk and sugar; it’s mediocre at best, but it’ll do the job. 

His hands shake slightly as he downs half his cup in one go. 

No one is nearby, his Six Eyes tell him so, but he still feels as if he’s on the edge of dangerous territory, somewhere he can’t let his guard down. Adrenaline and cursed energy surge through him, a dangerous cocktail of power and hubris. These people aren’t his friends. The only reason they’re not trying to shuck him in jail is because— well first of all they’re all logical people and have long since realized no jail could ever hope to hold him, and secondly Otheon is crowning him the hero of this saga while the UN just wants this Humarise business swept under the rug as quickly as possible. They fear and respect his strength. But to them, he’s a live weapon they have no hope of controlling. 

There’s only two ways he sees this unfolding. Either they try to keep him on a leash through fear or intimidation— unlikely, given the fact they’re all still too terrified of him to even look at him, and have no leverage to use against him— or they try to entice him with offers he can’t resist. From the way Otheon’s treated him so far, he has a feeling they’ll go for the latter. He’s not entirely unopposed. He’ll have to see what kind of terms they offer. 

Gojo pushes the sliding door to the balcony open, sprawling across one of the empty armchairs facing the scenic forests surrounding the building. 

He drops his cup on the end table at his side, props his feet on the ottoman and digs out his pack of cigarettes. 

He doesn't even want to think about how Japan will react. The country in general… and all the individuals he’s close to inside of it. He’s too tired to even fathom the fallout he’ll face when he goes back. Not tired in the physical sense of course; thanks to his reversed-curse technique he’s never felt better, not even a headache or mild soreness to mark an afternoon of exploding various Humarise bases across the world while fighting off armed terrorists. But mentally, he’s starting to approach the point of bleak, manic depression he usually tries to avoid. 

Like clockwork, his phone starts to ring. 

“Yui-chan!” He chirps in greeting, with an energy he absolutely does not feel right now. “How’d it go with Izu-kun and Shou-kun? How soon until they’re at the altar exchanging vows?”

“... Satoru,” Yui returns, with a frisson lurking beneath her level tone that bodes ill for him. 

He winces. “Hahaha… did you see the news?” He’s sure it’s all over the front page by now. 

“I originally stepped out to call you about Midoriya and Todoroki, and then my twitter started going nuts over international ‘Dabi sightings’,” Yui replies, flatly. “So yes, I just spent the last hour trying to figure out what the hell you were even thinking.”

“I promise, there was a plan involved,” he says, tiredly.

“Really? Because from what I can see from the TV inside the dorms, it looks like your usual brand of chaos.”

“Okay, that part was a bit of a spur of the moment decision,” Gojo admits. “But still a calculated one.”

Yui sounds as if she’s barely reigning in her temper. “I’m all ears.”

He sighs, staring out into the picturesque tree line. He takes a drag of his cigarette. It’s so quiet, here. The silence buzzes in his ears, rings faintly in distant echoes across his brain. When he gets like this, the roaring silence of his own head is his worst enemy. He’s always been his worst enemy, and now is no exception. Powers that defy logic, reason and even mortality itself— they’re not meant to be confined into a human shell like this. Pushed to his limits, surpassing even the furthest reaches of his own divinity, he feels both as endless and indeterminable as the universe, and as hollow and empty as a soulless husk. 

“I don’t really want to be a villain anymore,” he reveals, staring into the speckless blue sky.

There’s a long pause from the other end of the line.

“...You have a funny way of going about it.” Yui snorts. 

He chuckles under his breath. “It looks that way, doesn’t it? But I’m here for a reason. The King of Otheon wanted to deal with the Humarise problem ‘in house’, so to speak. He didn’t want to look weak in front of other countries and he wanted a show of strength to solidify his reign in response to his father’s own lackluster history. But Otheon is a small— if not blindingly rich— country and doesn’t have the manpower for an operation like that. And having to grovel to the WHA to request heroes would make him lose face, so he hired me to take care of the problem for him. I agreed, so long as he got me diplomatic status.”

“So that's what you’ve been doing for the past month?” She doesn’t sound particularly impressed. 

“Boring busy work for the most part, to be honest. Traveling across the world mapping out all their bases, tracing their streams of income, hunting down their main base. It all came in handy in the end though, when it was a bit of a race against the clock to track down all those bombs.” 

“All of that destruction… so it really was part of a WHA operation?” 

“More or less, yeah.” Gojo shrugs, leaning his head back and blowing out smoke rings into the brisk autumn air.

“And this is your plan to stop being a villain? To be a hero instead?”

“I think I’d rather die,” he retorts. He’d meant it in jest, but it comes out more like a declaration. A part of him is joking, but a part of him is really, emphatically, not.

He doesn’t think he has it in him to be that person again. To be the hero holding the world on his shoulders— to be the sole reason it all falls apart. To once again be standing alone at the end of it all, with all the deaths of every person he’s ever cared for laid at his feet. He honestly thinks he’d rather be dead, then bear that pain again.

Yui must pick up on it. The silence on her end of the line hovers heavily with things unsaid. “Satoru…” She says, sounding taken aback. 

Ah, shit. He hadn’t meant to say it like that. His eyes slip shut as he takes another drag. Even closed, his Six Eyes expand across the building, the hundreds of souls shuttling across hallways, puttering around the water cooler, arguing in the briefing room. With his cursed energy so off-balance after his multiple uses of his reversed-curse technique, it’s impossible to shut it off, to center himself and settle the infinite chaos in his own head. 

“Sorry. I didn’t mean that. I’m just— so tired,” he admits, a sliver of his celestial gaze peeking through a fray of white lashes. The sky is a blinding, tender thing above him. 

There’s shuffling on the other end of the line. He tries to focus on that, when everything else seems so unbearable. Is she walking somewhere? Heading back home after school, or to wherever she goes when she doesn’t seem to want to go home? 

“You should take a nap, if you can,” she says, carefully. 

“Can’t,” he returns, voice clipped. Not now. Not yet. If he shuts his reversed-curse technique down he’ll collapse like a marionette with its strings cut. That kind of vulnerability right now is unfathomable to him. 

“They’re still working it out inside, but I don’t doubt they’ll rule in my favor. The UN is just happy it looks like they’ve finally done something about Humarise. Otheon is happy to get all the credit. The WHA is throwing a tantrum about it, but they can’t go against the UN without losing face,” he says, just to fill the damning silence. “They’re going to knight me— isn’t that hilarious? I didn’t even know countries outside of Britain still did that. Otheon does, I guess. I get a fancy sword and title and everything.”

“...What does all this mean for you then, going forward?” Her voice is quiet and gentle, like she’s worried about spooking him. That’s silly. What does she think he has to fear? Hasn’t he proved to the world now that there’s nothing he can’t do, that there’s nothing he fears? 

“I get diplomatic immunity, basically,” he summarizes, flicking ash off the end of his cigarette as he crosses his legs in front of him. “Land, citizenship, a get out of jail free card— I think I made out pretty well for myself on this one, huh?”

She doesn’t say anything for a long moment. 

“Does this mean you have to stay in Otheon forever?” 

Gojo sighs. “That depends on Japan, probably.” 

Yui sounds nervous as she asks; “Do you think they’ll fight it?”

“If they're smart, they’ll use it to their advantage,” he replies, glibly. 

The world is shocked, right now. Shaken by the extent of his power. But too many people across the globe have lost too much to Humarise. Frankly the amount of civil unrest, human trafficking, and exploitation of vulnerable populations that group has caused is disturbing— there’ll be an outcry when it all comes to the surface, when the public realizes how long their governments allowed that rot to fester in their borders, how much dirty money changed hands. They might fear his power but they’ll commend his actions. Otheon is poised to make the best of the situation; despite their sordid history with the terrorist group, they’re going to come out of this smelling like roses since they look like they’re the ones who finally decided to do something about it. 

If Japan plays their cards right, they can get in on that glory too. His vendetta against Humarise started in their borders, after all. Tokyo was the only major city not to have a Humarise base, Japan one of the few countries that can truly say their borders are clean of the cult’s influence. And it’s true that’s mostly Gojo’s doing, but there are heroes and precincts that helped that cause. If they claim him instead of condemn him, they’ll look like they were the real first responders to the global crisis. 

Then again, the Japanese Hero Commission has some seriously stringent rules. They draw an unyielding line denouncing death of any kind as murder, and courts very rarely side with heroes as law enforcement as a whole does not have a license to kill, as they usually do in other countries. In an occupational field with plenty of collateral damage, that can be a really hard quandary to navigate. Japan doesn’t even execute criminals, no matter how dangerous. Quirk use in general is heavily relegated, especially in regards to what constitutes usage in self-defense. They haven’t had an offensive military campaign in centuries, so there’s no precedent for quirk-based government operatives with licenses to kill. If they were the only decisive party involved in the decision-making process, Gojo would be headed straight for a maximum security prison that would have no hope of holding him. 

Gojo snorts. The Commission is not nearly as squeaky clean as they adamantly make themselves out to be. Being in the criminal underworld for so long means he’s heard some very interesting rumors. 

“... And if they’re not smart?” She asks, tentatively. 

He sighs. “We’ll cross that bridge when we get to it.” 

Just from what little he understands of contemporary domestic foreign policy, he thinks they’ll take this on the chin. Recent tension in the South China Sea means they won’t risk alienating their Western allies. He’s way too fucking tired right now to even think about that though. He’s so far past exhausted he’s flung straight past manic energy and right into apathetic emptiness, and no longer has the capacity to care. 

Yui is quiet again. He finishes up his cigarette, and slides another one out of the pack and lights it. Even with the omniscient expanse of his Six Eyes, he can’t interpret her silence, heavy with things unsaid. 

“I really didn’t think he had it in him,” Yui starts, on a totally different tangent. “It was totally unannounced. Midoriya asked him what his plans were for the weekend and then Todoroki turned the question around. I’m still trying to wrap my head around it, to be honest. It feels like I’m missing something here…”

Gojo sits up straighter, relieved for the distraction from his own spiraling thoughts. “Straight out of left field huh? Kinda exactly his style.”

“It was very blunt,” Yui agrees, without missing a beat. 

“Well don’t leave me in suspense,” he whines. “I need all the details.” 

“I’ll tell you all about Todoroki’s awkward attempts at flirting if you tell me all about the mission.” 

He sighs. He should have expected this masterful manipulation from his favorite drummer. “Fineee~” He complains, exhaling a cloud of smoke. “But I doubt my story will be nearly as interesting.” 

//

After dragging Midoriya into explaining his side of the afternoon’s events personally in a desperate attempt to keep Satoru focused on her and not whatever else is currently plaguing him, she leaves an anxiously fretting Midoriya at the school dorms and makes the trek back to her house alone. 

She’s not the only one from 1-A that didn’t move into the dorms; Ojiro stayed at home to help his parents with his younger siblings and Koda didn’t want to leave the majority of his veritable barnyard of animals. Yui had borrowed a page from Ojiro’s book and cited her many younger siblings as her need to stay home, but she doubts Eraserhead actually fell for it. There are a couple out of 1-B as well, but overall the dorm program seemed to be successful. She’ll wait and see how many people stay after their first trial semester before she passes judgment on it. 

She doesn’t regret adamantly refusing to move. 

It’s a pleasant enough place to linger around on campus, but she chafes at the idea of having to get explicit permission for something as simple and thoughtless as running to the mall for errands. As a kid who’d had free reign over her life for so long, the thought of laboring under that kind of oppressive authority is anathema to her existence. So long as she keeps up her grades, stays out of trouble and comes up with a reasonable alibi, her parents are too busy and exhausted to care what she’s doing.

Yui has no desire to stay in the dorms.

She’s not particularly enthusiastic at the idea of her own house though, either. 

So it’s unsurprising then that her feet carry her to the same place she’s been ending up at all month. 

The neighborhood is so affluent she sometimes feels like she’ll break out in hives just by entering into it. The guards are all nice enough, but any time she crosses paths with one of the residents she feels the need to cringe away. It still amuses her that Dabi, the most dangerous supervillain in the country (and let’s be realistic, probably the world too) lives in a tidy little community with guard houses posted at all the entries. Well, ‘lives in’ is a bit misleading. She’s fairly certain she’s spent more time in his house than he has. 

Yui doesn’t even need to bother with the locks. The moron didn’t even lock his front door before he left the goddamn country. 

Then again, she thinks hysterically, does the most dangerous man in the world even really need to lock his front door? 

She drops her bag at the door with a dull thud. She pries her shoes off one by one, leaves them in the empty genkan and pads over to the thermostat on the wall and cranks the heat up as high as it can get. The generator hums to life behind the walls. 

The place feels cavernous and empty as she rummages through the fridge for the takeout she’d left in there the other day. The massive kitchen with its complicated state-of-the-art appliances and pristine steel finishing intimidated her at first, but she’s long since figured out to ignore ninety percent of the dials and knobs and stick to the microwave. The idea that he owns this place is just surreal to her— sometimes she genuinely forgets he’s an actual adult. He owns property, pays all his bills once a month without incident, probably knows how to hire contractors and landscapers for this place even if he doesn’t bother to do it, has a bank account and a credit score and apparently even a driver’s license. He always acts like such a child, but underneath that nonchalant attitude, all that silliness and frivolity, there’s a shrewd and perceptive adult who’s seen far more in his life than Yui will probably ever know. 

She shoves the rest of her half-eaten ramen into the microwave, slumping down against the kitchen island as she watches the bowl spin round in the window. 

Yui doesn’t bother to rely on adults. As a general collective they’ve proven themselves to be remarkably unreliable, and forever operating under their own agendas. Some of them even mean well, sometimes, but kindness can be fleeting and fickle, and ultimately people have their own priorities and can only ever be counted on to act on their own interests. It was part of the reason she’d always wanted to be a hero; to be the kind of person other people can rely on, no matter what. 

Satoru is different, though.

If Yui texts him to come save her even when he’s off dismantling human experimentation laboratories in an entirely different country, he comes rushing back in an instant. If she wants a new drum set, even when her current one is perfectly serviceable, he buys one in her favorite color. If she needs a place to get away from it all, without hesitation he offers up his address. If she wants to be a hero, he figures out a way to train her even though he’s a wanted villain on opposite ends of the law from her career of choice. If she mentions wanting a strawberry milk tea, one shows up at their next practice. 

Usually, she doesn’t even have to ask.

They were in danger in Hosu, and he was there. They were in danger at USJ, and he solved that situation too. He gives off an impression of feckless irresponsibility, of a fickle and capricious guy who can’t be trusted to tie his own shoes, who despises responsibility and refuses commitments of any kind— in reality, he’s actually proven himself to be the most reliable person she’s ever met. That mercurial and irresponsible personality he’s cultivated so fastidiously for himself is just a lie. 

She thinks in the same way she’s scared to rely on others, Satoru is scared to be relied on. 

But as it turns out, there are things that scare her more than relying on others. 

Her ramen is still spinning in the microwave as she slips her phone out of her pocket, the tremor in her fingers making it difficult to swipe through her password. It takes three shaky attempts before she flicks through her home screen to open her messenger app. 

Come back please. She writes. Her finger hovers over the send button. 

The timer on the microwave ticks a relentless tempo in the ringing silence of the deserted house. She didn’t turn any of the lights on, and at this time of year the sky is already drowning the world in dusk. Elongated shadows pitch against the floor in sharp angles. She sinks down to the ground, head resting against her knees. 

She’d panicked, back at the dorms. 

Yui never panics. Years of dealing with the twins (both sets) have insulated her from that reactive, instinctual panic that rears up in response to sudden stressful situations. No matter how worried she might be internally, her rational thought kicks in and smothers all that anxiety under the efficiency of logic. But earlier when she heard that emptiness in his voice, a cold, shaky fear had crept up her spine, and all her rational thoughts left her. 

She could hear it so clearly, even thousands of miles away. She was losing him. Pieces of the person she knew slipping inexorably through her fingers like unspooling water. 

She’d never heard him sound like that, ever. 

That beautiful, ephemeral voice of his had never sounded so vacant and cold before. Chillingly indifferent, burdened under a heavy, soul-crushing exhaustion. Just thinking about the bleak, uncaring way he’d said, I would rather die, drops a pit into her stomach. 

She’d tried to drag him back. Tried to reach him through time and space and the chasm of mortal impermanence, through that immutable barrier that makes him so untouchable. But the void was inescapable, this time. Even the escapades of Todoroki and Midoriya’s hapless flirting couldn’t bridge the gap, couldn’t drag him out of his celestial orbit, back into the confines of his human life. 

Her first thought, when she’d realized her attempt to pull him back hadn’t worked, was to somehow find a way to get in contact with Hawks. Even if she had to haul him out of his agency kicking and screaming. He wasn’t in Fukuoka though, and she didn’t know how to get a hold of him without going through at least three different secretaries. She couldn’t claim to understand what sort of idiotic relationship those two maintained in spite of their chosen professions (and the well-warranted advice of their betters) but she knew it must mean something to Satoru, if he put this much effort into it. He never kept his one-night stands around for more than a single tryst, yet Hawks doesn’t seem to be going anywhere. 

But thinking on it now— she doesn’t need Hawks. 

She can do it herself. 

She hits send. 

The microwave dings cheerfully at her. The smell of salt and warm broth wafts into the air. Yui lifts her head, blinking at it. The digital clock glares at her in the suffusive darkness. How did it get so dark so quickly? She really ought to turn on a light. 

Her phone buzzes by her side.

Right now? Lights up across her screen.

She hesitates, fingers hovering over her keyboard. 

Yes. She sends back. 

She shuffles on her knees to the microwave, unfolding herself to pry open the door and carefully juggle the piping hot bowl in her hands. She can’t dredge up any kind of appetite right now, though she hasn’t eaten anything since lunch. Even the alluring scent of miso and spices isn’t enough to rouse it, but if she’s going to be waiting here for him for a while she should really try to eat something. 

Her ears pop, a flickering jolt of pain that startles her into spilling some broth across her fingers. 

It must be scalding hot, but she doesn’t feel it at all.

She knows this feeling, this impression of invisible pressure against the back of her head, some primal, instinctual sense alighting to changes in reality she can’t consciously comprehend. When she whirls around, he’s right there, so suddenly and conclusively, and she gasps and drops the bowl. Yui flinches back in shock, bracing for the searing heat of boiling water against her bare legs as the ramen splatters across the kitchen. 

When she pries her eyes open, the floor is wet and steaming and the noodles have gotten everywhere, but she doesn’t feel a thing. There’s an arm held out across her, a hand gripping her shoulder and turning her into a broad, familiar chest. Droplets shiver in the air around them, stuck fast in an unrelenting grip. After a beat, they stop trembling in the air and crash to the ground, and it’s like all the sound and color returns to the world, and she remembers how to breathe. She sucks in a heaving, startled breath, craning her neck up to see a pair of celestial eyes peering down at her.

“Satoru,” she says, blankly, eyes very wide. 

// 

He doesn’t say anything in response to her, just drags her by the shoulder towards the sink. He flicks the tap on as cold as it can get, and holds her hand out under the spray. Her fingers are a little red, where a few stray droplets had caught her earlier. It doesn’t really hurt, just stings a little bit. But spilling an entire bowl of scalding hot ramen all over herself should definitely have caused excruciating pain. Yet she’s not hurt at all— she’s not even wet. She hadn’t even realized his quirk could do that. Could shift and change to accommodate others. There’s a lot she doesn’t know about his technique, she realizes. There’s a lot she doesn’t know about him, in general.

She tries to comprehend the reality that he’d most likely just traveled from across the world in the blink of an eye, just for her, and falls well short of it. 

She has no idea how long they stand like that, but eventually her fingers start to go numb. Satoru turns the tap off, releasing her wrist. She buries her hand back into the sleeve of her uniform, fingers clenched tightly to the bottom of her jacket. 

“S— Sorry…” She whispers, looking down at the mess on the floor.

Satoru just sighs, laying a hand atop her head. “I’m the one who should be apologizing, hm?” He ruffles her hair. “I really scared you this time, huh.” 

He’s not talking about accidentally startling her into dropping her dinner. She bites her bottom lip hard enough to draw blood, hands twisting into the hem of her blazer, wrinkling it irreparably. 

“Worried,” she corrects, quiet but steadfast, holding his gaze. “You worried me.” 

She’s seen this look in his eyes, before. That flash of remorse, of something a little too close to guilt or shame for her liking. It always flickers briefly in his eyes whenever he does something he thinks they’ll condemn him for, something too monstrous to be acceptable. But she’s not afraid of him, and never has been. She’s afraid for him, pretty frequently these days, but never of him. 

“Ah… I’ve been doing that quite a bit these days, haven’t I?” He observes, ruefully. 

She doesn’t reply, looking down at the mess seeping into her socks. She doesn’t want to make him feel worse by admitting it aloud, but it’s the truth and they both know it.

Yui takes a step back and looks him over carefully. He really does look tired. There’s a tightness at the edge of those shocking eyes that alarms her. He’s always pale, but he looks washed out in the dim light of dusk. The blue of his eyes swallows up all the color in the room, gleaming like polished jewels, brighter than she’s ever seen them; she wonders if it's a side effect of overusing his quirk, or if she’s just imagining it. He’s wearing an outfit she’s never seen before. It looks unusually professional, like an actual hero costume. A tightly fitted turtleneck, the ends of his sleeves tucked into support-grade fingerless gloves; cargo pants cinched against his slim waist with a belt lined with supply packs; heavy duty combat boots. The whole ensemble is his usual all-black look, but unlike his normal ‘Dabi’ attire it looks less like a bunch of athleisure he’d swiped off the floor of his bedroom, and more like it was custom-made by a professional support staff. 

He looks like a person she doesn’t recognize. He doesn’t look like himself at all. 

“What happened, really?” She peers up at him, eyes wide.

He doesn’t meet her gaze, shrugging as he looks aside. “I mean, I told you everything I know earlier. The heroes released their official statements too, if you want to look at those.” 

She shakes her head. “I don’t care about the mission. What happened to you?” 

He blinks. “Me? Nothing. What do you mean?” 

Yui purses her lips. She can’t tell if he’s being intentionally obtuse, or if he truly doesn’t understand. 

“Earlier, on the phone…”

He sighs, scratching the back of his neck. “Oh, yeah. Sorry about that. It’s just— been a long day, even for me.” 

“No, it’s more than that. Something’s wrong,” she denies, watching him closely. 

“What do you mean? Nothing’s wrong.” He smiles, a facetious thing full of teeth. “I mean, look at me! All that action, and not even a scratch.” 

Yui gives him a long, level look at that. She makes sure to put as much disappointment into it as possible. Does he really think she’d fall for that? She knows him better than this. 

He sighs again, facsimile smile disappearing. “I really am fine, Yui-chan. Or I will be. I just need to sleep.” 

She absolutely does not believe him, and she makes that very clear in her expression.

Satoru holds his hands out in front of him, spreading his fingers wide. “No, really, it’s true. I get that I seem a bit, ah, strange right now, but it’s nothing a bit of rest won’t cure.” 

“...”  

Does he think she’s an idiot? There’s a difference between being tired and a full blown existential meltdown, and Satoru seems to have long passed that point.

“Oh my god, stop looking at me like that, I’m telling the truth I swear,” he insists. He sighs again, sagging against the counter as he crosses his arms. “Look, this is kind of hard to explain, but my technique, it— well, you know how using your quirk a lot tires you out normally, right? Mine is the opposite. The more I use it, the stronger I get. Physically, I mean. Right now, I’m stronger than I ever have been before. My techniques are more powerful, my range is far greater, my precision flawless. But, it takes its toll, in its own way.”

She stares at him in mounting horror once she gets what he’s not saying aloud. 

“Physically, you said,” she repeats, slowly. 

He nods reluctantly, lips twisted into a fine line. 

“So… mentally…”

He chuckles weakly. “Mentally— my brain feels like a wrung-out dish towel.” 

Gojo unwillingly remembers a distant and almost painfully idyllic afternoon under the oppressive summer sun, dragging Shoko and Suguru out into the sweltering heat to have them pelt various office supplies at him until the sky went dark. Shoko had complained he’d fry his brain with his Infinity technique turned on all the time, and he’d smugly assured her his reversed-curse technique would refresh his brain and body as many times as he needed it to. Well, he’d been right. A little too right. His brain is firing neurons at an unprecedented rate, synapses communicating at lightning speed; his body is a perfect cocktail of adrenaline and cortisol, boosting his energy and reaction speeds; his cellular renewal rate is currently three times the average human’s. Physically, he’s at the peak of human existence. 

In his head though, his thoughts spiral into an endless vortex. He feels untethered, unmoored, and unaccountably empty. The inexhaustible expanse of infinity is too great for his mortal shell, tearing him apart at the seams. If he doesn’t recalibrate himself, and soon… he’s not entirely sure what will happen to him. He’s not keen on finding out. 

Yui is frowning up at him. She looks more distressed than he’s ever seen her. He hadn’t meant to do that. But he doesn’t know how to fix it. 

“... But you’ll feel better? After you sleep?” She asks, quietly, looking down at her sleeves. 

“Yep. Good as new, promise.” It might take a day or two at this rate, but natural rest has always fixed him up from the worst of his reversed-curse technique spirals before. 

She nods absently, then tugs him out of the kitchen. 

He’s floored when she drags him upstairs, a place he hasn’t actually been to basically since he bought the place. It’s a hall with a bunch of bedrooms, a wrap-around opening to the living area below, with a large expanse of windows facing the backyard and a small sitting area at the end. He’s startled to see a full sized futon up there that he most assuredly did not buy. It’s got pillows and blankets and everything. 

“Did you buy this?” He asks, perplexed. 

“I have a surprisingly large expendable income these days,” she returns, wryly, as she shoves him forward. 

That’s not really what he’s asking. He’s well aware how much money the band makes these days, even if it’s still a bit of a wild revelation, to think they actually make an income off their music. He should probably feel a little bad about it, considering all their songs are blatant rips from bands from his old world, but mostly he’s just still bewildered at the thought people actually spend money on them. That they have fans that wait outside for hours in the cold for tickets, who stream their songs on repeat and snap up their merch like frenzied sharks whenever they release new stuff. 

So he knows Yui has way more money than any kid her age should reasonably have, even if the circumstances of their band’s income are still surreal to him. But why she’d choose to spend her hard-earned cut of their earnings on buying a bed for a house he doesn’t use is…

“How long have you been staying here?” He questions, allowing her to push  him onto the mattress. He’s still a little too flummoxed by the idea of a mattress being here at all to protest. 

She shrugs it off. “Not often.”

It’s such a characteristically evasive answer he chuckles under his breath. That doesn’t answer much. But he noticed the heater has been blessedly cranked to its highest setting, and she’d been using the kitchen when he’d warped here, so clearly she stays often enough to know how to use the house properly. It’s for the best, really. He sure as hell wasn’t using it, and it’s better than the place going to waste. He actually finds he likes the idea of it; that she can have this place to herself whenever she just wants to get away from her own life for a bit. 

“I don’t care,” he tells her. “Stay for as long or as little as you like.”

He flops down onto the futon, deciding he may as well use it if it's here. Yui probably has the right of it; he’s really not much help to anyone the way he is right now, unless they need him to blow up an army or something. And now that he’s already been to Bern, it won’t be nearly as taxing to get back to it whenever he inevitably gets dragged back into that circus of bickering suits. He should probably let poor Baumann know he’ll have to run the show without him for a few days. On second thought, the Nanami-imposter will probably thank him for it. Gojo is more liable to turn those meetings into chaos than facilitate any meaningful conversation.

“Okay,” she says, then promptly lies down right next to him.

He blinks at her. “Um.”

“You said to stay as long as I like.”

“In the house,” he counters, hysterically. “Not in my bed.” 

“It’s my bed,” she returns. 

“You know what I mean!!”

Instead of replying to his perfectly reasonable objections, she remains stoically unmoved. He stares at her, uncomprehending. Why is it that he’s had to deal with teenage girls through two lifetimes, and yet has never managed to understand what the hell goes on in their heads? 

She reaches out and grabs his wrist in a death grip. There’s a brief half-second where he almost forgets to pull down his barrier, her grasping touch reaching nothing but the endless expanse of his Limitless technique. It’s gone in an instant though, her warm fingers clasping around his skin. 

“You’re not allowed to disappear,” she says. 

He turns to his side, eyes wide. His mouth opens, but no words come out. He doesn’t know how to respond to that. 

“I’m— I’m not,” he says. 

She just tightens her hold. 

“Yui-chan, you know I was never in any danger, right?” He asks, gently. “I never am, no matter how scary my circumstances might look.”

She doesn’t say anything for a long moment. It’s too dark to make out much of her expression, even with his Six Eyes, but he thinks it's something too close to sorrow for his liking. 

“That’s not what I was worried about,” she mumbles, almost too quietly to hear. Then she shakes her head. “Just go to sleep already. You look like a zombie.”

He scoffs, rolling onto his back. “I look fabulous and you know it,” he mumbles back, but nonetheless closes his eyes.

It’s always uncomfortable, to drag down his Infinity and bear his own human vulnerability to the world, but especially so when he’s overwhelmed in cursed-energy like this. Every instinct inside him protests the idea of it, an insidious voice reminding him he doesn’t really need to turn it off, that he could live like this forever, perfect and untouchable and beyond the reach of mortal pain and suffering. But Yui’s fingers are still curled around his wrist, right against his heartbeat. He can feel her own pulse where their skin touches, something frantic and unsteady. The idea of scaring her anymore than he already has leaves a sour taste in his mouth, so he dutifully disperses his barrier and unravels the tangled knot of cursed-energy inside him. The moment his reversed-curse technique stops cycling he feels the pounding in his skull where a headache starts to bloom, the ache in his bones and the fatigue building in his muscles crawling back from where he’d smothered them under his cursed energy.  

The implacable tide of exhaustion drags him down into its depths without pause or warning, tearing at his consciousness between one breath and the next. 

Chapter Text

Yui lies awake for an indeterminable amount of time, watching shadows make patterns on the ceiling above them. The heartbeat against her fingertips beats a constant tattoo against her skin, a reminder that she’s not alone, that the body next to her continues to live and breathe and exist in this world. 

She’s not particularly thrilled to find out the truth behind Satoru’s impossible powers. She should have known an ability so outrageously overpowered as his would come with dangerous consequences. That Satoru launching a global counterattack against an entire army, all on his own, and winning it single-handedly would have profound repercussions on him. He played it off like it was nothing to write home about, as if he wasn’t precariously close to falling into a place she doesn’t think he could ever claw his way out of. What did he do, before she was there? Before the band, before Midoriya and Todoroki, before Hawks? When he was all alone, with nothing but this god-like power? For someone who’s left such a profound mark on her life, she really doesn’t know very much about him. 

She falls asleep at some point, curled into his warmth as he lies beside her as still as the dead. Even in the endless silence of night she can barely make out the whisper of his breath as he sleeps; she has to place her palm over his chest to remind herself his heart is still beating. 

Yui’s eyes flutter open to the creak of the front door. 

She blinks blearily into the watery, early morning light, wondering what time it is. Satoru is still beneath her, unconscious. 

And completely defenseless. 

She’s up in a flash, darting towards the mouth of the stairs, guard up. Luckily it’s a very familiar— if not categorically unimpressed— visage that greets her at the bottom of the stairs. 

“Is he here?” Makoto asks, mouth pursed into an unhappy line. 

Yui’s shoulders relax, as she nods and jerks her head behind her. “He’s sleeping.”

She stomps up the stairs before Yui can protest, pushing past her. She reaches the open space at the end of the hall, where Satoru is still passed out. Makoto sucks in a long breath, as if gearing up to start shouting the house down, before she truly catches sight of him. She hesitates, then turns to Yui. 

“Wait. Is he… okay?” 

Yui numbly shakes her head. 

Makoto’s irritated expression crumples into one of worry. “How long has he been here? And how long has he been like this?”

“He got back last night,” Yui informs her. “And… he’s been like this since he fell asleep. He said it was normal, but he didn’t say how long he’d be like this.”

“Of course the one time I really want to yell at him he’s knocked out…” Makoto crosses her arms, sighing. “What’s he even doing here, anyway? I would’ve thought he’d still be stuck cleaning up his mess in Europe.”

Yui looks down, attempting in vain to smooth out the wrinkles out of her blazer. It probably wasn’t a good idea to fall asleep in it. “I asked him to come back,” she admits. “... I was worried.”

Makoto glances back at him. “As mad as I am at him for keeping this from me… I’m pretty worried too.”

She sighs again, then heads down the stairs. She gestures for Yui to follow her. When they arrive back on the ground floor, she sees Makoto hadn’t come unprepared. She’s got what Yui assumes is her work bag slung over the kitchen island, and an army of shopping bags lined up on the counters. Yui is relieved to see paper towels sticking out of one of the bags; she’d used up all the remaining ones in the house cleaning up her ramen from last night. She also never actually got to eat that ramen, so she’s painfully hungry. 

Luckily Makoto unearths a bunch of store bought onigiri from one of her bags, holding one out to Yui. 

“Breakfast?” She asks, as she starts putting away all the groceries. Yui stuffs the riceball in her mouth in one go, nodding gratefully as she hops onto the island. 

Yui watches in surprise as she leaves the kitchen, and comes back dragging a suitcase of all things. 

She smiles wryly when she notices Yui’s startled expression. “I had no idea how long I’d need to camp out here until he came back,” she explains. “But come hell or high water I was going to wait here to give him a piece of my mind.” 

Yui chews thoughtfully, as Makoto ducks through her haphazard packing and unearths a frying pan and spatula. Yui even sees a toaster oven in there. She certainly came prepared. 

Yui watches her putter about the kitchen, using all the dials and knobs Yui was too scared to touch herself. Makoto is the type to show her worry by yelling liberally at the people she cares for, and sometimes throwing various (harmless) objects at them. But she’s also the type to aggressively smother them with food and drinks and multiple scarves even when it’s not actually all that cold out, as Yui knows from experience. She must have been very shocked to find out their bandmate whom she’d always thought was just a jobless wastrel was actually the most wanted villain in the country. But she still worried about him enough to bring all this to his house and wait here for a chance to see him in person. To yell at him, mostly, but also to make sure he was really okay. 

“How long have you known?” Makoto asks, suddenly. “About Satoru.”

“… A couple months,” Yui reveals.

“He told you?”

She shakes her head, even though Makoto can’t see it. “”No. I— I figured it out. And he didn’t deny it.”

The black-haired woman makes an irritated noise, aggressively spraying down her frying pan with more cooking oil than Yui thinks is strictly necessary. Then she stalks over to the counter and slams the rice cooker shut with enough force to make Yui wince. Yep. She’s mad. 

“I think he kept it from you because he was scared,” Yui says, in a small voice, as Makoto stomps back to the stove. “I think he wanted to tell you, but was worried you wouldn't want to be his friend anymore.” 

Makoto pauses over the pan with an egg in hand, but doesn’t turn around. 

“I never made a big deal out of Kenji, did I?” She mutters, as she cracks the egg.

“Kenji was technically never convicted for anything more than a robbery or two,” Yui points out, dryly. Technically she’s been charged with manslaughter at some point, but hadn’t been convicted. She’d just had to go through the whole judicial circus, and that mark on her record had led her down the path to an, ah, alternative lifestyle. The rest of it— robbery and a couple assault charges— looked bad but weren’t all that awful in the grand scheme of things. She’d probably get off with hefty fines and community service if she ever got caught for them. 

Satoru, on the other hand, was likely going to be considered the most dangerous man in the world by the time all this blows over. And sure, maybe he’ll get diplomatic immunity and under international law might end up untouchable from a legal standpoint, but no one was going to forget what he was capable of anytime soon. 

Makoto clicks her tongue. “It’s the principle of the thing! Sure, yeah, I guess Satoru’s—err— rap sheet is a little more colorful than hers, but I wouldn’t judge him for that!”

Yui stares at her flatly, and even though her back is turned she must sense how unimpressed Yui is by that response. 

“Okay— I wouldn’t judge him much,” she amends, hastily. “But I mean, come on! Dabi has so much potential. As a brand! Think of all the things he could do with that platform if he just gave it a little bit of thought!”

“I think he’s given it plenty of thought already, which is why he refuses to do anything with it,” Yui counters. Makoto turns around, frowning. Yui shrugs. “He’s never been interested in any of that. He’s always just wanted to lay low and do his own thing.”

Makoto scoffs. “A little late for that, huh?”

She’s got a point there. 

“He needs to get his ass in gear and do some serious publicity for this,” Makoto mutters, mostly to herself. “He has to get ahead of this thing, or the press will eat him alive. That mysterious bad boy appeal is only going to take him so far. We might even have to get the band involved… although that could work in our favor. There’s no way in hell he’d agree to any talk shows though, but I know a few magazine editors that would jump at the chance to get him on the docket for next quarter…” 

Yui winces at the idea of it all. It sounds too much like what she remembers of Hawks’s schedule— the life of a highly public celebrity-hero. Exactly everything Satoru hates in life. 

“Isn’t it too soon for this?” She asks, weakly. 

Makoto flicks the stove off, shuttling the eggs onto a plate with fresh toast. “Not at all. It’ll take a month or two to get all this rolling, which is just enough time to let everything cool down from his latest escapade.” 

She pauses, spatula in hand. “Assuming he’s staying in Japan?”

Yui nods. “I think he wants to… if it’s at all possible.”

A firm, determined expression crosses her face. She nods back, decisively. “Then we’ll need a game plan. It’ll be tough, but this situation is salvageable. In fact, I think I can really turn this around and make him into a superstar.”

Yui withholds a hysterical laugh. From supervillain to superstar… well, if anyone was capable of that kind of image change, it was Makoto. 

//

Makoto: so I’m sure you’ve seen the news on Satoru, so I won’t bore you with the details, but yes he’s alive and (mostly) fine

Makoto: on a related note the band is getting back together 

Ken-chan: … how tf are these two sentences related??? 

Ken-chan: Satoru is literally causing chaos across the world and somehow this is a band problem??

Makoto: obviously yes because that dumpster fire happens to be our lead singer

Ken-chan: are you fucking serious right now

Ken-chan: no don’t answer that

Ken-chan: I don’t even care as long as he uses that fancy teleportation on me. If I have to get on another bullet train again in my lifetime it’ll be too damn soon 

//

“... How long have you been here?” Gojo almost doesn’t want to know the answer. Judging from the stacks of paperwork, the laptop and charger, the miscellaneous food and drink, and the entire fucking new dining table and chairs, she’s probably been camping out here for a while. 

“I can’t believe you left the country for weeks and didn’t even lock your fucking front door,” Makoto spits out, looking affronted by his very existence. 

He supposes that’s answer enough. 

He’d trudged down the stairs feeling like a brand new human— one who was in desperate need of a shower, and coffee, but human nonetheless. Looking back on himself from before he’d fallen asleep is like looking through a warped mirror; he knows intrinsically that he lived through that, but it feels like he’d been on autopilot and an entirely different Gojo Satoru had been at the wheel. That’s fairly par for the course when it comes to overusing his reversed-curse technique, though. And like he told Yui, he was good as new after a bit of sleep. …Or maybe a lot of sleep, judging from Makoto’s setup. 

He sighs. “... I’m sure you’ve seen the news.”

“Obviously.” She scowls, crossing her arms. “I can’t believe you let me find out about your entire alter ego through Euro Metrozone news! Of all outlets! They’re such trash I’m disgusted I even have their website in my browser history!”

“I’m— I’m sorry?” He blinks rapidly. 

She throws a shoe at him. It smacks against his Infinity and flops haplessly to the ground. Her brow twitches ominously. He winces at the foreboding look. Maybe he should have just let her hit him with the shoe… 

“Good! You should be!” She shouts, incensed. “Your PR is awful! And the worst part is— it could be so fucking amazing if you just spent even a single ounce of effort at it! Un- fucking- believable. You have such an incredible brand and you do literally nothing with it.”

He blinks some more, confounded by this turn in conversation. 

“It’s fine though, really. Just fine,” she sniffs, turning back to her computer. “This just means I get to handcraft your public image myself, without having to bother with anyone else’s half-assed work. You’ll be my toughest client yet, but if I could pull Chris’s stupid womanizing head out of his ass and turn him into a decent enough hero I think I can handle you.”

“Um,” Gojo says, slowly, feeling like he needs another forty-eight hours of sleep to figure out what the hell is going on right now. “My what now?”

“Your image, Satoru!” Makoto huffs. “It’s not— it’s not bad. It’s just got a very complicated narrative right now. We need to streamline it, parse it down to something everyone can get behind, and sell you and not your alter ego. You’re a very marketable person, I hate to say. I mean, just look at your twitter, and you don’t even try with that thing, you just post garbage memes all the time!” 

Gojo has no idea what to say to that. He sees an unfamiliar carafe filled with coffee that he absolutely does not remember ever buying and makes an immediate beeline for it. He’s not nearly caffeinated enough for this.

He’d expected Makoto to be— well, upset, he supposes. Upset about being lied to, that is, not upset about how terribly he manages his own public image and the fact he’s a walking PR disaster. 

“Where’s Yui?” He asks, as he fishes around for a coffee cup— that he also doesn’t remember buying. How long have his bandmates been using his house when he’s not around? Holy hell, this kitchen actually looks like it’s owned by a real, living, reasonable adult who actually knows how to use it. 

“School, of course.” Makoto snorts, between furious typing. “It’s Monday.”

“Is it?” He considers this idly as he pours himself a cup of coffee. 

That’s longer than he’d expected, actually. He hopes he didn’t worry her too terribly. Sleeping for a few days after overexerting his cursed-technique like that is… honestly not too bad, considering his track record. 

“Yeah,” she agrees, distracted, keyboard clicking loudly as he dumps half a carton of creamer into his cup. “When do you need to go back to Otheon? I imagine they’re not done with you by a long shot.”

“No idea. My phone’s dead.” He shrugs glibly. 

“Oh my god turn it on, what is wrong with you?” She gasps, looking offended at the very thought of ever going offline for that long a time. “Okay, if I’m doing your PR, you are no longer allowed to just disappear off the face of the earth like that. No dead phones. I want access to you at all times.”

“I don’t remember agreeing to be your client,” he comments drily, leaning against the counter and savoring his sip of extra-sweetened caffeine. 

“That’s too bad,” Makoto retorts, unmoved. “Now that you’re basically going public, your image is the band’s image. And I’ve spent way too much time and effort on No Scrubs to let it all go to waste because you’ve got a terrible reputation.”

He winces at the reminder. He’s no longer just ‘Dabi’, the mysterious and most powerful villain in the country. It’s only a matter of time until Dabi and Ru-kun are known as the same person. 

“And we need to get ahead of that narrative before it explodes in our faces,” Makoto continues matter-of-factly, hitting her last key with a triumphant flourish. She looks up at him with a shark-like grin. “Your days of lazing around as a happily unemployed wastrel are long over.” 

Gojo smiles wryly. 

She’s gonna be on his ass all the time, isn’t she? It’s much better than Makoto refusing outright to even talk to him, he supposes. At least she’s not making a big deal out of his whole ‘most wanted supervillain in the country and maybe the world’ situation. Honestly he’s grateful for all of this, even if it does sound like a pain; this is her supporting him in the only way she knows how. And that must mean she wants to stick around, even knowing who he really is. 

If all it takes to have her accept him is her wrangling his ‘terrible public image’ into whatever she has in store for him, he’ll take that deal in a heartbeat. Even if it means putting up with the terrible abominations she calls ‘hairstyles’. 

“So we’re going to have to go public with No Scrubs, huh? I can’t say I hate the idea of that.” Maybe one of these days he’ll get to live out his rockstar dreams and bask in the adoration of an entire stadium tour of fans. 

Makoto just clicks her tongue at him. Her eyes are twinkling viciously. “Oh, you say that now, darling. But just wait until you see what I’ve cooked up for our publicity tour.”

//

@goingunder4 | Usagi-tan

Re: Dabi allegedly not being a citizen of Japan - I would marry him to keep that face in the country 

@8oo8 | sewer clone

GET IN LINE BITCH

//

He spends far too long losing minutes in the lingering dredges of night, staring at the numbers ticking by on his phone screen. A little pathetic of the country’s fastest hero, to be dawdling around like this. 

But he just… doesn’t even know what to say. 

He’s had his number this whole time. Satoru had given it to him before he left; didn’t even bother with the pretense of professionalism, didn’t say it was only for work-related emergencies, or updates on the U.A. students. It was the sort of profound act of trust that Hawks can never fully accept. Maybe it’s just a burner phone, maybe it’s not. Maybe he could give it to his team and have them trace every call the man makes. How is Hawks supposed to accept that? That kind of trust? They’re supposed to be enemies, but Dabi has never once treated him like an enemy. How is Hawks supposed to do anything but answer that faith in kind? Keep the man’s secrets, even as it puts him into increasingly untenable positions? 

How is Hawks supposed to stay distant and unattached, when everything the other man does just has him becoming irrevocably more attached?

He should call him, honestly. 

There’s a lot their in person interactions leave unsaid. Whether that’s by design or just a result of work and certain, ah, distractions getting in the way is up to debate. But there’s so much he thinks and feels, and then just never manages to put into words. He doubts getting on a phone with him would make it any easier to put voice to the feelings all jammed up in his chest. Even if he does find himself yearning to hear the other man’s voice. 

Since he might be a wimp when it comes to his own feelings but he’s sure as hell not a coward, he opts to text him instead. 

+81(092): You awake?

He watches the bubble send off in his messenger app and wonders if he’s just being an idiot. Is it weird to get in contact with him after weeks of silence? Without any official reason to do so? Thinking back on it, every time they’ve gotten in touch they’d had a perfectly professional reason to do it. Exchanging information over coffees, crashing a wedding as part of an undercover mission, meeting up in the skies above Hosu as Nomu cause chaos below… he supposes their last meeting was a bit out of the norm, but it was unusual circumstances. And even if he had been sick, he’d still had information he’d needed to relay to Satoru. Right now, he’s got… nothing. Nothing but an overwhelming urge to hear from him in some capacity, to know he’s alright. 

Minutes tick by, and he’s still here in the dark, squinting into the hazy blue light of his phone. 

Hawks sighs, closing his eyes, tossing the phone away from him. This is ridiculous. What is he even doing up this late, contemplating things like this? He should be trying to get whatever rest he can. His schedule for tomorrow isn’t any less damning than it has been all week, and shows no signs of getting better. And the last thing he needs is to get sick again.

It’s just as he’s rolling over to settle more comfortably into his hotel pillows that his phone buzzes to life. His eyes shoot open as he scrambles to retrieve it from the haphazard mess he’s made of the blankets. 

+81(3): Despite my best efforts, the response reads. 

Hawks smiles unwillingly. He can hear the exact tone of voice Satoru would use— something a little tired, but nonetheless amused. 

+81(092): What time is it over there? 

+81(3): too early to just pass the fuck out, unfortunately. 

Hawks stares at the message bubbles crowding his screen, feeling uncharacteristically hesitant. He’s never considered himself a particularly indecisive person; usually when he decides on a course of action, he commits to it whole-heartedly. It’s how he’s lived his life since the moment he realized the only person who was ever going to save him was himself, and it’s the way he’s run his career as a hero ever since. But this is different. There’s something about Satoru, about that tentative, unspoken thing they have between them, that always has him second guessing himself. 

Is this what they call a crush? He wonders, giddy and somewhat hysterical. He’s never had one before— the fastest hero, flying too fast through life to stop and take the time to experience things like crushes and first-loves. 

He decides to just ask what he wants to ask. If Satoru thinks its crossing a line somewhere, or that it’s too personal for him to answer, then the worst thing he can do is just not reply. 

+81(092): How are you holding up? 

For a wretched half second of silence, he wonders if Satoru really isn’t going to reply. Then his phone goes off in his hands. 

He stares at in numbly for a few moments. Then he answers. 

“Oppe og gråter ikke,” the man on the other line says. 

It’s very late and Hawks was not expecting the villain to actually call him, so he believes his reaction to be perfectly justified when he laughs a bit madly and asks; “... Did you just cast a spell on me?”

It’s worth it for the responding chuckle he gets out of Satoru. “Sounds like it, right? I’ve been told my accent isn’t actually that bad though.” He can hear rustling across the phone line, but can’t identify what it is. As if in protest to the lack of feedback, his wings ruffle across the sheets. “I learned it while I’ve been in Europe. It means ‘I’m upright and not crying’ in Norwegian, and I don’t even cry but it’s really a mood right now.”

Hawks smiles into the phone. “You don’t cry, huh?” 

“Not for lack of trying,” Satoru replies, breezily. “I really just can’t. It’s probably not doing me any favors, to be entirely honest.”

He shakes out his wings, curling up under the covers. “I can’t either,” he confesses. “Can’t remember if I even cried as a kid. I don’t think so.”

He stares wide eyed into the quiet hotel room around him, shocked those words had even left his mouth. He’s never told another soul that, before. Never mentioned his own fucked up childhood, to anyone. 

Satoru lets out a sardonic chuckle. “Yikes. What a pair we make, huh?”

It drags forth a cynical smile to his lips. “It really sounds bad when you say it aloud like that,” he agrees. 

“No kidding,” Satoru returns, and there’s more shuffling from his side of the line. If Hawks closes his eyes and listens closely,  he thinks he can make out the click of shoes against clean, polished tiles. Walking somewhere, then? “Why are we talking about crying at… what time is it over there right now?” 

“One in the morning,” Hawks dutifully replies.

“One in the morning,” Satoru confirms. Then he balks. “Why are you even up right now? Don’t tell me you’re still working.”

“Nothing like that,” Hawks assures him, ambiguously, because apparently he can distantly allude to a childhood full of trauma but cannot admit to lying wide awake at night and missing the other man. “Just… couldn’t sleep.”

“Oh? Should I serenade you to sleep then?” Satoru jokes. 

Hawks flushes to the roots of his hair at the very thought. Can Satoru sing? It’s not out of the realm of possibility. He can probably play the guitar, and maybe even play it well. Hawks can’t fathom the thought right now. 

“I think that might have the opposite effect,” Hawks returns, cheekily, once he’s recovered himself.

“How rude!” Satoru mimes offense. “I’ll have you know plenty of people would pay good money to have me sing them to sleep.” 

His brow twitches at the thought. Oh, he can imagine that. He’s sure dozens, if not hundreds of people would love the chance to have Satoru lull them to sleep. He’s seen the forums dedicated to Dabi— people were already obsessed with him, and that was before he revealed his entire stupidly pretty face on international television. Even heroes were jumping on the bandwagon. Mt. Lady was just on record saying she thought he was cute!

“Why don’t we table that as a last resort then,” he hedges, because he’s fairly certain he’ll spend the entire night as bright red as a tomato and squealing into his pillow like a teenage girl not getting any sleep at all if it actually happens, but he also refuses to pass up the chance because the mere thought of Satoru ever offering this to someone else has him seeing green. “How about you just talk to me instead?” 

“Sounds boring,” Satoru complains. Then he perks up. “Unless you want me to talk dirty to you.”

Hawks chokes on his own spit. He has to take a moment to process that, brain wandering to places it decidedly should not be going right now when he’s trying to sleep. Then he laughs and counters; “I dunno— you’ve already given me plenty of great material to jerk off to, so unless you think you can top yourself…”

It’s Satoru’s turn to splutter ineffectually. 

“Well now I feel like I’ve been challenged so I have to prove myself,” he mutters. Then he sighs. “But I also feel like that’s going to get me kicked out of the UN if I tried.” 

Hawks grins against the phone. “Yeah, public indecency tends to do that.” 

He settles more comfortably into the mattress, wondering why he’d ever even worried about calling Satoru. Perhaps the time and distance had made him forget just how easy it is to talk to the other man, how seamlessly they seem to fit together. 

On the other end of the line, Satoru gives an unhappy scoff. “I should just do it anyway. Getting kicked out of this joint would be a hell of a sight better than being stuck in another boring meeting with a bunch of talking suits.”

“That bad, huh?” Hawks can relate, honestly. 

“The worst,” Satoru insists. “If I’d known saving the world would mean getting thrown into conference rooms for hours on end I would have let the whole place burn.” 

“Only a few days into the job and Pro Hero Six Eyes is ready to call it quits, huh?” He can’t help but tease.

Satoru grunts. “Of course you know about that.” He mutters.

“Well, it is all over the news,” Hawks points out, grinning. “So much for that villainous reputation of yours.”

“Don’t tempt me,” Satoru warns, before sighing. “I seriously don’t know how you do this all the time. Don’t you ever just want to, I dunno, light the whole place on fire and laugh and then wander off to go get wasted somewhere?”

“Can’t say mass arson has ever appealed to me in such a manner, no,” Hawks replies— and really, he should not find this attitude of his cute, but somehow the idea of Satoru laughing maniacally in front of an exploding building with a cigarette in hand is somehow rather charmingly on brand for the (former?) villain— “But I’ve certainly had the urge to toss a few people out of a window before.”

Satoru breaks out into giggles. 

“I would have caught them with my feathers before they hit the ground, of course,” he adds dutifully. “I’d just throw them out to spice up the meeting, y’know? Keep people on their toes.”

“That definitely would have kept me from falling asleep in my chair,” Satoru agrees, and Hawks can hear the smile in his voice, and it makes something heavy and warm settle in his chest. 

“Is that what you’re doing right now? Falling asleep in your chair?” He doesn’t think so, just from the distant audio feedback he can pick up. 

“I escaped to wander the halls aimlessly, pretending I’m lost looking for the bathroom so I can stay out of this meeting that’s—” he pauses, as if checking his watch, “—already thirty minutes over its end time. Who does that? Who schedules a meeting at four in the afternoon, knowing damn well it’s likely going to run way over? How could you be such a soulless bastard?” 

“What a cad,” Hawks concurs, in total solidarity. As someone who’s been stuck in meetings like that, he feels that pain on a personal level. 

“Right? Apparently I’m a hero now, so shouldn’t I save everyone from this hellish circumstance and go pull the fire alarm or something?”

“Nah, think of the poor building maintenance crew who’d have to deal with that.” Hawks rolls over onto his stomach, stretching out his wings. “So, are you really a hero then? Or was that just a cover for this op?”

“It was a cover, but it’s a real document,” Satoru explains.

“And why Six Eyes?” 

“It sounds pretty cool, doesn’t it?” When he closes his eyes, Hawks can easily imagine the devilishly handsome smirk draped across the man’s face as he says this. 

“It does,” Hawks replies, smiling sleepily. “But I don’t really see how it has anything to do with your quirk.”

“It’s actually the only reason I can use my powers the way I do, believe it or not,” Satoru reveals. Hawks blinks awake, startled to hear the other man admit to something like that. 

“... Seriously?” He has no idea how that would work, but it doesn’t sound like Satoru is lying.

The other man chuckles. “Maybe I’ll explain it all to you, when I get back.”

Hawks drops back onto the pillow he’s sprawled over, suddenly reminded that they’re not using any kind of encrypted app to call each other right now. He’d been so startled the man even responded at all, he hadn’t thought about the security of using their real numbers. Explaining in detail how his impossibly powerful, reality-defying quirk works through the phone lines is probably a pretty terrible idea. This whole conversation is probably not a good idea, but it’s late and he’s finally warm and comfortable and the person he’s longed to talk to for weeks called him first. He doesn’t have it in him to care right now.  

“So I was right,” he mumbles, resting the phone next to his face so he can comfortably bury his face in his pillow. “Those eyes of yours weren’t normal after all.” 

“I told you so, didn’t I?” Satoru returns, chiding. “Anyway, you sound like you’re finally getting tired. Go to bed, or I really will start serenading you to sleep.”

Hawks isn’t really thinking when he says; “You can do that too— when you get back.” 

Satoru lets out a choked laugh, as if he hadn’t actually expected Hawks to agree. Well, too bad. Now he’s going to hold the other man to it. 

“Yeah, okay,” Satoru replies, voice quiet and warm. “Sleep well, Kei-kun.”

Hawks wonders what it is about that name on Satoru’s lips that smooths out the sting of wretched memories he usually associates with it. Then again, no one’s ever called him something as affectionate and personal as Kei-kun. Not even his own parents. It’s different than Keigo, which only ever summons up traumatically parental associations for him. It’s something else— something so much more.

“Thanks, Satoru.” And he means that, more than the other man will probably ever know. 

Chapter Text

//

“Dabi— Dabi!” The video shakes as the reporter jogs to catch up to him, his faithful cameraman dogging his steps. “They’re calling you the Hero of The World— what do you have to say to that?”

For a moment, it looks like Dabi’s about to just brush him off, continue on his way. Just like he does most of the reporters that have managed to accost him so far. Then he pauses, as if the words land their mark on him. Delighted, the reporter stalks forward, microphone at the ready. 

The white-haired man turns to him. 

“I’m no one’s fucking hero,” Dabi says, with a surprisingly austere candor. 

The reporter takes a step back. 

Dabi flicks his shades off to glare at him, the full weight of those glorious eyes impossible to look away from. They’re cold, like the unforgiving vacuum of space, the icy emptiness of the distant stars. “And the world doesn’t need a hero. The world needs to save itself. Maybe the world needs to stop waiting around looking for a new symbol, and start solving their own damn problems.”

He pushes his shades back up, and with a vague salute of dismissal leaves the reporter stuttering on the street. 

This is going to be front page news in a few hours, Hawks thinks with a sigh, leaning back in his chair. 

He flicks the video off his phone screen, returning to his idle scrolling of social media’s take on Dabi’s international debut. There’s a few other clips like that, Dabi being harassed by paparazzi on the streets of what he assumes is Switzerland or some other landlocked Western European country. Maybe it was Otheon. Wasn’t Otheon a part of Switzerland at some point? He shakes his head. He wouldn’t be able to tell the difference either way; the closest he’s ever been to Europe are trashy foreign romcoms Echo keeps recommending to him. Most of the clips were of Dabi being his usual irreverent self, dismissing questions entirely out of hand or coming up with outlandish answers for them instead— this is the first one Hawks has seen where he actually has some bite to his responses. 

He feels a disconcerting sense of vertigo, staring at the veritable mess Dabi’s made of the international news in the past few days as he flicks through his news app. Especially when he remembers the easy, effortless way they’d chatted just last night. Some days it feels utterly impossible to reconcile the two halves of the man’s life— the charming and clever and surprisingly sweet young man who loves pastries and jokes about singing him to sleep, and the impossibly powerful and dangerous villain-turned-international hero who can terrify a full grown reporter to tears with just a glance of his eyes.

Hawks sighs. He feels eons better about the whole thing after hearing Satoru’s voice and getting a chance to speak with him, but it doesn’t make the gravity of him completely changing the entire world order any easier to handle. 

He’s disrupted from his spiraling thoughts by heavy, familiar footsteps vibrating against his feathers as they near the door to his commandeered office. Hawks just shoots off a feather to unlock the door, and sprawls back in his chair as he continues to browse through his phone. If he hadn’t wanted Endeavor to be able to barge in on him whenever he was trying to trudge through his paperwork, he wouldn’t have taken up the man’s offer to work out of his agency. 

“What’s up, big guy?” Hawks greets without looking up. Then he tears his eyes away from his phone and winces at what he sees. “You doing alright there, Endeavor?”

The man… doesn’t look well. He looks like he hasn’t slept in a handful of days, the whites of his eyes bloodshot and the set of his brows somewhat manic. There’s stubble across his jaw that Hawks doesn’t normally see, and even with his cropped style his hair looks a bit mussed, like he’d tossed and turned all night and rolled right out of bed and into the office without even looking at himself in the mirror. At least his uniform looks fresh, but then again, no matter how out of sorts Endeavor is, he's not the type to be so cavalier with his work. 

“Fine,” the man replies, stiffly. 

He’s most assuredly not fine, but Hawks just nods in commiseration. It’s hard to sleep at night with all the unrest Dabi is once again causing. A part of him genuinely hopes the government strong arms the HPSC into conceding to the UN’s terms and acknowledging Dabi’s international hero license. Last he’d heard they’d been up in arms over dismissing any known charges against him in light of his new diplomatic immunity, but he thinks the Diet will talk them off the ledge eventually. Dabi’s maneuvered himself into an incredibly favorable position on a global scale, and the federal government is going to want to take advantage of that. Right now, Dabi is the most famous Japanese citizen abroad, and with All Might’s shocking and sudden retirement, Japan needs a fresh face to represent them on the international stage. 

Hawks is perfectly happy to admit his own reputation doesn’t even come close. He’s only just recently begun to expand his reputation across the country, with most of his fan base still being located in Fukuoka. And Endeavor— well, he’s been a hero for much longer than Hawks, so he has his legacy going for him, but even then he’s not a global brand like All Might had been. 

If Japan acknowledges Dabi as not only an international hero, but also as one of its citizens, that could go a long way in settling the worst of the unrest that’s spreading like wildfire across the country right now. They don’t even need to concede and give him a domestic hero license if the HPSC is truly so unwilling to compromise— just recognizing him as a hero at all will appease the more vocal dissenters of the current hero industry. 

It’s not that Hawks doesn’t see where the protesters are coming from— the industry and the laws need to change. But what the country emphatically does not need right now is riots, average citizens intentionally stonewalling heroes and law enforcement, and people so disillusioned with the system they turn to anarchy and mutiny. 

Dabi’s very existence as neither a licensed hero nor a true villain had exposed the weaknesses in the tenuous framework that modern society operated on. And it had laid bare the intrinsic problems that existed within the current system.

Now that Dabi is a hero— albeit not one beholden to the Commission’s standards— there’s an angle the government can work with here, if they could swallow their pride long enough to do it. 

“Any word from the Bureau Chief?” Hawks asks, assuming the current state of affairs is what has the Number One so agitated.

Endeavor shakes his head. “There’s push back from the Hero Commission. But the decision of the Minister of Foreign Affairs has remained unchanged, and the rest of the Cabinet is likely to back him up.”

Hawks never thought he’d end up getting this bogged down in domestic politics. Even his training at the Commission had never prepared him for this— they probably thought he’d never need it, since they’d be the ones liaising with the federal government on his behalf. And the basics that he had been taught had bored him to tears. But look at him now, personally invested in foreign policy and everything. 

“So Dabi probably won’t be a Japanese hero, but his international license will be considered valid in the country,” Hawks surmises, propping his feet up on the desk. “How will that work, exactly? If a crime happens in front of him, is he just supposed to ignore it?”

Endeavor sits across from him in one of the empty rolling chairs lined up with the desks at the edge of the wall. Hawks hadn’t wanted anything special, so he’d just asked the front desk for whatever space they had available on short notice. Calling this an office was rather ambitious; extended storage closet might be more accurate. 

“Theoretically, he will need permission from both the HPSC and the Ministry of International Affairs for authority to operate,” Endeavor replies, as the paltry chair creaks a bit ominously under his bulk. Hawks scoffs incredulously at the very thought. Dabi, asking for permission? Endeavor catches his expression and adds, in that same flat tone; “In practice, he has diplomatic immunity and a powerful foreign backer that the government doesn’t want to make an undue enemy out of.” 

“So he can technically do whatever he wants?” Hawks summarizes, brow furrowing.

Endeavor frowns. “He’ll risk courting an international incident if he does so, but ultimately the worst that could be done to him is deportation.”

“Huh.” Hawks leans back in his chair, head tilted up towards the ceiling as he blinks. 

He’s honestly impressed by how smoothly Satoru managed to reverse his entire situation to work in his favor. He went from being Japan’s most wanted villain to the one person in the world the government can’t touch. 

“On the subject of Dabi…”

Hawks drags himself out of his own thoughts, focusing back on the conversation at hand. 

“Has he— spoken to you?” 

Endeavor’s bright blue gaze is focused with unerring fixation on a random spot on Hawks’s desk. His posture is rigid and unapproachable, and the way his hands grip tight against the armrests reads almost as… uncomfortable? Hawks wonders if he’s reading this right, or if all his training in body posture is failing him right now. 

Now that Dabi’s name has basically been cleared, he wonders if he really needs to keep their relationship as clandestine as he has been. Probably not, but just the thought of opening up about the true intimacy of their relationship with anyone sets his teeth on edge. Even if it might not be strictly illegal anymore, that relationship is private. He has no interest in letting others know about it. That’s a part of Dabi he wants to keep for himself. 

Nonetheless, strictly speaking he doesn’t have to be as cryptic on the subject as he has been. And Endeavor— he’s been good to him. They’ve had difficult moments since they’ve started working together, but ultimately they’ve built a mutual trust between them that has that instinctual defensiveness he feels whenever anyone brings up the subject of Dabi lowering ever so slightly. 

Still, he has to ask; “Are you still dead set on arresting him?” He tilts his head, looking benignly curious on the surface even as he studies the other man closely. “Even though we all know he’s going to be exonerated by the end of this?” 

Endeavor shakes his head. “That was never what I—” He cuts himself off, mouth shutting with an audible click as his jaw flexes. “No,” he finishes, after an offbeat. “I am not.”

Hawks isn’t sure how to read that response. Then again, Endeavor has always been a hard person to read— and he gets even more inscrutable whenever the subject of Dabi is brought up. 

But regardless, he’s not a liar, so if he says he has no interest in arresting Dabi then Hawks believes him.

“He called me last night, actually,” Hawks reveals. He watches carefully as Endeavor reacts to this; the chair creaks beneath his grip as his knuckles turn white, his head jerks upright as his spine snaps straight. When his gaze flies to Hawks, his expression is shockingly open, yet still entirely impossible for Hawks to read. He’s surprised, for certain, maybe even— hopeful?

“You spoke to him?” He asks, quickly.

“For a bit,” Hawks downplays. “It was a brief conversation.”

He waits patiently to see how Endeavor responds, posture intentionally arranged in an artless sprawl with his wings trailing behind him and his arms clasped above head. He wants to know what Endeavor wants out of this conversation, what he’s after with Dabi. What will he do, with this new information presented to him?

Endeavor digests his words with a distant look in his eyes. Hawks can always identify anger or irritation easily on the other man, but when he gets closed off like this he’s nearly indiscernible. All Hawks can say for sure is that his thoughts have turned far inward, to somewhere Hawks cannot hope to guess. 

“How—” He stops. This too is rather anomalous. Endeavor is always blunt and concise with his words, and he never hesitates to say what’s on his mind. Hawks watches him swallow once, then twice. He’s clenching his jaw so hard Hawks swears he can feel the grinding of his molars with his feathers. “Does he intend to return?” 

Hawks blinks at the question. “I can’t say for certain, but from what he’s said I believe so.” 

The other man did promise to explain his quirk to him in person, after all. 

Endeavor nods, unfocused gaze dropping back down to some indeterminable space between them. 

Hawks kicks his feet back up onto the desk, spinning lazily in his chair. “Why this fixation with Dabi, anyway?” He figures it’s fair to ask, since Endeavor is always bringing him up to Hawks. 

It’s not as if other heroes aren’t aware of Hawks’s history with Dabi, now that it’s a matter of public record. But aside from a few offhand remarks, he never gets questions on the man. Not like he does with Endeavor, although that’s not to say others weren’t curious. Echo of course accosted him the moment she heard the news, asking him all sorts of mildly invasive questions about the white-haired man. Hawks had fended her off with admirable aplomb, but she had unfortunately gotten him to admit to finding Dabi ‘sinfully attractive’. Echo had seconded that notion immediately, and then asked him to describe the man’s abs in intimate detail when she’d also gotten him to reveal that he’d seen him right out of the shower— to this day Hawks still has no idea how she managed to get him to fess up so many secrets. He supposes she’s in intelligence and reconnaissance for a reason. She’s hardly the only hero with a marked interest in the man’s looks, but fortunately she’s the only one with enough balls to ask Hawks about it personally. 

Hawks stills in his chair, a thought occurring to him; “You’re not, like, into him, are you?”

At first the flame hero doesn’t seem to understand what he means, blinking blankly at Hawks. Then Endeavor splutters hilariously, going so red so quickly his Hellfire bursts across his face. When the flames cool down, the flush is gone entirely and he actually looks a bit green as he chokes out; “Absolutely not!”

“Just checking!” Hawks spreads his hands out in front of him, grinning. “You’d be surprised how many heroes are! ” 

Endeavor scowls deeply, brow twitching. He no longer looks mortified, rather just slightly discomfited. He folds his arms as he stares Hawks down balefully. “Do you mean to tell me you’re not one of them?” He asks, sounding unimpressed. 

“He’s very good looking, that’s just an indisputable fact,” Hawks replies, evenly. 

Endeavor scoffs. “What nonsense. How can you consider yourself attracted to someone you don’t even know?”

I know a great deal more about him than you think. “Like I said— he’s objectively handsome. And that’s all anyone’s saying.” 

Hawks regrets even bringing up this conversation. He should have known Endeavor wouldn’t know how to laugh something off. 

Endeavor shrivels his nose, as if he finds the whole thing rather distasteful. “But you said people were… into him. How can anyone feel a connection to a person they have no knowledge of beyond their physical appearance?”

Hawks opens his mouth. Closes it. Then sighs. “Um, big guy… being ‘into’ someone really just means, uh, y’know, wanting to be with them. Like, physically. Not necessarily emotionally.” 

Endeavor seems to process this in slow motion. His face gets very red, but this time he doesn’t quite light himself on fire again. Then he once again looks a bit disgusted. 

“Look, it was just a joke— let’s just forget it,” Hawks brushes off, hastily. “I know your, uh, preoccupation with Dabi has nothing to do with that. And if you don’t want to tell me what it is about him that has you all agitated, that’s fine too.”

Endeavor’s expression closes off. “It is nothing you need to know about.”

Well. Hawks knows a dismissal when he hears one, and Endeavor seems to want to shut this conversation down in its entirety, even though Hawks would like it on record that he was the one to bring it up in the first place. 

“Fair enough,” Hawks shrugs. “Did you need something else?” 

Endeavor shakes his head, standing. “No. And …” He seems to realize how rude it is to just barge in here and ask what he wants and then shut down the conversation the moment it’s no longer convenient for him, for he adds, gruffly. “Thank you. For your time.”

Hawks nods silently, not entirely sure how to take that. Endeavor sees himself out, leaving Hawks alone with his news feed and the light off the wan, overcast sky outside his window. He reaches for his phone, possessed with the sudden urge to hear Satoru’s voice again, but it’s probably somewhere around four in the morning where he is. He settles for a text instead. 

+81(092): Let’s meet up, when you get back. My treat ;) 

//

@ru-kun | Bad Karma no Re Rolls

Hello everyone thanks for checking in I’m ✨still a piece of garbage✨ 

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@ru-kun | Bad Karma no Re Rolls

and no i was not banned (again) 

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@ru-kun | Bad Karma no Re Rolls

not for lack of trying though

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Replying to @ru-kun

@jupiterx777 | Kinomoto

THE RETURN OF OUR LORD AND SAVIOR RU-KUN 🙌

//

“You look nice,” Todoroki says, when he catches sight of him. 

Izuku blushes to the roots of his hair even as a wide smile lights on his face. Todoroki likes his outfit! He thinks he looks nice! He feels as if he’s floating— 

Then he adds; “My mother will like it.”

And then he promptly crash lands back to earth.

“Y— Your… Your— Mom?” He squeaks out, feeling like his brain is just one long record scratch.

Todoroki nods, glancing down as he scratches his cheek. “Or at least, I think she will. I haven’t seen her in years.”

“Oh. Oh,” he stutters. “Your, um, mom, huh? We’re going to see your mom?”  

That’s what Todoroki wanted to do with him this weekend.

Go see his mom.

In a mental hospital.

Izuku feels like an idiot. 

He also deeply regrets his choice in attire, now. He hadn’t told his mom it was a date when they’d chatted on the phone earlier today, but he was hardly subtle after his tenth meltdown over the depressing state of his wardrobe. She’d helped him pick out an outfit that even he could admit wasn’t entirely awful, and promised they’d go shopping for clothes on his next day off. It was a decidedly nice outfit, not too formal but also much dressier than his usual t-shirts. It was also not at all what he would have worn had he known he was meeting Todoroki’s mother. 

What do you even wear to meet someone like that? Or maybe he’s overthinking this? If they’re going to go see his mom— whom Todoroki had already told him was in a psychiatric facility— then there’s no way this was really a date, right? Izuku had just… just totally, mortifyingly, misread this. 

“Yeah.” Todoroki nods, and starts walking outside the school gates. Izuku hastily jogs to follow him, shaking himself out of his spiraling thoughts. 

Okay, so he misunderstood Todoroki’s intentions here, which was horrifying and had him mentally wanting to bury himself ten feet underground, but this was… well, this wasn’t awful. 

He was still spending time with Todoroki. And Todoroki still wanted to spend time with him.

In fact, he apparently wanted Izuku to meet his mother. 

“So, it’s been a while, huh? Since you’ve seen her?” Izuku asks as he falls into step beside him. “How does that, um, make you feel?”

He knows, from what little Todoroki has told him of his family situation, that things are… strained, in the family. He imagines if Todoroki hasn’t seen his mother in years, there’s a reason for that. 

If the question makes him uncomfortable, it doesn’t show on his face. “I don’t really think I feel anything.” 

That… was not at all what Izuku expected him to say. 

“But you must feel something, right? If you wanted to go see her, after all this time?” Izuku presses, gently. 

Todoroki doesn’t respond until they’re nearing the train station. Izuku is content to simply walk alongside him quietly, letting him mull it over in his head. That’s the thing he likes about Todoroki, or well, one of the many things he likes about the other boy. He might not show it on his face, but he’s always paying attention. He gives every word Izuku says a level of consideration that still leaves him a bit breathless; he remembers even the most offhand remarks Izuku makes, as if they’re all profoundly important treasures he doesn’t want to forget. 

“To be honest, it had never really crossed my mind. She didn’t really cross my mind.” He pauses, just as they reach the station. “Not until I brought her up to you. It was because of you, I think.”

Izuku turns to him, shocked. “M— Me?”

“Mm.” Todoroki nods, looking back at him with those bichromatic eyes of his. “I’d never told anyone about my family, until you. I think… talking about it with you made me realize I wanted to see her.”

“O—Oh.” His face is on fire as Todoroki finally turns away and heads to the turnstiles. 

This time Izuku is the one left floundering, at a loss for words. It takes him until they’re boarding the train and seated to finally settle his thoughts long enough to form a coherent sentence. Its his pervasive, bubbling anxiety that finally does him in.

“Is it really okay for me to come along?” He asks, nervously. “I mean, this is kind of a big deal for you, right? To see her again? Isn’t it kind of, I dunno, private? I don’t want to intrude…”

Todoroki’s gaze is focused on the passing scenery, expression unchanged, and Izuku would almost have thought he hadn’t heard him at all, if not for the way his hands fist into his jeans. His face might be inexpressive, but he feels things just like everyone else, Izuku thinks, watching the other boy’s knuckles turn white against his knees. Izuku just wishes he knew more about Todoroki, about his thoughts and his feelings, the things that keep him lying awake at night and the things that make him smile. He wishes he could reach out and support him, somehow, just to let him know he’s not alone. 

“No,” Todoroki says, quiet but adamant. Izuku almost doesn’t hear him, at first. 

“... No?” Izuku echoes, confused. 

No to what, exactly?!

“No,” Todoroki says again, peeling his eyes away from the city flashing by to once more strike, quick and unerring, right at Izuku’s heart with nothing but a flick of his gaze. Their faces are so close he can see all the flecks of color in both his eyes; the ultramarine ring just at the edges of both of them. “You’re not intruding. I need you.”

He says it so simply, it takes until he’s turned back to the window for Izuku to process it. 

He’s unaccountably glad for the fact Todoroki has gone back to his idle scenery viewing, because he’s fairly certain his face is about to combust and not even Todoroki’s ice is going to be enough to cool him off. 

“Oh,” he squeaks out. “Okay then.”

I need you.

Izuku doesn’t understand it, at first. 

They get off after a few stops, turning into an unfamiliar part of the city. Todoroki leads them up to a tall building, gleaming pale on all sides. I need you. Izuku glances down, to where Todoroki has his hands in the pockets of his jacket, fisted so tight he can see the fabric protesting from here. There’s a furrow creasing in his brow, and Izuku watches as the muscle in his jaw jumps as he grits his teeth. Without thinking too much about it, Izuku reaches over and tugs one of his hands out of the death grip he’s got on his own jacket. Todoroki is so surprised he lets him, relaxing as Izuku folds his fingers over his palm. Izuku is too embarrassed to acknowledge what he just did, and instead tugs Todoroki by their joined hands towards the front door. 

His bravery lasts him up until he’s greeted the nurse and realizes he has no idea what he’s supposed to ask her for. Luckily Todoroki steps up beside him, hand still clasped in his own, and tells her they’re looking for the room of Todoroki Rei. 

His first thought, upon meeting Todoroki’s mother, is— this explains a great deal about Todoroki’s preternatural beauty.

His second thought is— jesus christ I just walked in here holding her son's hand someone let me jump out this window and end my suffering. 

He tries to discreetly tug his hand back, but Todoroki just tightens his grip and doesn’t let go. 

This is not at all how he expected today to go. 

But he sits through it, even as it dips into awkward territory plenty of times. There’s nowhere really to sit, aside from the bed, which Rei immediately offers to them as she goes to sit in the singular chair in the room. Somehow that’s even worse than lingering oddly by the door, because Todoroki still hasn’t let go of his hand. It’s his warm side too, his entire arm burning like a furnace and overheating him in his winter jacket. Todoroki appears immune to his own rising temperature— aside from his palm, which is sweaty in Izuku’s grasp. I need you. Izuku squeezes his hand reassuringly. Todoroki squeezes back.

Todoroki’s mom is perfectly nice, if a bit soft-spoken, and doesn’t interrupt him even as he blathers on for at least a full ten minutes on the subject of their teachers. The conversation is stilted and difficult, clumsily trundling along in fits and starts. Todoroki is never much of a conversationalist on a good day, and it appears his mother isn’t one to chatter on either. Luckily Izuku is enough of a chatterbox for the three of them, happy to ramble on whatever tentative subject they’ve managed to land on.

Todoroki doesn’t let go of his hand the entire time. When Izuku concentrates, in the middle of a winding commentary on Lunch Rush’s lunch specials, he feels a slight tremor from their joined hands, where Todoroki is trembling, just slightly. He’s nervous, Izuku realizes, then feels like an idiot for being struck dumb by the thought. Of course he’s nervous. He hasn’t seen his mother in years, she’s basically a stranger to him, and he’s not exactly good at talking or conveying his own feelings. 

Todoroki has always seemed so strong and confident to him. 

He’s got an incredible quirk, and he’s obviously very skilled with it. He’s unbearably attractive. He doesn’t get hung up on what people think about him or what they say about him. He’s smart and hard working. And he holds Izuku in impossibly high regard, for reasons that remain forever unfathomable to him. 

He never seems like the kind of person that ever needs help, from anyone. 

Yet here he is, asking Izuku for help. He needs Izuku, right now. He can’t do this alone. And what kind of hero would Izuku be if he didn’t do his absolute best to help someone in need? 

So he grips Todoroki back just as tight, and when the two-toned haired boy haltingly explains to his mother how he decorated his dorm room, he swipes the back of his thumb up and down the back of the other boy’s hand in a reassuring gesture. And when Todoroki’s quiet, halting voice stutters to a halt, Izuku immediately picks up the slack. 

“And, um, our friend Jirou has been teaching us how to play the guitar!” He rushes to say, after Todoroki trails off.

Rei-san’s expression twists in an odd way when Izuku says this. Not quite nostalgia, but not quite regret, either. It’s something soft and sad, but she’s still smiling as she replies, “The guitar?”

“Through a series of unexpected events, we sort of, well, decided to start a school band together?”

Rei’s smile grows wistful as she claps her hand together. “Oh! A school band, how fun! With your classmates?”

Izuku nods. “Yes, with other members of Class 1-A. Jirou-chan is super talented, she can play just about any instrument! And she’s been really patient with us during our lessons. Todoroki-kun is definitely better at it than I am, though.”

“Not really,” Todoroki huffs. “I just have more practice.”

Izuku scratches the back of his head as he laughs, sheepishly. “Well either way, we’re very far off from being able to play in a real band. But Kacchan— err, another one of our classmates — already plays the drums. Between him, Jirou-chan, and our other friend Yui-chan who apparently can sing well even if she doesn’t like doing it often, we kind of have all the pieces for it!”

“That’s lovely. It sounds like you’ve made quite a few friends at school, Shouto.” 

Todoroki shrugs, looking down. His face is as impassive as ever, but Izuku thinks the tips of his ears are getting a little red. “I had nothing to do with it,” he replies, gruffly. “It was all Midoriya.”

“It— it really wasn’t!” Izuku protests on instinct, but when he thinks about it a little more, he has to wonder if Todoroki might be right. 

The thought is a bit humbling. 

He’d spent years unable to make a single friend, and suddenly he’s the reason for this entire burgeoning friend group. 

“It really was,” Todoroki retorts. “None of us would have been friends without you.”

“W—Well friendship is a two way street, you know!” Izuku returns, flustered. “It was because of everyone’s efforts! And— and you were the one who showed up at the beach first! We wouldn’t have been friends if you hadn’t followed us to meet D— Satoru-sensei!”

“Satoru-sensei?” Rei repeats curiously, causing all the color to drain out of Izuku’s face. “Is he another of your teachers?”

“Well that’s—” Izuku blusters. 

“He’s Izuku’s friend,” Todoroki talks over him, not nearly as tongue-tied over discussing the fake identity of a known supervillain with his mother as Izuku would have expected. “He’s not really one of our teachers, but he’s taught us a lot this year. His teaching methods are a bit unconventional, but he knows what he’s doing.” 

“Unconventional is one way of putting it,” Izuku sighs. “He once chased us around for an entire afternoon with water guns. And he likes to have us run through crazy obstacle courses while he laughs and throws stress balls at us.”

“He has very good aim,” Todoroki concurs, and when Izuku glances over he’s actually smiling a little bit, the sadist. 

When he looks back at Rei, she’s wearing the biggest smile he’s seen of her all afternoon. 

“It sounds like you’re having a great time at school, Shouto,” she remarks, and the look in her eyes as she watches them is very soft. “And you’ve found some very special people to enjoy this time with.”

She looks at Izuku while she says this, which makes Izuku blush bright red. And instead of helping him out with a tactful change in subject, Todoroki just looks at him too, fingers interlaced with his, and says; “Yeah, I really have.”

Chapter Text

“You really almost had me there!” Mirio laughs, patting Izuku on the back. “You’ve got a keen eye for spotting weaknesses, dont’cha?”

 I learned from the best, he wants to say, but instead just laughs it off. “Thanks, Togata-senpai. But you still beat us fair and square.”

“That move of yours was wicked!” The blonde third-year continues laughing uproariously, hands on his hips. “I thought you and Kodai-san were gonna corner me before I could get out of the way!”

He glances towards the girl in question, who’s wiping sweat off her brow with an indifferent expression. She doesn’t seem particularly concerned over losing to Mirio, even though they both had, by unspoken agreement, decided to toss the match.

Izuku had taken an immediate liking to Togata Mirio from the moment the blonde had hopped up to the podium at the front of the classroom. It had taken from the moment he opened his mouth to the moment he saw his quirk for Izuku to realize why.

Mirio… reminded him an awful lot of Dabi.

Even their quirks had striking similarities to them. Mirio’s Permeate and Dabi’s Infinity both granted their users a functional invulnerability. Izuku could tell just by looking at them that both those techniques required incredibly intensive time and effort to train to the degree in which they could utilize them. The end result was powerful and almost entirely without weaknesses, but much like Izuku’s One for All, likely came with a steep learning curve. 

After fighting against Dabi’s impassable barrier for months on end, he and Yui had learned how to combat that seemingly unbeatable technique. As Dabi was always preaching to them— it was all about situational awareness. And Mirio’s Permeate wasn’t nearly as invulnerable as Dabi’s Infinity. There were weaknesses to exploit, even if Mirio had done a good job in training himself to mitigate the worst of them. The easiest weakness to exploit was the one he seemed to share with Dabi; their quirks relied on making countless split-second decisions based on very complicated and intensive mathematical equations, all with a nonexistent margin for error.

It was incredible to see. Watching Mirio felt like catching a glimpse of Dabi’s own journey, like seeing what the villain might have been like in his own youth, when he still struggled to gain his mastery over his abilities. 

Ultimately it was those similarities that had him staying his hand. He would rather not cause a scene where he didn’t have to, and he knew with just a glance at Yui’s expression before the match that she had felt the same. 

It wasn’t just about him, anymore. The secret to Dabi’s Infinity, to his Cremation and even his teleportation… he was certain there were people who would kill for that. To risk revealing the similarities— and subsequently the shared weaknesses— between Dabi’s quirk and Mirio’s to anyone smart enough to put two and two together just didn’t seem worth it. He had certainly put in a token effort, and had encouraged his classmates to do their best, but his heart wasn’t in it. 

Mirio waited until most of Izuku’s class had filed out of the gymnasium before he slung an arm around Izuku and grinned. 

“You knew exactly how to defeat me, didn’t you?” He asks cheekily, as he walks out with Izuku.

Izuku shrugs. “Not— exactly. I couldn’t think of a surefire way to beat you in that situation.”

Frankly, all his ideas for overcoming that quirk were too deadly for a school gymnasium, and likely would have ended up with his senpai or any of his classmates dead. The half-measure he and Yui had done instead had been enough to startle Mirio, but not enough to actually permanently injure him. They’d used it on Dabi before, and while they hadn’t gotten very far with it on him either, he’d been very impressed they’d figured out the fastest way to get around his Infinity was to try to get him to make a mistake on his own accord, mainly by overloading him with enough split-second physics equations to make him complain of a headache.

“But you figured out a way, huh? That’s really impressive,” Mirio enthuses. “You were the only one who didn’t come at me immediately with your quirk too. You and Kodai-san. You observed the situation and figured out how my quirk worked and what I was most likely to do before you acted— that’s awesome! Man, I wish I had been that smart as a first-year… would’ve saved me a ton of trouble.”

Izuku shakes his head frantically. “Oh no! I’m really not all that impressive. I’ve just been able to learn from some really impressive people.” 

Mirio just grins wider at that. “We do have some pretty great teachers here at U.A., don’t we? But there’s no need to be so modest!”

Izuku just chuckles weakly. He’s not in the habit of being boastful, so he’s not really sure what else to say.

“So, have you decided whether or not you’ll do a work study?” 

Izuku nods, grinning brightly. “I definitely want to do one!” He hadn’t needed the demonstration, frankly. He’d been dead set on it since the beginning. His smile fades. “... I’m not sure where I would go, though.”

“Is that so?” Mirio blinks. “Well, if you don’t have anything in mind, why don’t you try working for the agency I’m doing mine at?”

Izuku blinks rapidly. “R—Really? Where are you doing your work study?” 

“Nighteye Agency! I’ll ask Sir next time I see him!” Mirio enthuses. 

“Nighteye Agency?!” Izuku brightens. That’s All Might’s former sidekick! “That would be amazing! Thank you so much, Togata-senpai!”

Mirio throws up a peace sign. “Well, don’t thank me yet! I can only give you an introduction to Sir Nighteye, he has to be the one to approve it or not. But, I look forward to working with you!”

Izuku is still in awe of the opportunity that had just fallen right into his lap, and spends the rest of class in a daze. He hopes the school approves the first years for work studies— it’d be a shame if he missed out on the opportunity to intern with one of the few heroes who worked alongside All Might. 

Even Todoroki sitting next to him at lunch doesn’t do much to rouse him out of his stupor. He feels like he should still be more embarrassed about the whole debacle of last weekend, but in the end he can’t summon up too much concern over it. 

So it hadn’t been a date… persay. But it had still been an important and monumental moment in Todoroki’s life, and he’d wanted Izuku to be there with him and support him through it. In many respects, it was far more meaningful than a date. Izuku still can’t believe Todoroki had trusted him with something so intimate. And it hadn’t exactly… not been a date? Sure, they spent a few hours with Todoroki’s mother— emphatically not first-date vibes— but they also held hands the entire time they were there and went out to dinner together afterwards, just the two of them. And Todoroki really had gotten him an All Might keychain, a limited edition collab one too!

Even if Izuku might have entirely misread that whole situation, he was still happy with how it turned out. He and Todoroki were even better friends than they had been before and that— that was nothing to be upset over. 

The common areas are loud and lively when he makes it back to the dorms, after talking about the internships with All Might. 

All Might hadn’t been thrilled to hear Togata-senpai had offered to extend an introduction to Sir Nighteye, his former sidekick. Apparently he and Nighteye… had personal issues they needed to work through. Izuku didn’t really understand it, and All Might hadn’t been particularly forthcoming on the matter. He seemed worried Nighteye wouldn’t accept the idea of Izuku on principle, which was all the more reason to go through with it. Izuku wanted to change the hero industry, change the very hearts and minds of everyone in it and all those who rely on it. It was a lofty goal, and one he was certain most heroes wouldn’t take seriously. He couldn’t be scared of what one hero thought of him, with a goal like that. 

After the long day he’s had, he takes one look at the rowdy common room and decides he needs some quiet. Todoroki invites him to his room to study, but Izuku gently turns him down. It’s true Todoroki is a calm and quiet person, and that’s exactly what Izuku is looking for right now, but nothing about Todoroki ever makes Izuku’s heart feel particularly calm. Every time he thinks about how the other boy had felt pressed up against him as they talked to his mom, fingers tangled together, he gets hot and cold all over and feels like he needs to jog around campus a couple times. 

So he returns to his dorm room alone, intent on collapsing face first onto his All Might comforter and neglecting all his homework in favor of a nap.

Except, he opens his door to find the bed already occupied. 

He gasps, bag slipping off his shoulders and dropping to the ground with a dull thud. He stands in his own doorway, struck dumb, before his brain reboots and he quickly shuts and locks the door behind him.

“S— Satoru-sensei…” He breathes, eyes wide. 

Dabi grins at him from where he’s sitting on Izuku’s bed. “Long time no see, Izu-kun.” 

“Satoru-sensei!!” He cries, and launches himself at the man. 

He sends them both sprawling onto the bed, wrapping his arms tightly around the white-haired man, even as Dabi gives a half-hearted whine in protest. He’s proud of himself for not bursting into tears at the sight of him. It’s just— it’s been so long since he’s seen him! So much has happened since then, and he’d been so worried… the news has been terrifying to watch, and it’s nearly impossible to turn on a television or log onto a website and not be immediately bombarded with Dabi and the whole Humarise takedown. Yui assured him Dabi was fine— apparently she’d gotten the opportunity to see him in person for a bit and confirm it— but it wasn’t the same as seeing the man in the flesh, feel his heart beating in the chest underneath Izuku’s ear.

“You’re… you’re really here,” he murmurs, dazed. Then he sits up in shock. “How are you here?!” 

Dabi just smirks, and holds out a tiny little bead about the size of the tip of Izuku’s thumb. “I had Yui slip you her tracker.”

He blinks. He feels as if he should find this a gross breach of his privacy, but if anything he’s relieved. Frankly, it’s rather reassuring, knowing Dabi has his location at all times. That he’s only ever a phone call away. 

“Can I see that?” He asks, holding out his hand. Dabi dutifully deposits it in his palm. 

He shuffles over to his desk, ferreting around in the drawers until he finds what he’s looking for. It’s an All Might pendant, just a gloved fist in the colors of his silver era dangling off a chain. He tapes the tracker to the back of the pendant, and slips it over his head. Maybe he’ll ask Hatsume to weld a clasp or something onto the back later, but for now this’ll have to do. 

Izuku trudges back to his bed, sitting next to Dabi, who’s watching him with an intrigued expression.

Izuku takes the moment to look him over carefully. 

He’s not wearing his blindfold, although he does have his sunglasses on indoors. Izuku had, when they’d first met and for many meetings afterwards, thought the obscuring of his eyes was for concealment purposes, but after getting to know the other man has realized it probably has something to do with his abilities. He’s got on a sharp wool coat with a scarf loose across his shoulders, as if he’d just come from somewhere much colder than Mustafu’s mild dreariness. Coupled with the slim-fitting turtleneck and tapered pants, he looks like he just walked off a runway… and directly onto Izuku’s All Might emblazoned bed. He’s mildly embarrassed about it. The very mature and adult-looking Dabi looks very out of place in his childish dorm room. 

Dabi doesn’t seem to care, though. He’s smiling softly at Izuku, with a surprisingly wistful expression. 

“Are you really going to wear that around?” He asks, tilting his head. “You know that means I can sneak up on you whenever I want.”

Izuku just shrugs bashfully. “To be honest it’s a little reassuring, to know that if anything happens, you’re just a call away.” 

Dabi’s teasing expression melts away. “You’re not doing anything intentionally dangerous, are you?” 

“No— nothing like that!” Izuku hastily replies. “But we have these work study programs coming up; they’re going to be our first real taste at being a professional hero. It’s not like the internships, where we were intentionally kept away from a lot of the dangerous stuff… so you never know.”

“I think you’ll do just fine,” Dabi tells him, and he sounds very certain of it, which is more than Izuku can say about himself. 

He knows he’s getting better— really, he does. His teachers tell him so fairly often; even All Might has remarked on it. And Dabi himself had told him, last time they’d spoken face to face, that he shouldn’t be in such a rush. But meeting Mirio, and seeing his formidable mastery over his quirk— a quirk that’s just as difficult and complex as Dabi’s— just reminded Izuku of how much he’s fallen behind on his own quirk. 

If he brings it up to either Dabi or All Might, he knows exactly what they’ll tell him; these things take time, and it’s better to learn how to use One for All slowly but steadily, instead of mortally injuring himself every single time. But it’s been months since he’s gotten it, and it’s true he’s only broken his bones on two occasions using it, but it also seems like he hasn’t made much progress on it. 

“It feels like all my classmates are improving by leaps and bounds, and I’m just inching along,” Izuku sighs. 

“Well, you already know what I think about that,” Dabi returns. He taps his chin. “But if that’s how you really feel, how about we do some more training?”

His head snaps up, gaze wide. “R— Really?” 

“Yeah. Just you and me— just like old times.” Dabi smiles at him crookedly. “I’ve been mainly focusing on teaching you the basics of fighting; situational awareness, flexibility and quick thinking, the ability to come up with a plan on the spot and execute it… maybe it’s time to move on to some of the intermediate stuff, like quirks.” 

“Really?!” He repeats, delighted. “You’ll train me?”

He probably shouldn’t sound so excited about personal one on one training with a bonafide international supervillain… but Dabi is a bonafide international supervillain (and now super hero??) for a reason— namely, that he’s incredibly powerful and basically unstoppable and his quirk is insane so of course Izuku is going to be over the moon about it.

“Sure.” Dabi’s smile turns into a rakish grin. “But only if you play me a song!”

“H— Huh?!” Izuku reels back, flustered. His gaze creeps over to where the guitar Dabi gifted him is leaning on the side of his desk. “Err— that’s…”

Jirou has been very kind about their lessons. Which is to say, she doesn’t get impatient with him and doesn’t make a single disparaging comment when Izuku fails to execute even simple chords and sometimes snaps his pick in half out of sheer nervousness before they even get to playing. To call it a ‘work in progress’ is a grave understatement.

“I’m really not very good yet,” Izuku protests. Learning music from the ground up has only made him even more in awe of actual artists like Jirou, Dabi, Yui and even Kacchan— he especially cannot fathom the idea of playing an instrument and singing at the same time. He can barely remember to put his fingers on the right frets as he strums the strings. 

“But I’ll definitely show you, when I can actually play songs!” Izuku adds, determined. However, it’ll be a long time before he can even fathom playing any of Dabi’s songs. 

Fortunately, Dabi takes him at his word. “Alright then! I’m looking forward to it.”

Izuku nods sheepishly, looking away. “Um, so, not that I’m not happy to see you— but what are you even doing here?”

“Hmm~ What do you mean? I wanted to check up on you, of course!” Dabi replies, blithely. “And I really did wanna hear you play something, but I’m cool to take a rain check on it.”

Sneaking into the U.A. dorms with everything that’s going on right now in his life… he couldn’t have possibly come here just to see how Izuku liked his guitar, right? The thought makes Izuku feel rather shy, and very much so overwhelmed. There are so many more important things Dabi could be doing with his time, yet he’s here lounging in Izuku’s bedroom as if none of that matters to him more than seeing Izuku in person. 

“And of course I want to hear all about your big date last weekend!” He adds, making Izuku choke on air. 

“It— you’ve got it all wrong! It really wasn’t a date!” He returns frantically. 

“Really? But I thought he asked you out and everything?” 

“Yes, he did, but it wasn’t…” He puts his face in his hands. “I might have, um, misunderstood the situation.”

Dabi laughs. “Did you? Or was Shou-kun just being his usual unfathomable self?”

“More of the latter, to be honest,” Izuku mutters, into his palms. “He just really made it sound like it was—! Ahhh, it was so embarrassing, Satoru-sensei! I got dressed up and everything!”

“Oh no~” He can hear the man’s shit-eating grin even if he can’t see it. “So what happened, on the not-date?”

“It turns out, he wanted me to come with him to see his mom,” Izuku admits, peeking out from behind his fingers. 

Dabi’s grin fades. With his blackout shades obscuring his eyes, it’s hard to tell what he’s thinking. “His mom?”

“Yeah. He hadn’t seen her in a really long time, so I guess he was just… a little nervous. He didn’t want to go alone,” Izuku explains slowly, a bit taken aback by Dabi’s suddenly impassive demeanor. 

That impenetrable distance is gone almost as soon as it had come about, leaving Izuku reeling and wondering if he just imagined it. The smile he wears instead is one of his rare small, but genuine ones. “Is that so? Well, that’s good for him. And you were a good friend to accompany him. Although, I guess he kinda tricked you into it, huh?”

Izuku shakes his head. “I might have gotten it all confused at first, but I was really… I was just happy to be there for him. I was honored that he wanted me there at all.”

Dabi’s mouth drops open in delight. “Izukuuu~” He sings, reaching over to pinch his cheeks. “How can one person be so adorable!! Shou-kun’s really got his hands full with you, huh? You probably give him heart palpitations everyday!”

“I give him—” Izuku splutters, flailing on his bed. Dabi’s got it all wrong! Izuku’s the one all tied up in knots here! “He’s the one who’s so—!”

“So?” Dabi prods, leaning over him. 

Izuku finally pulls his hands away from his face, looking up at the villain with what is most certainly a rather pathetic expression. “So, so, I don’t know. I get so nervous around him I can barely speak sometimes… and other times I say way too much and it’s so embarrassing!”

He turns his face into his comforter as he mutters; “He’s just always so calm and collected, you know? I feel like such a mess in comparison.”

“I don’t think he’s nearly as calm as you might think he is, on the inside.” Dabi reaches over and ruffles his hair. “He feels the same way, I’m sure. He’s just better at hiding it.”

Hiding it, huh? 

Izuku thinks back to what he knows of Todoroki’s childhood. His mother was in the hospital for most of it. His father was distant and unapproachable. His siblings tried their best, but they were all stuck in the same situation. Growing up like that… yes, he could imagine Todoroki learning to hide his own feelings to protect himself. 

“I just… I don’t know what to do,” Izuku sighs. 

Dabi looks down at him, grinning like a shark. “Hmm~  What’s this? Are you asking me for dating advice, Izu-kun?” 

He can’t believe he’s telling Dabi of all people this. But he was too mortified by his own mix up to explain it in detail to Yui, and there’s no way he’d say anything to anyone else in their class. And he’d been so embarrassed when his mom asked that he accidentally hung up on her. And his mentor? Not a chance. Just the thought of trying to blubber his way through this with All Might makes him want to spontaneously combust. His poor mentor would try his best, but he’d be just as awkward and uncomfortable with it as Izuku— in a manner not entirely like Izuku trying to broach this subject with a dad-like figure, he imagines. Not that he’d ever let Todoroki hear him say that. He doesn’t need to add fuel to that fire. 

And it’s not that telling Dabi is any less embarrassing, or anything, but Dabi’s already seen him in some pretty embarrassing moments. And he always gives Izuku good advice, and never, ever judges him. He can be a bit callous and cavalier, but he’s also surprisingly patient and understanding. If he was going to go to anyone for advice on this subject… he supposes there was never any question it was going to be Dabi. 

“Please don’t make fun of me,” Izuku whines, miserably. 

“When do I ever make fun of you?” Dabi mock gasps. Izuku turns his head slightly, just to skewer him with a glowering look. Dabi laughs. “Okay, okay. I won’t make fun of you. Much.”

“Satoru-sensei,” he complains, but it’s half-hearted at best. 

Dabi smiles down fondly at him, as he reaches out to ruffle his hair again. “As adorable as it is to watch you flounder around like this, I think the easiest way to put yourself out of this misery is to be direct about it.”

“Direct about it?” Izuku repeats, with slowly dawning horror. “You don’t mean…”

“Yep!” Dabi gives him a thumbs up. “Shou-kun is the kind of person who absolutely will not understand your subtlety, or in fact subtlety of any kind, so you’ve got to tell him how you feel directly!”

Izuku stares at him with mounting despair. 

Dabi’s smile turns impish. “You should definitely serenade him from outside his window. I even know just the song!”

“Please no,” Izuku says. 

“Or you could hire a plane to do some skywriting— I’d totally pay for it.”

Izuku makes a sad whinging noise, burying his face into the blankets. 

Dabi taps his chin, sprawled out by his headboard. “Or you could go with a good old fashioned love letter? Can’t go wrong with one of those.”

Izuku picks his head up incredulously, just to ask, “Have you ever written one?”

“Absolutely not!” Dabi returns, blithely. “But I’ve received plenty of them, and they all sucked, so I can definitely tell you what not to write!”

That doesn’t surprise him in the least. As far as his presented options go, that’s not the worst idea in the world, but Izuku is utter pants at writing. He tends to ramble on paper as much as he does aloud, unfortunately. But at least he’d be able to read it over and edit it until he gets it down exactly as he wants it? That might be even worse though, come to think on it. Then he’d just be stuck in an endless cycle of worrying himself into fits over each and every sentence. 

“I don’t know…” Izuku sighs, glumly. “I’m really not— I’m no good at this stuff, y’know? I’m not like you, I can’t do these kinds of things…”

Dabi blinks at him from behind his shades. “Who said I was any good at it?” 

“H— Huh?!” Izuku stutters. “But Yui-chan said—! I mean, um, I thought you were really— uh— popular.”

Dabi chuckles. “That’s a bit of a different situation, Izu-kun. And one that doesn’t exactly take all that much skill.”

Izuku wouldn’t know, as he’s never been in a situation like that, but he’s watched enough daytime dramas to know what goes on between young, single, and consenting adults. He’s not exactly sure it’s as thoughtless as Dabi makes it out to be. After all… 

“I dunno, you got Hawks, didn’t you?” He says, before he can stop himself.

Dabi rolls his eyes. “Like I said, that’s diff—“

“No I mean, you guys are um, like, together right?” Izuku interrupts, hesitantly.

Dabi’s eyes are so wide he can see the fray of pearlescent lashes above his shades. “That’s— I— where did you hear that?” He croaks out.

Izuku looks down. “I didn’t hear it from anywhere! But I guess It’s not hard to notice, if you know what you’re looking for.”

“… In what way?” Dabi asks slowly, a bit like he’s dreading the answer.

“Well now that all this Humarise stuff is coming out, it was on the news that you and Hawks took down some crazy evil laboratory, right? And it was kinda vague, but if you look at the official after-action report, it's explicitly stated that you guys went undercover. And I know you were at a wedding, because you were complaining about it, so it makes sense that you two attended together, right? And then, for him to be back in time for the Kamino mission— you teleported back with him, right?”

Dabi blinks rapidly. “And it was because of all that, that you assumed we were… in a relationship?”

Izuku scratches the back of his neck, embarrassed as he adds; “That and, um, the other day Hawks was photographed out in Tokyo and he was… uh, wearing your sweater.”

“He what,” Dabi says, flatly.

Izuku wants to bury his face in his comforter again, mortified he even knows that. “I— it wasn’t noticeable, really! Like I said, it’s only if you know what you’re looking for that you’d notice.”

And Izuku only knows what he’s looking for because he’s spent an awful lot of time staring at Dabi and cataloging everything about him. And Dabi happened to look distractingly attractive in that particular outfit, enough for Izuku to very distinctly remember it. To see Hawks photographed in street clothes on a day off in Tokyo, wearing the exact sweater (now tailored for his wings), was rather telling. 

Dabi seems too shocked for words for a moment. Then he coughs into his fist. “I see.” Is all he says. 

“So… it’s true?” Izuku asks, hesitantly. Yui hasn’t really mentioned anything about it. But then again, she seemed rather adamantly against the idea from the start, so maybe she just didn’t want to talk about it.

“It’s— complicated,” Dabi returns, vaguely. Then he shakes his head. “But that’s not anything you need to worry about. All adult relationships are kinda complicated, y’know? Which is why you should make the most out of your cute highschool romance while you can!”

Izuku can see the man is unwilling to talk further on the subject, so he lets it drop, even if he’s not particularly thrilled to circle back to this. 

“I don’t know… what if he doesn’t feel the same?” Izuku asks, uneasily. 

“He definitely does,” Dabi denies immediately, with an assurance that astounds Izuku. 

“But you can’t know that for sure!” Izuku frets.

Dabi leans forward, opening his mouth to speak what’s either going to be impossibly poignant words of wisdom or the most blasphemous garbage Izuku’s ever heard in his life— before he pulls back as if startled, and drops his feet onto the floor. 

Izuku watches this about face with an utter confusion that only gets increasingly baffled as Dabi suddenly stands up. 

“Well if you don’t believe me, why don’t you just ask him?” Dabi counters, turning to Izuku with that impish grin that Izuku has been conditionally trained to fear on sight. 

Like clockwork, there’s a knock on his door. 

“Midoriya?”  

He’s so startled by the familiar voice outside his dorm that he almost flails onto the floor, struggling out of his blankets as he tries to dive to the door before Dabi. Dabi, with his long legs and the advantage of his logic-defying eyeballs that probably saw him coming from down the hall, beats him to it. 

“You forgot your textbook in the—” 

Todoroki stops mid sentence as he cranes his neck up to stare up at the unexpectedly tall person at Izuku’s dorm room door. 

“Shou-kun~” Dabi greets, devilishly. “Just the person I wanted to see.” 

Todoroki does not look nearly as surprised to see a supervillain lounging in Izuku’s bedroom, in the confines of their dorm, which resides on the campus of a hero school. Then again, he’s still laboring under the delusion that Dabi is his secret estranged brother, and their father is All Might. 

“Satoru-san.” He dips his head. Then he holds the book out to where Izuku’s still half-tangled in his own bedsheets. “Midoriya, you forgot this downstairs.”

He waits until Izuku hastily thanks him and takes his history book off his hands before backing away. “Sorry for the intrusion,” he says, sounding genuine about it. “I’ll leave you two to catching up—

“Wait, wait, hold on.” Dabi stops him. “I had a question for you—”

“We have no questions!” Izuku squeaks, as he bodily throws himself at Dabi in a desperate attempt to shut him up. Dabi just seems terribly amused by his antics, and easily scoops him up midair to cradle him to his chest like a koala. 

“I have plenty of questions, actually,” Dabi denies, and when Izuku tries to protest this vehemently he just tucks Izuku’s face into his shoulder. 

“Okay,” says Todoroki.

Izuku tries desperately to claw his way out of the man’s hold, but he’s stuck fast in a weightless grip that feels both empty and yet filled endlessly. His quirk, Izuku realizes. How unfair! He hadn’t even realized he could use it like this! 

“How do you feel about Izu-kun?” Dabi asks, and Izuku stops his struggling and slumps forward in defeat. 

Todoroki doesn’t answer at first, and Izuku squeezes his eyes shut in dread, suddenly terribly glad that Dabi is basically holding him, because he doesn’t think he could handle this alone. 

“He’s very important to me,” Todoroki answers, matter-of-factly, not sounding nearly as conflicted about it as Izuku thinks the situation warrants. In fact, he sounds rather adamant. 

“Is that so?” Dabi sounds pleased, as he releases Izuku from the grip of his quirk. But Izuku, the coward, just stays where he is huddled in his arms with his face buried into his nice jacket, refusing to look up. 

“Yes,” Todoroki replies. 

And when Izuku finally has enough courage to turn around and face him, he’s startled to see Todoroki bowing formally. 

“I know he’s also very important to you too,” Todoroki says, head bowed. “I promise I’ll take good care of him.”

What is this?! Izuku’s brain screeches to a halt. What kind of response is that? It sounds much more like some kind of solemn vow exchanged on an auspicious date than an answer to a very simple question!!

“So formal~” Dabi teases, evidently picking up on the same disconnect here that Izuku did. “You like to do things the proper way, don’t you? Well, that’s fine. I’m entrusting Izu-kun to you, Shou-kun! Please promise to honor and cherish him with your life.”

Todoroki’s expression grows very serious as he nods, hands at his side. “I will.”

A tiny, mournful squeak comes out of his mouth as he sees the grave and determined look on the two-toned haired boy’s face. Oh god. He’s being dead serious, isn’t he? Does he even realize what Dabi is implying right now? 

“And you, Izu-kun,” Dabi turns to him, eyes twinkling delightedly as he continues with his game, “Do you promise to honor and cherish our dear Shou-kun, through all of life’s trials and tribulations, for the rest of your days?”

Izuku flushes to the roots of his hair. “S—Satoru-sensei!!” He wails. 

Dabi just laughs wickedly. “What am I saying, of course you do!” 

He clears his voice, and then begins, in a somber voice; “And with these vows exchanged, I now pronounce the two of you—” 

Izuku gasps loudly, reaching blindly to try to cover the man’s mouth. Todoroki might be a bit dense about these kinds of things, but if Dabi finishes this infamous sentence there’s no way he’s not going to get it!!  Dabi just sways out of the way as he claps his hands—

“—the best of friends!” He finishes, cheerfully.

Izuku’s soul has left his body.  

Todoroki merely looks vaguely confused by all the theatrics, but probably chalks it up to Satoru’s eccentric personality.  

Dabi throws up a peace sign, disentangling himself from Izuku with a pat on the head. “And on that note, I’ll be taking my leave now! Text me whenever you’re free, Izu-kun!” And then he’s gone in the blink of an eye, leaving Izuku staring dumbly at the spot he’d just inhabited. 

“You two look like you’ve gotten much closer,” Todoroki observes, pleased.

Izuku sighs tragically. “It’s not what you think.” Not that he expects his words to do anything to change his mind. Especially not with Dabi doing literally nothing to clear up the confusion. 

Todoroki only nods sagely. “I’ve heard it’s normal for brothers to roughhouse like that as a sign of affection. When are you going to tell All Might you’re back in touch with your brother?”

Izuku buries his head in his hands and groans.

//

+81(03): i’m baaaaack 

+81(03): and you said you’d treat me

+81(092): I did say that :) dinner then? What do you want to eat? 

+81(03): hmmm~ I want fried chicken

+81(092): Really? I know just the place!

Chapter Text

Hawks probably should have known to take any of Echo’s dining recommendations with a grain of salt. 

He was aware that the tucked away hole-in-the-wall she swears makes the best karaage she’s ever tasted in her life was in Mos Eisley, but it hadn’t occurred to him that this might be a problem until he’d arrived a few minutes earlier than his planned meeting time with Dabi. 

He opens the front door to the tiny restaurant and is immediately met with a blast of warm, spicy air and the deathly silent stares of the entire restaurant. As he meets the gazes of what can only be at least half a dozen gang members enjoying their beer and fried chicken, he acknowledges that he probably should have had the foresight to change out of his hero costume before trying to get a casual, low-key dinner in downtown Tokyo. He’s not sure if the notorious Tokyo Manji  gang members are better or worse than a room full of rabid fans. Maybe worse, considering they’re all probably armed. What is he saying, they’re definitely armed. He’s fairly certain that’s Mitsuya Takashi there in the corner— he knows from plenty of police briefings that the Division Captain is very high up in Toman and not someone to mess with. 

He honestly doesn’t know what else to do but wave sheepishly and sprawl into a chair as far away from their tables as possible. If he tried to leave now it would have looked suspicious and made the situation worse, and he has no desire to make an enemy out of Toman. Half the reason his investigations in the Tokyo area go so smoothly is because they feed him information through Echo. 

Hawks deeply regrets just flying right over here the moment he’d finished up his backlog of paperwork. He definitely should have changed. And dismantled his wings. And maybe grabbed a shower. He’d just been so excited at the idea of finally seeing Dabi again, he hadn’t really been thinking. That’s… rather alarming. Beneath his cavalier persona, Hawks prides himself on being a very analytical and preternaturally observant guy. It’s definitely not good form, to be so thoughtless. 

He worries the situation is about to take a turn for the worse when even the noises from the kitchen quiet down, the entire restaurant dead silent as he adamantly pretends to be busy on his phone, ignoring the many eyes he can feel staring him down. 

Then the front door slams open, shattering the tension on impact.

Hawks startles, staring wide-eyed at the man dusting off stray droplets off his scarf from the drizzle outside. He cuts a stylishly elegant figure with his long, fitted coat and all black outfit, offset by his stark white hair. Well. Now Hawks regrets his outfit even more; he feels severely underdressed in his hero costume. 

Everyone in the room turns to look at the man, but he only has eyes for Hawks. 

Satoru smiles at him, a soft and crooked little thing that’s a far cry from that usual cocksure grin of his. His breath catches oddly at the sight of it. 

Before he can walk any closer, the crowd from Toman accosts him exuberantly; Satoru seems to know most of them, giving out a few genial waves to the group and walking over to greet Mitsuya personally— the man who designed Satoru’s coat, Hawks realizes with disbelief as he shamelessly listens in on their conversation. Satoru keeps it short, chiming out his greetings before adding he’ll catch up with them all later, and perhaps even regale them with tales of his international exploits, as some of the younger and more excitable members loudly beg him for.

Afterwards he heads back Hawks’s way, the atmosphere in the restaurant decidedly more palatable than it had been minutes earlier. None of the Toman members turn his way again, apparently having dismissed him as a non-threat now that it’s obvious Dabi is here with him. Crisis averted then, and in the nick of time too.

“You look nice,” Hawks says immediately, as the other man sits across from him.

Dabi grins salaciously. “You should tell Micchan that— he’s the one who made this whole outfit after all.”

Micchan, huh? He hides the little spark of jealousy at the nickname beneath an easy smile. “But you’re the one who looks good enough to eat in it,” he replies, not even bothering with the pretense of pretending the other man’s existence in near proximity to him isn’t an alluring thought in and of itself. 

Satoru’s grin just grows wider. “Should we skip dinner entirely and move onto dessert, then?”

“That is your favorite meal of the day, isn’t it?” Hawks laughs. “But I said I’d treat you and I meant it, so let’s at least order something quick.”

“Fine, fine,” Satoru agrees gustily, glancing around the little shop. “Y’know when you said you had somewhere in mind, I hadn’t expected you to pick this place.”

“Neither did I,” Hawks returns, sardonically. Satoru blinks at him. “I’ve been on the hunt for the best fried chicken in Tokyo, and my friend Echo recommended this place to me as the best karaage in town. I should have expected its clientele to lean towards an, ah, alternative crowd, in light of that.”

Satoru snickers. “This is the fried chicken joint of Toman, you realize.”

“Yeah I managed to figure that out myself, funnily enough,” Hawks replies, drily. 

“It’s worth the trouble,” Satoru assures him. “She’s right. This really is the best karaage in the city. I’m not even that big of a fan of fried chicken, and I agree.”

“You’re the one who asked for chicken,” Hawks says, pouting. “I would’ve taken you somewhere else if you hadn’t requested it.”

“Yeah, but you like it, right?” Satoru counters, leaning over with his chin in hand. “Maybe I just wanted to go somewhere I knew you’d like.”

Hawks rolls his eyes, refusing to blush. “I’m happy to eat whatever. You’re the one who’s been out of the country, ya know. Don’t you want to eat all your favorite foods, now that you’re back?” 

“I like karaage just fine!” Satoru protests, just as a bustling old lady comes by with a pair of beers Hawks most definitely doesn’t remember ordering. She just grins at Satoru as she sets them down, and from the way Satoru smiles back, he assumes it must just be on the house. Well, he’s hardly going to say no to a free beer. 

She takes their order without bothering to write it down. Actually it’s not even much of an order— Satoru just says they both want the fried chicken, and she just nods along and then heads over to where the rowdy Toman tables are flagging her down for more drinks. It’s a far cry from the atmosphere Hawks had arrived in. It’s actually rather… nice? It feels very homey. 

“What’s your favorite food?” He asks, lifting his glass to his lips.

He remembers the last time he and Endeavor had worked through lunch together, and the man’s odd question about Dabi’s order, and finds himself curious. Then again he’s always curious about Satoru. He wants to know everything— everything the other man is willing to tell him, and then some. 

“Me?” Satoru looks surprised he’d even ask. He hums thoughtfully. 

“That’s not a dessert,” Hawks adds, because he’s already well aware the man is a glutton for anything sweet. 

“No fair~” Satoru whines, but nonetheless seems to take the question seriously. “If I had to pick… maybe Western food?”

“Western food?” Hawks repeats, surprised. 

“Yeah, y’know. Like hamburgers and fries, or steak.” 

“Really?” Hawks isn’t entirely sure why he finds the answer so surprising. “Somehow, that’s oddly unexpected…”

“Is it?” Satoru smiles wanly. With his sunglasses low on his nose, Hawks can see how it doesn’t quite meet his eyes. “When I was younger, I was never allowed to eat anything but traditional food. I’d only ever seen hamburgers in commercials on TV. Once I had the freedom to do what I wanted, I went a little crazy with it.” He chuckles lightly. “There was a period in my life where all I ate was fast food. My diet was pretty terrible.”

“It’s still terrible,” Hawks teases, having seen the proof of it himself multiple times. The amount of sweets this man was capable of consuming was simply absurd. How was he still so fit with all the sugar he devoured on a regular basis? “But you must have enjoyed Europe then, huh?”

“The pastries were perfection,” Satoru sighs dreamily. “Nothing can compare. And fresh swiss chocolate? I could live off that stuff forever.”

“I don’t doubt it,” Hawks replies, easily imagining Satoru surrounded by more sweets and desserts than any single human should ever have and gobbling them all up in record time. “Do you think you’ll ever go back? Just to visit?” 

“I’ll be going back fairly frequently, while all this stuff is being worked out,” Satoru reveals, making a vague gesture with his freehand to encompass his current situation. ‘Stuff’ indeed. 

“How’s all the clean up going?”

“It’s a mess, frankly,” Satoru snorts, reaching for his beer. “The leader and most of the upper echelons of the cult might be in custody, but the backers have scattered to the wind. The WHA will have a global witch hunt on their hands if they try to ferret out all the financial backers.”

“Duke Serreno is still at large then, I take it?” Hawks sighs. 

“Diplomatic immunity and everything.” Satoru nods, scowling. “He’s gone skulking off into the oceans, and his home country’s not about to rat him out. We can only hope he makes a mistake somewhere and gets himself caught.”

“So you’re still going to pursue them?” Hawks asks, then pauses, frowning. “What exactly is your plan going forward?” 

“With Humarise?” Dabi asks. “Dunno. Guess that’s up to the WHA now.”

Hawks shakes his head. “No, I mean— with everything. What are you going to do now?”

Normally he wouldn’t ask so blatantly, but something about the atmosphere feels relaxed and easy. Safe. This is Toman territory, he doesn’t have to worry about anyone listening in. And Dabi is no longer the most wanted villain in the country— or at least, unofficially he isn’t. The Commission will have to fold on the matter eventually, with all the pushback they’re getting from the government. 

Satoru doesn’t seem to know how to respond.

Luckily in the interim the server bustles back with their food, the smell of spicy fried chicken derailing the conversation. Hawks tears into it and immediately swears he’s in heaven. Dabi was right; this chicken is well worth braving Toman territory. He wonders what the odds of convincing Toman to look the other way to his regular presence here would be— they’re not making a fuss about him now, but that’s only because Dabi is sitting across from him. Maybe he just has to come back with Dabi in tow? The thought is hardly unappealing. 

Dabi takes a long swig of his beer. Hawks watches him lick the stray amber drops off his lips with so much fixation he almost misses it when the man says; “I don’t want to be a villain anymore.”

When the words finally register, he almost drops his chicken.

“Don’t misunderstand,” Dabi adds, reaching to their shared plate for a bite of his own. “I don’t care about being a hero, either. If diplomatic immunity hadn’t been dangling on the end of that particular stick, I never would have bothered.” 

Hawks blinks rapidly, not entirely sure how to process this. 

“So you just… don’t want the cops killing your vibe anymore?” Hawks jokes, before realizing that’s really not much of a joke at all. That’s probably the extent of Dabi’s reasoning. 

“Yeah, more or less,” Dabi confirms, shrugging. 

He’s truly not surprised. 

It leaves a sour taste in his mouth that he instinctively tries to chase away with his beer. 

At first, he doesn’t understand what upsets him so much about this revelation. This is good for everyone. Dabi is bowing out of villainy. Sure, he’s hardly leaping up to sign himself up as a hero instead (or at least more than one on paper), but neutrality is a damn sight better than outright criminal behavior. It probably won’t resolve the absolute kerosene fire of volatility he’s dumped on society with all his exploits, but it certainly turns a corner into a future that looks much less uncertain. Dabi settling into the life of a private citizen— albeit one currently being hailed by the globe as both the ‘world’s greatest hero’ and the ‘world’s greatest villain’— is probably better for him too, as a person. Much less murder and mayhem, more time for reflection and… and whatever it is people do when they’re not knee deep in crime scenes and dangerous situations. Gardening? Knitting? Hawks wouldn’t know the first thing about that kind of life, considering his own, but he imagines it must be better for one’s health. Just, y’know, generally speaking. 

Then he realizes what it really means.

If Dabi is neither a hero nor a villain… then what reason does Hawks have to see him anymore? 

This thing they have, whatever it is— he doesn’t know what this would mean, for it. For them. 

He looks down, trying to school his expression into one of casualness. Despite all his years of training, he’s not entirely certain he succeeds. “Oh. That’s— that’s good, right?” 

“Is it?” Dabi returns. When Hawks glances back up, he’s watching him with an unerring gaze, shades pulled down just enough for Hawks to lose himself in that mesmerizing swirl of color. “You don’t look like it’s a good thing.”

“It’s your life,” Hawks dismisses. “You should live it however you want to. Retiring from villainy is— great. That’s a great thing.”

“Sure,” Dabi agrees, still watching him closely. 

Hawks doesn’t meet his eyes, stuffing his mouth with chicken even though he finds his appetite has completely left him. 

“I’m sure all your favorite detectives will miss you, but I’m also sure they’d prefer you staying out of trouble,” he adds after he’s swallowed, wiping his mouth. “And I understand, not wanting to be a hero. Or getting involved with law enforcement. Lots of rules. You’d totally hate it. Even I find it to be a drag sometimes, y’know?” 

“Yeah,” Dabi replies. 

“I’m, uh, happy for you. And I wish you all the best in your… um,  retirement,” he blathers on, brain utterly out of sync with his mouth. He realizes what he just said and feels a dull flush crawl up his neck. That sounds ridiculous. This whole thing is ridiculous. He’s ridiculous. This is a good thing, for everyone. Why does he have to go and have a crisis about it? 

He reaches for his beer, intending to down it all at once and hopefully knock himself right out of consciousness, but Dabi reaches out to stop him. 

Satoru’s long fingers wrap around his hand; they feel so delicate, even though he’s seen firsthand the sort of indomitable power that lies beneath their touch. 

“Hawks,” he says, quietly. Hawks reluctantly meets his eyes. “What’s wrong?” 

“Nothing’s wrong,” he insists, even as the words fall a bit flat. 

Satoru frowns at him. 

“No, really, nothing’s wrong,” he maintains, glancing away. Those incandescent eyes seem to see right through him, into all the parts of himself he refuses to acknowledge. Hawks smiles wanly at him. “I guess I just hadn’t expected to say goodbye so soon.”

Satoru frowns further. His fingers curl around Hawks’s hand. “What?”

“Well, it’s just, if you’re not going to be working on this Humarise case— or any cases, really— then… there’s no reason to keep this up, right?” He bites his lip, looking down at the unfinished plate between them, thinking of the thousands of other meals that could have been between them, the thousands of other restaurants they could have been in; moments shared between the two of them that will never come to pass. 

“Is that what you want?” Satoru asks, his tone impossible to read, but Hawks doesn’t dare look up.

He swallows, thickly. “Well, no—

“Then who said anything about goodbye?” Satoru interrupts. 

His head snaps up, eyes wide. But Dabi isn’t looking at him anymore. Actually, he’s reaching into that stylish coat of his and pulling out a wallet. He lets go of Hawks’s hand long enough to slap a truly boggling amount of bills on the table between them, before pulling off his shades to pierce Hawks with the full weight of those enchanting eyes of his.

He has just enough presence of mind to protest. “I’m supposed to be treating you—

“You can get the next one,” Satoru cuts him off, in a tone that brooks no room for argument.

Hawks’s stomach flips over. The next one. 

“Besides, you promised me dessert too, didn’t you?” Satoru reminds him, gaze low and sultry, those eyes of his looking like they could devour him whole. 

Hawks licks his lips. “I did say that,” he agrees, voice gravely with anticipation. 

Satoru reaches for him. It doesn’t even cross his mind not to place his hand back in his. 

They’re gone in a flash, leaving nothing but rattling dishes in their wake. 

//

Sex is not going to solve all the unsaid things between us, he thinks. But it sure as hell feels great. 

He doesn’t think he’ll ever get tired of Hawks, which isn’t something he expected to say about anyone, in either lifetime. But being apart for this last month made him realize he’d missed the blonde; he’d be reminded of the hero in some fashion and be seized with the intense urge to seek out the man’s company, only to remember he was halfway across the world from him. Honestly if Hawks hadn’t called him and broken the silence first, he would have caved and done it himself. 

He’d told Izuku that adult relationships were ‘complicated’, and his relationship with Hawks was no exception. 

‘Complicated’ might be selling it short, though. 

Hawks is right. If he’s ‘retired’ from villainy, and has no intention of being a (real) hero, then what reason do they have to seek each other out anymore? The mere suggestion of walking away frightens him in a way very few things ever have. His fondness for the other man terrifies him. He knows how this ends for him— the only way it ever can end. He’s Gojo Satoru, the strongest, the Honored One, reigning high above where no one can ever hope to reach him, wrapped up in his own lonesome dynasty. In the realm of his own sublimity he is untouched by the blemishes of mortal existence, the weaknesses of his own damning human attachments. And yet here he is, letting that silly human heart of his dictate his thoughts and actions. He could have turned away from it all, earlier when he’d already started to detach himself from his own existence, embraced the limitless void awaiting him at the bottom of his reversed-curse spiral, and severed all his ties. But he’d let Yui draw him back, lying in a heap of blankets on the floor next to her warm and solid body as he dragged himself back down to earth piece by piece. She’d reached out to him, and he’d reached back. 

He couldn’t resist her, and he couldn’t resist Hawks either. 

He’s defined by the web of human touch he’s wound himself up in, the souls that touch his own. Maybe it’s time he’s accepted that— that for every spark of connection he makes he’s dragged further and further away from his own divinity, and he can’t find it in himself to regret it. 

He feels like it should hurt, to give in to his own weaknesses like this, knowing exactly how this ends, the Honored One plummeting out of the embrace of infinity. But instead he finds the fall from grace sinfully sweet. The soft dive of oblivion has never seemed so inviting.

There’s a flick against his forehead, startling him from his thoughts. 

“If you don’t close those pretty eyes of yours, I’m going to get soap in them,” Hawks warns, and Gojo dutifully closes them so the other man can wash out the suds in his hair. 

He’s surprised he zoned out enough to even forget where he was for the moment— showering with someone is new and uncharted territory for him. He’s fucked plenty of people, but he doesn’t really let them linger around for the rest of it; the breakfasts the next morning, the fleeting touches in the shower, the pair of toothbrushes set on the double sink. Considering how far he was from a virgin when they’d first met, Hawks has actually stolen quite a lot of his firsts. 

He blinks the water from his eyes once Hawks is finished, gazing up at the man from his spot on the shower bench. The hero is watching him with a searing, inscrutable gaze. Gojo just blinks up at him. Finally Hawks moves, cradling his jaw with one hand and swiping his thumb just beneath his eye. 

“These aren’t a quirk,” he says softly, nearly inaudible under the shower spray.

That’s a hell of a damning— and impossible— accusation to make. 

Gojo just smiles up at him. “What gave it away?” 

His hand falls away. Even under the warm heat of the water, Gojo still feels oddly cold without the touch. “Nothing about your abilities follows the laws of quirk science.” He pauses. “I’m not even sure if you have a quirk at all.”

Gojo raises a brow. “Now there’s an interesting conspiracy theory. What makes you think that?”

Hawks shrugs, water dripping down his shoulders in a decidedly distracting manner. “Like I said, your powers— at least the ones I’ve seen so far— don’t follow the laws of quirk science. If you have a quirk, I haven’t seen it.” 

Gojo considers him for a moment, standing under the water and steam, hair slicked back from his forehead but still dripping down his temple. He’s not pushing Gojo for an explanation, merely voicing his own observations. It feels as if it should be some kind of monumental moment— the unveiling of his world-altering powers in all their logic-defying glory. Instead the space between them seems soft and ephemeral, still glazed in a slow and sleepy post-coital warmth.

If anyone was going to put it together, it would be Hawks, and a part of Gojo seems to have accepted that long ago. 

Gojo stares up at him with an inscrutable expression as he holds out his hand, palm upturned into the spray. Hawks blinks at it, wiping water from his eyes. Then Gojo snaps his fingers, and a bright flame bursts into existence over his hand. It flickers valiantly, even through the torrent of water battering against it, forced to burn despite the unnaturalness of its birth through the sheer force of Gojo’s quirk. 

He disperses it after a few seconds. “Now you’ve seen it.”

Hawks looks a bit stupified. “A fire quirk? Really?” He sounds somewhat consternated. 

“What?” Gojo cracks a grin. “Not cool enough for you?”

“It’s not that.” Hawks shakes his head, still looking rather mystified. “It’s just— a little ubiquitous, y’know?”

He can’t help but laugh. “Yeah, I know.” Considering two of his family members share his quirk, to say nothing of the population with some level of manipulation over the element, it is surprisingly mundane for someone with his reputation. “And you’ve seen it before, actually. At least once.”

“I have?” Hawks returns, blinking.  

He leans back against the wall, flicking a bit of soap off his hand. “Yeah. Every time I use Cremation. It’s a technique that needs both my flames and my Infinity.”

A furrow creases the hero’s brow. His gaze seems to turn inwards as he mulls that over. Then he glances back at Gojo. “It’s both heat and pressure,” he realizes. “You’re not just using gravity to crunch something into nothingness— you’re creating nuclear fusion to destroy it instantaneously.” He finishes, voice going a bit high at the end with disbelief. 

“Uh, yeah. Basically.” When he puts it like that, it does sound rather outrageous, doesn’t it? Not any more or less outrageous than any of his Limitless abilities though, to be fair. 

Hawks stares at him in complete incredulity. Then he sighs. “That also makes absolutely no sense, you realize. Even if it was theoretically possible given the nature of someone’s quirk, there’s no way a human should have enough Plus Alpha energy to do something like that.”

He can’t help but grin widely at the hero’s words. “What can I say? Apparently I’ve been breaking the rules of science and man since I was born.”

Hawks chuckles. 

“A bonafide lawbreaker since day one, huh?” He remarks, ruefully, as he reaches over to flick the faucet off. Considering they’re talking about Gojo literally destroying all the known rules of the universe, he’s surprisingly unmoved by the revelation.

Huh. Maybe he’s just so used to Gojo’s particular brand of illogical chaos, it doesn’t even register anymore.

Gojo whines in protest as the steady flow of water tapers off, but Hawks just rolls his eyes. 

“If we stay in here any longer, we’ll turn to prunes,” he says, opening the shower door just as one of his feathers flies from the other room and tosses a towel at him. Two more follow it, and after Hawks has wrapped one around his waist he tosses one at him and slings the other over Gojo’s head. 

Whatever protests he might have had over the sudden lack of hot water disappear as Hawks starts to gently dry off his hair. He doesn’t remember the last time someone did something like this for him. He’d forgotten how nice it feels. 

“Hmm,” he hums as he turns his head further into Hawks’s hand, closing his eyes. Washing his hair for him and drying him off? He’s feeling quite pampered here. “You’re spoiling me.” 

“You’re letting me,” Hawks counters, which is a good point. 

“I should let you do it more often,” he agrees drowsily, relaxing into the head massage.

“Happy to oblige.” He doesn’t have to open his eyes to hear the smile in Hawks’s voice. 

After a few more minutes of him listing further and further onto Hawks, the hero finally protests. “Oi, don’t fall asleep here!” He chides, pushing the towel off Gojo’s head and onto his shoulders as he lets go. 

Gojo pouts ferociously at him. Nonetheless he doesn’t protest overly much as Hawks bullies him out of the shower and back into bed, collapsing next to him with a wide yawn. 

One of his feathers flits out from wherever he’d tossed them all to flick the lights off as the hero slides the covers over them. Predictably he’d shucked them all off when he’d made quick work of his clothes, but Gojo’s not entirely sure where they all went, only that they always manage to conveniently appear when they’re needed. Gojo barely registers it as Hawks pulls him closer to him, in search of warmth. He does spare a random, half-lucid thought to wonder on whether or not that’s a bird thing. Since he’s not actually covered in feathers like a real bird, does that mean he’s always cold? Or is Gojo just wildly overthinking all of this? He’s already half asleep when Hawks stirs next to him, voice dragging him back into wakefulness. 

“Hey,” the hero says suddenly. “I just realized— you didn’t actually tell me about your eyes.”

Gojo smiles sleepily. “You didn’t actually ask anything,” he points out. He’d just made some impressive observations, and Gojo had just confirmed them. 

“Fair enough,” Hawks chuckles. “Well, I’m asking now.”

Gojo is just awake enough to huff out a laugh as he counters; “Guess.”

“How is anyone supposed to guess with you? Your powers don’t make any sense,” Hawks complains, although he doesn’t sound particularly disturbed by the notion, and nonetheless gives it a shot. “Hmm… your official ‘hero profile’ says your eyes can see the quirks of others. But if it’s not actually a quirk itself… does it see the flow of Plus Alpha energy?”

“See? You didn’t even need me— you figured it out yourself.” Gojo yawns, rolling over. 

It’s still not quite the truth, but he doesn’t really feel like having to broach the subject of cursed energy. He’s barely still awake as it is. 

“Why Six Eyes, though?” Hawks asks, sounding a bit bewildered. “It makes you sound like you have, well, six eyes or something.”

Frankly, he has no fucking clue why the Gojo clan named them that to begin with either, and he’s too tired to come up with a legitimate answer, so he just says, “Like I said before… it just sounded cool.”

It startles the laugh from the hero that he was aiming for. “Oh, you were serious? Well, people have picked hero names for dumber reasons, I suppose.” Hawks pauses. “And what about Dabi? Did you pick it because it sounded cool too?”

“No, the task force tracking me at the time gave me that name.” 

“Then why’s your technique called Cremation?”

“That’s what they called it,” he yawns again. “I didn’t care enough to change it, honestly.”

“It’s your signature technique and you let someone else name it? Bad form, for a hero,” Hawks teases.

“Good thing I’ve never been much of one, then.” 

There’s no immediate response from Hawks, which has Gojo prying open one tired eye to glance at him. The other man is watching him with an expression Gojo isn’t entirely sure he likes. 

“I think you’re more of a hero than you give yourself credit for,” the hero says, quietly.

He wrinkles his nose in response. 

Hawks chuckles. “Yeah, yeah, I know. Not your thing.” He draws Gojo even closer, their breaths mingling together. 

His honey gold eyes flicker in the moonlight, mouth pulled to the side as he gazes at him. Gojo is alert enough to register it as an expression of restlessness. 

“What?” He prods, tiredly. 

“Ah— nothing, I was just thinking… villainy wasn’t really your thing either, was it? You never seemed particularly interested in it as anything more than a means to an end.”

It’s not exactly a shocking revelation. He’s never really made it much of a secret, how ambivalent he’d been about being a villain, or what society thought of his actions in general. And especially not with Hawks, who’s always observed how anomalous his behavior was in comparison to other villains. 

“That’s true enough,” Gojo agrees. “Doesn’t mean I’m interested in being a hero, though.” He adds, a vague tenor of warning in his words.

“Yeah— I hear you.” Hawks spreads out his fingers in a placating gesture. “It just got me wondering… what do you want to do, then? Now that you’re not really a villain or a hero.”

Teaching, comes unbidden and unasked for, from some wretched corner of his mind. He shoves it aside viciously. 

“Who knows,” he affects a grandly ambiguous tone, lips quirking into a smile. “Maybe I’ll be a rockstar.”

Hawks lets out a huff of amusement. “Sure, yeah,” he says drily, playing along. “And you’ll serenade unsuspecting heroes to sleep in your spare time?” 

“Is that a request?” Gojo counters, brow raised. 

Hawks leans closer, grinning. “And if it was?” 

Gojo amuses himself with the idea of it for a few seconds, before rolling his eyes. “Denied,” he drawls, making Hawks chuckle again. “I’m way too tired right now. Ask me next time.” 

Hawks startles a bit, then smiles softly. “Sure,” he agrees, voice suffused with warmth. “Next time, then.” 

//

When he wakes, it’s to the drag of teeth against his neck, a lurid wet heat suckling a spectacular mark into the base of his shoulder. 

He lets out an appreciative moan, tilting his neck to give the blonde better access. Hawks doesn’t waste any time sidling up behind him with a possessive palm spread against his hip, hot tongue tracing a line up to Gojo’s ear to a spot that never fails to elicit a full-body shudder out of him. He has no idea what time it is— he’d flung his phone away around the same time he’d shucked off his pants last night and hasn’t seen either item since— but from the slant of light across the closed curtains, he has to imagine its past dawn. Not that Gojo cares; unless Otheon is having some kind of crisis, he has no intention of leaving this bed at any point today. Especially not when his current company is so eager to please him. 

But while Gojo’s schedule might be flexible enough for plenty of lazy morning sex, the same cannot be said of his companion. 

A shrill alarm blares through the bedroom just as Hawks starts grinding against him in earnest. The hero pries his mouth off the striking line of marks he’s made along Gojo’s neck with something akin to a growl as a feather flings out from… somewhere and retrieves the source of the infernal noise. They part with a mutual reluctance as Hawks reaches out just as his feather drops his phone into the palm of his hand, swiping the alarm off as he tosses the thing behind his shoulder. He settles back behind Gojo, but this time neither his hands nor mouth wander into distracting territory, his nose buried into the crown of his head. 

The moment seems too soft to be real, slow and sleepy and squeezing at his heart like a vice. 

Their legs are tangled together, the heat of their bodies creating a warm and cozy bubble beneath the blankets that makes him want to drift off again. Hawks noses into his hair, reminding him of why he’d woken up again. There’s a hardness against his back he wants to do something about, but before he can reach behind him Hawks is pulling away. 

“‘Morning,” Hawks says, voice rough with sleep. 

Gojo grumbles in response. “It’s too early,” he complains. 

“No kidding,” Hawks commiserates, rolling onto his back with a sigh. He blinks up at the ceiling for a few seconds, then rubs the sleep out of his eyes. 

Gojo holds out a half-hearted hope Hawks will just ignore his alarm and doze off again, but as the hero sits up with an expansive yawn, he appears determined to rouse himself out of bed and go off to fight crime or whatever he’s doing today instead of lounging around like a wastrel. Unfortunately that steadfast commitment to his responsibilities is part of what Gojo finds so charming about him, so he can only smile unwillingly when Hawks leans over to place a chaste kiss against his shoulder, instead of protesting the early hour as he ought to. 

Hawks pulls away with a brush of his lips, bed shifting as he slides off of it and heads into the bathroom. 

He leaves his phone where he’d tossed it onto the bedspread, which just seems like such bad form to Gojo— what if he was the sort to snoop? Luckily for the hero he’s not, but it’s the principle of the thing. This doesn’t stop him from eyeing it with unabashed curiosity as it begins to buzz with an incoming call, nor does it stop him from turning it towards him to read the caller ID. Both his brows raise high as he sees who it is. 

“I thought you said you weren’t friends with Endeavor,” he comments idly, about ten minutes later when Hawks emerges from the shower, towel around his shoulders. 

The blonde looks confused at first, until Gojo lazily holds out his phone for him, still sprawled in bed.

“He called about five minutes ago,” he informs him, stretching his arms over his head but making no real effort to actually get up. 

“Oh,” Hawks frowns down at his phone, rubbing the back of his neck. He flicks the screen off, leaving it on the bed again as he towels off his hair.  

Gojo feels like he’s getting a taste of his own medicine as Hawks wanders over to the bureau, naked as the day he was born and without a care in the world about it, calling over his shoulder; “Can I borrow some clothes?”

“Sure,” Gojo answers, doing his level best not to roll out of bed and drag the other man back into it. He’d think the man was getting revenge for the time when he’d been sick and Gojo had pulled a similar stunt on him, but the hero seems too distracted for that kind of subterfuge right now. 

“I— wouldn’t exactly call us friends,” Hawks says in response to his earlier question, as he fishes around the top drawer. “But I think we’re getting along pretty well, in spite of it all.”

“Yeah?” He keeps his tone light and vaguely disinterested as he adds, “Y’know, someone told me he’s difficult to get along with.”

Hawks chuckles. “Well, it’s true. But I’ve made an effort to be friendly— unlike some people.”

Gojo blinks. “What?”

“What exactly did you do to the guy?” Hawks rolls his eyes, stepping into a pair of sweats. Gojo prefers his loungewear to be as loose and comfy as possible; Hawks’s more muscular form fills them out perfectly, and Gojo happily enjoys the view. 

Then he remembers the hero just asked him something, and remembers himself enough to counter; “Huh? What do you mean?”

He hasn’t done anything to Endeavor. Well, not as Dabi, anyway. 

“He’s interested in you,” Hawks reveals, rummaging in his drawers again. “More than other heroes, I mean. It seems— kinda personal, to be honest.”

“Huh,” Gojo says, blinking some more. 

That’s unexpected. Could Endeavor have figured it out? He supposes if anyone was going to have a shot at unraveling the secret of Dabi’s identity (transmigration notwithstanding), it would be him. 

He pauses with a sweater in hand. “Actually, he’s been so fixated on you I made a joke that he had the hots for you, which didn’t go as planned,” Hawks adds, sheepishly. 

Gojo’s mouth drops open in delight. “You did not,” he marvels. 

“He didn’t take it very well,” Hawks admits with a grimace. 

Gojo laughs himself into tears as he imagines Endeavor’s face when Hawks unintentionally asked him if he was attracted to his own son. He’s gasping by the time he’s done nearly laughing himself sick, face buried into the sheets. 

“It’s not that funny,” Hawks protests, pouting at him from across the room. “I thought he might toss a fireball at me for the disrespect!”

“It’s hilarious, actually, and you have no idea how much his discomfort pleases me.” 

Hawks narrows his gaze. “So you do have a personal history with him?”

Instead of answering, Gojo tilts his head at the sweater Hawks has in his hands. “There’s a pair of scissors in the drawer below if you want to cut the back.”

“You don’t mind?” Hawks returns, surprised.

He shakes his head. “Not at all. You can keep it.”

Hawks looks like he wants to comment on his blatant avoidance of his question, but fishes out the scissors without remark on it. Then he seems to take stock of the sweater he’d fished out. It’s a nice garment, one Gojo likes and wears fairly frequently. But he likes the idea of Hawks wearing it even more. He’s perfectly happy to admit the idea of the hero wearing his clothes around for everyone to see satisfies a weirdly primal urge inside of him. Maybe he’ll go track down that stray paparazzi photo that had tipped Izuku off to their relationship, just to see it for himself.

“Are you sure?” Hawks looks back up at him.

“Yeah,” Gojo says, with a secretive smile. He’s definitely going to go online later and see if any Hawks fans snagged a few photos of the blonde wearing it out. 

He waits until Hawks is carefully cutting out slots into the back before he considers the man’s question with any kind of sincerity. He has plenty of personal history with Endeavor, but the real question at hand is whether or not to reveal it. 

From what Hawks has told him, Endeavor most likely knows something. Gojo wouldn’t be surprised if the man has put it all together— these past few weeks, Gojo hasn’t exactly been hiding. His Limitless techniques may have given the man a bit of pause, but seeing his face would have made his identity readily apparent despite the mismatched ‘quirk’. And while he’d never outright used his cursed techniques while living in the man’s house, he’d used it to augment his quirk plenty of times. It’s possible the man still remembers that, even if it was subtle. 

Gojo’s not entirely sure how he plans to deal with his father. It depends on Endeavor, he supposes. Will the man go out of his way to oppose him, even though it’s only a matter of time until Dabi is exonerated? And what if the Commission legally recognizes his international hero license? Would he go after a fellow ‘hero’? For his part, Gojo’s perfectly happy to let sleeping dogs lie and never see the man again in his life. He doesn’t hate him or anything, and he’s not mad. He just doesn’t care about him, in any capacity. 

But he can’t say the same about Hawks, a person he cares for a great deal, who currently holds the dubious honor of being unknowingly dragged right into this unmitigated dumpster fire of a family soap opera. It doesn’t feel fair, to toss him in the middle of this drama without even giving him a heads up.

If Endeavor already knows, and he’s going public with (most of) his identity anyway… does it even really matter if Hawks knows? 

Theoretically no. If Endeavor knows he’s Touya, there’s no way of knowing whether or not he intends to keep that information secret. Gojo should assume there’s a possibility it will be common knowledge sooner or later. 

Makoto’s words from earlier ring in his ears, about needing to get ahead of a narrative to control the outcome. 

He sits up in bed with a resigned sigh. 

If Hawks is going to hear about this from anyone, it’s going to be him. 

And after everything he already told him last night, revealing the truth of his parentage doesn’t seem as daunting a task. Gojo has already confirmed that his powers are quite literally things beyond the reach of this world, so what’s one more secret in light of that?

“So do you like him? Endeavor, I mean,” he asks casually, crossing his legs as he turns towards Hawks. 

Hawks looks up from his careful cutting, frowning at the sudden segue back into their earlier conversation. He considers the question seriously. 

“You know, they say you should never meet your childhood heroes,” the hero begins idly, peering back down at his work. “But I think that’s just advice for people who are prone to seeing the world through idyllic, rose-tinted glasses. Even as a kid I was never under the delusion that people could be perfect, even heroes.”

“Endeavor was your childhood hero?” Gojo can’t really see it. 

“Yeah,” Hawks readily admits. “And meeting him as an adult has been an interesting experience. Like I said, I was never under the impression he was the friendly and welcoming ‘All Might-esque’ kind of hero. He’s not an easy person to get along with, but he’s a strong-willed and straightforward hero who takes his work very seriously, and I can respect his dedication to his job.”

Gojo makes a noncommittal noise. “He does give off a rather reliable impression as a hero, doesn’t he?”

Hawks nods slowly. “Yes. He’s diligent to the point of dogmatic, and so committed to his work I worry he can’t see past it, sometimes. But overall I would say I like him. Professionally it took a bit of effort, but we work well together now. And personally— well he’s the farthest thing from friendly, but he makes an effort to be cordial, I think.”

“Huh,” Gojo says, as he leans back on his hands. 

It’s intriguing to see the man from someone else’s point of view. Someone who’s only known him as he is today— a far cry from the raging and arrogant father Gojo remembers. 

“So are you going to answer my question, or are you the only one who gets to ask the questions right now?” Hawks asks drily, as he throws the sweater over his head. Where it looks loose and lanky on Gojo in an unkempt, artless way, on Hawks it highlights the man’s broad shoulders and sculpted physique, the wiry muscles in his forearms on full display when he rolls the too-long sleeves up to his elbows. 

Gojo valiantly refrains from being too distracted by the sight to reply. 

“It’s only fair,” he says mildly, once he’s dragged himself back to the topic at hand. “You got to ask all the questions last night, didn’t you?”

Hawks blinks. “…You have a point there.” He agrees sheepishly.

Nonetheless, Gojo has already made up his mind on answering him.

“But yes, we do have a personal history,” he reveals, slowly. His eyes flicker up to Hawks— the man is merely watching him with a patient expression, no judgment in his gaze.

“He’s—

Gojo almost cannot fathom it, when Hawks’s phone starts going off again before he can get the words out. He stares at it dumbly as Hawks lurches into action, crossing the room to shut off the incessant blaring. 

“Sorry, that’s my emergency line,” he apologizes as he swipes through his screen.

Does this sort of shit seriously happen in real life? 

When you have garbage karma like mine…  of course it does. 

He palms his face. And just when he’d finally come to the decision to tell him the truth— he’s waylaid by the universe, or maybe just some two-bit criminals reenacting Godzilla downtown. 

The hero’s expression turns serious as he frowns down at what he sees. “Shit, they’re calling me in right now.”

He runs a weary hand through his hair, and when he turns back to Gojo he can see he’s in his professional hero mode, a steely resolve sharpening in his eyes. His feathers fly back to him within seconds, a flurry of movement wrought with a deadly precision. Even with his hair still damp from his shower and his casual attire, there’s something unmistakably heroic about him. The last few feathers hover in front of him, carrying his clothes from last night. As he takes them in his hands he tucks them under his arm and with that same determined gaze swoops down to capture Gojo’s mouth with his own. It’s a brief but searing hot kiss, and when Hawks pulls away the hero’s eyes are a molten gold that sends that same heat all the way down to his toes. 

“Can I see you again?” He asks, and Gojo is fairly certain he doesn’t have it in him to deny the man anything when he looks at him like that, but especially not this. 

“Yeah,” he says, a little breathlessly. “Call me.”

Chapter Text

The room is several degrees colder than the rest of the house, as if even the heating system knows to leave it untouched. 

It’s a mausoleum when he enters; the air is thick and heavy with dust, despite the household’s dedicated cleaning staff. Even they don’t dare to come in here often, as if instinctually shying away from the sorrow and regret that drenches the room. For some reason, he expects it to be bloodstained and dirty, as cursed and wretched in the physical world as it is in his mind, but it’s a perfectly normal room. 

He almost lost his wife in this room, and he hadn’t even known it until hours after the fact. Hadn’t even realized she’d been unwell for months— maybe even years, maybe even the entire time he’d known her— until he’d gotten a call that his wife was in the hospital. He almost hadn’t even picked up the call, dismissing it as an unneeded distraction during his patrol. This particular assistant had been hired to deal with his personal affairs, and should have known better than to reach out to him with issues from his personal life during his work hours. He’d only picked it up to reprimand him for using his emergency hero line for family news, when the poor man had frantically blurted out the situation.

He doesn’t have to wonder why it was this room in particular that they’d found her in, pill bottle in hand. 

Rei shouldered as many regrets about Touya as he did, it seems. 

The contents of the room haven’t been touched in over a decade. Endeavor isn’t even sure if he’s ever once stepped foot in it, even when it was occupied. He’d never made an effort to know or care about his eldest— or any of his children— beyond what their quirks could offer him. He’d certainly never taken the time to look around his room, see the physical memorials to all his hobbies and interests, get to know his son as a person, and not just an object he’d created to further his own ambitions. And by the time he’d changed, Touya was long gone. Touya was the reason for that change. If he hadn’t confronted him that day, hadn’t upturned his entire life in that irreverently arrogant way of his, he might still be that selfish monster who only ever cared about himself. After that, the mere notion of his eldest was a lancing wound across the remains of his family, the circumstances of his death too raw to ever heal fully. So Endeavor hadn’t touched the room. He’d left it as it was, a hollow monument to all his sins. 

Knowing that Touya is still alive doesn't really change that. 

It doesn’t change the fact he’d been a cruel and dreadful person to his son, just like his own father had been to him. But Enji had grown stronger than that wretched man, and so too had he fashioned his son to grow stronger than him. Then fate had dealt him a stinging hand; Touya had been born too weak to surpass him. This only made him harder on the boy. Touya had to be strong, to carry on his pride and ambitions. If he had been born weak, then Enji would merely need to reforge him into something stronger. 

But Touya had never been weak at all. Enji had merely been blind to his strength. 

He’d hated his attitude, his utter disrespect, his disinterest in Endeavor and heroes. The way the boy would talk back to him never ceased to infuriate him beyond rational thought— if Enji had ever spoken to his own father like that, he’d have been beaten until he couldn’t walk. And for this weakling, this pathetic child of his that couldn’t even handle his own quirk, to talk to him in such a way? It was unfathomable. He’d raged constantly at the boy, a ghastly reflection of his own father; unlike Enji, Touya never so much as flinched at his father’s wrath. He held his ground every time. Beneath all his fury and violence, there had been a part of Enji that had feared the boy too. There had always been something unknowable about him, something Enji could never quite grasp, yet unsettled him nonetheless. 

Now he knows what it was. 

That power that lurked beneath the surface of that small and frail mortal shell; that power that could turn men into gods. He’d gotten a taste of it when Touya had rescued his youngest brother and destroyed the dojo, even if he hadn’t realized it at the time. It wasn’t a quirk— that he knew for certain. Touya had been to dozens of quirk specialists as a child, and they’d all unanimously said the same thing. He was a boy with a preternaturally strong fire quirk and a body that could never hope to handle it. But this power— it was something else. Something more. 

As an adult, his mastery over it was sublime. Dabi could cause untold levels of destruction and yet control it to a meticulous degree. As a child he could incinerate the family dojo without harming his brother or himself. Now fully grown, he could warp himself across the world and take on an entire army with nothing but his own two hands. 

After all his fervent research on the cremation villain these past few weeks, he could describe those god-like powers of his in great detail. 

But to describe the boy himself?

He doesn’t know the first thing about him, not the boy he used to be nor the man he has become. 

The room isn’t particularly forthcoming in that regard. 

He’s not entirely sure what he’d expected to find coming in here. This place hasn’t been used in years, and even when it belonged to Touya it was in name only; his eldest spent most of his childhood out of the house. Endeavor had never cared where it was he went. He’d long since given up on trying to ingrain any kind of respect or sense into the child, and so long as Endeavor wasn’t being called to fish him out of jail, once Shouto was born he’d dismissed the boy to his own devices. The drawers of his desk are empty but for old math worksheets and assignments, never turned in or even written upon. Touya had never cared about school, either. That he hadn’t been expelled for truancy probably had more to do with Endeavor’s reputation than his attendance. 

There are old clothes and shoes in the closet, things Endeavor never remembered buying. He would have assumed Rei had been responsible for dressing their children when they were young, but after what he’s learned about the woman’s mental health at the time, he’s not sure that was the case. Was Touya the one who took his siblings shopping for new clothes when they grew out of theirs? How had he even known how to do that, at that age? Touya had always been inexplicably good at everything, even as a small child, but he still had to have learned it all at some point. And if it hadn’t been Rei, then who had taught him all that he needed to know? Had he just learned it all himself? Had he been alone, even then? 

The only other thing of note in the room was the guitar case propped in the corner by the bed. 

He doesn’t remember Touya playing the guitar. But he doesn’t remember a great deal about Touya, on account of never being in the boy’s presence for anything longer than a training session. Was he any good at it, he wonders? Has he kept up with it all these years? Enji never learned any instruments, although not due to any particular lack of interest. His father considered music and arts as worthless pursuits, only befitting for weaklings. Back when Touya was young, Enji would have held a similar belief. If he’d ever found out about Touya’s guitar, he would have berated the child and raged at him, and it likely would have come to blows. 

It was probably for the best, that they had already been so estranged by that point. Enji is not a good person now, and he was an even worse one then.

“—Dad? Dad?”

Fuyumi’s voice echoes down the hallway, followed by her footsteps. There’s a falter in her steps where she must take note of the opened door to a room that almost always stays shut, then she’s hurdling down the hall.

“... Dad,” she says, faintly, when she stumbles into the open doorway. 

Her eyes are very wide as she takes stock of him, standing alone in Touya’s old room. Her expression is difficult to read— there’s worry in the furrow of her brow, but something tense to her shoulders and in the thin line of her lips. 

He expects her to remark on the very uncharacteristically maudlin position she’s found him in, but instead she draws herself back and says; “You left your phone in your office. It’s been ringing nonstop.”

That too is remarkably uncharacteristic of him. He never forgets his phone. He’s always available when his agency or his sidekicks need him— a far cry from his track record with his family, when he’s never there when they need him the most. 

“Thank you,” he tells her, gruffly, and with a nod in her direction leaves her standing in the hall. 

//

I think we should meet up, she sends, after deliberating on the message for the past twenty minutes. Me, you and Natsu. 

Endeavor left the house in a hurry— apparently for the same case that’s been having him coming back at all hours and staying for days in Tokyo— Natsuo is on campus and Shouto is in the dorms, leaving Fuyumi alone in the cavernous estate. She doesn’t mind the silence all that much, usually putting on music or a daytime television show for background noise, but right now it fills her with an unsettled disquiet. She still feels shaken, seeing her father standing in Touya’s room. What had he been doing in there? And why now? 

Could he know? 

It’s very possible. With Dabi at the forefront of the international media, whatever can be found on his history is coming to light. She’s not surprised to hear he’s been an asset to the police almost since his debut as a villain. Although she was surprised to hear he’d been working with unofficial Number Two Hero Hawks on the Humarise case. Also surprising her was the lack of recognition from fans of No Scrubs. Although they might all still be in mourning over the band’s  breakup. And then again, with the elaborate outfits, the crossdressing, the dim concert lighting and just the general absurdity of it all, connecting the two identities might take some time for even the most diehard of fans. Fuyumi knows it's inevitable though, with Dabi’s profile as public as it is now. 

Touya must know it too, if his silence on twitter is anything to go by. That might even be the reason the band broke up. Had he known all his secrets would unravel like this and preemptively split them up, or had it just been an inevitability he’d always kept in mind, finally paying off?

At any rate, she needs to see him. She’s been worried sick, watching the news. 

Touya had mentioned he’d be out of town, but he hadn’t specified where or why, and Fuyumi hadn’t pressed. They’d only just gotten in contact again, and it was shaky ground between them. She wasn’t certain what she was allowed to ask, how much of him she was allowed to see before he’d start pushing her away. Seeing his unmasked face suddenly all over the news had been a shock. The name had been even more shocking— Gojo Satoru, Pro Hero Six Eyes. The name and quirk were all wrong, but the face was unmistakable. 

She’d desperately wanted to reach out to him, in the aftermath of the Humarise incident. But she’d told herself he wouldn’t appreciate it— he was probably so busy dealing with the fallout of the mission and the unveiling of his ‘identity’, he wouldn’t have the time or energy to deal with her worries. She’d resolved to wait until things calmed down a little more before reaching out to him.

But then Shouto called the other day and said he’d visited Mom in the hospital, and now Dad was standing alone in Touya’s room with an expression she’d never seen before, and she couldn’t stop herself from reaching out. 

She didn’t want to be a burden on him, but she needed the reassurance of seeing him for herself, of knowing this stranger on television with his unfathomable eyes was really still her brother. 

Ru-kun: Sure. When?

She frantically tries to recall what she knows of Natsuo’s schedule. It’s a weekend, so he should be free. Even if he’s not, she knows he’ll make time for this.

Yumi-chan: Are you free tonight?

Nevermind her or Natsuo— Touya is the one with the unpredictable schedule. From what she can tell from the news reports, he’s been bouncing back and forth between here and Otheon ever since the Humarise mission. Is that difficult for him to do, even with that strange teleportation power of his? She hesitates to call it a quirk, since she knows with personal certainty that Touya was born with a fire quirk, but she has no idea what else to call it. If he was in Otheon right now, could he come back just to meet up with them like this? And even if it’s possible, would it be worth the trouble? What if it hurts him to teleport like that? She doesn’t know the first thing about his mysterious powers. Maybe it endangers him to use it somehow.

Maybe this is all a bad idea. Maybe this is too much, too soon. A month without seeing him might seem long to her, but he’s been on his own for all these years. Maybe he needs his space. 

She’s about to call it off when her phone lights up in her hands. 

Ru-kun: Yeah I’m in town. Should we meet up for dinner?

Fuyumi sighs, relieved. 

Yumi-chan: Yes! Let me check with Natsu and get back to you on the details.

Ru-kun: 👍

//

Gojo stares up at his little brother with a disgruntled expression.

“You’re taller than me,” he says, aghast. 

He was well aware he was a bit shorter than he’d been in his last life, but that fact had never been thrown in his face like this before. How dare his little brother be taller than him? This is outrageous! It’s unfair!

Natsuo takes one look at his petulant expression, and then bursts into full-bellied laughter. The restaurant is dead empty at this anomalously late dinner hour, so luckily no one’s around to start paying attention to the white-haired duo seated at the table in the back and their equally white-haired companion in sunglasses who just arrived. 

In addition to being taller— by a mere handful of centimeters, but it's the principle of the thing— his younger brother is also built like a giant, all broad shoulders and barrel-chested, packing plenty of muscle all across his frame in a manner similar to their father. Gojo very obviously favors their mother’s build, slim and lean with the kind of metabolism that means he’ll never have the kind of musculature stature his father and brother have, no matter how much he tries. His premature birth and childhood health issues hadn’t helped him either. It still takes him aback to remember his soul might be unequivocally that of Gojo Satoru, but this body, despite all of its remarkable cosmetic similarities, is completely different than his last one. 

I was still taller than him in my last life, he thinks pettily, as Natsuo continues to laugh.

“That’s what eating sweets for your entire life does to you,” Natsuo teases, grinning.

Gojo rolls his eyes. “You’re just an absolute giant.” 

“You’re both giants,” Fuyumi cuts in with an exasperated look. 

They both turn to look at her with matching smirks. In comparison to her one hundred and sixty centimeters, they both tower over her pretty easily. 

“Hmm— you think Shouto will be taller than us?” He asks idly, as he slides into a chair.

“I wonder…” She says, tapping her chin. “He’s not tall for his age, but he’s not short either.”

“I was already one of the tallest in my class by the time I hit high school though,” Natsuo muses. “The volleyball team would never leave me alone, always nagging me to join them.”

“Nacchan must have been the heartthrob of his high school~” Gojo grins impishly. “How many valentines did you get every year, Nacchan? It must have been in the hundreds!”

He means it as a joke, but Natsuo’s expression falls a little as he says, flatly, “You would have known for yourself, if you’d kept in touch.”

“N—Natsu!” Fuyumi hisses, as the tentatively lighthearted mood they’d started on shatters at his words.

“No it’s fine, he’s right.” Gojo shrugs. He flags over the bored looking waitress leaning against the hostess stand and filing her nails. He’s definitely going to need a drink or two for this conversation. “I’m the one who left, after all. I can’t exactly come back a decade later and act like a brother now.”

Fuyumi frowns. “That’s not—

The waitress wanders over to their table, and Gojo throws up three fingers as he says, “Can we get three shochu shots? Melon if you have it, thanks~”

Natsuo chokes. Fuyumi makes a strangled noise in the back of her throat. 

“What?” Gojo blinks at both of them. “Look, I’m already allergic to feelings. I’m not drudging up all this childhood trauma without at least some alcohol involved.”

Natsuo is shocked into a startled laugh as Fuyumi dons a consternated expression. Notably, she does not dissuade him from this course of action, and when the waitress comes back with their shots, downs hers all in one go without even waiting for them to cheers. She blinks up at the waitress and says, solemnly, “We’ll take another round.” 

“Well shit,” Gojo laughs, holding out his glass. “Yumi’s gonna drink us under the table if we’re not careful, Natsuo.”

Natsuo snorts, but diligently clinks their drinks together before downing it. “You can still call me Nacchan,” he mutters, as he wipes his mouth. “It’s just plain weird otherwise.” 

“You’re still our brother, Touya,” Fuyumi says, seriously. “No matter the circumstances. We’re family.”

Gojo blinks, tilting his head. “And is that how you feel about Dad too?” He asks, as he tosses his own shot back. It burns all the way down, and the heat that lingers in his throat is oddly galvanizing.

Fuyumi purses her lips as Natsuo scowls. “Yes,” she replies, steadfast.

“Don’t expect me to agree to that,” Natsuo scoffs, crossing his arms. “I still think we’re all better off without him.”

“But he’s here, and he’s trying,” Fuyumi returns, with an air of diligence to her. “I’m not saying anyone needs to make amends, or even forgive him, but I don’t think it’s good for any of us to hold onto this pain.”

“How can you expect us to just move on from it?” Natsuo counters, angrily. “He ruined this family, right from the start. How can I just accept what he did to Shouto, to Touya, to Mom? How am I supposed to not hate him for that?”

“Touya doesn’t hate him,” Fuyumi says, doggedly. 

Natsuo turns shocked eyes his way. “Seriously?”

“Well— yeah,” he says, nonchalantly. “I don’t care enough about him to hate him, to be honest.” 

“After everything he did to you… how can you say that?” Natsuo asks, bewildered. 

“Everything he ever did to us— that’s on him, y’know? Those were his choices, his sins to live with. Frankly, I have enough of my own sins to regret without bothering with his.”

Both Fuyumi and Natsuo stare at him with wide eyes.

“No matter how much he’s ‘changed’ these days, I’m never going to forget what he was like back then. And I’m not interested in forgiving him for it, either. But I’m also not interested in holding on to all that trauma.” He shrugs. “I think Fuyumi’s right. We need to find a way to accept it, or we’ll never be free of it.”

He said it more for Natsuo’s benefit, but he wonders if he’s truly as exempt from these circumstances as he likes to think he is. Sure, he’s never really thought of Endeavor as his father, and can’t exactly say there was any kind of betrayal of trust between them when Gojo had never trusted either of his parents to begin with, but he’d still had to live in that man’s house and deal with his abuse. Even if he was far better equipped to handle it than any of his siblings, it hadn’t made for a pleasant experience.

“Is that what you’ve been doing this whole time? Finding a way to accept it?” Says Natsuo.

Gojo waits until the waitress has dropped off their second round of shots before replying. He orders food for them as well, because he’s apparently a reasonable adult these days who can acknowledge that drinking alcohol on its own is inadvisable for his health, no matter how much he’d desperately like to get blindingly drunk right now. 

“Nope,” he says cheerfully, holding up his glass. “I’ve been running away from all of my problems, and it feels great. Kanpai~” 

“Running away from your problems straight into a life of villainy, huh? Honestly, I can’t say I’m all that surprised.” Natsuo rolls his eyes, tapping their glasses together with Fuyumi.

Once again their sister clears her shot well before they do, leaning back with a long sigh as she sets her empty glass down before Gojo’s even finished swallowing. Clearly his newfound alcohol tolerance in this life runs in the family. 

“It does seem to suit you, weirdly enough,”  Fuyumi agrees with a hiccup. “But— but you’ve been okay, right? No one’s given you any trouble?”

Gojo laughs. “No one’s strong enough to give me trouble, Yumi-chan! I’ve been fine.”

“What exactly have you been up to all these years?” Natsuo asks, looking genuinely curious at the prospect. “I mean, besides being a villain and all.”

Gojo toys with his glass, tilting his head. “Well, not much I guess? I’ve terrorized plenty of police chiefs into early retirement; I unintentionally started a band; I accidentally ended up the mentor to a bunch of hero students; and I guess I’ve somehow become a hero myself, nominally at least. And I also made a rather ill-advised home purchase? As it turns out, I really don’t know the first damn thing about owning property.” 

“Not much, he says,” Fuyumi echoes with disbelief. 

“Yeah, okay, I’m going to need more than that,” says Natsuo. “I need details. Most of that I’ve heard a little about— but what is this about hero students? And a house?”

So Gojo laughs and goes about regaling them with some heavily edited exploits of his life. 

He makes sure to tell them, in meticulous detail, exactly why Shouto hasn’t figured out he’s his older brother despite giving the kid so much evidence on a silver platter. Natsuo almost snorts liquor up his nose from laughing so hard; the idea of their father finding out Shouto’s laboring under the assumption that Touya is so powerful because he’s All Might’s son has him in tears. Fuyumi is just as amused, but also equally as concerned over him consorting so closely with U.A.— what if they find out who he really is? Gojo assures her that’s not really an issue, especially not anymore. She also corners him on what he’s been doing fraternizing so much with a top hero like Hawks— apparently she’s been reading the official Humarise reports— which has him admitting they’ve done a great deal more than just fraternizing. He figures he may as well tell them; they’ve kept his secrets for this long already, what’s one more?

“But— seriously? He’s the Number Two Hero!” Fuyumi hisses with wide eyes, gaze darting frantically around the empty restaurant as if expecting a reporter to jump out of the bushes outside with a microphone. Gojo would try to assure her that his Six Eyes would let him know if they were in danger of any eavesdroppers, but he’s a little too buzzed right now to do the subject justice.

“And the Number One in looks— he just won Hero Beat’s Best Smile Award for the third year in a row,” Natsuo says approvingly, raising his hand for a high five which Gojo enthusiastically meets. 

Fuyumi’s eyes grow to the size of dinner plates as she connects some dots in her head. “Wait a second— that week he was out, and you were asking me all those questions about taking care of sick people… that was—!!”

Gojo puts his finger to his lips with a wink. “Let’s maybe keep this all under wraps for now, huh? I might not be a wanted criminal anymore, but I’m still not particularly well-liked by the hero industry or the Commission.”

She nods slowly, brow furrowed as she palms her sake glass. They’d made the executive decision to switch from shots to a bottle of sake halfway through Gojo’s riveting tales of criminal enterprising, unanimously agreeing that while they’d all prefer to be a bit drunk for this conversation, they’d rather not be totally wasted. Which was a good thought, but probably about three shots too late. 

“Sure,” Fuyumi says, still looking as if she has no idea how to process this revelation. “But I’m still so confused… are you guys— together, then?”

“Uhhh— can I take a rain check on that question? That’s a bit complicated.”

Natsuo rolls his eyes grandly. “Soooo you’re friends with benefits.” He summarizes.

Fuyumi blushes. “Oh. Oh.”

“That’s—” Gojo intends to protest, before thinking it over. Is Natsuo really wrong? He knows there’s something there, between them, something a lot more than an easy fuck. If sex was all either of them were interested in, there were plenty of less complicated and more available people they could get it from. “Like I said— it’s complicated.” 

Fuyumi’s distantly bewildered expression colors into one of concern. Gojo cuts her off before she can give him the whole ‘I’m sorry you’ve complicated things with your own feelings, but maybe you should use this opportunity to take a step back and consider whether this is a relationship you should pursue’ song and dance. He’s well aware of how bad of an idea this dalliance is.

“Anyway, I guess he and Endeavor have something of a rapport these days,” he adds, offhandedly, deciding to steer the conversation back to lighter waters. “And Endeavor’s been asking some, hmm, interesting questions about me.”

Fuyumi frowns, nodding. “That seems in line with what I’ve noticed from him. He’s been different.”

“You think so?” Natsuo snorts into his glass. “He seems like the same old asshole to me.” 

“He was in your old room today. Just standing there. I wasn’t really sure what to make of it,” Fuyumi adds, hesitantly. 

“Maybe he was just having a gay crisis and needed somewhere quiet to think,” Gojo says, grinning viciously. Then he reveals, with relish; “Hawks apparently asked him point blank if he was obsessed with me because he wanted to bone me— he didn’t take it well, I hear.” 

Fuyumi’s mouth drops open. 

Natsuo laughs so hard he flails out of his chair and upends the table and gets them summarily kicked out of the restaurant. All in all, Gojo would call the outing a sibling-bonding success. 

They all decide the night is too young and their collective childhood trauma still too unresolved to call it quits now, so Fuyumi hastily searches for any establishments in their immediate area still open and selling booze at this hour. They’re in a part of Tokyo that's unfamiliar to Gojo, so he amiably lets her lead the way while he and Natsuo stumble behind her with the arms slung around each other. He learns Fuyumi picked the izakaya they’d been booted out of because of its proximity to Natsuo’s campus, and they spend a couple minutes walking around in the brisk air sobering up and talking about Natsuo’s school. He’s a med student, which Gojo already knew, and apparently also the ace of the volleyball team, which Gojo did not. His younger brother is perfectly happy to prattle on about his clubs and his friends, and Gojo’s not sure if he’s warming up to him or if it’s just the alcohol making him generously friendly.

His question is answered when Natsuo leans heavily against him after finishing up a story about attending his roommate’s track meet, Fuyumi a few paces ahead of them frowning down at her phone. Gojo steadies him with the arm he has tossed over his shoulders. Natsuo is silent for a moment before he admits, quietly; “I didn’t mean what I said, earlier.” 

“When you said what?” He replies, confused. 

“When I said you’d have known all these things about me, if you’d just kept in touch,” Natsuo mumbles. “That wasn’t fair to you, and I’m sorry.”

“You have nothing to apologize for— it’s the truth, after all,” he returns, automatically. 

Natsuo shakes his head. “No, it’s not. You were just a kid too, even if you always seemed so cool and grown-up to me at the time. And— none of us were okay, back then. Not even you. You needed to do what you had to, to heal and be safe, and it was never your responsibility to shoulder all the burdens of our family.”

“Nacchan—” He says, surprised. 

He wants to protest that on principle. He seemed so cool and grown-up because he was a grown-up, just stuck in a tiny body at the time. But alcohol has loosened his iron grip on his own emotions, and he’s drunk enough to admit there’s a part of him that agrees with Natsuo. He’d made the best out of his situation as a kid by detaching himself from his new reality and distancing himself from his new life and everyone in it. He’d put up walls as strong and impenetrable as Infinity and refused to let anyone in. He’d refused to accept this life he’d been reborn into as anything other than an unfortunate circumstance he was forced to endure. 

It had taken leaving that house and finding his own way to cope with this new life for him to finally drop his barriers. It had taken Makoto and Kenji and Yui, all the Toman guys, Izuku, and even Eraserhead and Detective Tsukauchi. Without them, he wouldn’t have been in a place where he could have accepted Shouto back into his life the way he had, he wouldn’t have been able to accept his own burgeoning feelings for Hawks, and he definitely wouldn’t have been able to reach out to Fuyumi and Natsuo again.

He sighs. “I’m sorry I wasn’t strong enough to protect you guys.”

What a joke. He’s the strongest, the honored one, and yet he couldn’t even protect a couple little kids. And to think, there were actually people right now calling him the ‘World’s Hero’. As if he was ever capable of saving anyone. As if Gojo Satoru hadn’t been born to be anything but a cursed weapon, a perfect killer, a tool made only of death. 

“That’s not something you ever have to be sorry for,” Natsuo returns, resolutely, jarring him from his depressing thoughts. “You did protect us. If you hadn’t stopped Endeavor when you did… I don’t know what would have happened to Shouto, let alone the rest of us. I hate to even admit it, but he definitely did change, after that night.”

Natsuo pulls a face. “Not that being a shitty absent father is all that much better than being a shitty abusive one, but at least he isn’t hurting Shouto anymore.”

“Um, guys?” Fuyumi interrupts them, turning around with a sheepish expression. “I… think I’m lost.”

Gojo pauses and takes stock of their surroundings. He actually… has no idea where they are, either. He usually has incredible spatial awareness— comes with the territory of his Six Eyes— but he’d been so distracted by his conversation with Natsuo he’d barely been paying attention to their surroundings. They seem to have ended up in a rather questionable looking alleyway, the garbage bins propped by all the doors mixed with the earlier on and off rain creating a rancid smell.

Natsuo stares around in bewilderment. “Where exactly were you trying to lead us to, Fuyumi? A sex dungeon?”

“It was supposed to be a top-rated speakeasy, but the directions were so confusing!” Fuyumi protests, looking around anxiously. 

Gojo is about to reply that they’ve definitely taken a wrong turn somewhere long before this, because there’s not a single soul his Six Eyes can see in the surrounding buildings, when he stops before he can even open his mouth. He untangles himself from Natsuo, taking a step forward until he’s standing directly between him and Fuyumi, frowning upwards. 

“Touya?” Natsuo squints at him. Both he and Fuyumi are looking at him in confusion.

“One second,” he says, distracted, which only serves to confuse them more.

Then they both shout in surprise as a blur shoots between them. Gojo— having sensed a figure hurtling towards them on the roofs above, judged the distance between the end of the building and the start of the one across the alley from it, and planned accordingly for this inevitable interruption— just opens his arms up and uses a bit of his Limitless technique to stall their fall. 

“Hey kid,” he says, to the surprised bundle in his arms. “Hasn’t anyone ever told you flying is for droids?” 

Chapter Text

She knows with the dreadful certainty that can only come from an endless cycle of crushed hope and misery, that this is a terribly foolish idea. 

Hope is such an awful thing, really. Perhaps if she could just somehow force herself to accept her circumstances, she’d be better off. If she could bring herself to be cheered up by brand new toys and trinkets, maybe she wouldn’t need to cry herself to sleep at night. For good or for ill, she’ll never be that kind of person. She’s the sort that cannot help but struggle on, no matter how fatalistic the effort might seem, because she simply cannot accept otherwise. She’ll regret it all later, when her handlers catch up to her— or worse, Chisaki himself— and she’s once again strapped onto a metal chair and deconstructed over and over and over again. She’ll scream and cry as she’s forced to regenerate through the pain and bloodshed, and she’ll hate herself for ever bothering to dream of a life outside of this wretched one, and yet later when she’s all alone in the foreboding darkness of her room, she’ll wish for something better. 

Wishing never helped her. It didn’t bring back her parents. It didn’t save her from Chisaki. It didn’t even stop those young heroes from leaving her behind. She hates that she can still wish at all. There’s no such thing as fairy tale happy endings for people like her. She’s not a princess with a knight in shining armor on his way to rescue her. She’s not even a princess that can fight her own way out. 

There’s no good ending for her here, and yet her feet carry her on anyhow. 

She keeps running as fast as she can, even as rocks and stray glass cut into her bare feet, mud and grime splattering up her bandaged legs. The ankle she’d landed on wrong screams in pain every time she puts her weight on it but she can’t bring herself to stop. 

Shouts ring out from behind her as one of the members on duty picks up her trail. It was inevitable; she hadn’t had time to plan any farther than her escape. Luckily her newest handler had been easy to win over. She’d started rock painting as a hobby, to the united bewilderment of all the yakuza lackeys Chisaki had watching her, and waited until the most restless and flighty of the lot was on shift to watch her before enacting her plan. Her final act of defiance, if she wanted to be honest, because she doubts she’s ever going to get a chance like this ever again. Once was a miracle. Twice is simply too much to ask for.  

Her most recent minder had wanted to buy her some stupid magic baby doll, and she’d instead asked for increasingly large and flat rocks, better to act as a canvas for her painting, until she’d amassed something of a collection. He’d been very confused, and probably thought her a bit touched in the head after all that deconstructing and reconstructing, but still so desperate to please her he’d gone out and found her rocks she wanted. Originally she’d intended to… honestly she didn’t know. Her five year-old mind hadn’t exactly gotten much farther than: bludgeoning this guy in the face with a giant rock; hoping she knocked him out and using the other rocks to bust a window in her room to jump out of; jumping out the window… and then hoping for the best, really. It was hardly a foolproof plan, but she was terrified and desperate and refused to just sit here and do nothing but cry about her circumstances. 

Not anymore. 

Not after she’d finally tasted freedom. Not after she’d stared into that young hero’s eyes, so full of kindness and sympathy, and realized he would have moved heaven and earth to save her if only she’d asked him to do it. But she’d been a coward, too scared of Chisaki and too scared of what might happen to this nice boy with his kind eyes and fluffy green hair if she let him help her, of what Chisaki would do to him if he tried. And he would try, she could see that in his eyes. He’d try to save her and he’d fight Chisaki and probably die trying, and just knowing that he’d try at all was enough for her. 

She’d pushed him away and swallowed her fears and returned to Chisaki. She didn’t want to see either of those two heroes— kids not that much older than her, really— die because of her. 

But she didn’t want to live like this anymore, either. 

Fate had ended up giving her a window of opportunity, before she could even attempt her premeditated manslaughter dreams. The flighty minder with his fiddly fingers and weird mustache left her alone in her room to step out and discuss something with another member. She could barely believe it; they were trained specifically not to do that, especially after her last escape attempt. She could hear them on the other side of the door, whispering and snickering, something about a lady and a love hotel and a bunch of other adult stuff she’s fairly sure she’s not supposed to know about, but knew plenty about anyway because she lives with a bunch of yakuza members.  

And just when she was sitting there, still painting her rocks, too stunned to move, another door banged opened and then there was a bunch of angry shouting and slamming and what she’s fairly sure was someone accusing someone else of sleeping with his baby mama, and then there was the whoosh of air shuddering against the door and walls, warm heat licking through the opening at the bottom of her door, and more shouting about ‘not using your fucking fire quirk indoors you asshole’ — which was just about the moment the fire alarm went off.  

Well, let it not be said Eri wasn’t an industrious, enterprising young almost-six year-old who didn’t know how to use a moment when it was handed to her on a silver platter. 

With all the shouting and the chaos as a screen, she wasted no time in moving past the ‘possible manslaughter’ part of her plan and straight to ‘busting out the window’ and threw as many rocks as she could at the glass until it shattered a hole large enough for her to crawl through. It was hardly as convenient as her last escape, where she’d managed to run out a side door, but her security had gotten tight after that failed attempt. Chisaki wasn’t willing to risk it, after she’d ran right into the arms of a hero. She was lucky to have a window at all, but even Chisaki could acknowledge sunlight was necessary for growing girls. He’d of course instead made sure her room was far too high for her to jump, and her window locked tight from the outside, so instead she used the siding to crawl up onto the roof.

They probably checked the security footage when they realized she’d escaped, once they’d stopped beating each other up over their collectively poor choices at the bar last night, and followed her trail. She was too small to run fast enough to really outrun them, and too weak to continue on for much longer. 

Tears of frustration gathered in her eyes as she thought about how this might be her last time feeling the wind in her hair, and seeing the open expanse of the dark night sky. After this attempt, she’ll probably be stuck in the basement holding cells for the rest of her life, vitamin D deficiency or no. She was on thin ice with Chisaki as it was already, after she’d escaped into the arms of a hero last time. 

The thought of a life like that made her sick. It didn’t seem like a life worth living at all. Struggling through pain and suffering day in and day out, nothing to look forward to, not even a glimpse of a distant sky and the fleeting call of freedom.

She sobs, stumbling over loose gravel and skidding her knees as she falls. She can hear the voices, closer now than they were before. 

She’s almost at the end of the rooftops. There’s another building ahead of hers but a wide alleyway separates them; she doesn’t think she’s strong enough to make the jump. But the idea of just sitting here crying and waiting for the inevitable inspires within her something stronger than fear. There’s no hero waiting for her at the end of a long alleyway, no warm and comforting arms to hold her, even for just a moment. There’s just her, and her own stupid, vicious hope burning in her chest. A determination to succeed, or die trying.

Eri doesn’t think twice about it. She scrambles up back onto her aching feet, sprints headlong towards the edge, and jumps.

//

Gojo looks up, just as the girl he’d sensed takes a flying fucking leap right to her death.

He watches her swan dive to her inevitable end with no small amount of horror and bewilderment. Then he moves to slow her fall down with Infinity and catch her.

He’s even more horrified— and bewildered— by the sight that greets him in his arms.

Her silvery hair is slicked with sweat and grime, matted in curls down her back. She’s got a hell of a bruise forming on her jaw, and a scrape across her cheek. There are similar scrapes across her palms and the backs of her forearms, as if she’d tripped and fell forward onto hard concrete. The worst are her feet, bleeding profusely from small cuts made from rock and broken glass, and dangerously dirty from running on the roofs after the spell of rain they’d had on and off all afternoon. Her legs aren’t spared from the mess, splattered with mud and stray cuts. Her ankle is swollen and angry red, likely sprained or broken recently. 

And that’s only what he can see with his own two eyes.

What his cursed eyes tell him is an entirely different story. She’s covered in older bandages; beneath them are disconcerting injuries. Gojo can’t really make sense of them— they fit no pattern of weaponry or injury that he can discern. But then, much like cursed techniques, quirks can often cause damage that seems impossible from a purely logical standpoint.

If Gojo had to guess, he’d have to say it almost looked like she’d been… pulled apart and then haphazardly put back together again. Over and over again.

He breathes in sharply through his nose, making a valiant effort to suppress the surge of anger and disgust swelling in his chest. 

The little girl finally seems to realize she hasn’t fallen to her death. Her tense body relaxes in fractions, hands uncurling from where she’d buried them in her hair, arms falling away from her face. She stares up at him with shocked, bright red eyes.

“Hasn’t anyone ever told you flying is for droids?” He asks, blankly, in lieu of anything more useful to say. 

“... What is a droid?” Natsuo has enough presence of mind to ask, reminding Gojo that both his siblings are here with him.

“Oh my god,” Fuyumi says, shocked. “Did she just fall from the sky? Is she okay?”

“I don’t think so, considering she didn’t fall from the sky, she jumped off the roof.”

“Jumped?!” Fuyumi gasps. “Why?” 

Gojo tucks the girl into the crook of his arm. She’s so small and malnourished he can easily cradle her on his hip with one hand, using the other to pull down his glasses and smile disarmingly at her. 

“Well, maybe she can tell us. Hi kid, what’s your name?”

She just looks up at him with big, terrified eyes, looking a lot like a frightened snow rabbit with her silver hair and ruby eyes. The fright falls from her features as she stares into his eyes, dazzled by their otherworldly glow. 

“Oh my god stop that she’s, like, five,” Natsuo cuts in, rudely. 

Gojo glances away to send the other man an impish grin. “I can’t help that women are always so charmed by me, no matter their age~”

“She has bandages all over her,” Fuyumi notices with dismay, ignoring their byplay entirely. She slinks up behind Gojo’s shoulder, smiling encouragingly down at the girl in his arms. “I’m Fuyumi, and these are my brothers Natsuo and Touya. Can you tell us your name?”

Gojo is reminded that Fuyumi is literally a professional child wrangler when the little girl meets her beaming smile with a tentative look, not nearly as frightened as she had been before. “E— Eri.”

“Eri-chan! What a lovely name,” Fuyumi enthuses. “Eri-chan, it’s very late and it’s so cold out! Did you leave your jacket with your parents? Do you want us to help you get back to them?”

He knows what she’s easing her way into asking, and evidently he’s not the only one who’s seen through her gentle tone. Eri seizes up as if Fuyumi’s words have physically hurt her, struggling in his arms. 

“No!” She kicks out frantically, startling Fuyumi into leaping back. “I can’t, no, please—”

He and Fuyumi share another look, before she tries again with that same calmness, “Okay, that’s alright. You don’t have to answer if you don’t want to. You’re safe right now, okay? If you’re lost, we can help you.”

Eri stops twisting around in his arms, but she still looks wary and distrustful as she eyes up Fuyumi. Gojo looks between the two— his sister with her reassuring smile and placid expression, and Eri with her wounded eyes and hunched shoulders— and thinks a change of tact might be in order. Fuyumi’s steadfast and supportive approach might work wonders on her own perfectly normal and well-heeled elementary students, but the injuries on the girl and her wariness even in the face of kindness has Gojo thinking a direct attitude might be better. 

“Eri-chan,” he says slowly, drawing the girl’s attention. “Did you run away because someone was hurting you?”

Fuyumi makes an aborted noise in the back of her throat, but otherwise doesn’t protest this new direction.

Eri, notably, doesn’t answer. She just looks down at her scraped knees, worrying at her bitten and bandaged fingernails. Very slowly, under all their watchful gazes, she begins to nod. 

He can feel the anger radiating off his sister, even as she balls her fists and refuses to let the rage cloud her face. Across from them, Natsuo looks like he wants to be sick, hand to his mouth. 

“I see.” Gojo himself can barely keep the frigid wrath out of his own voice. “Well, Eri-chan, like my sister said, you’re safe now, okay?”

“Please don’t let them take me back there,” she says, pitifully.

“Them?” Natsuo asks, worried. “Who’s them?”

Gojo blinks back up at the roofs, mouth twisting as he senses the ‘them’ in question. “I believe she’s referring to the group of adult men who appear to be chasing her,” he reveals.

“What?!” Natsuo shouts, just as Eri cringes in his arms. 

They don’t particularly worry him; he can take on a global army by himself and finish them off before dinner time. He’s not even all that worried about protecting Natsuo and Fuyumi and Eri through the confrontation. But it’s one thing for his siblings to watch him blow up buildings and kill people on television, and another thing entirely to see that monstrous power in person. And Eri is already a very obviously traumatized kid— she doesn’t need to see that on top of everything else she’s dealt with. 

He looks down at the girl, staring directly into her eyes as he promises; “I won’t let them take you anywhere, okay? You’re safe with me now.”

Her eyes are very wide as she stares back. He can’t tell if she’s registering his words, or is just once again caught up in admiring his shiny eyes. It’s hard to tell with kids at this age. 

So he ropes his arm around Fuyumi, and drags Natsuo around to her other side. 

“Right, so— don’t be alarmed, but this might feel a little weird.” 

Natsuo opens his mouth with a distinct look of alarm, despite Gojo’s words, but by the time he’s voiced his protests they’ve already teleported away. 

//

He wants it on record that he is not jealous of the traumatized and dreadfully injured six year-old kid. 

He’s just— a little surprised, is all.

Growing up, his older brother Touya had always been a friendly but ultimately standoffish character. Natsuo had always chalked it up to the age gap— it never felt as if Touya ever really wanted to play with him, or even be around him really, rather that he was just indulging Natsuo because he felt bad for him. He’d never been mean or even unpleasant, and if Natsuo asked to do something with him, whether that was watching cartoons or tossing a ball out in the yard, he always agreed. But Touya had never been the one to close the distance. He was never the one who crawled into his room at night in search of comfort, nor the one to seek him out during the day just to be by his side. It was always Natsuo wanting to be by his brother, and Touya conceding to his whims. 

As he got older, he just assumed Touya wasn’t the touchy-feely type. And as Shouto grew up and he found himself filling the same sort of role that Touya had with him, he realized how much affection Touya must have really had for him, in order to indulge him as often as he did. Touya just hadn’t been the sort who showed his affection in an overtly physical manner. He’d sling an arm across his shoulders or pat his head on occasion, but the one and only time Natsuo had tried to hug him as a kid he’d gone as stiff as a board and hadn’t reciprocated at all. Natsuo hadn’t tried it again after that. 

But then there’s Eri, crawling all over a very adult Touya who doesn’t seem to mind in the least. Actually, he’s letting her all but rip his shirt apart by its seams as she clings to his chest, little fists stretching the material irreparably. She’s staring at Natsuo like he’s the antichrist, curled up in a ball in Touya’s lap as Fuyumi hovers fretfully over the side of the couch. 

Truth be told, he’s still shocked it’s not Fuyumi sitting on the couch with an armful of terrorized little girl. 

She’s the one with the proven track record of taming groups of small children, after all. But little Eri seems to have imprinted on Touya, and refused to budge no matter how much they cajoled her. She seemed to be stuck under the impression that if she let go of him, he might disappear. In her defense, Touya did teleport them all halfway across the city without any kind of warning, so it’s not exactly an unfair assumption to make. 

Natsuo stares down guiltily at the first aid kit he’d found ferretted under Touya’s bathroom counter (that had two toothbrushes sitting in the cup by the sink, a little tidbit he was trying not to pay attention to) knowing her fearful look is probably well warranted. But those cuts on her feet and legs are liable to get infected with all the dirt and grime all over her, and that ankle should at least get a cold compress on it. 

He sinks down to his knees in front of her with a placid expression, which quickly breaks into consternation when he opens the kit and realizes it barely even constitutes as first aid. 

“Please tell me you have disinfectant,” he sighs. 

Touya blinks at him. “I have… alcohol?” he says, sheepishly. 

Natsuo gives him a disparaging look as Fuyumi sighs and goes to the bar cabinet in search of said alcohol. He rummages around the woefully ill-stocked box; there’s wrap, gauze, and bandages in different sizes, and not much else. He’s lucky Fuyumi is definitely the sort to have a pair of tweezers in her bag, otherwise they’d really be in dire straits. 

“Nacchan is going to school to be a doctor, so he’ll patch you up real quick, okay?” Touya is telling Eri, as Fuyumi returns with a little hotel-sized bottle of vodka and they begin to paw through her bag in search of anything of use. 

She does indeed have tweezers, and a bottle of paracetamol, and strangely enough, wet wipes. She insists they’re a necessity when dealing with small children as often as she does. 

“W— What is he doing?” Eri asks fretfully, as he cringes through pouring out the little bottle of vodka onto a wad of gauze. 

“He’s going to clean up all your cuts, so they don’t get infected.” Touya pauses, frowning. “Do they need stitches?” He addresses to Natsuo.

“No, but I’m going to need to take out some of these shards of glass,” Natsuo returns, leaning closer to get a better look at some of the wounds. He winces when he sees how deeply lodged some of the bits of gravel and glass are. 

He reaches out to gently steer Eri’s leg in his direction, but she flinches so violently she almost clocks him in the jaw. 

“He won’t hurt you, I promise,” Touya tells her gently, as she curls her face into his chest. “He’s going to patch you up, okay?”

She shakes her head vehemently. “Hurts,” she says. “It always hurts…”

His gaze lowers to the bandages still wrapped around her arms, and the remnants of them torn and dirty around her legs. Whatever was done to her… someone had patched her up, afterwards. And perhaps not as gently as they could have.

“Yes, it will hurt for a bit, but that just means the medicine is working,” Touya replies, running a hand through her hair. She just continues to shake her head, trembling in his lap.  

Touya looks over imploringly at Fuyumi. Fuyumi stares back, wringing her hands helplessly. Her eyes dart frantically around the hotel room, before finally settling on something behind the couch. 

“Okay, Eri-chan, I understand this is all a little scary, but we’re going to make it not scary, okay?”

Both Touya and Natsuo turn to stare at her. “We are?” Natsuo asks, skeptically. 

“Yep, we are. Here’s what we’re going to do,” Fuyumi claps her hands. “Eri-chan is going to sit with me, and she’s going to squeeze my hand whenever she feels scared and I’m going to ask Natsu to stop for a little until she feels better.”

Eri very carefully pulls her head off of Touya’s chest, blinking at her with guarded eyes. Fuyumi smiles charmingly as she adds; “And Touya-nii is going to sit right next to us, and play us a song with his guitar!” 

“He’s what,” Natsuo deadpans.

“I’m what,” Touya agrees, blankly. 

Fuyumi dances around the couch and pulls forward a stickered guitar case. Eri’s eyes grow wide with fascination as she catches sight of it. “Do you have a favorite song, Eri-chan?” 

Eri slowly shakes her head.

“Well that’s alright, Touya can play you lots of songs. Right, Touya?” 

“Um, Fuyumi,” Touya says, sounding pained. “Most of my songs are, uh, not very kid friendly.” 

“Nonsense, I’m sure you can think of something.” Fuyumi stares at him with a beaming smile. “And they’re all in English anyway, it’s fine.”

Touya looks like he still might try to protest being volunteered for this role, when Eri peers up at him with very big eyes and asks, in an awestruck voice. “You can play the guitar?” 

Natsuo watches in disbelief as Touya just fucking melts. 

“Yeah, I can play the guitar.” He concedes defeat. 

Wow. He’s seriously known this kid for all of half an hour and she’s already gotten him wrapped around her little finger. It’s a far cry from the amiable but distant brother he remembers. Or maybe not so much, he supposes, watching as Touya gently transfers Eri onto Fuyumi’s lap, and goes about prying his guitar case open. After all, Natsuo remembers barging into his room (on the rare occasions Touya was actually home) and begging his older brother to play him a song on his guitar, and Touya caving every time, no matter what he was in the middle of doing. 

Eri watches Touya settle across from her with his guitar slung over his lap, picking gently at the strings as he gives it a quick tune-up. The fear and sadness that had clung to her face washes away into wonderment as Touya strums a few haphazard chords, tilting his head this way and that. 

He glances up at her with an easy grin. “Bear with me for a little bit, okay? I’ve never actually played this one before.”

Fuyumi sits up straighter at that. “Ooh! Is this a new song?” 

Touya smiles wryly at her. “It doesn’t exist anywhere but in my head, if that’s what you mean.” 

Fuyumi pats Eri’s head. “Isn’t that amazing, Eri-chan? Touya is going to play a song just for you.”

“Just… just for me?” Eri’s eyes are wide as saucers, looking a little overwhelmed. Even when Natsuo uses her distraction to turn her bleeding foot his way, she doesn’t seem to notice. 

Touya keeps strumming chords at random, lips pursed in concentration. Natsuo takes the opportunity to start probing gently at Eri’s foot— she doesn’t so much as twitch. As Touya clears his throat and starts to sing, she remains utterly transfixed, as if he’s caught her under some kind of spell. 

Even when he has to dislodge a shard at least three centimeters from the side of her heel, she just balls her fists in her lap and continues to stare at Touya with complete and utter fascination. It saddens him, because no amount of pretty music should be able to distract any regular six year-old from that kind of pain; she must have a staggeringly high pain tolerance. His stomach drops when he thinks of all that she must have been through, and the uncertain future that lies ahead of her. 

He hissed in sympathy when he dabs the alcohol across her open wounds, but she doesn’t so much as glance at him, all her attention focused on Touya as he sings— as if she’s never even heard music before. 

His heart lurches, as Touya’s voice drifts on. 

“What love song, do you sing your babies?

What sunshine, do you bring?” 

//

Makoto will be thrilled, Gojo can’t help but think, as he wrangles up long forgotten memories and manages to pull out a song that’s perfectly adequate to work as a soothing lullaby. 

She’s been bugging him about making new music again, now that the band is officially on the ride or die train with him, especially since she intends to start promoting them in earnest. She has a masterplan to get ahead of his grand identity reveal— at least the Dabi part of it— and is working on the others with theirs. She apparently pulled some of her industry contacts to get Kenji off with a bit of community service and a few hefty fines (easily paid for by the band’s funds) since the statute of limitations on her alleged manslaughter charge had already passed. Yui had apparently point blank said that if she has to choose between the band and her future career then she doesn’t want to be a hero in a society that won’t accept them as a band, and Makoto herself said she’d rather handle her own image than other people’s if it comes down to it. Gojo hopes it doesn’t come down to that, though. He’d rather they get to enjoy their lives without having to make that kind of choice. 

At any rate, he’d been debating on what new direction (read: which new bands to plagiarize) to take their music and he supposes the noisy shoegaze sound of Siamese Dream is as good of one as any. 

Come to think of it, he’s sort of been shying away from songs from that era in his life— his loneliest, earliest days with just an mp3 player for company. He wonders what it says about him, that it doesn’t hurt so much to play them now. That there’s a part of him that wants to bring that music back into the world. 

By the time he’s played through enough songs to have a tentative framework for a new album, Natsuo has long since finished up cleaning Eri’s wounds and wrapping her ankle and the girl herself has been lulled to sleep. Gojo is shocked to see it— she’s been through so much this evening he would have thought she’d be too on edge to properly rest. But by that same turn, maybe she was just too tired by the night’s events to fight off her own exhaustion. 

By unspoken agreement the three adults silently creep out of the living room and into Gojo’s open bedroom. He shuts the door quietly behind them, after peeking back to make sure she was still fast asleep on the couch.

“What— what are we supposed to do with her?” Spills out of Fuyumi the moment the door is closed. 

“She was obviously being badly abused,” Natsuo adds, coldly. “We should find her parents and have them hauled to jail.”

“I don’t think it’s that simple.” Gojo taps his chin, leaning against the door. “There were grown men after her. Five of them, chasing her down the rooftops of all things. I think it’s fair to assume her living situation isn’t ordinary.”

“You think she’s involved in something?” Fuyumi asks, worried.

“Probably— but whatever it is, she’s an innocent in it.” He cards a wary hand through his hair. “Let’s let her rest tonight, since she’s already asleep. Tomorrow, I’ll get in contact with the police and make some discreet inquiries.”

“You, discreet?” Natsuo snorts, smiling dryly. 

“I can be discreet! … Sometimes.”

“No matter what the police have to say about the situation, there’s no way she can go back to— to wherever it was she was running from,” Fuyumi says, looking down at her clasped hands. “There might not be a lot they can do without concrete evidence, and if that’s the case then they might…”

She takes a shaky breath. “I’ve— I’ve seen situations like this play out before. I’m worried that even if they do manage to get the law involved and have her put in protective custody… will that be enough? You said there was a group of men chasing her… there’s no way that’s not linked to criminal activity, right?”

Gojo sighs. “Yes, most likely. If I had to guess, it was probably quirk trafficking.”

From what his eyes can tell him about that quirk of hers, she’d be an ideal target. Even if it seemed to be dormant currently, it was outrageously powerful, even by his standards. It makes his own reversed-curse technique look like child’s play. Hell, even Shoko would have been jealous. 

Natsuo curses under his breath. Fuyumi looks heartbroken.

“I’ll look into it, okay? And I’ll keep you both updated. For now— it’s been a long night for all of us. Let’s figure it out in the morning, yeah?”

They both nod in response; all three of them had sobered up real quick when a kid came flying out of the sky, but they still spent most of the night drinking away their problems and getting kicked out of establishments. It’ll be better for all of them to approach the problem with a clear head and a couple hours of rest. 

“Fuyumi, I can take you home. Do you need me to take you back, Nacchan?” 

Natsuo blinks. “Where exactly are we right now?”

Gojo laughs, and tells him the address of the hotel. 

Natsuo shakes his head. “Nah, I can walk from here. I’ll talk to you guys tomorrow.” 

They follow Natsuo out to the door, tiptoeing past the living room to slide on their shoes in the genkan. After Natuso’s ducked out with a silent wave over his shoulder, Fuyumi turns to him with a look of concern. 

“Let me know if you need anything, okay? Anything at all,” she says, voice urgent but pitched low to avoid waking up the girl sleeping down the hall.

Gojo grins at her. “It’s only until the morning. I’m sure I can handle it.”

Chapter Text

All Hawks has wanted to do all week is crawl back into bed with Satoru and sleep for days, but as it is he’s barely had time to catch a couple hours of poor, lonely shuteye on his own. He hasn’t even had time to reach out to the other man, let alone ask to meet up again. Not that he could, even if he wanted to. 

He’d completely forgotten about the U.A. work study program.

He was still a bit put out that his stone-faced ninja of an intern totally passed him up without a second glance. Him! The Number Two Hero! The most popular hero in the country (as voted by Nippon TV) and winner of Hero Beat Magazine’s best smile award for the third consecutive year in a row! Who does that?! … Okay, he’s being a little misleading— she didn’t actually pass him up so much as she passed up the work study program in its entirety. Apparently she wanted to ‘focus more on her studies’... as if she wasn’t studying to be a hero to begin with and the whole part of the work study program was to further her damn studies. Whatever. Hawks isn’t bitter about it—not at all! 

Anyway he supposes she did him a solid, so he really can’t complain. When she’d turned his secretary down, she’d mentioned her classmate Tokoyami was looking for an internship and might be a good fit for Hawks. He’s honestly a little stunned she’d do such a favor for one of her classmates; not to sound conceited or anything but a recommendation to the Number Two Hero is kinda a big deal, and Hawks wasn’t going to deny someone she seemed to think would work well with him. If there was anything he’d learned over their brief time together, it was that his little former intern had a keen eye for people. A little… too keen, in fact. 

He shuddered. 

“Cold, Hawks-san?” Tokoyami asks from beside him. 

“No, no, just remembering something scary.” He waves the concern off. “And how many times have I told you to just call me Hawks?” 

He likes Tokoyami, really. He couldn’t have asked for a better replacement intern. The kid is such a little edge lord; it’s fun to wheedle him until he breaks character. He also has a great work ethic, listens well to direction, and a unique quirk that compliments Hawks very well. Hawks thinks with a bit of practice and training, Tokoyami might be able to even use Dark Shadow to fly, which would be especially complimentary to Hawks’s preferred fighting style. 

So Tokoyami is great, really. 

But interns are a lot of work.

Especially now that he’s not in Hosu at an agency where he can involuntarily slough off his intern to random unsuspecting heroes whenever he needs to handle something on his own. And since he and Tokoyami have never worked together before, they still have some kinks to work out in their teamwork. And there’s just so much to teach him, and so much responsibility to do it well. 

He scratches the back of his neck, sighing. 

It doesn’t help that the case he’s currently on is shaping up to be a real piece of work. 

“Hawks,” Tokoyami says, drawing him out of his musings. At least he finally dropped the stuffiness. 

Hawks glances at him, then in the direction of his gaze. Speaking of the case…

A familiar tall, bulky silhouette lumbers in their direction from across the street, where crowds and first responders part like awestruck schoolfish to let him through the police tape.

“Yo! Endeavor! You’re crazy early— you even beat me!” He tosses a hand up in greeting.

He’d heard the suspects for this particular arrest might be tied up in his own case, and had come to check it out. It’s really no surprise to find Endeavor beat him to it, seeing as though both their cases are starting to follow a similarly worrying trend. 

Endeavor doesn’t return it. He merely inclines his head in what probably seems like an incredibly rude dismissal to everyone else, but Hawks knows from experience is what constitutes as a respectful form of acknowledgment from the man.

“Todoroki-kun,” greets Tokoyami, to the boy trailing after Endeavor.

Hawks hasn’t seen him since that mess in Hosu. He’d forgotten what a handsome kid he is. The coloring is crazy distinct— he’ll have no trouble at all launching himself to the top of the popularity charts, with a unique look like that. He doesn’t really look much like Endeavor though, despite sharing half his coloring. The face is all wrong. Slim and delicate where Endeavor is all broad angles. Hawks studies him surreptitiously; there’s something familiar about him, nonetheless.

Endeavor cuts straight to the chase. “The suspects have been subdued and put in custody. What do you know about the dealers?”

“Tokoyami found a good lead earlier.” Hawks gives his intern a proud smile. Tokoyami looks away, bashful but too much of an edge lord to show it. How adorable. “He noticed the building permit of a pachinko parlor in the search area was several months out of date.”

“A front then?” 

“Probably, if it’s been sitting in limbo that long.” Hawks shrugs. “The problem is, it’s owned by the Shie Hassaikai.”

“You mentioned them earlier,” Tokoyami notices, recalling a briefing they had both been in just this morning. “Who are they?”

“Yakuza,” Endeavor growls.

Tokoyami looks confused. “They… still exist?”  

Hawks laughs at his surprise, amused if only because he’d had a similar reaction when he’d first come to Tokyo. 

“Believe it or not they’ve actually gotten more powerful in recent months,” Hawks reveals.

He neglects to mention why that is. It doesn’t seem worth mentioning when he’s sure they’re all well aware of the mess society is currently in. How much Dabi had done to hack away at organized crime, only for them to slither up like weeds the moment his hands were tied up in legalities. He flicks a glance at Endeavor, worried the man will take it personally. He seems calm— for now.

“I thought Dabi had stopped organized crime,” says Todoroki.

Aaaand there goes that calm.

Endeavor’s face darkens at the mere mention of him. Hawks won’t presume to know what the Number One’s issue with Dabi is, but Dabi himself confirmed it was personal, so he leaps in to salvage the situation.

“That’s not exactly untrue,” Hawks hedges vaguely. “But it is a bit misleading and his methods were very specific and, uh, direct. Now that he’s kinda been on hiatus while the government tries to figure out what to do with him, criminals are capitalizing on his inaction.”

Endeavor scowls out into the crime scene; he looks upset— or as upset as a guy like him ever looks— but doesn’t seem as if he’s about to fly off the handle, which is a good sign. A couple guys had gone explosive with their quirks, tearing up half a street and toppling a nearby bridge, and there was only one real explanation for how that happened; Trigger was back on the streets. Endeavor was probably going to take that personally, now that he was the Number One. He apparently also took everything to do with Dabi quite personally, which was why Hawks’s anxiety had been going through the roof ever since he started this case.

On top of a new intern to get used to, he’d also been thrust headfirst into a new case unfolding in the Tokyo region, and Trigger was at the center of it. 

Organized crime was slowly reconvening, and with it came the new dregs of the Yakuza. Shie Hassaikai had been on the outs these last few years, according to his sources, but they’d been causing a stir amongst the gangs in recent months. Apparently they had a young, fresh-faced new leader eager to prove himself, and a new stream of revenue. Hawks had dutifully relayed his map of the criminal underworld to the Commission, and they’d been keen to keep him in Tokyo in light of that. Fukuoka was being hit too, but not to the same degree as the capital. They’d praised him on his meticulously detailed notes on each organization,  from kingpins to underlings, and reasoned it was better for the country— and his reputation— to stay in the thick of things.

In light of this, Hawks has ended up on a case with a spattering of mysterious arms deals that even his most hard-earned underworld contacts haven’t been able to tell him much about.

All he knows for certain is that both the sellers and the buyers have been tight-lipped on the particulars of the goods, and the prices are astronomical. Just one of these weapons easily nets hundreds of thousands of yen, yet no one’s squealed yet on the details. That alone is cause for concern. Flipping small time dealers and brokers is the bread and butter of the organized crime unit, but Echo says they haven’t gotten a single one to come clean. Even her Toman contacts don’t know much; just that they’re not involved, and whatever it is hasn’t passed through their streets yet. Hawks hasn’t gotten quite so desperate that he’s felt the need to reach out to Dabi and start asking him to use his own contacts to net him more information, but if things go on like this he might have to.

At any rate, these unknown weapons and sales of Trigger seem to run in similar circles. And now that Endeavor seems to have made it his personal mission to clean the streets of the dangerous drug, he’s been running into the Number One more often than not. 

He can’t say he’s entirely displeased with the circumstances. Endeavor does good work, and it’ll be good for Tokoyami to learn how to handle heroes with his kind of personality. 

“The Shie Hassaikai are in Sir Nighteye’s jurisdiction,” Endeavor intones, turning back to face him. “If you need further information on them, he’ll be a good place to start.”

Hawks nods. Sir Nighteye, huh? He remembers the last time he’d gone to see the guy— he’d been perfectly polite, if not a bit standoffish. He doesn’t think the man will appreciate Hawks inserting himself into his territory, even if it is for a case. He supposes he could always ask the Commission to get involved, but that’s hardly going to endear him to Sir Nighteye. 

“He’s called for a hero task force on the matter. I’ve been asked to attend the kickoff meeting this afternoon,” Endeavor adds, dashing Hawks’s concerns away.

He grins at the stoic man. “A hero task force, huh? Is there room for one more?” 

//

“So y’know, just, like, theoretically speaking—” Dabi begins the moment the line connects, which immediately has Naomasa laboring under heart palpitations. 

“Oh god,” he says.

“Listen, hear me out, it’s not actually kidnapping,” Dabi adds, which only makes everything worse. “But theoretically speaking, if I ended up in possession of a kid that isn’t mine, what exactly should I do about it?” 

Naomasa braces himself on the side of his desk. “You’ve… kidnapped someone?” 

Gran Torino looks up with a confused expression from where he’s puzzling over the documents their financial division scrounged up for them. He waves the old man off, and staggers towards the empty break room. He needs several more cups of coffee before he’s in proper condition to handle this, he thinks. His doctor will have some choice words for him about his blood pressure, but at this point its the lesser of all evils. 

“More like, rescued without legal consultation.” Dabi laughs sheepishly. 

“Oh god,” He says again, with feeling. “You know you were just exonerated, right? Not even a few hours ago? And you’re already pulling shit like this?” 

“Was I really? Took long enough,” the (former) villain muses. Naomasa sighs. 

“Anyway, Tsukauchi-keibu, I couldn’t just leave her there. She was being systematically abused, and also chased across the rooftops by armed men.”

If anything, this just makes the entire situation so much worse. Naomasa drops his forehead against the kitchen cabinets, scrabbling helplessly for a clean coffee mug. 

And you didn’t think to call the police? He wants to ask, but realizes as he opens his mouth that it’s a bit far fetched. Why would Dabi, of all people, call the police? Especially when he could handle the situation himself? Dabi doesn't hate the police, but he’s never once relied on them either. 

“When did this happen?” He asks, tiredly. 

“Hmm~ around ten last night?” 

Naomasa sighs, reaching blindly for the coffee pods. “I’ll check if there’s been any listed missing persons since then. But you said she was being chased by armed men?”

“Yeah,” Dabi confirms. “Smells of trafficking, doesn’t it?” 

“That’s what my gut tells me too,” Naomasa agrees, leaning against the counter. “I’m actually working on a lead with the League right now, but I can ask around and see if there are any open cases with human trafficking suspected to be involved. There hasn’t been very much though, since you toppled Humarise over.”

“Was that a compliment, detective?” Dabi returns, amused. 

“Just a statement of fact,” Naomasa denies, dutifully. 

Trafficking around the globe has plummeted in the wake of Humarise’s explosive and highly publicized demise. Unfortunately here in Japan, with Dabi’s reputation tied up in the foreign relations office, criminals have been capitalizing on other avenues of income while Dabi is on hiatus. Naomasa was in a briefing just yesterday on the surging drug trade exploding across the country, with underworld enterprises taking advantage of Dabi’s unsteady legal situation. 

Naomasa wishes he could say it would change now that word has come down that Dabi’s been dismissed of his crimes, but unless the Commission budges on the issue it's still basically a stalemate. They agreed to exoneration, but won’t recognize his status as a hero without him going through their own program. It’ll be a cold day in hell that Dabi willingly drags himself through that circus, but without it he’ll risk his acquittal status if he tries to intervene with criminal enterprises as he did before. And Naomasa doubts he’d do that, when he’s gone through all this effort to absolve himself of his criminal charges.

The worst part is— there are plenty of countries willing to take advantage of Japan’s blatant capitulation on the subject. Countries willing to not only give him a clean slate, but roll out the red carpet for him and give him anything he desires to entice him to emigrate. Naomasa isn’t entirely sure why Dabi even bothers to stay; the band, probably. And those U.A. students he seems fond of. But if Japan keeps making things difficult for him, how long will that be enough to keep him around? 

“Would you mind keeping this to yourself for now?” Dabi asks, pulling him out of his thoughts. 

Naomasa’s gaze sharpens immediately at his words. “You think the police are compromised?”

“Can you truly tell me every commissioner in Tokyo is clean?” Dabi returns, stoically. “I’m not taking any chances with her. She’s been through enough.”

Attached already, huh. Naomasa can’t say he’s all that surprised. Dabi has a reputation for being soft on kids, after all. 

Frankly, the first order of business should have been to coax Dabi into setting the girl up in witness protection. But if this is truly a trafficking case, and this girl was a high profile enough target to warrant her kidnappers coming after her, then the safest place for her to be is likely within Dabi’s reach. Although, for all that he goes out of his way to look after them, Naomasa does have to wonder if the man is actually any good at taking care of kids. Does the man realize what he’s signing up for here? Even for a few days, taking care of kids is hard. And one dealing with abuse and trauma on top of that? 

Well, that sounds like a problem for Dabi to figure out. 

“Send me whatever info you’ve got on her and I’ll look into it. Discreetly,” he promises. “If you’re that worried about her safety, frankly the best option for her would be to stay with you, so just try to keep her watered and fed, huh? Hopefully some relatives will turn up eventually, and we’ll figure out the rest from there.” 

Dabi laughs. “She’s, like, six. It can’t be that hard, right?” 

//

@ru-kun | My Own Worst Enemy (The Remix)

Still on hiatus but here to remind everyone (read: myself) that no one clowns me better than me 

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//

Shie Hassaikai.

The name comes up as the likeliest new target for Gojo’s unmitigated wrath, after some careful digging by Tsukauchi. 

He’ll be sure to reign fire and brimstone down upon them at an appropriate time, a time which is not now or the foreseeable future, because he is currently occupied with his desperate attempt to turn himself into a reasonably responsible caretaker for a small child. Caring for a small human is far more difficult than he remembered. Megumi and his sister had always just sort of… handled themselves. He made sure they had plenty of money and lived in a clean apartment that didn’t smell like mold and old cigarettes in a good part of town, and left them to their own devices. It turned out perfectly fine. They always ended up dressed in new and clean clothes and eating well enough and doing their homework and not mortally injuring themselves one way or another, through no input of his own. 

In hindsight, he probably had Tsumiki to thank for most of that. If it had just been Megumi alone, at an age similar to Eri’s, there wasn’t a chance in hell he could have been that hands off. 

At any rate the Shie Hassaikai are pretty dangerous yakuza, so despite his astounding lack of childrearing qualifications he’s likely the best person to keep her safe for the time being. His siblings are rightfully wary of the prospect of him being the sole caregiver of a small child for any length of time. Gojo would love to say he’s out to prove them wrong, but let’s be realistic here— he’s bit off a bit more than he can chew. 

The first order of business, as it turns out, is not ordering her every single item off the a la carte room service breakfast menu like he’d originally thought, but finding her something to wear that isn’t rags, and making sure she doesn’t drown in the bathtub. 

Frantic google searching reveals six year-olds can bathe themselves but only with supervision, so he powers up the master suite’s jacuzzi and Eri has a grand old time making bubble castles in the whirling water while he parks himself on the sink and tries to tackle the next problem that promptly shores up the moment she shucks her clothes off— he has nothing for a six year-old to wear. He wraps her up in a big fluffy bathrobe and figures that will have to do for now, because room service is knocking on the door. After a bit of introspection, he can admit he may have gone overboard with the food. Even a ravenous pack of teenagers wouldn’t make a dent in the food laid out for them on the dining table when they exit the bathroom. 

He drops a wide-eyed Eri in front of the veritable feast and starts a parade of one-sided panic texts in Fuyumi’s direction. She’s got some kind of field trip today so she’s mostly out of pocket, but occasionally she’ll respond to talk him off the ledge. Conferring with Fuyumi reveals he’ll need clothes, shoes and other assorted accessories as the most basic necessities if he intends to keep Eri for any amount of time. Additionally books, toys and other entertaining and enriching items would be helpful, as well as kid medicines and kid-friendly food options. From the way Eri is staring blankly at the luxurious breakfast spread he imagines he might need to bump that one to the top of the list.

In the end it turns out she’s not a picky eater, she simply doesn’t know what she’s looking at. 

Gojo walks her through the gamut of assembled western and traditional breakfast foods laid out before her, and with some quiet input from Eri, picks out the dishes he thinks she’ll like the most. He piles her plate with fresh fruit and eggs and grilled fish and a whole assortment of fine pastries and she picks at it like a bird. More frenzied texting with Fuyumi reveals this is normal for kids, and she might not have a big appetite after all the excitement of last night. She advises him to bring snacks if he intends to take her out today, because a meltdown is all but assured if she starts to get hungry. 

At first he dismisses this because hadn’t intended to take her anywhere; then he realizes he has no choice. 

He can’t just leave her unsupervised in this hotel room while he goes and procures all the necessities for her. On a related note, he can’t keep her in a hotel room indefinitely. Kids need structure and stability and a loving home and all that jazz. And he might technically be a home owner, but his house can barely be justified as a home in its current state. 

Right, well, he’ll put a pin in that for now but he makes a mental note to look into contractors to get that place kid-ready as soon as possible. Tsukauchi had mentioned finding relatives to care for her at some point, but who knows how long that might take. 

And then he whips out an actual list in a frantic attempt to sort out all the things Fuyumi assures him small children require. They’re so small! How can something so small possibly need all this stuff? 

“Eri-chan,” he says, trying to keep the panic out of his voice as he scrolls through the aforementioned list on his phone. “How do you feel about shopping today?”

Eri’s crimson gaze lifts from her solemn contemplation of her strawberries. The bathrobe swallows her up whole until only the top of her bedraggled half-dried silver hair (fuck he was supposed to dry that for her wasn’t he) is visible from where he’d draped it over her head in a desperate bid to keep it from falling off her. The rest of it trails down her seat and pools on the floor like the train of a king’s cape. Clothes, he thinks, warily. Clothes are definitely first on the list. 

“Shopping,” she repeats this like a foreign word. 

“Yeah, shopping. Going out to the store and getting you some stuff to wear that actually fits you. How does that sound?”

She stares at him with those big eyes of hers. Swallowed up in an adult-sized bathrobe, she really does look like an adorably fluffy white rabbit like this.  “... I’ve never been shopping before.”

Gojo leans back in his chair. He hasn’t asked her directly about her situation, but just from what he’s observed the conclusion he’s coming to is… not good. She’s either lived the last few years of her life in seclusion, or she’s been a very sheltered child. From the wounds she had when she arrived and her reckless bid to escape her own circumstances, he has to imagine that seclusion wasn’t voluntary. But the swell of anger that rises in response to that revelation won’t help anyone, least of all Eri, so he pushes it down in favor of turning an easy smile her way. 

“Well, today’s as good a day as any to try it, right?” 

//

Gojo goes two full days without any kind of kiddie meltdown. He thinks that deserves a medal of recognition, or something. According to Fuyumi, an entire forty-eight hours without any tantrums or tears is something worthy of celebration. 

As it is, he’s a little too shocked to even think about celebrating. 

The absolute last place he’d ever expect a kid to have a meltdown in is a toy store. 

But Eri’s reaction from the moment they walked into the place was decidedly odd. 

He’s gotten a good read on her, over the past two days. Their first shopping outing was a bit of a baptism by fire, with Gojo fleeing in a mad rush to the nearest department store and begging the first attendant he saw to procure him as much children’s clothing in Eri’s size as she possibly could. Considering he’d wandered into the ritzy place with a child wrapped up in one of his t-shirts like some kind of mangled toga-dress, the attendant took pity on him and led him to the dressing rooms first. They got Eri into the first dress she could scrounge up in the girl’s size, and afterwards purchased so many more dresses Gojo honestly lost count of them.

Eri didn’t have much preference on styles and colors, looking progressively more overwhelmed as they walked through the kid’s section and picked stuff out. She got quieter and quieter as she grew more distressed, until she was hiding in his shoulder and refusing to make eye contact with anyone. She was the sort of kid that reacted to stressors by trying to make herself as invisible as possible— something he probably should have guessed, given what little he knew of her history. They had to return to the quiet refuge of his hotel room for a short spell (mercifully just a few blocks away) before she was settled enough to continue their shopping. Gojo has been told he’s just an overwhelming person in general, and his haphazard attitude towards life is chaotic on the best of days, but he makes an effort to be more sedate after that. He stops asking her for her opinion on every single color and style of every single garment after he realizes that all the choices just confuse her, and the clothes shopping goes much smoother. 

Gojo definitely has more fun with the experience than Eri does, but by the time they’ve been parked in the shoe section for a few hours and the grandness of the department store stops having her cower into his side, she seems— not quite happy, but quietly content. She even smiles just a little when Gojo gets them matching Sailor Moon sneakers; hers in rainbow and his in black and white. It’s the first time he sees her smile, and he makes the executive decision to dress them up in matching outfits as much as possible if it gets her to smile like that. 

Since they’re in Tokyo, Natsuo skivvies off his evening study sessions to get dinner with them, and he’s suitably impressed by Gojo’s ability to keep a child alive and dressed and in relatively good spirits for an entire twenty-four hours. He doesn’t realize how much Eri has grown comfortable with him until Natsuo slides into the booth with them at the McDonalds Gojo had dragged them to. Natsuo gives him a nonplussed look over his choice in restaurants but come on what kid doesn’t like happy meal toys? She hadn’t been particularly emotive over the day, but she all but clams up when Natsuo shows up. It takes Natsuo coloring random shapes with her on the kiddie placemat he’d snagged from the front counter and plenty of silly faces and embellished stories from his younger brother until she relaxes enough to actually talk to him. Even then it’s only to briefly answer questions when he asks them of her directly. This is how Gojo learns her favorite food (she doesn’t know, but so far chicken nuggets are at the top of the list) her favorite color (also doesn’t know, but maybe blue) and her favorite animal (cats). She doesn’t offer up any information of her own accord, which puts Gojo in a bit of a difficult bind, as he’d been hoping she’d tell him what had happened to her on her own time and save him the unpleasant task of dragging the answers out himself.

They part ways with Natsuo after dinner—Gojo and Eri to start what Fuyumi refers to as a ‘bed and bathtime routine’ whatever that’s supposed to mean, and Natsuo to likely call Fuyumi the moment he’s out of earshot and relay every single detail of the dinner to their sister. For the record there’s nothing to relay; Eri didn’t have a single meltdown at dinner (and there had been plenty of kids of a similar age doing so at the restaurant) and behaved herself perfectly, even if she’d only made a slight dent into her dinner. And bed and bathtime weren’t nearly as much of a struggle as Fuyumi had painted it out to be in her ominous text warnings. No tears at all! Not even when he used his newly procured princess comb to brush her hair! And Eri had no trouble settling down to sleep in the spare bedroom— and no, Fuyumi, singing her to sleep is not cheating, that’s just making use of his talents.

Okay, so maybe Gojo had let the first day get to his head a little bit. 

Either Eri was a great kid, or this parenting thing just wasn't as hard as everyone made it out to be. He survived a full day with her, and neither one of them had broken down in despair. He was a pro at this, obviously. Gojo Satoru, as good at parenting as he is everything else in life!

And just when he thinks he’s not too bad at this whole childcare thing, she has a full blown panic attack in the middle of a luxury toy story and makes him look like a failure of a human being in front of all the judgmental shoppers and staff. 

Gojo honestly doesn’t even know what sets it off. She’d looked confused when he’d carted her into the store after they’d finished off their breakfast and hit the streets for more shopping, which was odd, because he’d mentioned they were going to a toy store today and kids usually had a reaction to that. Gojo was all but buzzing in excitement, watching eagerly for her reaction when he announced this was a toy store, and they were here to pick out new toys for her. 

Then catastrophe hit. 

She started screaming and hyperventilating and kicking out at him like she was trying to claw her way away from an axe murderer. The nice lady who’d come up to greet him startled at her reaction and then before he knew it the whole store was staring at them, as she wailed and shoved at him. He’d been just as startled, and worried just from the decibel that he might have accidentally hurt her or something, so he’d put her down on her own two feet. Rookie mistake. She’d darted off into the aisles the moment her feet hit the ground and led him on a chase through the store, shrieking “No!!” at the top of her lungs as he dodges around bewildered kids and parents and attempts to catch her without setting her off worse. In the end he just snags her by the armpits and hauls her over his shoulder kicking and screaming and marches them out of the store. 

So here they are, forty-eight hours into his child rearing trial by fire, and she’s still sobbing on a nearby park bench while he watches her cry helplessly, pedestrians side-eying them warily and giving them a wide berth. Gojo groans and buries his face in his hands, crouched beside her as she cries and wondering what the hell he did wrong. 

He senses someone behind him, and looks up just in time to see an elderly obaa-san reach out to pat his shoulder. She hits his barrier, but doesn’t seem to notice. “There, there,” she says, kindly. “It’s always hard with the first one, isn’t it?”

He stares at her blankly. Distantly, he notices Eri has stopped crying. The old woman looks down at him with kind, empathetic eyes— the eyes of a wizened veteran who’s seen her fair share of childhood tantrums, no doubt. 

“I’m a failure,” he tells her, plaintively. Gojo has never really failed at anything in his life, so it’s a bit of a grating revelation. 

“Nonsense,” she denies, and pats his Infinity-covered shoulder once again. “You’re just new at this.”

He sends an exhausted smile her way. “What gave it away?” He asks, wryly. 

“New fathers always have an air about them,” she says, vaguely. “But chin up, lad. You’ll get better with practice.”

He lets out a mirthless huff of laughter. “Great, so I can just continue to traumatize her in the meanwhile?” He doesn’t think he’ll ever forget her screams for the rest of his life, nor the wretched, powerless feeling he’d had as he watched her run away from him with fear in her eyes.

“Children may stumble, but they grow wiser from the experience. So do their parents. As long as you continue to try to learn together, you have nothing to fear,” the old lady intones, sagely.

So long as you continue to try, huh? It sounds too good to be true, but he imagines the lady must be speaking from well-earned experience, so he clings to it anyway. 

She hobbles over to where Eri has stopped crying and stares up frozen at her from her spot on the bench. “And you, little lady. Try to be good for your father too, hm? He’s doing his best.”

Eri’s tears have dried up. She just blinks shocked eyes at the old lady, who nods approvingly at them both one last time before scuttling away with her hands behind her back, leaving a rather reverent crowd of onlookers in her wake. Eventually the crowd stops lollygagging and returns to the usual rhythm of foot traffic, and Gojo scrubs his hands over his hair one last time and pulls himself together. He’s faced down monsters and villains and entire armies— he’s not about to be defeated by a six year-old. 

But before he can even begin to formulate an apology, Eri beats him to it.

“... I’m sorry,” she whispers, with a crestfallen expression.

Gojo blinks at her. He picks himself up and slides onto the bench next to her, peering down at her. “What exactly are you apologizing for, Eri-chan?”

“I hit you.” She looks down at her hands clasped in her lap. Her brand new designer dress is looking a bit worse for wear after her mad sprint through the store; they’ll have to go back and change at some point. “That’s not nice.”

“No, it’s not nice,” he agrees, reaching out to smooth out the worst of her flyaways. The painstaking style he’d had it braided into (it had taken six attempts, three youtube videos, and much coaching by Fuyumi) has gone into disarray, bows all but falling off her head. “But I don’t think you hit me just because you wanted to, right?”

She bites her lip, shaking her head rapidly and dislodging the clip-in bows even more. Gojo sighs and gives them up as a lost cause, plucking them out of her hair. 

“You hit me because you were upset, right?” He continues calmly, easing the pins out of her hair. 

She doesn’t respond, just bites down on her lip harder, little hands fisted into the skirt of her dress. 

“Do you want to tell me what made you upset?” He figures it’s a fair question— the reaction came out of left field, but it had to have come from somewhere, right? Eri had been perfectly fine with him up until that point. Unless…

“...Did I do something to upset you?” The thought occurs to him belatedly, sitting sourly in his stomach.

“No!” She denies immediately, with more fervor than he’s ever seen from her. She shies back after her outburst, looking down and fiddling with her dress. “I... I… don’t like toys.”

Gojo blinks.

Then blinks some more.

… seriously? That’s a thing? What kid doesn’t like toys?!

“Back there, they— they would…” she squeezes her eyes shut. “They would always give me new toys. To make me feel better after they hurt me.”

It’s Gojo’s turn to close his eyes. He said he’d table the whole Shie Hassaikai thing until after he’d gotten Eri sorted out, but immediately finding them and eviscerating every single member of that group right this very moment is starting to sound more and more appealing. He has to remind himself that there’s a scared and hurt little girl in front of him who is so traumatized she can’t even walk into a toy store, and Gojo has a responsibility towards her safety and wellbeing first. Perfectly justified murder can wait. 

“I see. So the store upset you,” he says, once he feels calm enough to respond. “Do you not like toys at all, Eri-chan?”

She shrugs helplessly, picking at the lacey hem of her pinafore. 

He frowns slightly. Fuyumi had been pretty adamant that kids needed toys. They were more than just entertainment; they provided enrichment and education as well. And toys as a concept was applied pretty broadly. So far, Eri had used plenty of things he’d considered ‘toys’ without issue. Her entire Sailor Moon outfit had come with a little Luna cat doll, and her Disney princess dress had come with a light-up magic wand that blows bubbles and plays little Disney jingles on command. If that’s not the definition of a toy, then he doesn’t know what is. And that was to say nothing of all the happy meal toys they’d procured at McDonalds yesterday, now waterlogged and slightly irreparable after bathtime. Maybe it was the concept of the shiny newness of the toys in the store, the wrapping and the packaging, that triggered the response? Most kids adored tearing open new presents, he was fairly sure, but dolls and stuffed animals all neatly wrapped in gleaming plastic boxes and shiny paper probably set her off. 

“Eri-chan… I know it must be hard to talk about, but could you tell me what happened to you? What you were running from when we met?” 

She looks frightened at the very thought of having to answer these questions, and Gojo feels for her, but it’s also become very clear in the last twenty minutes that he needs to know. He can’t properly… he can’t properly parent her if he doesn’t even know the first thing about her; not just her likes and dislikes, but the things that scare her, her past traumas, her overall mental health, and even the basic physical metrics like age, height and weight. Right now, he doesn’t even know any of that. 

He knows it’s a lot, to ask her to trust him— a veritable stranger— after everything she’s been through, but aside from the episode in the toy store she hasn’t seemed uncomfortable with him. He hopes that’s enough of a start.

Eri doesn’t say anything, head bowed, hair covering her eyes as she all but rips her dress beneath her flexing fingers.

Gojo sighs. 

“Why don’t we get you into a new dress, huh? We’ll go back and change, and then we can talk back at home.” This probably isn’t a conversation they should be having on the side of the street anyway. 

He picks her up again, and is quietly relieved when she doesn’t kick out at him in protest like she had earlier. Actually, she rests her head against his shoulder and pushes her nose into the collar of his jacket, almost deadweight in his arms. The hand he places over the back of her head to steady her as he stands is totally instinctual, and he doesn’t even realize he’s doing it until he catches sight of them in the reflection of one of the nearby storefront windows.

Huh. 

No wonder that old lady— and probably everyone else who’s encountered them so far— thought he was her father. Carting her around on his hip like this, one arm supporting her and the other in her hair as she buries her face in his neck— they really do look like father and daughter. It doesn’t hurt that their hair colors are so similar. 

The thought leaves him in a bewildered daze the entire walk back to his hotel room. 

Fatherhood has never crossed his mind— not in either of his lifetimes. And whenever the notion was brought up to him he dismissed it out of hand immediately; he’d never had to give the subject any kind of thought. He was never having kids. And if he was ever forced to do so by the Gojo clan, he’d been certain he’d come to resent them one way or another, through no fault of their own. 

And yet, the idea of everyone assuming Eri is his child isn’t entirely distasteful nor unwelcome.

Chapter Text

It’s just Eraserhead’s luck that the moment he’s finally done with his class of problem children he runs into his number one problem child— who only seems to have made himself impossibly even more problematic since the last time Eraserhead had seen him.

He has a knit hat slung over his shock of white hair and a pair of sunglasses obscuring those startling eyes of his, and all bundled up in a parka like everyone else on the street, he keeps a surprisingly low profile for someone so infamous. It’s not the understated outfit that draws Eraserhead’s exasperation though; it’s the little kid propped in his arms devouring her way through a cakepop. If Eraserhead hadn’t already met him plenty of times before and known the exact tenor of his voice, he might have even walked right past them. As it is, he sees the man relishing an identical pink sprinkled cakepop as the girl he’s carrying and hears the cheery tone in his voice that means he’s saying something blasphemous, and knows immediately who it is. 

“—there’s no such thing as too much sugar,” he’s in the middle of saying, as Aizawa reluctantly draws closer. “So have as much as you want, okay? It’s good, right?”

“Mn,” says the girl, sparkles in her eyes as she munches through all the frosting. 

Who the hell put Dabi in charge of a small child, Aizawa sighs internally. Regaling an impressionable young soul with completely incorrect dietary facts is the least of his worries when it comes to the ex-villain being allowed anywhere near a little kid. 

He opens his mouth to greet the other man, then promptly realizes he’s not entirely sure what to call him. ‘Dabi’ was given to him by the police, and is also likely to cause panic on this crowded street if he just shouts it out. Six Eyes is technically his hero name, and a chosen hero name is a perfectly respectable way to refer to any hero, but he’s not even certain how much the man even associates with that name. In the end, even if it seems strangely informal, he goes with what he knows. 

“Satoru… kun,” he greets, awkwardly. It makes him feel like he’s addressing one of his students, and even if Dabi isn’t actually all that much older than them, it still feels strange, 

Dabi blinks at him over his shades. Then he grins. “Oh, well if it isn’t senpai! What are you doing in Tokyo?” 

“I suppose I could ask you the same question,” Aizawa counters, stuffing his hands in his pockets. He ignores the senpai on general principle. That way leads to madness and gray hairs. “I thought you’d still be in Otheon.”

Dabi shrugs. “Nah. If they need me, they know how to find me,” he replies, blithely. 

Aizawa’s gaze trails down to the girl, who stares at him curiously from her spot bundled up in Dabi’s arms, mouth streaked with pink from the frosting of her treat. She has long pale hair not quite as strikingly white as Dabi’s, big carmine eyes, a sweet heart-shaped face and a cute button nose, and a little horn peeking out at her temple. If Aizawa didn’t know any better— and now that he’s thinking on it, he really actually doesn’t— he’d say they were related. Too far apart to be siblings though, he thinks, with pooling dread.

“Satoru-kun…” He starts slowly, with mounting apprehension. “Who’s this?” 

Dabi takes a bite out of his own cakepop. “Hmm~? You can’t tell just by looking at her?”

Aizawa stares at them both with a pained expression. There’s a very obvious assumption to make here, even if he truly doesn’t want to make it. She looks no older than five, and that, coupled with ‘Pro Hero Six Eyes’ official listed age means it’s more than possible. And he supposes he can see the resemblance if he’s actively trying to look. She’s a beautiful child, probably not all that dissimilar to Dabi himself at that age, he imagines. 

Then he looks at her— really looks at her. 

Past her adorable outfit and the cute hairclips in her wavy hair, their vaguely similar features, and the way she seems so settled and at ease in Dabi’s arms. Little girl with silver hair, red eyes, and a horn.

Was that not the exact description of the girl both Togata and Midoriya were so distraught about not saving from the clutches of Shie Hassaikai? 

Aizawa sighs aloud. “Dabi,” he says plainly, keeping his voice low from the milling crowds on this popular Tokyo street. The severity in his tone seems to sober the other man up. “You asked me why I was in Tokyo— there’s an ongoing investigation I was asked to take part in. I think you should hear about it.”

//

So the heroes beat him to the punch, huh? That’s annoying, but if he’s being honest, probably all the better for him.

As Tsukauchi reminded him earlier, he’s only just gotten his criminal record dismissed in light of his international hero status. It’s probably for the best that he doesn’t immediately decide to test his new diplomatic immunity by committing mass murder against an entire yakuza organization. And from what Eraserhead has mentioned of the hero task force, they should have the situation well in hand. Even dear old dad is involved. He’s a little surprised to hear Hawks is sitting this one out, but Eraserhead offhandedly mentions he’s tied up in a different— but still somewhat related— case at the moment but will be available as backup if needed. 

Eraserhead hounds them into a nearby cat cafe for this conversation, and Eri is adequately distracted by all the felines preternaturally gravitating towards Eraserhead’s presence. She’s off in the nearby corner with a very fat and lazy specimen, delighting in running her hands through its soft fur. 

Gojo turns his gaze away from the enamored little girl, and back to the underground hero across from him.

“I suppose you know all about Eri’s situation then, if you’re in the task force,” Gojo surmises, stirring his latte. 

Eraserhead frowns. “Only what Midoriya and Togata could tell me of her from their brief encounter.”

Gojo frowns. “What did they say?” 

“That she’s the daughter of Chisaki, the leader of the Shie Hassaikai, and that she looked scared and afraid when she’d ran to them for help. That there were bandages on her arms and legs, and before the situation could escalate between the two and Chisaki, she ran back to him.”

He sighs deeply. “And when was this?” 

“A week ago now, or thereabouts.” 

He cards his hand through his hair. That lines up with what Eri told him last night. It had been a tough story to sit through, but a necessary one for him to hear, if he plans on keeping her safe from those who seek to harm her. 

“She’s not his daughter. He probably just uses that as a convenient excuse whenever anyone sees the two of them together.” Gojo should know, he’s been doing the same these last few days. “Her past with her real parents is… traumatic. She doesn’t know how she ended up with Chisaki, but it’s unlikely he’s related to her at all.”

He takes a shuddering breath. “He was using her for his own gains. It was some awful shit. His quirk can deconstruct and reconstruct things, and whatever he was after, it required him to ‘deconstruct’ Eri over and over again.”

Eraserhead jolts in his seat, looking horrified. “Deconstruct?” He repeats, disturbed. 

Gojo nods. “He tore her to pieces, and then would put her back together.”

The underground hero looks like he wants to be sick. Gojo doesn’t blame him. He’s seen some truly awful things in both his lifetimes, but that level of systematic cruelty is still enough to turn his stomach. 

“Eri doesn’t know what he was after, only that he needed her for it,” Gojo soldiers on, for both their sakes. “I imagine it has something to do with her own quirk, which works on the cellular level of living creatures and seems to reverse the aging process. I haven’t seen her use it, so I don’t know how exactly it works.”

Eraserhead looks down into his own untouched cup of black coffee. Gojo doubts he’ll be able to touch it after this. Gojo himself has lost his appetite, but he determinably downs the rest of his sugary latte anyway. He’ll need all the energy he can get; ever since he learned the truth of her quirk he’s had his Six Eyes on high alert scanning everyone in their vicinity, and his Infinity active for both himself and Eri whenever he’s holding her. Even now, he’s careful to keep her within grabbing distance just in case. 

“That’s worse than anyone could have imagined, but also makes a great deal of sense.” Eraserhead slumps in his chair, somehow managing to look even more exhausted than usual. “There’s been a recent explosion in Trigger, as I’m sure you know, but also weapons and ammunition. In particular, there’s been some unknown weapon being traded around for exorbitantly high prices, but until yesterday, no one knew what it was.”

Gojo nods slowly. He’d heard as much from Toman, the last time he’d checked in with them. 

“It's a bullet that temporarily negates quirks,” Eraserhead reveals, gravely. “We don’t quite know how it works, but forensics found evidence of biological tissue in the bullets.”

“You think that’s what he was using Eri for,” Gojo realizes.

“In light of what you’ve told me, that seems like the obvious assumption to make, yes,” the underground hero agrees. 

“What’s going to be done about the bullets?” Gojo asks quickly. The last thing Eri needs is for those things to take off and become coveted ammunition by the entire criminal underworld— she’d never be safe then. 

“That’s the case Hawks is working on,” Eraserhead divulges. “They’re tracing the supply routes and confiscating all the bullets they find.”

His shoulders relax at that, but only slightly. Hawks does good work, and he trusts the hero to handle the case to the best of his abilities. But that’s a behemoth of a job, crawling through the intricate web of clandestine meetings and under the table dealings that make up the majority of the illegal arms trade. He makes a mental note to set the hero up with his own contacts to speed up the process. With Eri’s safety at stake, he’s not taking any chances. 

“And what about the Shie Hassaikai?”

“There’s a raid in the works. I can’t say much more about it, but it’s a strong task force. Our objective is to apprehend Chisaki and dismantle the Shie Hassaikai permanently.” 

Privately, Gojo doubts that will happen unless the heroes manage to arrest and charge every single member of the gang, and with how squirrely the yakuza are with their businesses and finances, there’s really no shot at that. The best he can hope for is Chisaki and everyone else involved in Eri’s torture ending up in jail for life, unless he wants to get involved personally. 

His gaze slides back towards Eri. She’s coaxed the monstrous feline onto its back and is happily stroking the soft fur on its belly, and subsequently getting cat hair all over her cute dress. She looks blissfully content— a far cry from the hopeless and despondent kid he’d met a few days ago, dirty and bleeding and dressed in rags. After the miserable life she’s had, he can’t help but want to ensure her ongoing happiness moving forward. She deserves to enjoy an uncomplicated childhood filled with her favorite sweets and plenty of cats to pet. 

It’s true he was tired of all the infamy and scrutiny that being a top villain gave him, of having to hide under elaborate disguises and constantly live a double life, but he thinks he’d risk his newfound freedom, for her. 

He’d never set out to change the world in this life. He doesn’t care about any of that— changing society’s views on what it means to be a hero, saving all the poor and destitute of the world, stopping organized crime… none of that matters to him. His motives for his crimes as Dabi were never altruistic in nature; he wanted so much money that he’d never have to worry about being inhibited by the cost of things ever again, and Gojo Satoru is good at everything, but what he’s best at, what he was born to do, is kill. It only made sense to put the two together. He doesn’t care whether people label him a villain, or a vigilante.

And he definitely doesn’t care about being a hero.

The only reason he’s a hero at all is because it was an easy and convenient way to get out of the legal quagmire he’d found himself in as Dabi. He wouldn’t have bothered, even with all the hassle of being a wanted supervillain, but there were people in his life that wanted and needed him around, and for them he was willing to sort himself out. His band, his little padawans, Hawks, even the family he’s only recently started to reconnect to— their lives would be so much more complicated with a wanted criminal like Dabi in them, and becoming Pro Hero Six Eyes wasn’t too terrible a tradeoff for the convenience of shedding his criminal history. 

But he thinks they’d all understand, if he threw it all away for her. 

He won’t, though. He can’t. He’s accepted the responsibility of her safety, of her continued wellbeing and happiness, and landing himself in yet another legal debacle won’t achieve any of that.

“I should be there,” he mutters, crossly. “I want Chisaki dead, but if I have to settle for putting him in chains behind bars, I guess that’ll do too.”

Eraserhead looks conflicted. In the end, he just shakes his head. “I can’t say your presence wouldn’t be valuable, but I think you’re needed here more, wouldn’t you say?”

He dips his head in the direction of Eri, still oblivious to their conversation.

Gojo grumbles uncharitably. Eraserhead is right. Even he can’t be in two places at once, and protecting Eri is more important.

“Yeah, you’re right,” Gojo concedes, reluctant. “But if anything changes, I want to know. And if anything goes wrong, I want to be there.”

Midoriya will be involved, after all. And if the old man’s sticking his nose in the situation, there’s a good chance Shouto will be dragged along. He might have a responsibility to Eri’s safety, but he has a vested interest in their well-being too.

“Of course,” Eraserhead agrees easily. “Is it alright if I tell the task force she’s safe? They don’t have to know the specifics, but she’d been factored into the raid plans and they’ll need to be adjusted. …And Midoriya will be very relieved to hear she’s okay; he’s been distraught about her situation ever since their encounter.”

“Yeah that’s fine,” Gojo capitulates, pouting at the man. He would have agreed either way, Bringing Izuku into it is just dirty pool. 

“Thank you,” Eraserhead says. “I know you want to see justice done personally, and I understand the sentiment. But… by rescuing Eri and keeping her safe, you’ve already accomplished far more than the task force ever could.” He bows his head. “I don’t think there are words for how grateful I am, to see her healthy and well-cared for. Thank you for saving her where the heroes could not.”

Gojo only has a vague understanding of the timeline of events; Izuku had apparently desperately wanted to save Eri when they’d met, about a week ago, but hadn’t been able to do so without jeopardizing the ongoing investigation against Shie Hassaikai. Either way, Gojo can’t really claim much credit either. 

“She did most of it herself, to be honest.” He looks over towards her, eyes soft. “I was just in the right place at the right time to catch her fall.”

//

Note to self— fix house ASAP because the Four Seasons does not like pets. 

Neither does Gojo, for the record. He’s not particularly fond of kids or animals, and yet he’s found himself in possession of both anyway. 

Eraserhead had left the cafe after their conversation, but Gojo had lingered and ordered another latte for Eri’s sake. She’d become utterly enamored with the beast she’d tamed, and Gojo was loathe to part her from it. She was finally smiling and giggling like a regular kid— how was he supposed to steel his heart against a sight like that? And then after loitering around for an hour under the increasingly suspicious side-eyes of the staff, he’d finally worked up the courage to gently prod her away from the thing, only to be met with the most heartbreaking sight in the world. Eri hadn’t cried when he’d tugged her away, just stared up with a despondent, hopeless look. Then she’d turned to the cat with resignation and longing heavy in her eyes and said, in the saddest, most pitiful voice, ‘bye bye meow-san’. And then the cat meowed back, and Gojo was a fucking goner. He’s not a complete bastard, okay, and he’d already joked about making an impressively short-sighted pet purchase to complete his millennial existential crisis, so it seems rather appropriate karmic justice that he ends up with the thing. 

Eri is over the moon. She cuddles the thing the entire cab ride back and doesn’t put down the carrier the cafe had given them the entire time Gojo hastily procures immediate necessities for a cat. Fuck. What the hell is he supposed to do with a cat? 

On that note, what the fuck is he supposed to do with a kid? 

Eri told him her parents were… not in the picture. After plenty of tears and Gojo sitting there feeling like a heartless schmuck for making her dredge up all these traumatic memories, she’d revealed that she’d accidentally killed her father with her quirk, and her mother had left her because of it. She’s been with the Shie Hassaikai ever since then. And if any far flung relatives were trying to look for her, Tsukauchi’s search into the missing persons database would have scrounged up something. Gojo has spent the last few days earning her trust and assuring her he wasn’t scared of her or her quirk, slowly getting her to open up to him, and helping her come out of her shell and experience the world. Maybe after Chisaki and his entire organization are behind bars and the whole quirk-erasing bullet blows over they’ll find a wonderful, perfectly well-adjusted family to adopt her— but for all that he reassured her he’s not scared of her quirk, it is a terrifying quirk. Especially in the hands of someone too young to understand how to use it. Gojo’s Infinity makes him immune, but the same can’t be said for anyone else. It’s dormant for now, but he has no idea what could set it off. He hates to say it, but it’s a liability that needs to be accounted for, no matter what ultimately happens to her. 

Gojo is not in the habit of lying to himself, so he doesn’t bother with the pretense. It’s more than likely Eri will end up with him long term. It’s probably the best option for her. 

But is it the best option for him?

Is he ready for that? 

Does it matter if he is or isn’t? There’s a kid who needs someone, and he’s her best bet. 

Gojo has shouldered the burdens of an entire world; since the beginning of his existence he has understood the staggering responsibility he bears as the strongest, and has carried the obligations of a burdened destiny. Somehow, the idea of being solely responsible for this single small child is far more monumental a duty than any he’s ever had before. Even being nominally in charge of Tsumiki and Megumi hadn’t seemed so daunting— although perhaps he’d merely just been too young to truly understand the responsibilities he’d been signing up for at the time.

Gojo closes his eyes, resting his head against the fridge while he hears Eri quietly try to coax the new cat out from where it had immediately scampered underneath the couch. 

He’s been in charge of kids before. Has had the sole responsibility of their safety, their youth, their futures on his shoulders before. His precious little students, all bright-eyed and eager and innocent.

He’d thought they would be fine. He was the strongest, after all. He’d always be there to protect them.

He’d been wrong. 

Even the Honored One isn’t infallible. 

That’s a lesson he’s had to learn in the worst of ways. No matter how hard he tries, he’s never enough. Not on his own. 

With that in mind, he resigns himself to the daunting and monumental task he’s been mulling over in his head ever since he’d accepted the fact he was likely Eri’s best option for long term guardianship. He can’t protect her all on his own. He needs more than just his own abilities to ensure her long term safety. She needs protection in every aspect, not just in the physical sense. 

And he’s learned his lesson on not having a single contingency plan for his own demise.

While he has a moment to himself, he fishes his phone out of his pocket and speed dials Fuyumi.

“Hello?” Her tinny voice comes through once the line connects. 

“Hey,” he says. “What ever happened to all those toys we used to have as kids?”

“... Huh?” She asks, blankly. 

“Y’know, just all that stuff I used to get you. The stuffed toys and the trinkets and all that. Do you still have any of them?”

“Um— yes I think so… There’s a few boxes of storage in the attic that would have all the stuff like that. But… why do you ask?”

Exactly as he’d expected. Fuyumi is pretty sentimental; he’d known there was a good chance she’d kept all that stuff. 

“Ah— no reason~” He lies, cheerfully. “Are you home right now?”

“I actually just stepped out,” Fuyumi reveals, hesitantly. “Uh, Touya… what’s this all about?” 

“It’s nothing! I was just thinking about what kind of toys to get Eri, and thought some inspiration might be good.”

He can hear the frown across the phone line. “Touya—”

“Uh oh, I think Eri’s trying to stick her hand in the electrical socket! Gotta go!” He interrupts blithely, then disconnects the call.

He turns around, to where Eri is most assuredly not doing anything of the sort. Actually, she’s plopped in the center of the room sending mournful looks at the couch, where the cat has evidently rejected her. Perfect timing, really. She looks like she could use an intervention, lest she mope around for the rest of the day.

“Hey Eri-chan, let’s leave the cat alone to get settled in,” he says, crouching down to her height. 

“Meow-san doesn’t like me anymore.” Eri looks up at him with such dejection he wants to toss the stupid thing out the window for daring to upset her. 

“He likes you plenty,” Gojo assures her. “He’s just scared because he’s never been here before. So why don’t we let him relax for a bit, and in the meanwhile, we get you some toys?”

Eri’s look turns wary at that. “Toys?”  

“Not new ones,” Gojo promises. “These are special toys!”

“... Special toys?” She repeats, wariness bleeding into curiosity. 

“Yep! My sister heard you don’t have any toys, so she said you can have her old ones! These ones are special because, uhhhhh , they’re vintage collectibles!” He lies through his teeth. Luckily, Eri doesn’t seem to notice. Probably because she doesn’t even know what ‘vintage collectibles’ means with her limited six year-old vocabulary.

She's also not dismissing the idea of them right off the bat, which is also a good sign. 

“What d’you say? You wanna check them out?”

She bites her lip, casting a look back to the couch. A low, feral growl emits from the abyss below. “Meow-san will be okay on his own?”

I’m pretty sure Meow-san is an immortal satanic demon sent from the pits of hell just to torment me, so I think he’ll be just fine. 

“Just fine, promise!”

He holds out his hand. Finally she nods reluctantly, and puts her little hand in his. “Okay.” 

//

The white-haired man— Satoru, he’d asked her to call him, even though his siblings had called him Touya, and the sleepy-looking man from earlier had called him Dabi when he thought Eri wasn’t listening— uses his magic quirk to plop them right on the front lawn of a big house. It reminds Eri a little too much of the exterior of the Shie Hassaikai compound she’s been trapped in these past few years; a stately and sprawling estate done up in traditional architecture. She stares up at it with trepidation, curling her fingers a little tighter around the man’s hand. 

Even if it looks a bit scary, Eri will be fine. 

Satoru is here.

And Satoru might not be a name familiar to her, but Dabi certainly is. 

Chisaki and his subordinates would talk, when they were hurting her with those terrible experiments. 

She’s heard the name Dabi before, and even if she was in too much pain to pay the conversation any real mind, she can remember the tone in which his name was mentioned. Chisaki’s men spoke of him in low and fearful tones. Chisaki himself always tried to sound as calm and controlled as he always did when he spoke of him, but there was a frisson of tension in his voice that Eri knew from experience belied his frustrations— and his fear. Chisaki didn’t fear anything, which meant Dabi must be a frightening character. She knows Chisaki considers him an enemy; she knows Chisaki is wary of him. Chisaki is scary and strong. If someone as scary and strong as Chisaki is scared of someone else… then that must be a very scary person indeed.

But meeting Dabi in person has painted a very different picture than the frightening caricature she’d conjured up in her head. 

Satoru was… really nice. And kind of silly. He was a bit awkward sometimes and seemed as confused about what to do with her as she was with him, but he tried. He was doing his best to take care of her even if he didn’t know how, and just like that old lady from the other day had said, sometimes that was really all that mattered. He cared, and he showed it, and he didn’t give up on her even when she’d panicked and nearly slugged him in the face at that toy store. 

And even if it turned out he really was a scary person, she didn’t mind. If Chisaki was afraid of him, that could only be a good thing. Maybe he’d leave her alone, as long as she stuck near him. 

“I actually have no idea how to get into the attic,” Satoru remarks idly, as he slips his shoes off at the genkan in the entryway. After he’s done he crouches in front of her to help her with the laces on her own shoes. “But it can’t be that hard, right?”

Eri doesn’t know how to answer that, so she doesn’t. That’s fine though— she’s noticed Satoru isn’t always looking for an answer from her, sometimes he just chatters to himself. It’s nice. She likes hearing his voice, especially when she doesn’t feel pressured to respond. Satoru has a very nice voice. 

They wander around the cavernous house for a few minutes, Satoru puttering around the walls and stopping at every closet, peering up at the ceiling every once in a while. Finally he comes to a stop at the end of a hallway, where a very old and unused looking bedroom rests behind a closed door. He snorts when he pushes it open, but she doesn’t think it's a reaction to all the dust that flies up with the movement. 

“Of course it’s here of all fucking places.” He scoffs, but he doesn't sound very upset.

There’s a bit of a scuffle as he has her stand at the end of the hall as he finds a ladder and fiddles with the ceiling. With a creak and a groan and a cloud of dust that covers both the man and the ladder in powder, Satoru finds the entrance to the attic. He shakes himself off like a dog to rid himself of all the dust, laughing as he hauls Eri into his arms to cart her up the ladder. She takes the opportunity to brush off the worst of the dust still clinging to him. 

“Why do we even have this many Christmas decorations? We’ve never even celebrated Christmas!” Satoru remarks with disbelief, once he finds the light and reveals the attic in full. “Say, Eri-chan do you know what Christmas is?” 

Eri shakes her head.

“That’s alright, I’ll teach you,” Satoru assures her, picking his way across the mess of string lights on the floor. “We’ll get you a cute little Christmas outfit and everything, and go see a tree lighting. It’ll be fun! Christmas cake is really good, too. And it’s only a couple weeks away!”

Eri perks up at this. She likes cakes. 

She likes the thought that she’ll still be with Satoru in a couple weeks even more. 

//

For a man who had made an entire criminal empire almost entirely anonymously, Dabi is suddenly everywhere. 

He’s a regular feature on the news cycles, and has racked up the kind of celebrity status career heroes spend decades trying to cultivate, with the fan club size to match. As Hawks had disturbingly reminded him the other day— he is a very good-looking young man. It’s hardly unsurprising that the public would take so well to him. They love a young and handsome new toy to parade around the media outlets. Hawks himself is a prime example of this. 

Endeavor has spent so much time hunting down every small morsel of Dabi he can find, and now he’s inescapable. 

But for all that his visage is plastered onto every available news channel and all over social media, he’s still as impossible to get a hold of as always. 

Trying to contact ‘Pro Hero Six Eyes’ through official channels is a lesson in futility. Otheon is not taking questions on their new hero, and they’ve provided little to no information on him beyond what’s already available. His ‘residence’ in Otheon has been staked out by reporters for weeks now— to the disgruntlement of all the small hamlet’s population— but he doubts anyone had ever lived there in the first place. Otheon claims Dabi had been officially registered as one of their heroes when he had first started his crusade against Humarise. Endeavor doubts the timeline, but there’s no real way to disprove them other than his gut feeling that Dabi has never left Japanese soil until recently. 

At any rate, Dabi has proven to be uncannily good at disappearing from the public eye no matter how intense the public scrutiny, and now has been no exception.

There’s not a doubt in his mind that Dabi is Touya. Not anymore. But his stance on the man still stands; he wants to see him in person, wants to hear the answers to his questions from the man himself. 

No.

That’s not quite right.

Touya doesn’t owe him anything, answers least of all. That’s not what he wants from the former villain. Endeavor is a ruined, selfish man. He wants absolution, more than anything. What he wants from his son is something Touya cannot give him, because Endeavor’s sins are not his to bear. Nonetheless, he wants to see him. Drink him in with his own two eyes and personally see that he’s still alive, that he lives and breathes and continues to exist in this world. 

But Touya doesn’t owe him that either. 

He returns home in a somber mood. 

Sir Nighteye’s briefing had been succinct and to the point, but the sheer amount of top heroes involved made it a long-winded and overly complicated affair. Even without Endeavor’s own brand of churlish input, there’d been plenty of butting heads. Now that Eraserhead had revealed there wasn’t a hostage in need of immediate rescuing, some heroes thought they were rushing ahead too recklessly. Others, like Fatgum, had pointed out time was the essence even without a hostage involved, as long as those bullets were being sold on the streets. Shouto and the other interns had listened quietly but eagerly, absorbing their first look into a large hero task force like this. Endeavor had made sure to go over every point brought up in the meeting in detail as he drove Shouto back to school. His youngest had protested the idea of it, stating his fellow students would all be taking the train back together, but he’d settled down when it became clear Endeavor was using the time as a learning experience for his young son and not some awkward attempt at making amends. 

Shouto had good counter points, but he was young yet. He struggled to see the bigger picture when he was focused on a villain he’d singled out— much like Endeavor himself at that age. Shouto wanted Overhaul behind bars as soon as possible, likely a reaction to the harrowing encounter his fellow classmate, Midoriya, had gone through with the villain. Endeavor could agree to an extent; he’d proved himself to be a dangerous villain who needed to be dealt with swiftly. But the other heroes who cautioned against an immediate assault weren’t wrong either. They still didn’t know enough about the operation to know if they’d be shutting it down effectively; the last thing anyone wanted was another Kamino Incident. Countless deaths that could have been avoided with better planning.

Shouto might not like him, but he values his opinion as a hero and is willing to defer to his expertise and greater breadth of experience. 

Their relationship is still shaky and fraught with tension. It’s a laughable presumption to even consider what he has with his youngest a ‘relationship’ of any kind at all. Shouto barely tolerates his presence, and the only reason he does is because Endeavor is still useful to him. He doesn’t delude himself into thinking Shouto would voluntarily subject himself to his presence for any other reason.

Still, it’s more than he’d had before. 

Yet it still feels like not enough.

Shouto had barely even acknowledged him when he’d dropped him off at the U.A. gates, only giving him a nod in his direction and a promise to consider his viewpoint on the case. Then he’d closed the door and left without a second glance, not even the hint of a farewell. Not that Endeavor had expected as much. Shouto getting in a car with him at all is progress. Nonetheless he feels a bit maudlin about it all as he pulls back up to his house; repairing his relationships with his children was a daunting and likely impossible task. He’s uncertain if it’s even worth the effort of trying, or if he’d only hurt them more in the process.

He stills when he reaches for the front door, only to find it already unlocked. 

That in and of itself isn’t cause for alarm— sometimes Fuyumi forgets to lock the door behind her. 

But the shoes in the genkan are most assuredly not his daughter’s.

A matching pair of sneakers crowd innocuously at the mouth of the entryway. One pair is bewilderingly  tiny, patterned and rainbow colored, obviously belonging to a child. The other is an identical pattern, but in black and white, and obviously belongs to an adult. 

He stares down at them in bewilderment.

The child’s shoes, he has no guesses. The adult shoes are too big to be Fuyumi’s, but could still very well be Natsuo’s. But why is Natsuo with a child? 

As he slips off his own shoes, he hears the low murmur of voices from someone else in the house, muffled with distance. Locating the source of the voices is easy enough; the moment he turns the corner he spots a ladder propped in the middle of the hallway, leading up to the entrance to the attic. He boggles at that for a moment; he didn’t even realize he owned a ladder. It probably lived in the gardening shed, where only the landscapers ever made use of it. Beyond just the ladder, he’d honestly forgotten he’d even had an attic. What exactly is Natsuo even doing up there?

He heads closer, voices getting clearer as he crosses the hall. 

“This one’s pretty cute, right? It’s a pokemon. Do you know what pokemon is?”

There’s a muffled response.

“Seriously!? Okay, we have gotta fix that.”

Endeavor frowns as he comes to a halt at the bottom of the ladder, peering up into the shadowy attic. That doesn’t sound like Natsuo.

He has no idea what he’s expecting to see when he climbs up the ladder into the attic proper. The whole scenario has been so bewildering he had no time for introspection. Did he expect it to be Natsuo, perhaps somehow roped into helping with one of Fuyumi’s students? Roped into impromptu babysitting by one of his friends? Or maybe it wasn’t Natsuo at all, but a friend of his, or Fuyumi’s, that they’d asked for an arbitrary and convoluted favor that involved going to their residence and fishing around their storage? It hadn’t even crossed his mind to assume it was an intruder. No intruder would politely leave their shoes in the genkan. 

At any rate, Endeavor wasn’t entirely sure what he’d expected to find when he arrived home that day— but his assumed-dead son turned infamous international superhero was emphatically not it. 

“Touya,” he gasps, his heart stuttering in his chest as he takes in the scene before him.

It seems impossible. Too absurd to be true. But his eyes aren’t deceiving him. It really is Touya.

Here. In the house.

In the attic, in fact, with boxes strewn haphazardly around him and upturned contents spilling over the dusty floor. The place is so messy he almost misses the fact that Touya is not alone. His companion is a young girl in a soft mint-colored dress that has her blending in with all their unused Christmas decorations sprawled across the dusty floor, watching him with wary eyes where Touya doesn’t even bother with looking up to meet his gaze. This must be the mystery owner of the tiny rainbow shoes, he thinks, hysterically. 

“… Touya,” he says again, voice raspy with disbelief. “You’re… you’re here.”

Finally, Touya speaks, pawing through what appears to be an old storage box of clothes. “Huh. I’m shocked you’re actually home, old man. What are you doing here?”

Endeavor balks at him in utter incredulity. What is he doing here? The gall of this fucking child, of all people, asking him this question, has him almost expiring on the spot. He’s so confounded he’s at a loss for words. He just sputters incomprehensibly, unable to even form a proper sentence, let alone give voice to his disbelief.

“Who’s that?” The little girl asks, staring at him as if he’s the one who shouldn’t be here.

“Oh, this grouchy old bastard?” Replies Touya, still distracted by his rummaging. “Just call him grandpa.”

Endeavor chokes.

He swings aside to look at her properly, truly focusing on the girl herself and not the categorically surreal circumstances that have had her appearing in his attic. She has big doe eyes, sparkling like rubies, and shiny, wintry hair that curls down her back in unruly waves. The texture of it reminds him vaguely of a younger Fuyumi, when his daughter still wore her hair long and rarely brushed it. And her face… it’s soft and heart-shaped like Fuyumi’s too. Like Rei’s. Like Touya’s own face.

Grandpa…

He stares, aghast, as he says slowly; “Touya.”

“Hmm?” His eldest still hasn’t deigned to look up from his storage box.

“Who… who is this child?”

He blinks down at the girl. Warily, she blinks back. Then she’s hauled off her feet as Touya straightens up and props her on his hip. His grin is wide and positively evil as he beams at Endeavor.

“What do you mean, who is this child? She’s mine of course! I birthed her from my own body!”

Endeavor is fairly certain his soul just left his body. 

(omake)

Gojo Satoru's rules for cat ownership:

1. The cat is not allowed on the furniture.

2. Alright, the cat can go on the furniture, just not the kitchen counter.

3. OK, the cat can go on the kitchen counter too, just not when I'm preparing food.

4. Fine, the cat can go wherever it wants, whenever it wants, as long as it doesn't swat me in the face at 5:30 in the morning demanding to be fed.

5. The cat will be fed at 5:30 in the morning. 

Chapter Text

In the end, it had been an easy decision to make.

Almost preordained, really, when he thinks on it. 

As Makoto has loved to point out to him ever since the fallout of the Humarise mission, there’s only two ways he can address the mess he’s made out of his life. He can either disappear off the face of existence— not terribly hard, considering the kind of money he has, and the fact that he can teleport at will— or he can face it head on and manipulate the situation to suit his own gains. 

Gojo is not above just peacing out at the first sign of trouble. He’s made running away from his own problems into an art form. But he values his freedom too much to even consider it— if he starts running now, he’ll always be running, and that’s not the kind of life he wants to live.  

It was part of the reason he’d even agreed to the Humarise mission in the first place. 

Being a villain had become more trouble that it was worth, not only just for himself, but for everyone in his life. Being a hero wasn’t any less trouble, but it was trouble of a different kind. However the freedoms he would have without the burden of a criminal history just happened to be more appealing than the freedoms he’d had outside the system. 

After that it was a logical next step to come clean with his identity and make it into something of his own. He’d shed the name Todoroki Touya years ago and never looked back, and for more than a decade that worked out for him. But it’s different, now. He’s reconnected with his siblings. He’s ready to look back on his own past and accept that Todoroki Touya, for good or for ill, is an inexplicable part of his identity. That name of his is no longer just an emotional burden he’s eager to rid himself of, but something he’s ready to embrace. It feels like his life is coming full circle, something about it so inevitable it just feels right. 

More to the point, being Todoroki Touya again has its uses, and he’s not above reclaiming that identity to use for his own gains.

“Are you just gonna sit there staring all day blocking the exit, or do you plan on moving any time soon?” He asks casually, as he tosses the last of the toys into the dusty kid backpack he’d found in one of the boxes. 

Appearing rather at a loss for both words and feelings, Endeavor just blankly moves to the side. 

He hoists Eri higher up on his hip, and tosses the backpack at his father. It actually hits the man in full force before he seems to have the presence of mind to catch it. 

“Make yourself useful and carry that down for me, would you?” He doesn’t wait for an answer, swinging onto the ladder with Eri. He gently eases them down, and is halfway down the hall before Endeavor seems to shake himself out of his stupor long enough to react. 

“Touya! Wait!” He shouts, as he attempts to clamor down the ladder after him, hindered by his size. 

“Don’t hurt yourself back there, old man!” Gojo calls over his shoulder. All he hears in response is a mad scramble and liberal cursing. “I’m not going anywhere… yet.”

That seems to stop the worst of the banging. 

He drops Eri off in the living room first, plopping her on the couch and scrolling through the channels for something kid friendly to watch.

“How about Paw Patrol?” He asks, looking down at her to study her reaction. She squints suspiciously at the characters on the screen. Maybe not that one then.

He flicks through a few more channels, wondering if he’ll get lucky and maybe find some vintage anime. Endeavor comes barreling down the hall, skidding to a breathless halt at the mouth of the room. He looks a little deranged honestly; Gojo can just make out the wide whites of his eyes from where he’s resolutely keeping his gaze on the tv. 

“Oh, Cardcaptor Sakura~ that’s a good one!” It's definitely a much updated version of the classic he remembers, but it’ll do well enough to entertain her for now. “Just sit tight here for me, Eri-chan, I’ll be back in a bit with lunch.” 

He turns to Endeavor, holding out his hands. Endeavor stares at him blankly for a long moment, before Gojo gestures to the sparkly pink little backpack he’s still clutching in one hand. After a beat he silently hands it over, and Gojo crouches down next to Eri and sets the bag down next to her. “The toys are down here if you want them.” He ruffles her hair as he stands. “I’m just in the other room if you need me, okay?”

She gives a vaguely affirmative mumble in response, already drawn to the cartoons. 

He ignores Endeavor as he heads to the kitchen, hoping Fuyumi has something simple he can pull together for lunch, even if it’s just a bunch of snacks. He’s impressed Endeavor manages to hold it together long enough for them to get out of Eri’s earshot— that’s some herculean level of restraint, coming from the big guy. He’s even more surprised when Endeavor doesn’t immediately start yelling the moment they’re alone in the kitchen. Gojo knew, in the abstract, that the man had changed a lot since he’d seen him last, but seeing the evidence in person was a rather novel experience. 

Then again, maybe he shouldn’t have doubted Hawks’s judgment. The winged hero had a keen eye for candor, and if he approved of Endeavor then there must be some kind of redeeming quality to the man.

Honestly, he wouldn’t even be here if it wasn’t for Hawks’s words on the man, no matter how neatly being a Todoroki again might fit into his plans. Hawks considered Endeavor a brash and difficult man but also acknowledged his commitment and dedication to his work as a hero. That echoed sentiments Gojo had heard before over the years, but hearing it from a trusted source had Gojo re-evaluating the new Number One. Gojo’s own thoughts on the man were… well, like he told Natsuo, he doesn’t hate him. To be entirely frank, he forgets he exists most of the time. But whenever he’d spare an idle thought towards his father, it was always in the context of an obstacle to work around. It hadn’t occurred to him until recently that he might be able to turn Todoroki Enji from a pest to avoid into an asset that might be useful to him. 

Even if it’s just as a family name to give to Eri in the event anything happens to him, and a convenient additional adult in his orbit for impromptu babysitting. 

There’s a couple tense seconds of silence as Gojo rummages around the fridge and Endeavor hovers by the doorway, looking both like he wants to come closer and run away at the same time. 

“Touya… why did you come here?” Endeavor finally asks, voice hoarse with emotion.

Gojo doesn’t pause from his perusal of the vegetable bin. Vegetables? Why is he even bothering? What kid even likes vegetables? “Fuyumi’s limited edition Sailor Moon collectibles,” Gojo deadpans. 

He rummages around some more, but only shores up a couple onigiri for his efforts. He shuts the fridge and tries the cabinets instead. 

“... You cannot be serious,” says Endeavor, bewildered.

“Sure I can! Those are perfectly good toys, y’know. And Eri’s officially a Sailor Moon fan. She’s got the merch to prove it.”

“You—” When Gojo glances over his shoulder, Endeavor is turning a very mysterious shade of purple. “You— You!!”

Gojo blinks back at him, guilelessly. “Me?”

“You let everyone think you were dead; you changed your name and identity; you haven’t stepped foot in this house for over ten years— and you’re telling me you returned to go through the family storage?!” By the end of it he’s shouting, flames bursting across his face. 

Gojo just laughs at him. “Well when you put it that way, I suppose it sounds pretty silly, doesn’t it?”

He finds a bag of senbei crackers in the cabinet, and combined with the riceballs decides that’s good enough for a light ‘lunch’. Or at least enough to tide Eri over until they can get out of this place. Which, from how terribly he’s handling Endeavor right now, isn’t going to happen any time soon. He just can’t help it though! Endeavor is just too easy to rile up. He’d forgotten how much fun it was.

When he turns around fully, a plate of crackers and rice balls in one hand, Endeavor looks ready to either strangle him with his bare hands, combust and bring the entire house down with him, or both. 

“What’s with the face?” He asks, glibly, with a smile full of teeth. “One would think you weren’t happy to see your eldest son isn’t actually dead!”

The fire disappears immediately from the mans’ face— and his expression— at Gojo’s words, leaving a pained and rather guilt-stricken look in its wake. Endeavor stares at him with his burning blue gaze, so similar to Gojo’s own and yet not quite similar enough, lips thinned into a fine line. 

“Touya,” he starts, gravely. His hands curl into fists at his sides. 

Gojo waits for a moment, feeling the words unsaid like a tangible weight in the air between them, but Endeavor seems to lose his nerve. His mouth opens, but no sound comes out. His expression is muddled and imploring when he gazes at Gojo; Gojo just stares back, flatly. Finally the silence starts to seriously weird him out, and he edges around the man to head back to the living room. He sets the snacks down in front of Eri, who is now fully immersed in the nonsensical world of children’s cartoons, reaching out blindly without even really looking at the plate as she crunches into a cracker. 

When he heads back into the kitchen, Endeavor is still exactly where he left him; his features rearranged from the contrite look he had earlier into something more crestfallen. He looks totally pathetic, honestly, all shamefaced and downcast like that. Gojo takes one look at that defeated face and just sighs. It’s no fun to fuck with him when he’s looking at Gojo with so much sadness and longing.

He makes a beeline for the fridge again, and this time heads straight for the six-pack he’d seen shoved at the bottom. He has to imagine it’s Natsuo’s, because as a top hero Endeavor probably follows a regimen too stringent for any kind of alcohol. On second thought, it could very well be Fuyumi’s too; his sister can outdrink a sailor. Either way he snags it and snaps off a can to toss Endeavor’s way. The man catches it on instinct more than anything, a befuddled look on his face as he stares at it. Gojo doesn’t wait for a response, just pushes past him and makes for the engawa. 

It’s cold enough to be bracing even with a winter jacket on; the perfect temperature to freeze away the worst of his feelings and keep his beer cold. He hears Endeavor lumber up behind him, but doesn’t look up as he pops his own can open and chugs half of it in one go. Endeavor settles down next to him in silence; out of the corner of his eye, he can see the man palming the can in his hand. 

“Touya…” He tries again, words shaky and threadbare, “I don’t deserve your forgiveness nor your consideration, so I won’t ask for either. I… there is too much to atone for, to even think of making amends, but I assure you, when I realized you were still alive I— I was overjoyed.” His voice breaks at the end, head bowed.

Gojo barely refrains from snorting aloud. Overjoyed? There’s no need to oversell it, old man. 

He’s sure he was relieved to hear his eldest son hadn’t died in a confrontation with him, the dark blemish on his history finally wiped away, but overjoyed seems a bit much. They had never been particularly close. In fact, Gojo would have assumed that in Endeavor’s eyes the only downside to his son’s death was the fact it happened in such an incriminating way. There had been no lost love between the two of them, no shred of paternal or familial affection. Endeavor was cruel and impatient with him, and Gojo regularly went out of his way as a child to make the man’s life miserable. The idea of Endeavor mourning, perhaps even regretting his eldest son’s death was a bewildering prospect to Gojo. He couldn’t even fathom the thought. 

Still, when he glances over towards the older man, he looks almost close to tears. 

Gojo shrugs uncomfortably, looking away quickly. “Don’t expect that to change anything, old man.”

“I don’t,” Endeavor returns, quietly. “I know that I… have been no father to you. To any of you. I know I don’t deserve the chance to be a part of your lives. To see you all alive and well with my own two eyes… that is already more than I deserve.”

Gojo doesn’t know what else to do with that other than down the rest of his beer and reach immediately for another. 

Honestly, when he’d made the rather haphazard decision to follow through with this harebrained scheme of his, he’d expected there to be a slim chance Endeavor was even at the house to begin with. He figured a blatant stopover at home while the man wasn’t there would be a good way to ease Endeavor into the idea of his eldest son returning to his life again— dipping a toe in the water, so to speak. His vague plan was to leave confirmation of his existence, and then maybe have Fuyumi instigate a meet up of some kind in a few days. 

On the off chance Endeavor would be home during his little rendezvous, Gojo expected their ensuing confrontation to be, well, a confrontation. A volatile battle of dissonant personalities that would ultimately end up with them clashing in some manner, but probably with Gojo getting what he wanted out of it. Namely, Todoroki Touya returned to the family registry alive. 

He had not been expecting… this.

This remorse, this regret, this sorrow. He’d known Endeavor had ‘changed’. He’d assumed it was mainly in a superficial sense. Recently he’d hoped, mostly for Fuyumi’s sake, that there was some small but genuine urge within the man to be a better person. And he’d also hoped there really was something redeemable somewhere in the man for Hawks’s sake too, because the hero had spent so much time and effort trying to build an earnest relationship with the man and Gojo didn’t want to see all his efforts go to waste. But to see how deeply and irrevocably the death of his eldest son had changed him with his own two eyes was… not at all what he wanted to deal with right now. 

This shit is way too deep for me right now, Gojo laments, silently. And who does he have to blame for this situation? Himself, of course. 

He clears his throat. “Right, well. On the subject of being ‘alive’, I need a favor from you.”

Endeavor startles, straightening up. “Anything,” he intones, seriously. 

Gojo crushes his second beer, then turns to him. “I need you to turn Todoroki Touya from legally dead to legally alive.”

//

If there was one thing Enji had learned from this surreal and borderline hallucinogenic encounter, it was that bonds born in the most immutable forge of blood and family could still be only surface deep. 

Enji had no eldest son. He had no sons at all. He had strangers that shared his features. 

And now, apparently, heretofore unknown little girls as well.

He closes his eyes, feeling lost and unmoored. This was not at all how he’d expected his evening to go. Even knowing Touya was alive for weeks before this hadn’t prepared him for the reality of seeing his eldest son again in the flesh. He was just as much a whirlwind at twenty-three as he had been at thirteen. Endeavor had barely even known him as a thirteen year-old living in his house. He knows even less about him now, as a grown adult a decade later.

He’s missed so much of the other man’s life. He has no one to blame for this but himself, of course, but that doesn’t lessen the sting of regret and longing that lances against his chest as he thinks of the little girl watching cartoons in the living room. A girl he’d never known about until this moment. A girl he probably never would have known about, if Touya hadn’t happened to need something of him. But as he’s reminded himself plenty of times since finding out his eldest was alive, Touya doesn’t owe him anything, least of all knowledge of his own granddaughter. 

A granddaughter he imagines is the only reason Touya is even here, speaking to him at all.

“You’re asking for her, I imagine?” It’s not so much a question as confirmation. 

Touya doesn’t look at him as he says, “I’d like to keep that option open for her, yes.”

Truth be told, Endeavor has no idea how to go about rescinding a death certificate. He’s not even sure if it’s possible to do it without getting the courts involved. Fortunately he doesn’t think it’s illegal— especially now that Dabi is no longer listed as a wanted criminal— but it was likely to be a tedious circus of paperwork nonetheless. It’s also the least he can do, for the son he’s wronged so terribly.

“I’ll see it done,” he vows, solemnly.

He’ll do it for Touya, and for the young girl he’s come all this way for. He can’t imagine it was easy for Touya to come back here, and face Enji like this. But he did it regardless, for that girl. Touya faced his own past, the specter of trauma that must surround this house and every memory within it, and faced him, the monster at the center of it all, and he did it with an unflinching bravery Enji could never hope to match. When he had been Touya’s age, he could not have stomached the thought of having to face down his own father; the mere notion— even though the man would have been dead for years at that point in his life— would have had him sick with fear. Would he have done it though, for his children? For his own daughter, the way Touya is now? 

“She…” He swallows thickly, still holding the now warming can of beer in his palms. He can’t fathom the thought of drinking it right now, during such a wrenching conversation like this. That doesn’t seem to stop Touya though, who’s making decent headway into his third already. “How old is she?”

“Umm— six, I think?” Touya scratches the back of his neck. “Her birthday’s coming up actually… she’s either six or she’s turning six, I can’t remember.”

Endeavor blinks at the response. 

“How can you not remember? I thought you said you gave birth to her.”

Touya chokes on his drink. At first he thinks the young man is just startled by the question— then he realizes the former villain is desperately trying not to laugh at him.

Endeavor blinks rapidly, realization striking him. “Wait. That girl, she’s not…”

Touya stares at him, at first in disbelief, and then with dawning, malicious glee. 

“No,” Touya marvels, delighted. “Did you seriously believe me when I said I gave birth to her?”

Endeavor flounders. “I— You—” His face gets very red as he sputters. “Your powers make no sense to begin with! How am I to know what is possible or impossible for you?!”

“Well sure, but—” Touya dissolves into uncontrollable laughter. When the worst of it is over he leans back, wiping his eyes. “Oh my god, I seriously can’t believe you.”

Endeavor glowers darkly at him. “And I don’t suppose you intend to enlighten me on the extent of your powers at all, do you?”

“No, of course not,” Touya replies without missing a beat, between laughs. “But I can promise you they don’t include that!”

That’s not much of an answer. Endeavor still doesn’t know the slightest thing about the man— his powers or how they manifested, what he’s been up to this past decade beyond the sparse bits of news that trickles through proper channels, his favorite foods, what he does when he’s not causing monumental headaches to law enforcement across the world— and he doesn’t think he’ll ever be in a place where he can reach out and ask, no matter how much he wishes. 

But what Touya is asking of him… this is something he can do, for the boy he’s failed so terribly. 

“She’s not mine,” Touya explains, once he’s got his laughter under control. “Well— not yet, anyway. Her situation is pretty precarious, so I’d appreciate your discretion on the matter.” 

“Precarious?” Endeavor repeats, frowning. “Is she in danger?”

“Not as long as I’m around,” Touya returns, shrugging. On anyone else such cavalier arrogance would be infuriating— but on someone as infamously powerful as Pro Hero Six Eyes, or S-rank cremation villain Dabi, it’s a simple statement of truth. No matter what name he’s going by, his status as the world’s strongest is irrefutable fact. 

Endeavor looks away. 

To think, the son he’d forsaken as too weak to carry on his legacy has become the indisputable strongest hero in the world. The irony is not lost upon him. 

His strength is undeniable— and yet he’s here because he refuses to take any chances with this girl. If anything ever happened to him, he wants legal protections enshrined for her. This is what he’s truly asking of Enji. He doesn’t delude himself into thinking it’s really Endeavor’s protection he’s after— it’s the legal power of a will and an estate, and an unshakeable family name that would keep her untouchable from the vultures (on both sides of the law) that will inevitably try to get their hands on any piece of Dabi. 

“So anyway, do we have a deal, old man?”

This draws him out of his thoughts. Touya’s not looking at him, idly examining the afternoon sun peeling across the gold can in his hands. The tone is unremarkable, but Endeavor can feel the weight of unspoken promise behind it.

“Yes, of course.” He nods, seriously.

A little chime interrupts them, as Touya drags a phone out of his pocket and flicks the screen on. Whatever he sees has a little furrow creasing between his brows, then he’s propping his beer between his knees and sending off a rapid-fire response. It shouldn’t surprise Endeavor that he has a phone, he doubts there is a single adult on this earth who doesn’t have one, and yet it’s shocking to see anyway. Perhaps not the item itself, but what it represents. There are people in Touya’s life that can reach out to him at will and expect a response. With a jolt of shock, he remembers that Hawks is one of them. Surely that’s not who Touya’s speaking to now though, right? The winged-hero had made it sound as if their contact was sporadic. That being said he’s also been historically tight-lipped about his entire relationship with Dabi; for all Endeavor knows, they’re a lot closer than he’s ever let on.

Even though he’s well aware it’s not his place to question it, he wants to ask Touya. 

“Cool,” Touya tucks his phone back into his pocket, then polishes off the rest of his drink and gets to his feet. “Well, I gotta run. Good talk, old man.”

Startled, Endeavor gets to his feet as well. He shouldn’t be so surprised that Touya had blasted back into his life with all the abruptness of a tornado, only to take his leave in just as sudden of a whirlwind. 

Touya crunches the now empty can in his hand, already turning for the sliding doors back into the house proper. “Tell Nacchan I’ll buy him another six-pack, yeah?” He calls over his shoulder, leaving Endeavor too stunned to reply. 

//

“Who the fuck let you be in charge of a small child,” Kenji says, flatly.

“Who the fuck let you procreate?” Makoto says, aghast. 

He patiently looks to Yui, waiting for her two cents, but the high schooler only gives him a thoroughly unimpressed look and sighs. 

“Everyone, meet Eri-chan!” He introduces, grandly. “She’s in my care for the time being, so be nice! To her, but more importantly, to me!”

Kenji rolls her eyes. “Unbelievable,” she mutters. “This poor kid doesn’t deserve to have to deal with your personal brand of chaos.”

Internally, Gojo can’t help but agree. Externally, he just keeps smiling as he says, “Eri-chan’s a tough cookie, she can handle it!”

“I love your shoes, Eri-chan!” Makoto ignores their byplay to crouch down next to Eri, who’s warily clinging to his pants and hiding half behind him. “Are you matching with Satoru?”

She nods, hesitantly. 

“That’s so fun!” Makoto enthuses. She smiles gently at Eri. “Are you here to make music with us?”

This causes Eri to slowly peer out from behind Gojo, eyes growing wider. “Music?” She repeats, sounding eager. Or as eager as she gets, anyway. 

Gojo probably should have expected that she’d be more enamored with the thought of music than she would any kind of toy— new or old. She hadn’t had a reaction at all to the toys they’d snagged out of the Todoroki attic, which was probably the best he could hope for, given her history. He hoped she learned to like them at least enough to entertain herself with them whenever he was too busy to play with her; given the state of his life and his ‘personal brand of chaos’ as Kenji called it, that was a scenario that would happen more often than not. 

“Yep, this is my band, Eri-chan! I told you about them, remember?” 

She nods with a serious expression. “Bands make music together,” she adds, reverently. 

He chuckles. “Exactly! Do you want to watch us practice, Eri-chan?” 

Those big red eyes of hers start to sparkle a little. She looks too awestruck to even nod her head. 

He can’t help but grin in response. 

She’s heard him play on his acoustic guitar plenty of times now, but that’s an entirely different experience from hearing an entire band making music together. He’s pretty sure she’ll adore it, but he does harbor a passing anxiety that this might spectacularly backfire on him like the toy store. In light of that, he’d had a package delivered to this house earlier.

He turns to his bandmates. “Ken-chan, was there a delivery today?” 

She’s been staying here on and off as they work out a reliable practice schedule for their big comeback, since it’s a lot cheaper than shelling out for a hotel, not to mention easier for Gojo to teleport her back and forth when it’s a place he’s very familiar with. She confirms there was and then goes off to find wherever she tossed it. In the meanwhile, Makoto all but frog marches him off to the side where they can’t be overheard. Out of the corner of his eye he sees Eri has become curious enough at the prospect of music to cautiously wander over to where Yui is still sitting behind her drum kit. 

When Makoto finally corners him by the back windows, she rounds on him.

“You’re supposed to tell me about these things beforehand so I can plan adequately for them, Satoru! Not just spring them at me full grown!” She hisses. 

Gojo raises his hands in surrender. “It was a surprise to me too okay?! I didn’t exactly plan this, so I didn’t exactly have time to warn you.” 

“How did you not know you had a full grown kid wandering around,” she says, accusingly. 

“She’s not mine,” Gojo explains quickly. Makoto glares at him, then looks over at Eri, who is hedging closer to peer warily at Yui’s crash cymbals. Yui, for her part, is making a laudable effort to pretend Eri isn’t there at all.  

Makoto turns back towards him with a severely disparaging look.

“No, seriously!” Gojo insists. “She’s— her situation is a bit difficult, currently. Oh my god don’t give me that look I’m not trying to be vague on purpose, it’s an open investigation, I really can’t say anything.”

Makoto reels back at that, brow furrowing. “Is she in trouble or something?”

“Not in trouble persay, but there’s worry over her safety so she’s staying with me for the time being.”

And even Makoto can’t deny that there’s no safer place for a kid in trouble than by the side of the strongest (former) s-rank criminal. Evidently she’s aware of this, for she just sighs grandly as if Gojo is the most troublesome thing in the world. In her defense, he sort of is. 

“And how long is ‘for the time being’?” Makoto crosses her arms.

Gojo smiles bracingly. “Well…”

Makoto stares at him. His smile turns into a grimace. She stares some more, then scowls deeply. 

“Satoru,” she says, aggrieved. “Didn’t you say you weren’t planning on having kids, ever?” 

“Yeah, okay, I did say that,” he admits, wincing because he’s even more of a hypocrite than she probably even knows. He may have only adopted them in spirit, but he’s become attached to not one, not two, but three hero students since he’d last had that conversation with her so clearly he’s just a fucking liar here. 

Makoto looks like she’s about to reach over and strangle him. 

“Um, there’s more, too,” he adds, sheepishly. He may as well come clean with everything, now that he’s planning on making Eri a Todoroki. 

“Oh god,” Makoto says, with feeling. 

Kenji stomps back into the main room, waving a package around. 

“I’ll tell you later,” he says quickly. 

Makoto takes his prevarication as a sign of imminent disaster. “From almost being arrested for public indecency at Ikea—

Gojo rolls his eyes grandly. “Seriously, would you let me live that down—” 

“—to impulsively buying two hundred live caterpillars while drunk, how bad is it?” 

For the record the return policy made that an easily fixable mistake, just a mildly alarming one to wake up to. 

“Um.” He tries to answer it honestly. “Definitely not as bad as being a supervillain without telling you, but probably pretty close?” 

Makoto, if possible, only looks more dismayed. “Oh, lovely. So it’s not just bad, it’s catastrophic.”

Gojo’s only response is a wince of a smile. Yeah. Revealing himself to be the surprisingly undead eldest son of the country’s Number One Hero was going to be an absolute circus. Just icing on the cake, really, for the rest of the absurdity of his life. 

“Oi, Satoru, is this what you were talking about?” Kenji shouts, still waving the box in the air.

Gojo supposes that’s as good an escape as any from his impending doom. “Let’s open it and find out!” He calls back, as he walks over to the rest of the group. Makoto sighs loudly behind him, but mercifully follows without remark.  

Kenji tosses the package at him the moment he’s close enough, and he wastes no time ripping it open to unearth the adorably pink bunny-eared headphones he’d rush ordered that morning. He looks back at Eri, who’s still clutching at the straps of her new backpack. 

He bends down to fit them over Eri’s head. She pats them curiously as he settles them over her ears and starts sizing them. When he’s done, he steps back with a satisfied expression; he didn’t think it was possible for Eri to look any cuter, but when there’s a will there’s a way, apparently. They have the added bonus of not only being positively adorable but also preserving her hearing— which is a must if she’s going to be sticking around for the foreseeable future. That does beg the question of what on earth he’s going to do with her during shows. He can’t just stick her in the back, right? Looks like he’ll be utilizing the Todoroki family baby-sitting service fairly frequently in the future. 

He leans forward and crouches down next to Eri, pushing the casing away from one of her ears so she can hear him clearly. “I need you to keep these on when we’re playing music, Eri-chan. It’s really loud and bad for your ears.”

Eri blinks at him, then dips her head. 

“And you don’t have to stay and listen if you don’t want to,” he adds, just in case that’s an issue. “You can go play upstairs with your toys if you get bored or it’s too loud for you. And if you need anything, you can stop us at any time, okay?” 

She’s liked all his music so far, but a couple songs on an acoustic guitar are a far cry from a full band ensemble jamming out in a confined space. It might be too much for her. 

“Okay,” she says. 

He needn’t have worried. 

Chapter Text

Eri is absolutely entranced from start to finish. She seems to entirely shed her shy and skittish demeanor in favor of crawling up into all their stuff, finding bizarre and sometimes untenable locations to sit in and catch all the details. Gojo has to gently move her off his pedals at least three times lest he accidentally step on her, and that’s to say nothing of poor Yui on her drums. At some point during their third go of Cherub Rock she manages to wiggle between the drummer's feet to watch the rhythm of the kick drum.  

“You’re a little late on the hi-hats, Yui-chan,” Makoto had called out once they’d gone through the first verse. 

“Um,” Yui had replied, then pointed down at her feet where Eri had wedged her head in the space between them, and Gojo had to hastily run over there and tug her away. 

After that he’d procured a stool for her right between them all, and plopped her there with a juicebox and asked her to either stay in the chair or wander but not get too close to them, and definitely be careful of the wires. She stays long enough to finish up her juice and let them work through the bridge in peace, before she’s up again and getting up close and personal with their instruments. It’s almost like that shy kid who barely said a word to Eraserhead or his siblings has completely disappeared, swallowed up by her childish delight at the simple pleasure of live music. 

There’s no helping it then; she’s obviously going to learn how to play music. And quite likely inherit the entirety of his guitar collection in the process. And why bother to stop there? He should get her a collection of her own. 

Practice goes as well as it can, when they’re all distracted by a little silver-haired bunny wandering around their sprawling mess of cords and amps, and Gojo’s tossed a bunch of brand new songs at them. There are some standout favorites among them, that Makoto thinks would make good singles to release before the album itself. This has them spiraling down a tangent on producers and record labels, whether or not they really need or want them, and how they’re going to handle the fallout of their public debut. Makoto has plans, of course, and Gojo’s already committed to following through with them. Kenji is mostly game for all of it but she does have some concessions about privacy. Yui apparently already told Makoto in no uncertain terms that if it came down to it, she’d rather be a rockstar than a hero, which Gojo had heard already but hadn’t quite believed until now. 

“But— Yui-chan!” He cuts in, shocked. “Being a hero is your dream! You’re going to school for it!”

“There are other schools,” Yui returns, sounding unmoved. For the life of him, Gojo can’t tell if it’s a facade, or if she’s truly this unbothered by the thought of leaving U.A., and giving up a childhood dream. 

“But what if it’s not just U.A.? What if no hero schools accept you? What if they suspend your license?” Gojo continues, panicked. 

Makoto clicks her tongue, interjecting, “That’s illegal.”

Kenji snorts. “Since when does the HPSC play fair?” 

Yui just shrugs. She holds out her drumstick to Eri, who has once again wandered close to her and is examining her cymbals. Eri takes it with an air of reverence. “My dream is to help people. As it turns out, you can help people quite a lot with music.” 

“Yui-chan,” gasps Makoto, moved. “That’s beautiful.”

“Is that really what you want, though?” Gojo worries, uneasily. 

Yui gazes up at him flatly and says, “I don’t want to be part of an industry that won’t accept me just because I’m vaguely associated with you.”

Gojo has no idea how to respond to that. It frightens him, more than anything. Not just her steadfast and unwavering (and utterly undeserved) loyalty to him, but what it means for all the other people in his life. 

This was one of the reasons he’d decided to take steps to clear his name and sort out his reputation. What would it mean for Izuku to be associated with him? Shouto? Fuyumi and Natsuo? Hawks? Kenji is right— the HPSC doesn’t play fair, and they have no lost love for him. And Hawks has a… long and mysterious history with them. He’s already putting the winged hero in a difficult position as it is. He’s not even sure if he’s made things better, by becoming an internationally licensed hero. 

What if he’s just making everything worse, by going public like this? What if it just adds fuel to the fire, and makes not just his, but everyone else’s lives around him more complicated? 

He shakes the thoughts away. He can’t just stay still and do nothing, and he can’t just walk away from it all. The only way left is forward on the path he’s chosen. 

In light of that, it’s probably time to come clean about his real identity. It’s likely to cause plenty of upheaval when word inevitably gets out, and Makoto is right; the only way to come out on top of it is to control the narrative from the start. To that end he cajoles his bandmates into sticking around for dinner and then orders them delivery for far more fast food than any of them could ever reasonably finish. When Makoto protests all the fried food he just tells her Eri’s favorite food is chicken nuggets and she caves like a house of cards. 

He of course makes sure to wait until they’re all content and stuffed as full of french fries and cheese teritama’s as he can make them before broaching the subject, and in the meanwhile he’s surprised by how effusive Eri is being in front of a group of people she doesn’t know. Maybe it’s because they’re all women, and from what she’s told him of Shie Hassaikai the organization was entirely made up of men? He’s sure her curiosity over their music helps; the questions she asks all have to do with their instruments and their songs, and what it’s like to be in a band. It’s so innocent and charming she definitely lulls them all into a false sense of security— just for Gojo to promptly upend yet another of his secret identities on them. 

He clears his throat, drawing their attention.

“Okay so I just want to preface this by saying it’s not like I was hiding this on purpose from you guys, so much as I was just ignoring my past in general,” he starts off, gravely, setting his drink down. 

Something about his posture must clue them in to his drastic change in mood, for they all exchange quick glances. 

Kenji slurps down the rest of her soda. “Oh boy,” she enthuses. “I thought we had to be at least relationship level four to hear your tragic backstory.”

“Just level four?” Makoto gasps. “Satoru, you slag!” 

He rolls his eyes but smiles nonetheless. He can always trust his bandmates to ruin a mood. 

Kenji dissolves into snickers. “Ru-kun’s always been easy Makoto, surely you know that by now.”

“Too easy,” Yui agrees, flatly. “He should have better standards. Or at least have standards.”

“Hey!” Gojo protests. “I thought you liked Hawks!” She interned with him and everything! Come to think of it, she probably is going to intern with him again for those work studies Izuku told him about. That’s going to be… strange. 

“Not as much as you,” she deadpans.

“So we’re finally having that conversation, huh?” Kenji rolls her shoulders. “Is he finally gonna make an honest man out of you?”

Gojo blinks furiously. This is not at all how he’d thought this conversation would go. “That— what? No that’s not— nevermind Hawks right now, this isn’t about him at all.” 

Yui’s gaze flickers to Eri, who’s at the far end of the dining table diligently dipping her chicken nugget into every single one of the small parade of sauces he lined up for her. That’s either going to taste delicious, or blasphemous. 

“Is this about Eri-chan?” She asks, carefully. 

“In a roundabout way,” he hedges. “Y’see, I introduced her to my old man today.” 

Kenji chuckles. “Oh? Finally confronting those latent daddy issues of yours? How’d that go?”

“I got what I wanted out of it, so it went fine, I guess. Might have shaved a decade off the old man’s life though from the stress of it all.” Gojo shrugs, utterly unrepentant. “I wanted him to reinstate me into the family, just to keep my options open— for her. Just in case this ends up being more than, um, temporary guardianship.” Which from what he understands of her situation, is likely going to be the foregone conclusion. 

“Reinstate you?” Makoto repeats, incredulously. “Were you, like, banished off the family tree or something?”

“Not so much banished as presumed dead,” he reveals, sheepishly. 

There’s a long moment of silence where there’s nothing but Eri slurping down her milkshake, wonderfully oblivious to— or perhaps just uncaring of— the conversation the adults are having over her. 

“You let your entire family assume you were dead?!” Makoto shrieks, once she’s recovered herself. 

“Dude!” Kenji laughs uproariously. “You have no chill!” 

“It’s more complicated than that,” Gojo whines in protest. “There was a lot of shit going on and it was just better to take myself out of the equation as permanently as I could. When I left that place I did it with the intention of never returning, so letting them assume I was dead was just the easiest route.” 

Surprisingly— or perhaps not— it’s Yui who just nods along. “Some families… sometimes it’s just better to remove yourself from a bad situation.”

He’s made painfully aware that he’s never looked into Yui’s homelife as diligently as he could have. For all that she regularly lets him put a tracker on her, he’s tried to respect her right to privacy as much as possible. He knows her parents aren’t abusive or anything like that— they’d asked her directly, after the third time she’d stayed out well past dawn at a live show without a single phone call from her parents. But he’s not sure how much of their situation he’s willing to blame on busy schedules and multiple siblings before he just labels them as neglectful.  

“I do regret letting my siblings think I was dead for ten years, but it was necessary to sever all ties with my old man. As a top hero he’s got a lot of reach, and I didn’t want him figuring out who I was after the fact.” 

The three stare at him with wide eyes. Eri munches away at her chicken nuggets. 

“Did you just say… top hero?” Kenji chokes, voice high. 

“Oh my god,” Makoto gasps, hand to her mouth. He should have expected she’d be able to put it together with what little he’s given them so far. “...You’re— but of course you are! It all makes sense! They said his eldest son died almost ten years ago… a training accident, or so they said. And the timing adds up…” She trails off, eyes big and round. “... It wasn’t a training accident, was it?” 

He snorts. “Of course not.” 

“Then— what—” She chokes off, swallowing thickly. “Did Endeavor try to kill you? Or was it the other way around?” 

“Endeavor?!” Kenji screeches, as if Makoto had just invoked the antichrist. She looks around wildly, as if expecting him to lumber out of the shadows like the boogeyman or something. Considering her criminal history, it’s probably a well-deserved caution.

Yui actually looks confused, for once. Frankly, Gojo’s a little surprised she didn’t get it right away too. Then again, Makoto has made a career out of managing hero’s secrets and public images and has a lifetime’s worth of industry connections and actually works closely with heroes— she would have heard the industry gossip on Endeavor, at the very least. The incident hadn’t been covered up, exactly, although it never made the news. 

“Oh, please,” Gojo laughs. “If I wanted him dead, don’t you think he’d be dead by now?”

“Yeah now maybe, but you had to have been, what, thirteen at the time?” Makoto counters, brows creasing. “No offense, but he’s been a Top Three Hero for decades now, what could a teenage punk have been able to do to him?”

Gojo doesn’t take offense, just smiles widely. “Do you really think my age ever stopped me from doing what I wanted?”

“I suppose that timing makes sense too,” Makoto mutters, no doubt thinking of the timeline of s-rank cremation villain Dabi’s exploits, which did in fact coincide directly with his ‘teenage punk’ phase.

“But, you…” He glances towards Yui, who trails off as she stares at him with piercing dark eyes. She shakes her head. “You call him Shou-kun— but you never treat him with the same familiarity as you do with myself and Midoriya. You don’t seem to hold any familiarity with him at all. If Endeavor really is your father… then he’s your little brother, right?”

“Who are they talking about?” Kenji whispers to Makoto, leaning over.

She leans back. “Shouto, I think. The youngest Todoroki, and one of Yui’s classmates.”

Gojo sighs, ignoring his other two bandmates to answer Yui. “Yeah, that’s right. But he was so young when I left he definitely doesn’t remember me, and to be honest, I didn’t really remember much about him either. Meeting him again has been like meeting an entirely new person.”

“And now?” 

“He’s…” Gojo trails off. He glances helplessly towards Kenji and Makoto, who both look too confused to be of much help. “I don’t know what you want me to say. He’s my brother, of course I care about him.”

Yui doesn’t look particularly judgmental as she says, “You keep him at arm's length, on purpose.”

“It just seems easier for everyone, that way,” Gojo admits. 

Shouto— he doesn’t remember much about his eldest brother, but what he does recall he clings to with a vehemence that surprised Gojo. He hadn’t intended to make such an indelible mark on his youngest brother— hadn’t intended for the boy to put him on some kind of pedestal. What will he do when he realizes the brother he idolized, his motivation for becoming a hero, is in fact a former villain and all around human dumpster fire?

“If you’ve gotten in contact with Endeavor in order to restore your legal status as a Todoroki, he’ll figure it out one way or another,” Yui points out, rationally. 

“Well it’s up in the air whether or not Endeavor can even get that done at all, but I suppose you’re right,” he concedes, crossing his arms. He glances back down the table towards Eri. “And Eri-chan and I still have to have a chat about that.” 

Eri looks up from where she’s been dunking her collection of happy meal One Piece toys into her sauces. Her poor Zoro is dripping a sticky, syrupy glaze all down her hands and the front of her dress. 

He chuckles at the sight. “And a bath, I think.”

Makoto casts a look out the window, where the sky turned dark ages ago. “It’s already pretty late. You should probably take her home.” She crosses her arms, nose scrunching up in thought. “And I need some time to come up with a good game plan for this latest revelation of yours.”

He laughs sheepishly. 

She taps her chin, leaning back in her chair. “Although I have to say, I think I could really work with this one…” 

“How many ideas going on in that head of yours are strictly legal?” Kenji asks warily. 

Makoto winks at her. “When do I ever play fair, hm? All’s fair in love and publicity stunts, you know!” 

“That didn’t answer the question,” Yui sighs. 

Makoto only smiles roguishly at Yui, before she levels an unimpressed look his way, crossing her arms. “But seriously Satoru, please tell me you don’t have any more of these identity reveals  hiding up your sleeve.”

His laugh turns a bit forced. Does being isekai’d into this world in the first place count? “Uh, none that I can think of off the top of my head, at least!”

“That’s not reassuring at all,” she laments. 

//

He’s so distracted by trying to teleport himself and Eri and her new toys all back to his suite in one piece without getting honey glaze lathered over all of them that he doesn’t even notice he’s not alone until he’s putting her down on her feet. Rookie mistake, but he’ll let himself off the hook just this once since he’s always considered this location— and the person currently in it— as safe. 

Hawks is staring blankly at the both of them, like he can’t quite believe his eyes. Gojo doesn’t blame him. He can still barely believe that anyone let him be in charge of a six year-old kid, either. 

“... Hi,” he says, belatedly, golden eyes wide. 

“Hi,” Gojo returns, resigning himself to the inevitable mess explaining this all to Hawks is going to be. Not to mention other messes he still hasn’t explained to the man. 

Eri looks just as startled to see Hawks as Hawks is to see her. But where Hawks just looks vaguely bewildered, Eri looks downright panicked. She backs up and immediately tries to hide behind his legs. 

Gojo rushes to reassure her. “Oh, Eri-chan, it’s okay. This is Hawks. He’s a— uh, a friend of mine.” Friend is not even remotely the right word for his relationship with Hawks, but it’ll have to do for now. “I—”

There’s a resounding knock on the door that startles all three of them. 

Gojo frowns, glancing towards it. After a cursory check, the person on the other side seems innocuous enough; male, middle-aged, with some kind of photosynthesis quirk that doesn’t appear to be inherently dangerous. Nonetheless he tells Eri to wait a moment with Hawks while he answers it, unwilling to endanger her even slightly, if this person ends up being some kind of threat. 

It turns out to just  be one of the hotel managers, looking fidgety and vaguely alarmed by his presence as he asks him to sign some liability papers on his new pet. As he does his level best to fill them out as quickly as possible, he hears Hawks try to make stilted small talk with Eri.

He asks how old she is, to which Eri replies with a firm five and three quarters (there’s one mystery solved), if she goes to school (she does not), and where she’s from (she says she doesn’t know). Even as he focuses on flying through this paperwork as fast as possible, he can hear the wariness creeping into Eri’s voice the longer Hawks tries to engage her in conversation, sounding a bit scared by the line of questioning, even if Gojo knows Hawks doesn’t mean anything by it. Eri’s just wary of questions about her past, especially anything that connects her to Chisaki, and rightfully so. 

Then Hawks asks her how she knows Satoru, and Gojo doesn’t have to see her to know she’s clamming up. 

He hastily scrawls his final signature on the last page, and all but shoves the stack of them back at the hapless hotel employee. He shuts the door and turns back around to try to salvage the situation, just as Eri finally replies—

“He birthed me from his own body.” 

Gojo very nearly trips over his own two feet and face plants into the floor. He just barely manages to catch himself on the wall as he staggers back towards them, unsure if he’s mortified or delighted. 

Hawks looks like Eri just hit him over the head with a frying pan, expression dazed. Eri stares up at him with a brazenly defiant look, as if daring him to question it. 

God, what has he done. He’s had her for less than a week, and she already trolls people like a fucking pro. He should not be as proud of that as he is. 

“He… what?” Hawks struggles to ask.

Eri darts a quick, questioning look towards Gojo as he enters the living room. “That’s what he told grandpa.” 

Hawks looks at him quickly, eyes wide. “… Grandpa?” He boggles. 

“Uh, I did say that,” Gojo answers, put on the spot. “But that’s taken out of context!”

Context, Hawks mouths, looking incredulous. 

In his defense, Gojo’s not entirely certain what context could possibly provide a feasible explanation. What is the context, exactly? That Gojo said it just to fuck with his old man? Hawks doesn’t even know who his old man is yet. 

Despite the compounding headache Eri’s misleading words have thrown on top of everything else, damn it all Gojo’s proud of her. He knows what she’s doing. She doesn’t know if she can trust Hawks, so she’s parroting the answer he’d given Endeavor when he’d asked something similar, even knowing full well that answer is entirely and emphatically incorrect. 

He sighs heavily. Well intentioned she may have been, but this is just yet another misunderstanding with the winged hero he’s going to have to clear up, and he’s got no time to do it. He looks down at Eri, who has a mysterious red sauce smeared across her cheek, to say nothing of her outfit or her hair. He grimaces at the sight— it’ll be hell to get out of her curls if he lets it harden.

“I promise I’ll explain everything, just give me— fifteen minutes?” He recalls their last few bath times, winces, and then amends, “Or maybe twenty? Sorry, I just really need to get her into the bath.”

“... Sure,” Hawks replies, still looking as if he hasn’t quite caught up to the surrealness of the situation.

He’s giving Gojo a look that really could mean anything, something contemplative, but also a bit panicked. 

Then he seems to remember himself, and adds, in a lighter tone; “I’m the one who should be apologizing. I’m the one who came out of the blue like this…”

“It’s fine, it's fine. We’ll be quick,” Gojo assures him hastily. It’s not as if he doesn’t want to see him, but today has already been a rollercoaster of revelations that required way more emotional availability than he was willing to give, and he’d sort of been hoping to just collapse into his bed for a few hours. 

Well, he’s already come this far today, what’s one more reveal, really? 

“Oh, but could you feed the cat for me? Food’s on the counter,” Gojo calls over his shoulder, as he hustles Eri into the bathroom. 

“... The cat?!” He hears Hawks give a squawk in protest. “Wait— you can’t leave a cat alone with a bird! Satoru!”

He laughs as he closes the door on him. “It’s just a little cat, Hawks, I’m sure you’ll be fine.” 

//

Cats are demons, and he wants that on record. 

If he’d known there was one of them in the room when he’d flown onto the balcony he would have— well, not run away, but he definitely would have waited outside on the veranda or something. As it is he hadn’t been in the suite long enough to notice the creature’s breathing over the sounds of the rest of the building. But now that he’s been made aware of it, he does indeed feel small vibrations coming from beneath the couch. 

He uses a few of his feathers to place the food bowl directly in front of the beast’s lair, watching from a safe distance away by the kitchen. He’s aware it’s ridiculous for a full grown man to be this wary of a housepet, but beyond just being the natural predator of all birds he also finds them to be annoying. Their propensity for chasing after feathers makes them an irritant he always needs to be aware of when using his feathers as part of an investigation. He couldn’t tell you how many feathers he’s lost to the damn creatures. But this isn’t some mangy alleyway cat getting in the way of a recon stakeout— this appears to be Satoru’s cat. That he’s managed to procure in the few days since Hawks has seen him. 

Along with a small child Hawks is doing his level best not to think about. 

Satoru said he’d explain when he was done with the bath. Hawks just has to be patient. Letting his thoughts spiral out of control isn’t going to help anyone, least of all himself.

It’s hard to get a reign on the worst of his doubts, though. He hadn’t seen her for very long, but the hair was quite eye-catching. Bright, shiny, and of a similar shade to Satoru’s own hair. And the way she was clinging to him, the ease in which he’d handled her… it’s hard not to think about it. Even now he can hear them in the master bathroom; the man’s low tenor interjected periodically by a much higher voice, the splashing of bathwater and quiet laughter. He desperately tries not to focus on it, tries to ignore the comfortable domesticity he seems to be intruding upon— tries not to look at the little sneakers lined up in the genkan, the children’s coloring book on the kitchen table, the sparkly backpack they’d left in the living room. 

He finds himself actually playing with the damn beast, just to distract himself. 

He dangles a feather just out of reach from the depths beneath the couch, watching as beady yellow eyes reflect light from the abyss. Just as the cat swipes out a paw, he wiggles the feather away. He repeats the process until the cat emerges from the shadows, chasing his feather in earnest. By the time Satoru returns from the bathroom he has the cat doing acrobatic flips over the couch, and he thinks he might have managed to win the infernal creature over. 

“Meow-san! You came out!” The girl cries in delight, just as the cat startles and darts back under the couch. Her excitement dims into dismay as the cat runs away. 

Satoru pats her head, where her hair is still a bit damp from her bath, curling down her nightdress. “It’s alright Eri-chan, you just startled him. He’ll come back out.”

As much as he doesn’t want to look at her, he finds himself carefully observing her anyway. Ah, it hurts as much as he thought it would. She’s a very pretty child. A cute round face with a button nose, big sparkling eyes— even the shell of her ears peeking out from her curtain of silvery hair is adorable. She looks just like Satoru, except for the ruby eyes. And the little horn at the side of her temple. She must have gotten both those traits from her… her other father (?) (Is that the right word for it?) Hawks can’t help but notice, and even though he prepared himself for the hurt he’d feel at that realization, he’s still shocked by how painful it is. 

“I’m sure if you’re really quiet and patient, he’ll come to you on his own,” Satoru assures her, ruffling her hair. “Do you want to stay here and wait for him? I have to step out to talk to my— um— friend.”

Eri nods determinably, and then crawls over to wait by the side of the couch with a tenacious air to her. Satoru just watches her with heart-wrenchingly fond eyes; the soft smile across his face feels like a burning brand pressed into Hawks’s chest. 

When he looks up at Hawks, the smile lingers there, but Hawks can see a bit of tension in the edges of his eyes. He tilts his head in the direction of the balcony, and Hawks follows him out. 

Hawks doesn’t say anything for a long moment, just steeling himself. 

Satoru doesn’t owe him anything, he reminds himself. They’d never made any promises to each other. Never talked about what they were to each other, what they were doing here, falling into each other’s arms over and over again. Hawks has very intentionally never brought it up, knowing full well he can’t make promises he knows he can’t keep. As long as the HPSC is keeping up their damning silence on the subject of Dabi, he can’t promise anything. And he’s known all that— he’s known it all along, so why does the thought of Dabi being in a relationship with someone else hurt so terribly? Why does the thought of his child make his heart ache with both pain and longing? How can he feel so betrayed when there’s nothing to betray?

“How much do you know about the Shie Hassaikai?” Satoru asks, drawing him from his spiraling thoughts. 

The topic is utterly unexpected. Are they just going to ignore the child-shaped elephant in the room? Nonetheless he gathers himself enough to answer; “... They’re a pretty big suspect in a case I’m working on, why?” 

“About that case,” Satoru begins, leaning against the railing. “Has there been any progress on the analysis from the bullets?”

Of course he knows about that. Dabi’s intel network is probably just as impressive as his own. The query also serves to remind him why he’d even come to Satoru’s hotel room at all (before he’d been distracted by unrelated revelations). While the Shie Hassaikai raid might be chugging along, tracking down their supply routes and sweeping the streets up of Trigger has been slow going. Any contacts Dabi’s willing to give him would go a long way in speeding up the process.  

“I’m not sure how much you know about them, but they’re made from biological matter,” Hawks replies, slowly. 

Satoru doesn’t look surprised, so he must have known that already. “Did the investigative team find out if it's replicable?” He asks, urgently. 

Hawks mentally rifles through all the briefings he’s been on in the last few weeks, shaking out his feathers into the cool night air as he crosses his arms. “I know they’ve managed to isolate the sequence in question… but I don’t believe they’ve managed to replicate it. The substance dissolves quickly in open air. Most of the samples the investigation managed to get their hands on didn’t last long.” 

Satoru nods along, still looking pensive. “It must still be in its prototype stages.”

Hawks nods as well. “That was the conclusion forensics came to. Are you aware of what it does?”

“Temporarily erases a person’s quirk if they come in contact with it, right?” 

“Yeah. Temporary for now,” Hawks reveals, gravely. “There’s a good chance the later versions might be able to erase someone’s quirk permanently. In light of that, the task force is placing the whole investigation under the utmost secrecy. If word got out…”

“There’d be mass panic, I’m sure.” Satoru snorts. “People just can’t handle the idea of being quirkless.”

Hawks can’t help but think it’s easy to be so dismissive of the subject from Satoru’s position. The bulk of his abilities are unrelated to quirks at all, so it would hardly make much difference to him. As for himself… he can’t even fathom it. It would be one thing, to have never been born with a quirk at all, but to have one only for it to be ripped from you? To lose something as integral to his sense of self as his wings? It’s too horrifying to even contemplate. 

“Something like that would destroy society as we know it,” Hawks cautions, then wonders why he even bothers. Satoru can destroy society as they know it, and he doesn’t need a magic quirk erasing bullet to do it.

“But because of the biological component, it’s unstable and difficult to create, right?” Satoru returns, looking out into the city as he drums his fingers against the railing. “So if you cut off the source, you can stop them from being created at all.”

“Sure— except tracking down the biomatter that creates the substance in the first place is going to be impossible if we can’t even get it under a microscope without destroying it.”

“Well I’ve already solved that part,” Satoru says dismissively, making Hawks gape in shock. “So really, it’s just a matter of taking down the supply chain.” 

“You what?” Hawks says, blankly.

Satoru jerks his thumb back in the direction of his living room. “That biomatter was coming from Eri. They’d been keeping her locked up to use her for their experiments. Without her, they can’t make those bullets.” 

Hold on— a little girl being imprisoned by the Shie Hassaikai? Wasn’t there something about this in the briefing Sir Nighteye had hosted? Nighteye had been understandably vague on the subject, but Hawks can recall two of Tokoyami’s fellow students being particularly distraught over the notion. That girl was Eri? Satoru’s Eri? 

Hawks boggles at him. “Your— your daughter was being held hostage by the yakuza?”

How are they still in existence right now? How has Satoru not obliterated them from the earth for such a grievous offense against him?

It’s Satoru’s turn to gape at him. “My—” He cuts himself off, voice a little high. He scrubs a hand over his mouth, chuckling weakly. “Right, shit. My bad, I said I would explain it all, but I’m doing it all out of order.”

“Eri’s not mine. What she said earlier— that was a joke that, uh, isn’t nearly as funny taken out of context. I didn’t give birth to her. We’re not biologically related at all.” He explains quickly. 

Oh. 

Hawks swallows, thickly. That’s one question answered. 

But there’s another one— one he’s been sincerely trying to ignore ever since the mere possibility became something that could be theoretically possible…

He awkwardly clears his throat. “Uh, but is that, like, a thing? You can do?”

Satoru’s powers are impossible and unknowable. Nothing seems out of the realm of possibility, where Satoru’s involved.

It’s Satoru’s turn to look a bit awkward. His ears turn very red as he starts to cough. “Oh! No. That is not a thing I’m capable of doing, not in the slightest. I think the only reason Eri repeated it is because she was scared to tell the truth. Given her situation she’s smart to be so cautious… but like I said, out of context it’s not very funny.”

(Gojo makes a mental note to maybe not make that joke again. It was just so outlandish he’d thought it was hysterical— but evidently in a world that doesn’t and likely will never be able to understand the extent of his powers, people were going to take his words at face value. Then again, when has that ever stopped him from trolling people?

But he does feel bad for Hawks, who probably didn’t deserve that kind of stress right now. Man, the guy must have been sweating bullets there for a second. Now Gojo feels a little bad waiting until after Eri’s bath to clear things up, he must have been having an existential crisis out there while Gojo was blithely making bubble castles with Eri.)

Hawks lets out a breath he hadn’t even realized he’d been holding. The relief sinking over him is a palpable thing, even as there’s maybe a tiny part of him that might mourn the loss a bit.  

“So… Overhaul is her father, then?” Hawks makes a valiant effort to return back to the main topic at hand, before his thoughts stray any farther. 

“No. Her real father is dead,” Satoru answers, then pauses for an offbeat. Satoru’s hand moves to the back of his neck. “She doesn’t really have a father figure in her life. Or well— at least not yet. There’s a lot of legal stuff to jump through, and the status of the rest of her relatives is still up in the air, to say nothing of the fact I haven’t actually talked about it with her…”

Hawks stares at him, eyes growing wider as he rambles on. 

He swallows thickly. “You’re… planning on adopting her?” 

Satoru looks down with a rueful, self-deprecating smile. “It’s a crazy, stupidly bad idea, isn’t it?”

Well, he’s not sure about stupid. But it certainly sounds like a catastrophically life-changing event that does indeed border on crazy. Frankly though, jumping head first into catastrophic events is pretty on brand for the ex-villain.

That being said, he doesn’t think it’s a bad idea at all. “I wouldn’t call it a bad idea,” he voices his opinion aloud, once he’s recovered from the shock of it all. 

He hadn’t seen much of their interactions, but from what he could see… Well, there are plenty of people in the world who never should have been parents that somehow acquire children despite their astounding lack of qualifications. His own chief among them. If his own parents had shown him even a fraction of the tenderness and care he’d seen from Satoru in the last thirty minutes, he would have thought himself the luckiest, most loved kid in the world. He thinks about how fiercely protective Satoru has been over U.A.’s Class 1-A— walking them home late at night, teleporting across oceans at the first sign of trouble— and can’t help but think Satoru would be a wonderful parent. 

He doesn’t know very much about Eri’s situation, other than the fact it’s undoubtedly been traumatic for her and put her in all kinds of danger. In the last Shie Hassaikai briefing he’d been a part of, Nighteye had mentioned a hostage they needed to be aware of, and Eraserhead had cut him off and explained that would be a non-issue moving forward. They must have been referring to Eri. 

Being with Satoru… he thinks that would be good for her. It might not be the most stable of a homelife, just from the brief window he’s had into Satoru’s chaotic life, but it would be a place full of safety and support. 

And it speaks volumes about Satoru, that he’s willing to completely upturn his life for her sake. Taking care of kids is no joke. The responsibility of keeping them safe, nurturing them, and teaching them how to survive in this cruel and unforgiving world is not something for the faint of heart— Hawks should know. Even having Tokoyami for the week has been unaccountably stressful, and the kid’s nearly full grown, with parents and teachers of his own! 

“It’s a lot, though,” he adds, huffing out a laugh. “Even interns are stressful.”

“Yeah, no kidding.” Satoru chuckles, ruefully. “It’s been… a bit of a trial by fire. But we’re working through it.”

Hawks can’t help but take a moment to appreciate the soft expression on the man’s face as he gazes back inside— a look he feels he rarely gets to see on the former villain. The way the city lights cast fractured patterns against his face, the iridescent glow of his eyes, the silver in his hair. He’s overwhelmed with the urge to reach out and touch him, even though he knows it's not the time or place. 

“For what it’s worth you seem to be doing a great job of it so far,” Hawks says, fondly. 

Satoru tears his eyes back to Hawks, blinking as if Hawks has caught him off guard. “That’s— … thanks.” Even in the dim light Hawks can see how his ears turn red at the praise. It makes Hawks want to do something stupid, like lean over and bite them. 

Hawks mentally yanks himself back onto topic, shaking out his wings. “Ah, I should probably let you get back to that, huh?”

He’d originally come here with the intention of asking Dabi for any underworld informants he was willing to cough up, and maybe dinner (and more) if he managed to catch the other man in time. It had been a rather spur of the moment decision— he’d dropped Tokoyami back off at his dorms, chatted with his analysts, gotten a rather dissatisfying report on the progress from the recon team, and taken one look at his empty hotel room and lonely bed and decided he’d just fly over and see what Satoru was up to. In hindsight, he probably should have at least texted the man to warn him instead of trying to surprise him like this. It would have been better for his own blood pressure, at the very least. 

“I actually had a question about the best informants in the Mos Espa area, but that can wait,” Hawks adds. 

Satoru shakes his head. He glances back at Eri once more before he turns fully towards Hawks. “No, it’s alright. There’s still an hour or so before it's her bedtime, and I don’t think I’m going to be able to pull her away from that cat anyhow. What did you want to know?”

//

Satoru stays outside with his friend for longer than she expects. 

In the meanwhile, she’s made some slight progress with Meow, getting the cat to at least sniff at her fingers from beneath the couch a few times. Satoru’s winged friend helpfully flies in a red feather to help her in her task, which does seem to make Meow a bit more charitable or at the very least more predatory. Once she has it in hand and tickles beneath the couch he comes out in full with a pounce. The feather is incredible— it flies right out of Eri’s hands to dangle alluringly in front of Meow’s rapidly expanding eyes, only to flip away before he can catch it. It dances around the room all on its own, like some kind of magic! Eri knows it must be a quirk of some kind, but it’s still enthralling to watch it in person. She and Meow are equally entertained by its loops and turns. 

By the time the feather has become inert and the balcony door is rattling open again, she’s starting to feel sleepy. 

Eri thinks she isn’t supposed to see, but when she turns around at the sound she catches the man leaning towards Satoru and catching his mouth in a kiss. 

So Satoru and that guy have that kind of relationship then, huh? Eri doesn’t know much about ‘adult’ relationships, other than what she overhears from Chisaki’s underlings, but from what she can discern they’re either fun and frivolous or fraught with ‘baby mama drama’ and ‘no-good double crossing skanks’. She’s not sure what a skank is, but she’s pretty sure Satoru doesn’t have a baby, no matter his jokes. And when she peaks back around, Satoru and his ‘friend’ are no longer kissing, but are standing very close with their arms around each other as they talk, in a manner that doesn’t seem particularly fun or frivolous either. Maybe they’re not in the kind of relationships she hears about from her yakuza minders? Eri doesn’t really know about any other kinds of relationships though— well, except for the ones in storybooks. The ones where the two characters fall in love and kiss and hold each other close and get married and live happily ever after. 

Oh. Maybe that’s it. Maybe Satoru and his friend are getting married.

“Ready for bed, Eri-chan?” Satoru asks, as he closes the sliding door behind him. His ‘friend’ is still there next to him, smiling at her in a way that she thinks is supposed to be friendly, but just looks a bit awkward, like the way adults get when they’re trying to be nice but have no idea how to interact with kids.

She nods slowly, rubbing at her eyes. Satoru leans over to hoist her up in his arms, even though the bedroom isn’t that far, and she’s perfectly capable of walking there herself. She likes it when he carries her though, so she doesn’t protest in the least. 

“I’m just going to put her to bed,” he tells the man with the red wings. “Shouldn’t take too long. Do you mind waiting? I still have something I wanted to talk to you about.”

She can’t see his face, and his tone is light and unremarkable, but there’s an unmistakable tension in his arms that Eri doesn’t think she likes. Satoru’s friend must sense it too, the amiable smile on his face dissolving into something more guarded. 

“Yeah, sure.” Is all the blonde says in response. He meets her eyes and waves. “Sleep well, Eri-chan!”

She gives him a sleepy blink in response, before she’s carried into the spare room that feels more like home to her than any other place she’s ever been in has. 

She doesn’t mind bedtime with Satoru— not like she used to, when she was still locked up under Chisaki’s thumb. Satoru always sings until she can’t even keep her eyes open, soft and soothing things that lull her right to sleep. And if she wakes up feeling scared he always seems to know, and comes in and lies with her until she settles down again. She doesn’t remember anyone ever doing that for her. Maybe her parents before… before everything went wrong. 

But this is better, she thinks.

She hardly remembers them. A woman with long, flowing hair, just like Eri’s. She had a pretty, lonely smile. A man with glasses. A permeating sadness, the sound of raised voices echoing in a barren hallway. Then there was the screaming. The ringing silence as an old man with a weathered face stares down at her. And then there was Chisaki, and nothing else but darkness. Anything is better than that. 

Now she has Satoru: who finds her toys to play with even after she had a screaming fit about them; who delights in watching her try new foods and is determined to find her favorite; who sings her to sleep without fail, and gently brushes out her hair every morning when she wakes. Satoru, who doesn't keep her locked in a room, but seems to go out of his way to introduce her to everyone in his life and show her everything the world has to offer, even though apparently that sleepy-looking guy that all the cats loved at the cat cafe had told Satoru he has to ‘keep a low profile’.  

Life with Satoru seems too idyllic to be real. Too good to be true. Too good for a girl like Eri, who curses every life she touches. Who killed her father with her quirk and drove her mother into abandoning her. 

Good things like this can’t be real for girls like Eri. But she’ll enjoy it, while it lasts.

“Say, Eri-chan…” Satoru says, as Eri settles under the covers of her bed. His guitar is out of its case, but he hasn’t picked it up yet. He’s watching her a little carefully from his spot sitting by her hip. The look opens a dark, gnawing pit in her stomach.

She blinks at him, fingers curling desperately into the duvet. Panic sets in at the base of her throat. It’s not his usual expression— he looks worried, and serious. Nervous, even. 

Eri can only think of one reason for that. Her. She tears her gaze away, willing the sting out of her eyes. She thought she’d had more time. She thought they were both going to try, just like that old obaa-san had said. But that’s silly. Why would anyone try their best for Eri? She’s a cursed child. It took Satoru a while to see it, but it looks like he’s realized just how much trouble she is and is washing his hands of her. 

“Do you, um, like it here? With me, I mean.” 

Eri squeezes her eyes shut. 

She doesn’t want to answer, because the answer is a resounding yes. She can’t bear the thought of having to lose it all.

Satoru must take her silence as some kind of answer in and of itself. “Uh, well… I guess it must be hard, huh? I’m sure you’ve realized by now that I don’t really know what I’m doing here. Thank you for putting up with my pitiful attempts at parenting— I’m sure it hasn’t been easy for you. There are definitely people better qualified for this, I know. People who can give you the kind of support you need. I’m sorry I suck at it.” Satoru laughs, but it sounds a bit sad. 

That’s enough to quell her tears. Satoru… she doesn’t want him to be sad. She opens her eyes. He’s not looking at her, gaze cast down where he’s tracing patterns on the covers with his finger. 

“If you don’t want to stay… Eri-chan, I won’t force you.” 

“... Stay?” She repeats, eyes wide. 

She doesn’t understand what’s going on here. What does he mean, if she doesn’t want to stay? Why would she not want to stay? Isn’t he here to tell her she has to leave? 

He rubs the back of his neck, gaze flitting around the room. “Yeah, you know. Stay here… with me. For as long as— well, as long as you want to, I guess. It probably is too soon to ask about anything else yet, come to think of it, so, uh, let’s just table anything more than that for later right?”

He’s talking too fast again, and by the end of his rambling she doesn’t really understand what he’s talking about… but that first part. That she thinks she understands. 

“I— I can stay?” Eri sits up, unable to hide the eagerness in her voice. “I can stay with you?” 

Her reaction startles Satoru into turning towards her. “Of course you can stay! You can stay with me for— for as long as you’ll have me!”

Forever, she thinks. That’s how long she wants to stay. 

Satoru’s expression turns worried. “Is that okay with you, Eri-chan? If I get guardianship over you? I’m not sure you really know how big of a deal that is… that means I can decide what house we live in, and what school you go to, and a bunch of other big decisions!”

Eri’s eyes grow wider. Living in a house, and going to school? That sounds like a dream come true!

She just nods eagerly. 

Satoru stares at her, conflicted. He sighs. “You’re sure you’re okay with that? You can always tell me if you don’t like something of course, and I’ll do my best to change it, but I kind of already have a place and there’s only so many schools you can pick from in the area…”

Eri barely listens to his words, already daydreaming about it all. A real house, just like in her picture books. And school! Chisaki had someone come in and teach her how to read and write and add numbers and stuff, but nothing like a real school! But will the other kids like her? What if they think she’s weird?

“—Eri-chan? Are you listening?” 

A hand ruffles the top of her head, dragging her abruptly out of her thoughts. 

“Mm,” she says, when Satoru stares at her as if he’s expecting a verbal answer. 

He purses his lips. “And you’re okay with staying with me, for a while? Even after Chisaki and the Shie Hassaikai are all arrested?”

She nods, but he’s still giving her that look like he’s waiting for a real response, so she adds, “Yes.”

“And going to school? And seeing a doctor about your quirk, just to make sure everything’s working okay?”

The thought of another person peering at her like she’s some kind of specimen in an experiment makes her skin crawl, but she reminds herself that Satoru will be there. Satoru, who people sometimes call Dabi, also known as the strongest s-rank villain in the country. She’s still nervous about the idea of it, but she’s willing to agree if Satoru thinks she should.

“Yes,” she says again.

Satoru still watches her like he’s expecting some other kind of response, like he doesn’t believe his own ears. Finally he leans back, a complicated but genuine smile on his face. 

“Well, alright then. Looks like you’re stuck with me.” 

Chapter Text

Hawks doesn’t mean to eavesdrop, but his feathers make it really hard not to listen in on private conversations, no matter how much he doesn’t want to. And this time the cat’s not even around to distract him, probably too tired out from earlier to continue playing.

Satoru’s concerns from earlier were hilariously unfounded; he’s going to be an incredible father. Any kid would be lucky to have him.

Anyone would be lucky to have him, period. 

Hawks is hardly unaware of this fact. The intense longing that burns up his chest when he thinks about it is unwelcome but hardly unexpected. He wants, more than anything, to slot himself into all the spaces in the other man’s life and burrow his way in there until there’s no hope of removing him. He wants all that they have right now, and more besides. He wants everything. He wants in a way he doesn’t think he’s ever really wanted anything in his entire life, maybe not even his career as a top hero.

He wants it all, as he sits on the couch and unabashedly listens in on Satoru’s very private, very intimate conversation.

He wants the kid, the house, the school visits and the playdates. All the domestic shit he never thought he’d get a chance to have— or at least not until long after he’d retired and the Commission was through with him. He wants bathtimes full of laughter and bedtimes full of unbearably beautiful songs. Of course Satoru has a voice that’s just as breathtaking as the rest of him. He can’t even be mad that Satoru is serenading someone else to sleep before he’s done it for Hawks, because the whole thing is so stupidly sweet he can barely handle it. The thought of Satoru just across the room softly singing his daughter to sleep has something excruciating squeezing around his heart like a vice, making it difficult to breathe. 

He wants this with a terrible, furious longing— made all the worse because he knows he can’t have it. 

By the time Satoru comes back out he has it mostly under control, he thinks. 

He can hold a working conversation with the former villain without doing something irrevocably stupid in the middle of it, like get on his knees and ask the other man to marry him, or make any other array of promises he knows damn well he can’t keep. He can discuss what to do with the illegal weapons supply chains he’s tracking, work with him to winnow out the list of informants, relay any relevant information on the Hassaikai case he can give the other man— their usual shop talk. He can even banter like old friends, like they always do. 

See, he tells himself this, and yet the first thing he blurts out when Satoru sits down next to him is; “You’re going to be an amazing dad.” 

Hawks rarely sees the other man blush like he does now, all across his cheeks up to the tips of his ears. 

“Ahh, I’m not so sure about that.” Satoru looks away, scratching his cheek. “Hopefully I’ll be better than my own, at any rate.” 

It’s the first time the other man has ever mentioned any kind of family to him, even in passing. And only the second time he’s ever heard of Satoru having any kind of familial relations at all— and even that was just from earlier, when Eri mentioned a grandfather. Obviously he must have a family of some kind, but Hawks had sort of assumed their situations were similar, in that they were functionally alone. It’s a distraction from his own pit of embarrassing feelings, and he wastes no time latching onto it. 

“You’re not close then, I take it?” He probably shouldn’t prod like this, but he can’t help it. He’s desperate for any information on the other man, no matter how vague or insignificant.

Satoru barks out a startled, humorless laugh. “I let him think I was dead for ten years so— yeah, I would say we’re not particularly close.”

Hawks blinks rapidly. He’s not entirely sure what response he’d expected, but it definitely hadn’t been that. There’s not having a functional relationship with your own father… and then there’s letting him think you’ve been dead for a decade. 

Satoru doesn’t seem to be expecting a response from him, which is for the best, because he truly has none to give. 

Dealing with family relationships— as much as he’s always quietly longed for them— have never been his forte. It’s one of those pillars for a collective social fabric that he can never connect with; an amalgamation of life experiences that he always seems to be a step removed from. 

Hawks doesn’t know what he’s supposed to say here. Should he be sorry for Satoru, have sympathy for the deteriorated relationship he has with his father? Should he be pressing him for more answers, encouraging him to vent? 

There’s a long moment where he just meets Hawks’s gaze head on, expression inscrutable. Hawks holds his gaze, not entirely sure what Satoru’s looking for. 

While he’s sitting here trying to come up with an adequate response, Satoru seems to come to some kind of conclusion. 

“I probably would have let him continue thinking that, if it wasn’t for you,” Satoru shares, into the silence.

“...Me?” He clarifies, confused. What could he possibly have to do with Satoru’s relationship— or lack thereof— with his father?  

“Yeah,” Satoru continues, tilting his head back to stare up at the ceiling. “You seem to like him for some reason, despite his lackluster personality and profound personal shortcomings, so I thought I’d see what the fuss was all about. I still don’t really get what you see in him, to be honest.” 

If anything, Hawks is even more confused. “I said that?” 

Satoru rolls his head in Hawks’s direction, grinning slowly. 

Hawks isn’t sure if he likes the sight of it. 

It’s the sort of smile he makes when he’s about to do something that’s sure to give Hawks premature gray hairs. 

“You did, don’t you remember? You said you guys weren’t friends, but you seem to hold a pretty high opinion of him nonetheless.”

“I—” Hawks feels like he missed the plot here somewhere. 

When did he say that? And who was he talking about? He’s about to protest that Satoru must be thinking of someone else, when the realization slams into him like a freight train and knocks the wind right out of him.

He’s so shocked he falls right off the couch. 

“Wait— you— hold on—” He starts frantically, not even certain what he’s actually trying to say. Satoru is definitely laughing at him, as he watches Hawks flounder on the ground. That asshole, he knew Hawks would respond like this. 

“No,” he says, aghast, as Satoru dissolves into laughter. 

“No, no, no—” He scrambles back onto the couch, grabbing the shaking man by the shoulders. “Tell me I didn’t ask Endeavor if he wanted to sleep with his own son, even as a joke!!”

Satoru is laughing so hard he’s in tears, gasping for breath. Hawks is so far from amused he’s fairly certain he’s about to have a panic attack. “Satoru! Seriously! What the fuck am I supposed to do?! I can’t believe I’m still alive right now!” 

“It’s not that big of a deal,” Satoru wheezes out, wiping his eyes. 

“Not that big of a—” Hawks echoes, panicked. “It is a huge deal! Holy shit!”

Then he processes what this means, beyond just his ill-advised jokes and their unfortunate consequences, and collapses back onto the couch as he repeats, voice high with disbelief, “Holy shit. Endeavor is your father.”

Dabi, the former number one villain in the country— and probably the world, except he switched to being a hero before they could give him that dubious honor— is the son of the current Number One Hero. 

Satoru, a man he knows is just as jaded and wounded by his past as Hawks, is Endeavor’s son. Not only does Satoru have a personal history with Endeavor, he has one that’s so terrible he decided to fake his own death for the past decade. 

Honestly, there’s way too many angles to this shocking revelation for him to comprehend right now. He’s going to be unpacking this for days. 

The shock still hasn’t settled enough for it all to sink in, but he does have enough presence of mind to ask; “Who knows about this?”

He answers his own question before Satoru can even respond; Endeavor must have known, or at the very least suspected. Hawks doesn’t know for how long, but he at least must have had his suspicions when Satoru left for Europe. The preoccupation with Dabi, the fixation on what seemed like completely irrelevant aspects of the villain’s character and habits… those weren't the actions of a hero trying to hunt down a wanted criminal, but a father trying to find his son. 

“Only a handful of people right now,” Satoru replies, his earlier humor washing away into something more pensive as he cards a hand through his hair. “But it’s hard to say how long that will last.” 

“You’ve managed to keep it a secret for this long,” Hawks has to point out, because Satoru has point blank told him he’s Endeavor’s son and he’s still having a hard time wrapping his head around it. 

It makes all the sense in the world, and yet the concept still remains rather unfathomable. 

In hindsight, he had all the pieces to put this together in his hands this whole time. Satoru already revealed his actual quirk was a fire quirk. He knew Endeavor had a weirdly personal obsession with Dabi. And he even knew the man had suffered some kind of loss in his family— he recalls that butsudan he’d glimpsed at the man’s house with sudden clarity. He damns himself for trying to be respectful of the other man’s privacy and not snooping when he had the chance; if he’d just peeked into the room to see the photo on the altar, he would have put two and two together much earlier. 

On the other hand though, he can see why no one’s ever put this together before. 

Endeavor is a fiercely private person, likely for good reason. As the acting Number One Hero, he has a lot of enemies. There was a reason the public never knew the first thing about All Might’s private life, including his real name. Hawks has known the man for months, has been working in close quarters with the other man, even taking meals with him on occasion. He’d even like to say they were friends, if not close acquaintances— he doesn’t think it’s an exaggeration for him to say he’s probably the closest to Endeavor, out of all the other top heroes. The man keeps everyone at a distance. 

That Endeavor even had a dead child at all wasn’t common knowledge. Hawks certainly hadn’t known about it, for all that he’s been working so closely with the flame hero. But even for the select few who must have known about it, there’s still quite a leap in logic to think Endeavor’s dead child was actually the very much alive supervillain with a telekinesis quirk. They don’t even really look alike, and Hawks should know, since he’s stared at both their faces… quite a lot.

Shouto though… now that makes sense. No wonder the kid always seemed vaguely familiar to him. If you know what to look for— and can look past that unique coloring— he and Satoru actually look a lot alike. They both look nothing like Endeavor, though. They must get their features from their mother.

At any rate, if Satoru wanted to continue to keep it a secret… well, it’s worked out for him so far. 

But Satoru shakes his head. “Sure, but that was before— everything.” 

He waves a hand in the air grandly, as if to possibly encompass all that’s happened in the past few months; taking down one of the most dangerous villains in the history of quirks on live television, starting a vigilante revolution, and destroying a global terrorist organization, as examples. 

“And I don’t really care if Endeavor tells anyone I’m his son— that’ll look worse for him than for me,” Satoru adds, idly. “But it might not be something he can control. If I’m going to be taking care of Eri permanently, I want as many legal protections for her as I possibly can. That includes reclaiming my old identity and giving her my legal name, and that’s something that has to be filed and sorted out by the government.”

“In which case there’d be a lot of opportunity for the information to get out,” Hawks observes, frowning.

“Exactly.” The white-haired man sighs. He turns around on the couch to face Hawks, feet tucked underneath him. He smiles a bit tremulously. “And I didn’t want you to find out that way. I didn’t want you thinking I hid it on purpose or anything like that— it wasn’t like that at all. I just— I dunno, how bad does it sound if I say I just didn’t care enough about it to bring it up?”

Hawks has no idea how to respond to that. His heart does a weird little flip in his chest, something warm curling in his stomach when he realizes the other man cares enough about him to want to tell him something so personal on his own terms. He’s touched the former villain would actually even consider his feelings on the matter at all; Satoru’s entire life is about to be upended, yet he still worried enough about how Hawks would take it to tell him personally. 

Come to think on it… he thinks Satoru might have tried to tell him before. 

That morning where he’d been rushing to get back to the office, he’d asked Satoru point blank what was going on with him and Endeavor, and they’d been cut off before Satoru could give him a proper response. That whole conversation had been odd, now that he thinks about it. Looking back on it, Satoru has always been odd, when it comes to the subject of Endeavor. He never had the kind of response to the flame hero that he would expect from a villain. 

As a general rule, Dabi has never approached the concept of heroes in the manner most villains of his caliber would. 

He’s mostly ambivalent on them as people, and although he has plenty of uncharitable thoughts on the profession, he can respect the heroes themselves for their dedication to helping others. He’s always seemed rather fond of All Might, and Hawks doesn’t think it’s arrogant of him to say that Satoru is definitely fond of him. But when it comes to Endeavor… there’s always been something cold in his dismissal whenever the man is brought up, even in passing. 

“... You really don’t like him at all, do you?” He observes, sitting up to face the other man. 

“No,” Satoru confirms, bluntly. “As a hero, I think your summary of him was pretty spot on. He’s not going to win any personality contests, but he does good work. As a person… I can’t think of anyone more undeserving of the family they’ve got than him.” 

That’s right. Endeavor has more kids than just Shouto, the one attending U.A. (and suddenly a lot of Dabi’s actions surrounding Class 1-A make so much sense), he has at least one daughter that Hawks met very briefly when she’d answered the door to the man’s house. He knows the older hero is married, so he must have a spouse. And now Hawks knows he has another son besides Shouto— and soon he’ll have a new granddaughter too. 

“If that’s really how you feel about him,” Hawks begins slowly, “then why would you want Eri anywhere near him?” 

Satoru shrugs. “She deserves to have a family,” he says. “He might not be worth the effort, but my siblings are good people. If anything happens to me, I know they’ll do everything in their power to protect her. She’s got the kind of quirk that means people will always want something from her; at the very least, the Todoroki name will keep the worst of the sharks at bay.” 

… How can this man possibly think he won’t be anything but a great father? Hawks honestly can’t fathom it. He’s only known this girl for a few days, but he’s already committed to protecting her for her entire life, whether he’s around to see it or not. He would reach out to his own father— a man he has no lost love for— after letting the man think he was dead for a decade, because of this girl. She might not be his daughter biologically, he might not have even known about her at all until a few days ago, but Hawks is fairly certain he’d move heaven and earth for that girl. 

“For what it’s worth… I think Endeavor will do his best to protect her, too. I can’t claim to know what kind of father he is, but at least as a hero, I can say he does his best to keep innocents safe.” 

Satoru just shakes his head, smiling ruefully. “Even from himself?”

Hawks grows cold at the implication.

He only ever sees the man as Endeavor, the Number One Hero— never Todoroki Enji, the man behind the hero. He’s trying not to draw his own assumptions, trying to remain as unbiased as he possibly can when he’s already been so unknowingly tangled up in this family from the start. 

But what Satoru is implying right now… 

Before Hawks can even formulate a response to the horrifying prospect, Satoru continues; “Well, not that I’m actually worried about that. Her quirk is powerful, but it’s not the kind of strength he’d care about. The worst he’d do is ignore her.”

Hawks swallows thickly, hands curled tightly against his knees. “... And if she did? Have a quirk that he cared about?” 

A powerful quirk like yours? He doesn’t say aloud.

Satoru blinks those haunting eyes at him. He’s curled up with his feet beneath him facing Hawks, one arm thrown indolently over the back of the couch, cradling his head in his hands. His posture is deceptively relaxed; Hawks doesn't trust that casual demeanor for a second— not when those eyes seem to blaze in the night.

“I’d finish the job— for real this time— before he could even think about laying a hand on her,” Satoru says, voice colder than he’s ever heard it. There’s no room to doubt the lethal promise in his words. 

… For real this time? 

He wants to ask, but he’s not sure he’s ready to hear the answer. 

He doesn’t get the chance to, anyway, because Satoru’s attention snaps towards the second bedroom before he can even try to tackle the sickly feeling rising in his gut. Those eyes of his must sense something even Hawks’s feathers can’t. 

“Eri?” Hawks asks, quietly. 

“Yeah.” He sighs, getting to his feet. “She’s been having trouble staying asleep.” 

Hawks imagines she must have plenty of reasons to sleep so fitfully, given her history. He sends the other man a sympathetic look. That’s probably not doing his own sleep schedule any favors. 

Hawks nods. “I’ll get out of your hair, then.” 

Satoru glances back at him, something flickering in his eyes. “You don’t have to go, if you don’t want to,” he says, voice casual. 

He bites his lip, hesitant. “I wouldn’t want to intrude.” 

Whatever he and Satoru have together… he knows it’s real, but he also knows it’s not meant to last. Satoru and Eri— they’re going to be family. Permanently and irrevocably tied together with the sort of immutable filial bond Hawks has only ever seen from afar. He feels like an interloper, in light of that. Like he’s infringing somewhere he doesn’t belong. 

“You wouldn’t be,” Satoru assures him. Then he grins, sheepishly. “Well, it’s not like I can promise you a good time or anything, what with a kid sleeping next door… but I’d like it if you stayed.”

“Oh,” Hawks feels his cheeks growing warm. “Well, if it’s really no trouble…”

While Satoru’s off gentling a young, traumatized girl back to sleep, Hawks slinks into the master bathroom to get ready for bed. The late hour hits him like a freight train; it had been a long and exhausting day before he’d showed up here, and all the twists and turns of this evening have only seemed to lengthen the hours exponentially. 

He honestly doesn’t think he has it in him to handle any more revelations tonight, but evidently his brain does not agree with him and instead drags him into yet another existential crisis as he reaches for his toothbrush.

Because he has one, here. He’s had one since he crashed here while he was sick, and Satoru apparently just never bothered to throw it out. At this rate, he should probably stop stealing all of Satoru’s clothes and maybe think about just leaving a set here. But the very idea of it edges too close to a kind of commitment he knows he can’t promise, no matter how much he might desperately want to, and the reminder just leaves him empty and sad on top of his exhaustion. So he just steals another pair of sweatpants and promises not to take them this time, no matter how comfy they are. 

He’s sure he’ll have a whole other crisis on Satoru’s identity and the worrying implications about his father in the morning, but for now he’s tired enough to just accept the fact he’s apparently been sleeping with his coworker’s son for months without knowing it, and frankly he’s just grateful he’s not going back to a cold and empty hotel room. 

He intends to wait for the other man, certain they have more to discuss, everything he’s learned today settling unevenly in his chest as his thoughts unspool in his head. But the moment his head hits the pillow he feels all of it get dragged under the inexorable tide of sleep, and he doesn’t even bother to fight it as he drifts off. 

//

She learns the hard way that Satoru’s ‘friend’ didn’t leave when she wakes up for the second time that night and Satoru isn’t immediately there to lull her back to sleep. 

Eri blinks into the dark ceiling with her heart pounding in her chest, the frantic rush slowly leaving her as she blinks away the fractured memories of her dreams. She expects Satoru to somehow just know that she’s had bad dreams again, as he has for the past few days. But as she twists her hands into her comforter, there’s no telltale sound of feet padding down the hall. She wonders if she could just try to go back to sleep on her own— nightmares aren’t new to her, and there was never anyone to run their hands through her hair or rub her back until she fell asleep again before, so there’s no reason she can’t. 

She just… doesn’t want to.

She’s crawling out from under the covers before she can even really think about it, working on some lost instinct from a time she can’t consciously recall, back when she lived in a little house with two adults she called mother and father. She pads quietly over to the door to Satoru’s room; she’s still half-asleep and not thinking properly, still moving on muscle-memory from her long gone childhood, otherwise she’d never have been bold enough to do something like this. The door creaks open with more noise than she’s expecting. It’s enough to knock her out of her daze, and she freezes in the doorway when she realizes what she’s done. 

She’s about to run back to her own room when a hand flings out from beneath the covers. “Mm… Eri-chan?” His voice is gravelly and slicked with sleep.

She’s not sure if he can see her, but she’s too nervous to speak, so she simply nods in response. 

“Did you have a bad dream?”

Another nod.

Satoru yawns, then scoots back and throws the blanket off and beckons her closer. 

She takes a hesitant step forward, and when he doesn’t do anything else but blink sleepily at her, crosses the room and burrows under the covers with him. It’s toasty warm under the blankets, and the bed smells like Satoru. The scent is almost as comforting as the thought of someone else beside her. When she peers up at him after she’s settled in bed, he just pats her head with an incomprehensible murmur, eyes slipping shut. 

It doesn’t take her very long to fall back asleep, now that she feels safe and warm. 

She wakes up before Satoru, blinking into the dim light of morning with a calmness that surprises her. She doesn’t remember what she dreamed about, if she dreamed about anything at all. She surfaces from sleep snuggly tucked up against Satoru’s warmth. It’s such a comfortable way to wake up, she almost wants to just go back to sleep. 

She doesn’t, though, because movement from the other side of the bed startles her awake. She turns with wide eyes and sees she and Satoru aren’t the only inhabitants of the bed. 

The man with the big red wings from last night is staring back at her. Hawks blinks. She blinks back. 

He shoots her a small smile, then he puts his finger to his lips and tilts his head towards Satoru, still asleep. Eri watches as he slowly pushes off the bed, turning around to stretch and revealing the broad expanse of his back. She’s surprised to see his wings are gone— well, not gone, just much smaller than she remembered, just a few red feathers sprouting between his shoulder blades. She’s even more surprised when all the feathers fly back to him from somewhere she can’t see, assembling back into full glory as he stands properly. 

He tiptoes out of the bedroom.

There’s a moment where Eri just looks towards the doorway with lingering trepidation, nothing but Satoru’s rhythmic, even breathing from beside her to break the silence. Then there’s a muffled curse, and a low, yowling hiss from the other side of the door, and Eri slowly untangles herself from the sheets and follows after him. 

The blonde man is in the kitchen holding a carton of eggs in one hand and a loaf of bread in the other, pressed up against the corner of the kitchen counter as he has some kind of intense staredown with the cat, who’s crouched by the microwave with his tail all puffed up. 

“Meow-san!” She whispers, which startles the cat and has him leaping off the counter immediately. 

Eri worries he’s going to run under the couch again, but instead he just winds over towards his food bowl, then perches in front of it. 

“I think he wants food,” Hawks says, setting the eggs down behind him, keeping both eyes on the cat. 

Eri thinks it’s a little funny that a grown man seems so wary of a small creature like Meow, but it must be a bird thing. He scoops out a cup of cat food for Meow, but gives it to Eri to run over to the cat and drop it in Meow’s bowl. It seems to be what the cat was waiting for, the ornery feline tucking in to his breakfast the moment Eri steps away. He even lets Eri pet him as he eats, which is very exciting for the five year-old. 

“What about you, Eri-chan?” The man asks, quiet enough not to wake Satoru up, but loud enough for Eri to hear him from the other room. “Do you want breakfast?”

She stands up and cautiously makes her way back towards the kitchen, where the blonde has a pan on the stove. He looks a bit sheepish as he turns the burner on. “I can’t cook much, but I’m good for eggs at least.” 

Eri’s still not sure what to make of him, but she’s hungry enough to agree. “Okay.”

The man smiles at her in response. He has a nice smile. He looks… kind. He seems as confused on how to approach Eri as Eri is with him, but he’s making an effort anyway. 

And he must be a nice person, if Satoru kisses him and hugs him and sleeps in the same bed as him, and is probably going to marry him, just like in the stories. Or maybe they’re already married? Eri’s not sure how you’re supposed to know the difference. 

Luckily Hawks seems engrossed enough in cooking that he doesn’t engage with her any further than that, because she’s not sure she can handle any more social interaction. She instead hides by Meow, who’s finished up his breakfast and now seems content to let her give him chin scratches, and quietly observes the winged man from afar. 

Satoru said she could stay with him, for as long as she wanted, and live in his house and go to school. She forgot to ask him if Meow was coming with them, although she assumes so, and now she wonders if Hawks is going to be there too. If he and Satoru are married, or going to be married, then they’ll live in the same house, right? That’s how all the ‘happily ever after’ stories she’s read end, after all. Are they all going to live together, and eat breakfast together like this everyday? 

“Eri-chan,” the blonde calls, drawing her out of her musings. “Breakfast is almost ready. Could you wake Satoru?”

“Mm!” She gives Meow one final pat before getting to her feet. 

This is all very new and unexpected for her, but she doesn’t dislike it.

//

Gojo wasn’t sure what he’d expected out of Hawks after all the bombshells he’d dropped on the other man last night… but sticking around to cook breakfast for he and Eri seemed a little too good to be true.

At best, he’d thought the hero would need some time away to sort out his thoughts. At worst, he figured the hero would just call it off right then and there. A lot of things were going to change, after all, and Gojo’s life was only going to get more complicated and difficult from here. Gojo would understand completely if Hawks decided all of this was too much for him. It would be a lot for anyone— especially when he hadn’t signed up for any of this. 

The whole ‘sleeping with a known enemy who also happens to be the son of a close coworker that you’ve idolized since childhood’ thing wasn’t even the worst of it. Personally Gojo thought it was hilarious, but he can see how someone might have reservations about that. He’d put the poor guy in a bit of a bind, honestly— straight up dragged him into the dramatically estranged relationship between Gojo and Endeavor, actually, which was totally not bros. 

But then on top of that, bringing a kid into all of this? 

Hawks was completely in his rights to step away, after that. Gojo had upended the playing field. Whatever tentative relationship he and Hawks had together would no longer just be about the two of them. 

Gojo’s life wasn’t just about himself anymore. 

It’s kind of funny, how he’d actually thought he was prepared for this. 

He’d had custody of Megumi, after all. Surely that counted for something, right? Yeah, he’d been a guardian in name only, but he had still been nominally responsible for both Megumi and by extension his sister. They might have been completely independent kids who hadn’t needed— or wanted— him around, but there had still been things they needed him for. Food, shelter, safety: someone to call when the sink broke; when they needed a new washing machine; when the neighbors came sniffing around wondering where their parents were. Someone to train Megumi and show him how to survive in the Jujutsu World. Looking back on it, he’d been more of a glorified landlord than a guardian to those two. But that’s what those two had needed from him. They weren’t looking for family: they had each other. They certainly weren’t looking for parental figures. 

But Eri is different. She doesn’t have a Tsumiki to lean on. She doesn’t even have the social support system the Fushiguro kids had, with school providing some semblance of structure, and the neighborhood community watching out for them. Her past is filled with trauma and abuse, not just abandonment and neglect. He can’t just set her up in a nice, new apartment in a better part of town, sign some legal documents, and check up on her every few days to make sure she’s going to school and eating properly. 

He’s not just agreeing to be her legal guardian to keep her from being sold off to her dad’s shitty extended family. 

He has no idea if he’s ready for that kind of responsibility. As Hawks had put it so succinctly earlier; it's a lot. 

But she doesn’t have anyone else. 

And frankly, at this point Gojo is too attached to trust anyone else with her. 

So if he has to completely upend his life and shoulder a kind of responsibility he never thought he’d want to carry, then so be it. Still, that’s his decision to make. Asking Hawks to make it too is just plain unfair to the other man. And yet… he’s still here. 

“This is actually pretty good,” Gojo says, as he bites into his toast.

Across the table from him, Hawks just rolls his eyes. “It’s literally just toast and eggs. Even I can do that.”

“Hmm~ maybe, but this is the first time I’ve seen Eri finish her plate at breakfast.” Gojo turns a proud smile the little girl’s way, patting her head. “What do you think, Eri-chan? Is Hawks better than the Four Seasons chefs?” 

Eri just blinks at both of them, licking a stray bit of scrambled egg off the side of her mouth. Privately, Gojo thinks she ate it all because she gets to eat it with her hands, but it’s impressive nonetheless.

“I think I’ll keep my day job, thanks,” Hawks returns, dryly, leaning back in his chair. He cleared his own plate off ages ago, content to just sit with them as they finish up. 

Gojo’s eyes flick towards the clock, as he polishes off his own toast. “Speaking of— aren’t you going to be late?” He’s surprised Hawks is still here, honestly. He’d told Gojo once that his work hours usually started well before the sun rises, and the sun has been up for hours at this point. 

“I’m never late. I’m the fastest hero in the country,” Hawks winks.  

It’s Gojo’s turn to roll his eyes. “Oh really? And how do you stack up against teleportation?”

“That’s cheating,” Hawks accuses. Then he perks up. “Unless, of course, you’re saying you’ll teleport me to my briefing this morning. Then you can have the title of fastest hero.”

Gojo wrinkles his nose at the very thought. “Hard pass.”

Hawks laughs. “Really? Endeavor will be there, you know. Sure you don’t want to pop in and say hi?” 

He says it jokingly, but Gojo can see what he’s doing here. Teasing Gojo to test out the waters, get a read on his mood, and see where he can and can’t push. It’s a tactic he’d used pretty frequently when they’d meet every week at the cafe, back before they’d gotten to know each other; talking around the subject to gauge Gojo’s response to the topic without directly asking. It’s a strategy that gives them both room to step back from the conversation, if they’re not willing to engage. He’s not sure if the hero is doing it for his sake, or because Eri’s in the room. 

Either way it’s a thoughtful gesture, but it’s not a subject Hawks needs to be delicate about. 

He gets that he might have… implied more than he’d intended to last night, but that’s really not anything he wants Hawks worrying about. Endeavor isn’t a concern for him, and he genuinely never has been. Even as a child, Gojo always had him well in hand. And as an adult— well. At this rate, he’s just quality entertainment. 

“Oh, that’d be plenty entertaining— for me.” Gojo smirks, devilishly. “But I already shaved off a decade of his lifespan from stress the last time we talked; twice in one week might send him into cardiac arrest.”

“I suppose avoiding a manslaughter charge is a good idea,” Hawks chuckles, standing from his chair. Then his expression falls into something more serious. “If you want me to pass a message along, just let me know, okay? I’m happy to do it.”

Gojo blinks. “Huh?”

“I get that it’s not easy, having to interact with him. That there’s a reason you cut him out of your life and never looked back,” Hawks says, seriously, as he gathers up their plates. “So if you need someone to stand between you two, I can do that. You don’t have to do this alone.”

Gojo finds himself so unexpectedly gripped with emotion he barely has enough presence of mind to reply. “That’s... I don’t think you realize what you’re signing up for.” 

No one’s ever tried to share his burdens with him, in either of his lives. And why would they? He’s the strongest. He can do everything himself, just like he always has. He’s the one others look towards for safety and protection, not the other way around. He’s the one who carries the burdens for others, because he can. Because he’s so much stronger than everyone else, and things that can drown other people barely make a dent against him.

And yet here Hawks is, telling him he doesn’t have to do this all on his own. That he’s willing to take this burden from him, because he knows it’s a task Gojo finds difficult to do. 

And what a ridiculously monumental task it is! Does Hawks even realize what he’s saying? What he’s agreeing to do? Gojo already feels bad about having gotten the hero unknowingly tangled up in his own personal dramas to begin with, and now the hero is trying to intentionally insert himself into the Todoroki family dumpster fire? 

“I think I do,” Hawks disagrees, and as he swipes Gojo’s plate he boldly dives in for a kiss. 

It’s just a quick press of his lips, there and gone, but it still leaves Gojo wide-eyed and a bit breathless. He darts a frantic look towards Eri, but her response to this display is decidedly sedate. She just stares at them, slurping down her carton of melon milk, looking entirely unfazed. Maybe that’s not entirely unexpected. Hawks had been in Gojo’s bed this morning, and there’s no way Eri would have missed that in the light of day. He is not looking forward to having to explain their relationship to the five year-old. Hopefully she just won’t ask. 

“Just keep it in mind, okay?” Hawks says, as he heads back into the kitchen to deposit the plates in the sink. 

“Sure,” Gojo is still a bit too overwhelmed to come up with a proper response. 

He does, however, have enough presence of mind to get up and boot the winged hero out of the kitchen. 

The other man already cooked for him, and is now offering to suffer Endeavor’s ongoing presence in his life so Gojo doesn’t have to; the least Gojo can do is clean the dishes.

Chapter Text

Dabi has Eri, he reminds himself for the umpteenth time, trying to quell his nerves. 

Dabi has Eri. 

She’s safer with him than she could have ever been with Izuku, or even the other heroes or the police. Aizawa-sensei had told him, had taken him aside personally, and revealed that he’d seen them both with his own two eyes just a few days ago so he knows it has to be true. Everything is going to be fine. The mission is a complicated one with a lot of moving parts, but the task force is massive and full of capable heroes. Even Endeavor was part of it now. And so was Hawks, although he wouldn’t be part of the strike force. And Ryukyu was expected to reach Top Ten this year in the rankings too, so that would make three heroes in the Top Ten part of this mission. 

He tries not to think of another mission roster packed full with top ranked heroes, and how terribly it had gone. 

Dabi has Eri— and because of that, the entire operation almost crumbled apart before they could even get it off the ground. 

Chisaki’s forces melted out of the main headquarters like water down a storm drain, scattering across the city in a manner that would have seemed ominously preemptive if Aizawa-sensei hadn’t been there to give them an explanation at the last briefing. The girl Overhaul was keeping at his headquarters had been taken out of the equation. Aizawa-sensei didn’t mention specifics to the team, only that she was no longer an issue that needed to be factored into the raid. But in response to this, Overhaul launched a frantic operation of his own to find her. He had his top subordinates and all his underlings out combing through the city and shaking down quirk traffickers by the dozens, leaving a brutal trail for the police to follow. He’s apparently tearing apart the criminal underworld in search of whoever snagged his prize, thinking it to be the work of one of his fellow criminals.

Well, he wasn’t entirely off the mark.

As it turns out, the regions he’d been scouring religiously did not include the ritzy Ginza area, because from what Aizawa-sensei told him Dabi hasn’t exactly been keeping a low profile with Eri. He saw them outside a department store, and they’d gone to a cat cafe of all things! Aizawa-sensei said Dabi was aware the Shie Hassaikai were looking for Eri, and he’d agreed to keep their public outings to a minimum until they were dealt with. But if Overhaul had had the foresight to stop looking around the shady corners of the greater Tokyo area and stare right into its luxurious heart, he’d have realized Eri had, indeed, been taken from him by another criminal— just one that was no longer labeled as such. 

At any rate Izuku might have been moved to happy tears hearing Eri was safe and out of Chisaki’s clutches, but that didn’t make the fallout of her disappearance any easier for the taskforce to handle.  

Chisaki, his eight bullets, and his two generals were all scattered across Tokyo— to say nothing of all the underlings involved in the organization, constantly flitting through all the yakuza’s safehouses as their orders changed. Shie Hassaikai had outposts throughout the city, some of which the investigation hadn’t even managed to uncover yet. And to make matters worse, Overhaul didn’t appear to have any intention of calling off his search in the near future; if anything, it had only gotten more frenzied as the days went on. 

This meant the task force would have to deploy a complicated, multi-pronged assault at all of their locations, which was a complete reversal from their original attack plan concentrated on their headquarters. 

The scale of the operation had exploded as the heroes and police worked to coordinate all the moving pieces necessary for the mission. Multiple precincts were going to have to be involved. The top brass at Tokyo Met would have to be involved. More heroes than they’d originally planned for would need to be brought in. The interns might need to be split up from their mentors— Togata-senpai had been called out in particular, because his quirk made him a useful counter to Chisaki’s second, Mimic, and Nighteye was planning on being in the team that would focus on Chisaki. Luckily as a third year it wasn’t as big of a deal for him as it would have been for the first-years, although he’s fairly certain Tamaki-senpai had been sweating bullets there for a minute, worried he might be separated from Fatgum. 

As it is, there’s talk that Izuku shouldn’t be going in with Nighteye on the Overhaul team, but it's dismissed once Endeavor insists on keeping Shouto with him. And anyway, between the acting Number One, Sir Nighteye and Aizawa-sensei, Izuku isn’t worried at all.

Or, well, he’s mostly not worried.

It’s hard not to be worried about his first real mission as a licensed, professional hero. 

He just— he can’t help feeling like something is wrong. Or that something is going to go wrong. 

“It always goes wrong, kid.” Were Aizawa-sensei’s gruff words of advice, when Izuku fretfully mentioned his worries to him. “The trick is to know how to think on your feet when it does.”

It sounds an awful lot like the sort of wisdom Dabi is always trying to impart on them. 

He always likes to say there’s nothing Izuku can rely on but his own quick-thinking, right before he comes out of nowhere to slam Izuku with a dodgeball to the face. That he changes up their trash-arenas so Izuku always learns to use everything in his environment as a possible weapon, and that he doesn’t let them use their quirks sometimes so they learn how to react without them. 

But he’s also the first to remind Izuku that he’s only a teenager, and it’s okay if he’s not the best at everything, if he gets things wrong sometimes. That he needs to learn to rely on others, to remember that he’s not alone and there are people he can lean on— yet he never seems to stop drilling into Izuku’s head that his quick wits are always the only thing that will ever save him. It seems contradictory to him, but Dabi always swears it's not. 

It’s enough to give him a headache on the best of days. 

At least he’s really not alone for this mission. Todoroki is even on the same strike team as him— because of course Endeavor was going after the big fish or he’s not going in at all— along with Aizawa-sensei and Sir Nighteye. He knows for sure that sensei and Todoroki will have his back. And Endeavor always seems like a reliable hero. As for Sir Nighteye… well, he doesn’t seem to particularly like Izuku, but he gave him a chance anyway. And he’s All Might’s former sidekick. Izuku trusts him.

“Nervous?” The voice next to him jolts him out of his thoughts. 

Izuku has been twisting his hands in his gloves until he’s started to wear through the support-grade material. He glances over at Todoroki, seated next to him; he looks as stoic and unmoved as usual. 

“Yes,” Izuku confesses, not even bothering to put up a front. 

Of course he’s nervous. Why wouldn’t he be? This is his first time being a part of an operation on this scale, and the stakes are high. He supposes Hosu had been a similar situation, but that had all happened so fast that there was no time to be nervous. 

Todoroki just nods along. “Me too.”

Izuku studies him carefully under the yellow light of the surveillance truck they’re hiding out in, waiting for orders for the mission to start. His face might seem placid and calm, but now that Izuku is looking for it, he notices the way Todoroki’s fingers clench tight against his pants, and his foot taps impatiently against the metal floor. Knowing that he’s not the only one who feels this way… well, it doesn’t exactly settle his nerves, but it does serve to make him feel a little less alone. 

Izuku isn’t exactly sure how to be a strong person. He’s not like Dabi— powerful and confident in himself and his abilities no matter the situation. Izuku is a nervous mess on the best of days. But being strong for others? Somehow, he finds that easier to bear. 

He slides his hand over Todoroki’s clenched fist, giving it a reassuring squeeze. 

“We can do this,” Izuku says, with a surety he absolutely would not have managed if he’d said, ‘ I can do this.’

Todoroki releases his death grip on his pants, turning his palm over so their fingers slip together. “Yeah,” he returns, gazing into his eyes with a conviction that mirrors Izuku’s own. “We can.”

All at once, Izuku realizes just how ridiculously close they’re sitting. How close their faces are, with their noses mere centimeters apart. It’s unfair that even this close Izuku can’t see a single imperfection on the other boy’s face. He’s got perfectly unblemished skin, long lashes, and hair that sweeps softly against his brows. Izuku, meanwhile, gets spots no matter how religiously he follows a skincare routine and regularly breaks combs attempting to tame the mess he calls hair. He wants to pull away and hide his face in his hands, but Todoroki has a death grip on his hand and a look in his eye that has him stuck in place.

The back door rattles open with a loud groan.

“There’s been a change in plans—” Endeavor thunders inside, then stops, looking oddly at them both.

Izuku squeaks and flings himself across the bench, as far away from Todoroki as physically possible, plastered against the wall like a terrified raccoon. Todoroki just blinks back at his father, face expressionless. 

Endeavor is still eying them both with a deeply suspicious frown. Izuku wants to die.

“What,” Todoroki says, and with such a flat tone Izuku really would have thought him utterly indifferent to the situation, if it wasn’t for the twitch in his brow that spoke of his irritation. 

Endeavor squints at the two of them one more time, before he mercifully seems to conclude that discretion is the better part of valor, and continues without remark; “Sir Nighteye has been called in for an urgent task only he can complete. He’s unlikely to return in time to complete the mission. In light of that, you will both be shadowing myself and Eraserhead respectively. There is no room for error. We expect you both to follow our orders implicitly. Am I understood?”

“Yes,” Todoroki returns, standing up. 

“Yes sir,” Izuku adds, hastily, scrambling to his feet as well.

“Good.” Endeavor nods curtly. “Let’s go.”  

//

As Aizawa had so helpfully enlightened Midoriya earlier— no matter how meticulously planned they may be, missions always go wrong. 

And while it’s true that the trick to dealing with unpredictable situations is to think fast and act even faster when push comes to shove, Aizawa may have overly simplified it a bit. Yes, quick thinking in the heat of the moment is the sort of hard-earned skill that makes good heroes into great heroes— but there’s also something to be said for preemptive thinking as well. 

The moment he’d heard Shie Hassaikai had split up across Tokyo and shattered their tentative assault plans as they did it, Aizawa was forming contingency plans of his own. You didn’t get very far in the underground without the ability to formulate new plans on the spot, some of which weren’t always entirely above board, and that’s not necessarily a knock against spotlight heroes. Spotlight heroes just happen to be surrounded by support teams and strategists and a plethora of sidekicks, and additionally a wide range of cameras constantly fixed on their every move. Underground heroes, usually working alone and sometimes even deep undercover, need to have other tricks up their sleeves. 

Which is why Aizawa had called in a favor with one of his trusted Tokyo precincts and had them clear paperwork for pro hero ‘Six Eyes’ to be listed as backup on the mission. 

He’d thought getting one of the police chiefs to agree would be the most difficult part of this particular endeavor. As it turns out, plenty of them were more than willing to have Dabi back on the streets in any capacity, regardless of what one grisly lieutenant called ‘his appalling personality and lackluster taste in cheese and wines’. Privately, Aizawa thinks Dabi might have unintentionally spoiled them all with his plan to annoy all the bureaus into early retirement. At any rate, even getting the Tokyo Met superintendent to sign off on it hadn’t been an issue, even if she did have a caveat against intended homicide. Normally Aizawa wouldn’t consider that much of a problem; that was a fairly standard legal admonition in just about any hero’s paperwork. And Dabi wasn’t the sort to go out of his way to kill— 

Or, well. Not usually. Aizawa imagines Overhaul might be a special exception. 

That’s just a risk they’ll have to take now. The Shie Hassaikai have the upperhand now, and Aizawa has no intention of letting them turn the tables. 

He’s still checking his phone for new messages when he hears heavy footsteps coming his way. 

“Any word from Nighteye?” The acting Number One asks him, gruffly. 

Aizawa’s unfocused gaze lingers on the message he’d sent off thirty minutes ago. Detective Tachibana confirmed they’d gotten Dabi’s paperwork cleared and all their ducks in order. He’d also confirmed the leak hadn’t come from anyone in his office. Not that Aizawa had worried over that— he’d chosen Tachibana for a reason. He would have gone with Naomasa, but was told by his front office that the detective was unavailable and would be for some time.  

“No. He’s still en route to interrogate the suspect now.”

The very idea of a mole in their operation has him gritting his teeth in frustration. It’s a risk they always have to run when a mission gets to this size, especially when it comes to organized crime, but it doesn’t make it any easier to deal with, knowing they’ve been betrayed. They’re lucky they caught the leak before their team engaged the enemy— not that it even really matters at this point. They’re in position, and the other operations have already been launched. They’ve passed the point of no return. 

All that’s left is to keep their wits about them and hopefully have a chance to launch a counter offensive. 

When Aizawa looks up, Endeavor’s expression is thunderous as he folds his arms. “Our recon team has already confirmed Overhaul is here. Surely we’re not going to just let him go to slink off to his next hiding spot? The other teams have already engaged.” 

Frankly, Aizawa is impressed Endeavor hasn’t just jumped straight into the mission without even waiting for confirmation from the other teams. There was a time in the other hero’s career when that would have been the expected response to an existential threat like this. He wonders if it's a sign of personal growth, that the flame hero is actually acting as part of a team, or if it's just a response to his youngest son’s presence on the mission roster.  

“No. Nighteye confirmed we should all go ahead with the original plan. They’ll work to coordinate any necessary mission changes on their end, once they know what they’re dealing with,” Aizawa returns. 

Right now, they only have confirmation of a leak from one of the precincts involved in the mission. As of now they don’t know how much was given to Shie Hassaikai, or how much of today’s preemptive strike has been ruined. Sir Nighteye had to detour from his original plan to be part of the main strike force and return to headquarters to use his quirk on the suspect in custody. 

It’s a risky call, to proceed with their original plan of action now that they know there’s a high likelihood that the Shie Hassaikai know they’re coming. But Aizawa isn’t sure if he’d make a different call, in Sir Nighteye’s position. There’s no turning back now that the other teams have started their assaults; they can either act on this momentum or gamble with the chance of losing it all if Overhaul goes to ground after this. And as Endeavor already mentioned, their on-site recon team has confirmed Overhaul’s presence here and now. They might not get another chance like this. 

But if it all really goes to shit… well. That’s just another gamble they have to risk.

“Good. I’ll get everyone in position.” Endeavor nods curtly, then turns around to start barking orders at the nearby riot police. 

In the interim, Aizawa uses the chance to pick out Midoriya from the crowd. He’s coming out of a surveillance truck on the opposite side of the street, Todoroki at his side. He looks shaky and pale, but that’s to be expected for a novice provisional hero on his first mission as a licensed professional. 

“Midoriya-kun,” he calls, startling the poor boy into nearly jumping out of his own skin. “Can I talk to you for a moment?”

The green-haired boy shares a look with his classmate, who nods in response and walks over to where his father is talking to the lieutenant in charge. When he comes to a stop in front of Aizawa he’s worrying nervously at his gloves, but his gaze is determined.

“Aizawa-sensei,” he starts, fretfully, “Um, I know Nighteye isn’t here, but—but I still want to—

“I’m not taking you off the mission,” Aizawa cuts him off, before he starts descending into anxious blubbering. Midoriya’s shoulders sag in relief. “I can’t. I’m not your sensei here, Midoriya-kun, I can’t order you to do anything. You’re a fellow licensed hero on a job, and your immediate superior, Sir Nighteye, hasn’t ordered you off the roster.” 

“Oh,” Midoriya says. Now he looks a bit confused. “Then, um, what did you need?” 

“I need to borrow your phone,” Aizawa reveals. If anything, he only looks more confused. “I’m assuming you have, ah, Satoru-kun’s number, right?”

Midoriya’s eyes widen. “Y— Yes?”

“Good. I need to get in contact with him right away.” And he has a feeling he’d have better luck doing that through Midoriya’s number than dialing through his own. 

Midoriya looks a bit shocked as he hastily drags his phone out of one of his many pockets. “Aizawa-sensei, is he— I mean—is he going to—” He scrambles with his phone, flicking through screens before holding it out to him. “Will he be here?” 

“He’s been cleared for it, but we’ll see,” Aizawa answers noncommittally, taking the phone. 

Midoriya looks delighted— and infinitely relieved. Aizawa wishes he could share his enthusiasm, but unfortunately, he knows far too much about politics to be celebrating just yet. 

Even if this mission goes to shit, and Dabi somehow finds a way to turn it around, he can’t even begin to fathom the fallout that will come from it. 

//

The phone is ringing. 

The cat has escaped down the hall, and he can hear the shriek of surprise from housekeeping as the blasphemous demon probably ruins all their fresh sheets. Eri only has one sock on, and the other has been spirited out of the suite by a rabid feline possessed by the zoomies; her hair still isn’t brushed and he’s been looking for her other shoe for ten minutes now and still hasn’t found it, and the only reason they’ve avoided a meltdown over her favorite pair of shoes is the cat deciding to steal the spotlight and have his meltdown instead. Gojo also doesn’t have his shoes on, and also hasn’t combed his hair, and he’s fairly certain his sweater is on backwards but he already put his coat on and doesn’t have the bandwidth to care about that while he’s juggling two melon breads for him and Eri while searching for her lost shoe. And his phone is ringing. From somewhere that’s not his pocket, which means he’s forgotten it somewhere in their hotel room.

If these are the sort of mornings that await him as a soon to be single parent, he might actually need to turn to legitimate therapy to make it through. Twitter shitposts and cathartic music shows aren’t going to cut it anymore. 

Eri is staring down at her shiny red Sailor Mars loafer (singular) with a dejected expression, the cat is yeowling down the hall, Gojo has a splitting headache and hasn’t even had his coffee yet and the phone is still ringing so he hands Eri her melon bread and tells her to wait in the genkan and goes to hunt it down. 

In the interim he fortunately manages to locate the missing shoe— squirreled beneath the couch in the cat’s lair, laces predictably chewed— as well as his phone, which he answers without looking with a swift and merciless, “I’m busy. Call back later.”

To which the voice on the other line replies; “Too busy to take down the Shie Hassaikai?” 

That stops Gojo in his tracks.

He’d thought it was the contractors at the house again, asking where his breaker is for the umpteenth time, as if he’s supposed to know that kind of shit about his own house. He is actually, which only makes him more annoyed. He’d told them it’s probably where a breaker is normally supposed to be in a house, and reminded them that if they have any other questions about the water pipes or the electricity they’re better off asking the neighborhood maintenance crew than him and hung up. That was… thirty minutes ago, when he’d barely gotten Eri out of the bath and into clothing acceptable for human society and still hadn’t fed the cat or cleaned the litter box or even gotten started on dressing himself in a manner acceptable for human society. And that’s not even scratching the surface of the other things he needs to get done today, beyond just making sure he and Eri are upright, dressed, and not crying. 

And now, apparently, he’s going to add wrecking the shit out of the yakuza onto today’s to-do list. 

“Not quite that busy,” he backtracks, coolly. “What’s going on? I thought we agreed it was better if I sat this one out.”

He doubts Eraserhead would be calling him from— and yes when he checks his phone screen, it does say Izuku’s name on it— one of his student’s phones if it wasn’t urgent. Especially not after they’d both agreed his responsibilities towards Eri were paramount. 

“Well, the mission has gone sideways before it’s even really started. I know Eri needs you right now… but it's very possible my students might need you as well.” 

This draws Gojo up short. 

A befuddled hotel service staff holding his demonic runaway cat appears at the open doorway. He hastily waves her in with a flap of his hand and grabs it by the scruff of its neck with a mouthed apology at his lips, phone cradled between his ear and shoulder.

“That doesn’t sound good,” he remarks, kicking the door closed with his foot and setting the cat down to wrestle Eri’s sock out of its mouth. Once he’s succeeded in that goal he sets it down and motions for Eri to come closer to him. “Do you have a plan to fix that?”

“Not yet. But I did get you cleared to be a part of it.” 

He pauses briefly, sock halfway onto Eri’s foot. “Really? And how much bribery did that take?”

“You did most of the bribing already,” Eraserhead drawls. “When you drowned all the precincts in chocolates and cheese boards earlier this year.”

Gojo grins at the reminder, leaning over to snag Eri’s shoe and start lacing them up. 

“Sir Nighteye is the hero in charge of this attack force,” Eraserhead continues. “He’s meant to be on my team, but was called back to headquarters to deal with an intelligence leak. Depending on how bad it is, this mission is likely to go even more awry. I was hoping you might be able to meet up with him and help come up with our contingency plan.” 

“Does he know I’m coming?” 

“No, and I’m sure that’ll be a delightful surprise to him,” says Eraserhead, dryly. “Try not to send him into cardiac arrest, would you?” 

Gojo laughs. Is Eraserhead giving him carte blanche to mess with a hero? Maybe this morning is looking up after all. “I’ll do my best, but I make no promises.” 

Eraserhead tells him the location of their mission headquarters, then hangs up. In the meanwhile, Gojo still hasn’t brushed Eri’s hair or fed the cat, but he’s at least gotten both her shoes on and fed her a passably acceptable breakfast of sugar and processed carbohydrates… which probably doesn’t count as a passably acceptable breakfast in anyone’s world but his own. He has Eri wait for him there while he shucks off his coat and hastily changes his entire outfit, having to dig through his unsorted clothes until he unearths the hero outfit he’d gotten from his Otheon support team. It’s a pain to put on, and he’s thoroughly reminded why he’s never wanted to deal with all the nonsense that goes into being a professional hero. 

At least by the end of it he looks fairly presentable, and he’s dumped a generous heap of food into the cat’s bowl. Eri is waiting patiently by the door, still dressed for a long day of picking out furniture for the house; plaid red pinafore dress with both her shiny red loafers, looking very adorable and festive with her matching cream petticoat. She looks adequately dressed for a day of luxury furniture shopping, not loitering around at a police precinct where she’ll probably have to be bribed into sitting still with candy and coloring books. She’d been excited to pick out a bedroom set, too. Gojo will have to make it up to her somehow. Maybe he’ll buy her a personal piano— wait no, maybe a harp. Something comically grand and vaguely unsuitable for a little girl’s bedroom. 

“Change of plans, Eri-chan!” He announces, clapping his hands. 

Eri peers up at him, blinking.

“We’re going to be playing one of my favorite games— it’s called ‘coming up with increasingly bizarre answers whenever the police ask me questions’. Do you think you can play it for me, today, Eri-chan?” 

She just blinks some more. “Game?”

“Yeah. It’s really easy. Any time someone asks you a question about me, you just tell them whatever silly and completely incorrect thing you think of off the top of your head. For example, if someone asks you, ‘where does he live?’ what do you say?”

Eri pauses, clearly a bit confused. Her brows furrow before she says, hesitantly, “...A trash heap?”

Gojo’s mouth opens in surprise. Then he dissolves into laughter. He had, in fact, returned from his early morning meeting with his contractors to wake Eri up and pronounced to her that the house they were going to live in was still a trash heap and that was entirely his own fault. 

He gives her two thumbs up. “Oh Eri-chan, that’s perfect. You’re even better at this game than I am! The police are just going to love you.”

//

There are plenty of people Sir Nighteye dislikes in this world. 

And there are plenty of people who would be surprised to hear that the former s-rank cremation villain Dabi is not on that list. 

He has a showman’s mastery over dramatics, and an inherent magnetism that makes him impossible to look away from. He’s charming and charismatic, with the sort of irreverent sense of humor that can either put people at ease or drive them up the wall. He has character and personality, and his heart is in the right place. No ordinary villain would make a career out of saving the vulnerable kids of society otherwise. 

And he has a delightfully wicked sense of humor.

He sets off illegal weapons caches and turns them into fireworks. He trusses up drug kingpins in glitter duct tape. On one memorable occasion, he’d left a quirk trafficker for the police to find by tying him up with a hundred and seventy-one balloons and kept him hovering in the air overnight. He sends simperingly romantic gifts to the detectives that hate him the most, and always makes sure there’s enough for the whole office to share. 

Nighteye can admit that he finds that sort of slightly off-color and flippant sense of humor to be amusing. 

He’s not entirely sure how he feels having it turned on him, however.

“— I was called in a bit last minute so I was hoping to leave my darling daughter in your care, everyone! Be careful, she does bite! But only people who deserve it.” Dabi is in the middle of saying, to the stunned crowd of people in the mission control room he’d just teleported right into, patting the girl by his side on the head. 

Everyone is a bit too startled to reply. Nighteye counts it as a win that no one’s drawn a weapon yet. 

“Dabi-san,” he says, entering the room properly. “Or, do you prefer Six Eyes?” 

“Either or,” Dabi shrugs. “But I suppose I’m here in official capacity as a hero… so probably Six Eyes?”

Oh is he now? That’s news to Nighteye.

“The paperwork should have hit your inbox already,” Dabi continues, not sounding particularly concerned over being an only recently cleared former villain surrounded on all sides by professional heroes, police, and support staff. Actually, he’s not even looking at any of them, distracted by his young charge, who has an unlaced shoe.

Nighteye watches with vague disbelief as Dabi continues to ignore all the people staring at him, and crouches down to tie up the girl’s shiny red shoe. 

“I’ll take your word for it,” Nighteye responds, still trying to process what he’s seeing.

Dabi gatecrashing their investigation at the eleventh hour was not what he had expected to see after finishing up his interrogation. Using his quirk to such a degree often exhausts him, so when he’d left the interrogation room and started hearing whispers of Dabi’s name he’d assumed he was either so exhausted he’d started hallucinating, or the situation had really just gone from bad to worse and Dabi was somehow now involved, and with how his luck was going that day, likely in an antagonistic fashion. He still feels as if he might be hallucinating because Dabi is not here in opposition to them and is in fact apparently here to help them, and somehow that’s even more surreal.

After finally staggering up to the main strategist room, he needs a few moments to process this. 

“And… who is our young friend here?” Nighteye asks, as Dabi straightens up.

“This is Ri-chan, my daughter. I birthed her from my own body!” He says, with an enthusiastic smile.

Notably, no one tries to call him out on that. Nighteye is fairly certain they all, collectively, believe his words at face value and are now terrified at the thought of being held liable for any minor inconvenience that may happen upon their new young charge, and the wrath from her father they may face as a result. 

Nevermind the fact that there were plenty of briefings on a young girl with silver hair being held hostage by the Shie Hassaikai, a girl who only recently was confirmed to have been rescued from their clutches by an unknown third party. Perhaps Nighteye is being too severe on the support staff, though. Eri’s photo and general description hadn’t been made public knowledge among the task force, and she and Dabi make a convincing father-daughter pair. She’s a very cute child, and he’s a very handsome man, and their coloring is so similar he doubts anyone would look further than that without prompting.

“I didn’t have time to arrange childcare, but Ri-chan is a very well behaved child. She only bites people who deserve it, and has never purposefully electrocuted someone or lit them on fire, which is more than I can say for myself, haha!” 

Nighteye can’t speak for Dabi, but by all accounts Eri is a quiet and well-mannered young girl and has likely never intentionally maimed another human being. On a related note, he’s never heard of Dabi doing any of these things either.  

Nighteye elects not to call Dabi out on any of his more egregious lies, because as one troll to another he respects the other man's commitment to The Bit™, and on a more serious note they’ve already found one mole for the Shie Hassaikai in the mission team and he doesn’t have the time or capacity to vet every single person involved in this strike force. He’s uncertain as to whether Dabi is truly just messing with the team for the fun of it, or if he too is wary of trusting such a large group with the truth. From the way he’s refraining from using her real name in addition to spouting flagrantly incorrect remarks on her character, he has to imagine it's both. 

Instead, he decides to focus on the matter at hand. “We’re happy to look after her here. In the meanwhile, your assistance would prove invaluable with the current direction this mission has to take.” 

“Is that so?” Dabi adopts a more serious expression. Without his iconic blindfold, those eyes are frightening to face head on. Nighteye meets his gaze nonetheless. 

“Yes,” Nighteye says, gravely. “Our entire attack strategy has been leaked to the enemy, and we need to turn the tables around.” 

Chapter Text

Mirio had worried from the start that something would go awry during the mission, but Sir had entrusted him to lead his team and he refused to let himself wallow in worry and fear. Sir believed in him, and he wasn’t going to let him down!

But now, trapped under an impossible amount of rubble and separated from the rest of his attack force, with no sightings of Mimic at all, he couldn’t help the doubt that festered. 

Mirio was leading Team B, set to counter Mimic and two of the Eight Bullets traveling with him. Intel had them setting their base of operations in an abandoned warehouse on the outskirts of Yokohama, making Mirio’s team one of the farthest from the main assault force. The only team further was Fatgum’s across the bay in Kisarazu, where the Shie Hassaikai had a shipping depot. Mirio’s team was following the branch of the Shie Hassaikai monitoring rail transit; the team here was clearly meant to chokehold any movement outside of the Tokyo area via rail, in their bid to find Eri. The yakuza still thought another criminal enterprise had taken her, so they were focusing their search efforts on the usual illegal trafficking routes. 

Mimic was supposed to be here this afternoon, as part of his usual schedule checking in with the various yakuza teams spread out across the city. While Chronostasis, Overhaul’s other right hand man, tended to stay by the leader’s side more often than not, Mimic took on a more general management role and his whereabouts were harder to pin down because of that. 

Their recon team were able to confirm two of the Eight Bullets, Nemoto Shin and Sakaki Deidoro exiting a supply truck with a large blonde man wearing glasses and a hood. 

Since Mimic often merges with various objects to use as puppets, his true form’s physical features were difficult to confirm. But his official profile lists him as fair-haired with larger than average stature. There’s a high likelihood the third man is Irinaka Joi— better known as Mimic. 

With that information in mind, they’d gotten the go to raid the warehouse. 

In hindsight, it was all too straightforward.

The whole thing must have been a setup from the start. 

Mirio had no idea how the Shie Hassaikai knew they were coming, or how they could have possibly guessed that he would be the one to lead this particular assault team. But how else would they have known to set this specific trap, made to counter his quirk? Nemoto and Sakaki had led his team on a merry chase through the underground maintenance tunnels beneath the warehouse, Mirio chasing them deeper and deeper as he used his quirk to bypass the twists and turns slowing the rest of his team down. Looking back on it, leading him so far underground was definitely part of their plan. The whole place had been rigged to blow, and the moment they knew he’d be too far down to utilize his quirk to save himself, they’d detonated the whole thing and escaped off a now-collapsed side tunnel. 

He had no idea how far down he was, but he doubted he’d be able to get himself back up with his quirk. 

He tried his radio to signal for backup, but only static greeted him when he turned the dial. That was ominous. Support grade short-distance radios were hard to disrupt without special equipment. Certainly not the kind of equipment that would just be lying around at a warehouse depot without purpose. 

He feels cold sweat drip down his back. How did the Shie Hassaikai know they were coming? And how much do they know of their plans? Has the entire mission failed?

And then something much more daunting than just sweat shivers down his spine. 

It’s an indescribable sensation, like the pressure in the air before a storm. It’s also the only warning he gets before the entire right-hand side of the caved-in tunnel he’s in is entirely obliterated. 

He scrambles back in shock, but his reaction is a moot point. By the time he’s reacting the second half of the tunnel is just… completely gone. There’s nothing but a perfectly carved hole where the mounds of rubble should have been. The sunlight from the cleaved opening is searing after being in the dark for so long, and he has to squint to make out the damage. The cylindrical hole ascends upwards in calculated geometry, all the way to the surface, with a diameter several meters across. Mirio is shocked speechless to see it. He doesn’t understand. One moment he was buried under an entire underground building’s worth of rubble, and in the next a hole right to the surface has been sliced right through it. There was no sound or light or even physical sensation to announce an explosion of that magnitude… but yet, what else could have caused that kind of destruction? 

His question is answered when a singular form floats down from above. 

Wreathed in the golden sun, there’s something rather divine to the scene. A man cloaked in black, with hair as bright as the moon, surrounded by immaculate destruction. 

“You’re Lemillion, right? You’re in charge of Team B?” The man asks, as he touches down, hands in his pockets. 

Mirio licks his dried lips, throat hoarse as he replies, “Yes, that’s me.”

He’s not entirely sure what to make of the man in front of him. The white hair, the iridescent, unnatural eyes, the black uniform, and powers that seem to defy all current theories about quirks and mankind… there’s really only one person this could be. But what Mirio’s struggling to comprehend is why on earth he’d be here. 

“Headquarters has been trying to get in contact with you guys for the last twenty minutes,” Dabi— or is it Six Eyes?— informs him. He pulls a phone out of his pocket, frowning down at it. “Hmm… I don’t have a signal either. Looks like there’s some kind of blackout over the area.”

He tucks his phone away again, gaze once more focused on Mirio. “Are you okay? Nighteye was pretty worried when you guys missed your check-in.”

“I…” Mirio swallows, throat parched with dust. 

“Oh, I guess I should introduce myself.” He laughs sheepishly. “I’m—

“I know who you are,” Mirio cuts him off, because the idea of anyone not knowing this man’s identity is a bit laughable. “But what are you doing here?”

“Got called in,” Dabi answers, easily. “There’s a leak on the operations team. Nighteye found one of the culprits, but there’s no telling how many of them the Shie Hassaikai’s got. The whole mission is compromised.”

So this really was just a setup, Mirio thinks, angrily. He’s not sure who he’s angrier at, the yakuza for their dirty tricks or himself for falling for it. He’d known something was off from the start. Why didn’t he listen to his gut? Sir is always telling him to be more cautious, and this is exactly why!

“My team—” Mirio panics, lurching forward.

“Oh, don’t worry about them. I rounded them all up earlier— you were the one that was buried the deepest in the rubble,” Dabi mentions offhandedly. 

He puts a hand on Mirio’s shoulder, and suddenly his entire sense of balance shifts. He has to blink away the vertigo he feels when he sees the layers of the cave-in slowly pass them by, even if he can’t feel himself moving upwards. Getting a personal and intimate look at the destruction this man caused in the space of a second is one of the most surreal experiences in his life. Mirio has no idea how he would have managed to get out of there himself; it’s more than likely he wouldn’t have been able to, and would have been stuck buried underneath all that rubble for hours, or longer. And that’s to say nothing of the rest of his team, all trapped underground too. It would have taken a team of rescue heroes hours to get them all out, yet Dabi managed it in minutes. 

Dabi floats them back up to the surface, and with a weird popping sensation gravity once again seizes Mirio and plummets him back on solid ground. He lands on unsteady feet, not at all surprised to see Dabi gracefully dropping down next to him while he staggers about. 

“Mimic was supposed to be at this location. Was he the one who got the drop on you guys like this?” Dabi asks, directing his question to the crowd. 

Mirio is the one who answers. “No.” He hangs his head. “There was a man who fit his description, but it ended up not being him. The only two I can confirm were here were the two Eight Bullets, Nemoto Shin and Sakaki Deidoro. They must have rigged the place to blow before we even arrived here.”

“They tricked us!” One of his squad members cries. “This whole thing was a setup— they knew we were coming!”

There’s nothing Mirio can say to that, because he knows it’s true. They’ve been betrayed. And if Dabi hadn’t shown up, they might have also been dead. 

Dabi nods, a small frown on his lips. “I see. I’ll relay that back to headquarters. In the meanwhile, if you guys could figure out how the yakuza are jamming the cell signals that’d be really helpful. They seem to be using some kind of localized device across all their sites; the task force is having trouble getting in contact with all of the strike teams.” 

A pit drops in Mirio’s stomach, as he thinks about his friends, all spread out across the city. Were there traps laid out for them as well? He hates how weak and helpless he feels, too far to help those he cares about, too weak to make a difference when things go wrong. 

“We’re on it, sir!” Says one of the members of his team, with an eager salute in Dabi’s direction. Dabi just looks vaguely bemused by the respectful form of address. 

“Great. Well, I’ve gotta go check on the other teams. See ya!” The former villain gives a jaunty wave. 

He named himself Lemillion because his goal is to save millions of people. How is he supposed to do that if he can’t even save himself? 

All he can think as Dabi disappears is—

He’s got a long way to go.

//

Yep, this is definitely how Tamaki is going to die.

He’d always thought he’d end up eating something too weird and too poisonous for even his body to handle, and his poor family would have to suffer the embarrassing shame of telling everyone they know that their only son died because he ate the wrong part of a poison dart frog. Not heroically after saving a bunch of people, not peacefully in his sleep after a long and fruitful hero career— death by poison dart frog.

This might be worse, though. 

How is he supposed to explain that he got so freaked out by seeing the s-rank cremation villain Dabi turned international hero Six Eyes appearing right in front of his face that he tripped over his own cape, brained himself on a rock and then fell off the side of a boat and drowned in the ocean? Well luckily he won’t have to, because he’ll be dead, but he doesn’t envy Kirishima the experience. 

He’s fished out of the water before he can even drown properly, held up by his waterlogged cape. It takes him a moment to realize he’s also hovering some several meters above the water suspended in midair, at which point he starts to panic.

“Calm down kid, I’m not here to kill you,” Dabi laughs at him. 

That is even worse, Tamaki thinks, suffering. He’s made a total embarrassment of himself in front of one of the coolest and most impressive humans on the planet and the man won’t even do him the courtesy of letting him drown his shame. 

“And sorry for startling you,” Dabi says, and floats them both back over the boat so he can drop Tamaki like a sad sopping wet puddle on the deck. 

“Whoa! Is that— Is that Dabi?!” Kirishima comes running up the side of the shipping cruiser. He looks delighted at first, like he’s meeting some kind of celebrity, and not a very infamous (former) criminal. Then he skids to a halt by Tamaki, and his expression turns a bit panicked. “Wait, uh, Dabi-san, what are you doing here? I don’t have to, like, arrest you, do I?”

It’s cute Kirishima even thinks they have a shot in hell of doing that. 

Dabi waves their concern away. “I’m actually here as part of the investigation. Looks like you guys cleaned this place up pretty quickly— where’s your team lead? Fatgum, I think is his name?”

“He’s loading up all the captured members in the police vans at the docks!” Kirishima reveals, without missing a beat. 

Tamaki should probably mention to the kid that trusting people— especially former villains, no matter how cool they were— at face value was probably never a good idea, but he’ll let it slide this time. If Dabi wants to know something, there’s really no point in keeping information from a guy like him. He’ll get what he wants one way or another. 

“Do you know if Mimic was one of them?”

“Mimic?” Kirishima blinks, clearly takes a moment to mentally rifle through what he remembers of the Hassaikai members dossier they’d gotten earlier, then just as clearly fails to remember any information from that docket at all. “Uh…”

“No, he wasn’t,” Tamaki summons up the courage to say, staring down at the water pooling around him. There, he actually spoke to Dabi. No one said he had to look him in the eye as he did so. 

He’s close enough to the still hovering man to hear him quietly curse under his breath. Louder, he just says, “Okay, thanks for the info. Oh yeah, and the Shie Hassaikai are using EMPs to jam the signals around their bases— you’ll need to drive out at least ten minutes before you can contact HQ again. Let your team know, okay?” 

The whole encounter probably takes less than five minutes, but probably effectively clocked off half Tamaki’s lifespan from stress alone.

“Wow, that technique is so useful,” Kirishima enthuses, as they watch him disappear before their eyes. “... And so manly!!”

//

Nejire really, really hadn’t thought this mission could get any cooler, but it really, really did!

Working with Ryukyu was already pretty cool and exciting, and interning alongside those cute first years had really livened things up. Uraraka-chan and Asui-chan just always had the most interesting things to say! Kicking butt with Ryukyu was so fun, and doing it alongside Uraraka and Asui was even more fun! Nejire hadn’t really had many friends before Mirio and Tamaki, or any at all really, and yet the other two girls had quickly become close with her. 

She knew this mission was super high profile, and countless top heroes were involved in it, but she hadn’t actually expected to meet so many of them!

There was Endeavor, of course, the acting Number One in the country, but Nejire found him a bit unexciting and uninteresting in person. And there was Sir Nighteye, the lead on this mission, formerly All Might’s sidekick and Mirio’s mentor. He was a pretty interesting guy for sure! He looked like he would be a huge stick in the mud, but beneath that impervious expression was apparently a jokester! Very unexpected, which Nejire always found delightful. Fatgum was gregarious and pleasant and happy to answer any question no matter how arbitrary. Rock Lock is kinda prickly, and dismisses her more often than not, but Nejire still finds him fascinating because he always says what’s on his mind no matter how poorly his opinion is taken. It’s a little inspiring!

She likes all the heroes on the team, more or less, but she’s been dying to meet Hawks and ended up missing the one briefing he’d been at. 

She’d pouted about that for a while, but felt a bit better after accosting his new intern and just asking him all the questions instead. Tokoyami didn’t seem to know what to make of her, which was fairly par for the course. Nonetheless he’d answered to the best of his abilities, although a lot of his answers were weirdly centered around darkness. Tokoyami himself was such a curious guy, it wasn’t a total loss to talk to him instead. 

But then she ended up getting to meet Hawks here, personally! She even got to take down a couple bad guys with him! 

Their hideout raid location was deep in the heart of the ward’s city center, so it was no surprise Hawks had swooped in to help with crowd control. He’d been in the area for his own mission, or so he’d said, and had seen the commotion and figured he could lend a hand. Or a feather, in this instance. He’d made quick work of all the bystanders trapped in the danger zone, scooping them all up and out of the way like it was nothing! Well for him, it probably was. Top heroes were really something else! So cool!

“Are you going to be alright out here by yourself though, Nejire-chan?” He asked, after he’d rounded up all the stragglers and even pinned down a couple of the Hassaikai goons for her. 

“Yes! Thanks for the help, Hawks-san!” She does a loop in the air, then floats over towards him. “Say, how many feathers do you have? What’s the longest they’ve ever grown?” 

Hawks scratches the back of his head, blinking a few times behind his visor. “Uh— you mean in general? Or like one specific kind? I’ve never counted them all before—”

“You have different kinds of feathers?!” She cuts in, eyes sparkling. 

“Umm— yeah, there’s primaries, secondaries, tertials, rectrices…” Hawks leans back a bit, as she hovers right by his face, hand balancing on his arm. 

“Wow! Your wings are so cool. Your hair smells nice too! What shampoo do you use?” 

Hawks flaps his wings a few times, blinking rapidly. Even while he’s doing that, and focusing on her questions, his feathers are still zipping around carting people off to safety around them— that’s really so impressive! He must be so great at multitasking. He’s probably the kind of person who can do their laundry and wash their dishes at the same time; she’s kinda envious! She really wants to touch them; are they as soft as they look? Would he let her, if she asked? 

“I— don’t know? It’s a sponsorship.” Oh man, he really looks so cute when he’s confused! No wonder he’s always ranked as the most handsome hero 

 in those magazine polls. 

“Really? How many sponsorships do you have?” 

“Um, Nejire-chan,” Hawks says. “I don’t mind answering your questions, but we’re kind of in the middle of something, you know.”

“Right, of course! Sorry!” This really isn’t the time to be asking him questions, even though she really, reealllyyy wants to know. 

Hawks is just as interesting as she’d always expected him to be. He’s always been on her list of people she’s wanted to meet, and what were the odds they’d get to meet here and now, of all times? His quirk is super impressive, and crazy versatile, and his personality is really great too. He comes off as a bit arrogant and cavalier in his interviews, but it’s pretty easy to see he takes his job very seriously, and he’s surprisingly collaborative for a top hero with that kind of reputation. 

“And what are you two gossiping up here about? Anything interesting?” A new voice interrupts.

Nejire gasps, pulling back as the space between she and Hawks is suddenly and decisively very occupied. By someone just as infamous— and just as cute— as Hawks.

She squeals internally when she sees who it is.

No way! This might just be the greatest mission ever! Not only did she get a chance to talk to Hawks, but now Dabi too? 

He’s just as dramatic in person as he is on TV! Everything about him seems so much larger than life, even when he’s standing— or floating— right in front of her in the flesh! He’s crazy handsome too, just like everyone says. He’s so pretty! Nejire doesn’t think she’s ever seen someone quite so inexplicably beautiful. It’s hard to even put into words; there’s just something oddly otherworldly about him. 

“So cool!” She says aloud, eyes sparkling. “Did you just teleport? It was so quiet!” 

“Dabi,” Hawks says, talking over her. “...What are you doing here?” 

Dabi looks away from her, those marvelous eyes turning away to glance back at Hawks. 

Now Nejire might come off as flighty and a bit of an airhead, and it's true she tends to forget or ignore things she finds uninteresting, but she’s always been preternaturally good at reading a room. …Whether or not she decides to acknowledge an atmosphere or not is a totally different story. Usually she just doesn’t bother to care about things like that, but when the two other people involved are such impressive characters like Hawks and Dabi… well, she’s certainly going to pay attention.

There’s definitely some kind of undercurrent running between the two of them, although she can’t quite place what it is. The way Hawks looks at him— there’s a surprising amount of familiarity in it. Then again, she did hear that they worked together before on that big Humarise case. 

And then there’s the way they’re placed. Or rather, where Dabi is placed. He’d teleported right between the two of them, and Nejire had been literally touching Hawks at the time. She backed up once Dabi got between them, but Hawks hadn’t done the same, leaving him awfully close to the villain. Dabi wasn’t moving away either.

“Got called in,” Dabi says, shortly. “Sorry I can’t really stay to chat— communications have been jammed so I’m collecting team status updates in person. Is everything okay here?” 

“I only just got here myself,” Hawks reveals, glancing over towards her. “Nejire-chan?”

“We’re all good here!” She answers exuberantly, still looking between the two of them. “Ryukyu-san and the team are still down in the building, but they haven’t sent up an emergency signal yet.”

Dabi hums noncommittally. “I don’t suppose either of you can confirm whether or not Mimic is at this location?”

Nejire taps her chin, mentally rifling through all the villains from the briefing. “Don’t think so. I haven’t encountered anyone with a quirk like his.”

“Me either,” Hawks adds. 

Dabi sighs. “I see. I’m going to go in and confirm with Ryukyu. In the meanwhile, the main objective for all the assault teams is to find and destroy the Hassakai’s EMPs and restore communication channels with headquarters.” 

Without hesitation Hawks sends out another dozen feathers, zipping past her with a speed that probably could have sliced right through her if Hawks had any less control over them. Nejire watches with fascination as they fly off to canvas the entire area. 

“I’ll find it,” Hawks says, confidently. Nejire doesn’t doubt it for a second.

Neither does Dabi, apparently. He smiles at Hawks and it’s— she doesn’t swoon, but it’s a near thing. Dabi was already beautiful, but when he smiles, he’s absolutely stunning.

“Thanks, Hawks,” the former villain returns, and the warmth in his voice is too gentle to be anything but sincere. 

When Hawks smiles back at him, Nejire desperately wishes she could whip out her phone and take a picture to immortalize this moment forever. It’s not the usual smile she’s seen from Hawks— that dazzling flash of teeth he uses with deadly precision in magazine ads and television interviews— but something equally as soft and sweet as Dabi’s. And wow, those dimples are kinda lethal up close like this. Oh my god, they’re smiling at each other. It’s so cute she could expire on site. 

Maybe it’s for the best she doesn’t have her phone on her, because the temptation might be too much to resist and something about this moment seems oddly private. The way they look at each other… she doesn’t even think they realize they’re doing it, but it’s so intimate it makes her feel like she’s intruding. 

And is it just her, or are they leaning closer? No. No way. They wouldn’t— right? There’s no way.

Whatever trance they seemed to have been locked in breaks, as Dabi clears his throat and looks away. Hawks pulls back with a sudden jolt, wings beating furiously behind him. His expression looks perfectly placid, but Nejire thinks she can see a flush peeking out from beneath his high collar. 

“Right. Okay. I’ll just leave you guys to that. I, uh, gotta go find Ryukyu.”

Hawks nods rapidly in response, as Dabi drops down to the ground and lands at the building entrance. He doesn’t look back as he heads inside, but Nejire thinks if he had she might’ve caught a blush spreading over his cheeks that perfectly matched the one crawling up Hawks’s neck. 

(After Dabi leaves, Hawks does his level best to school his features into something unremarkably professional. Internally, he’s still reeling from seeing Satoru again so suddenly— and getting caught up in his eyes, like a total idiot. He’s in the middle of a mission right now! He can’t believe he let himself get distracted like that. But Dabi had just looked so good in that outfit...

He can’t help but worry it’s a bad sign, that Satoru apparently got called into this mess. His status as a legal hero in this country is still fairly complicated; if he’s involved, someone had to have gone through the hoops to clear him for this. No one goes through that kind of bureaucratic purgatory on a whim.

He shakes himself out of those thoughts, reminding himself that he’s not only on the clock, but also in the presence of one of Tokoyami’s fellow students. 

“Hey, hey,” Nejire-chan leans in close again. 

Hawks braces himself for yet another onslaught of questions over his quirk— 

“Are you two dating?”

—and promptly plummets out of the sky in shock.)

//

Gojo had known, from the moment Eraserhead had called him of all people, that this mission was going to be a fucking mess. 

He also knew, without a shadow of a doubt, that there’s nowhere else he’d rather have been than in the thick of it. Especially when so many people he cares about have been caught up in this. 

But it only becomes clear to him just how badly it’s all gone to shit when he finally gets to Rock Lock’s team only to find that they’ve made the most headway in their original objective than the other teams if only because they’ve had no opposition. There’s no Shie Hassaikai at all in the empty building Rock Lock’s team has seized, which is already foreboding. All the other teams were met with more hostilities than expected, not to mention a coordinated defense, when this was supposed to be a surprise assault. 

Rock Lock’s team was meant to storm the Shie Hassaikai office compound, the place where they kept all their finances and legal documents. In light of this there was a good sign Mimic would be there even if he was scheduled to be on site at their railroad warehouse, and Rock Lock’s team was stacked accordingly. Yet not only was Mimic not there— there were hardly any yakuza members present at all. Certainly none of the big shots they’d expected. Because of that, even with the EMP device embedded in the location, they’ve made good headway in sorting out the files and puzzling out what went wrong on this mission. 

“He’s planning to run,” Rock Lock says gravely, when Gojo arrives to get their sitrep. He doesn’t even look shocked to see the infamous s-rank villain turned global superhero, which Gojo tries not to feel chagrined by. 

“Chisaki?” Gojo clarifies, just to be sure.

“He’s made a fortune off recent weapons sales, but hasn’t delivered on the goods. Mimic’s book keeping is pretty impeccable— they took the money, but never delivered any kind of product in return,” Rock Lock explains. “And there’s been payouts to multiple precincts. Some of these names are… really not good.” 

Gojo curses inwardly. So he’d been right to be cautious with Eri’s situation, even among law enforcement. He’s been in organized crime long enough to know that’s always a danger when it comes to these things, but to hear just how deeply the police have been infiltrated… 

“If Mimic’s not here with you, then he’s definitely with Chisaki,” Gojo mutters to himself. 

There’s no other option. Between Eraserhead and Endeavor, and even Shouto and Midoriya, they should still be okay. Mimic’s not much of a fighter, Eraserhead’s quirk is a perfect counter for Overhaul, and his two munchkins are enough for Chronostasis, nevermind Endeavor. He worries nonetheless— the yakuza, like most organized crime, use live weapons. And apparently Chisaki hasn’t followed through on any of his deals, so he must still be in possession of all his quirk-erasing bullets. 

Gojo checks his watch. 

It hasn’t even been fifteen minutes since Izuku’s team has engaged. 

They’d been one of the last to start— long after the first team at the railroad warehouse. He’d been in the mission control room when Sir Nighteye had briefed their squad on what they knew of the leaks and Shie Hassaikai’s counter to their assault before they’d gone in. Both Endeavor and Eraserhead were aware of the EMP devices and knew communications would likely cut out as they continued their pursuit. They were made aware that Mimic was not at the railroad location, and that there was a chance he’d be with Chisaki. They also had entire platoons of law enforcement with them, already vetted by Nighteye himself. 

Gojo felt uneasy about it all nonetheless. 

“That’s only further evidence he’s trying to run, if he’s got both his most valued subordinates with him,” Rock Lock grouses, drawing Gojo out of his thoughts. The dark skinned man crosses his arms, frowning deeply. “I’ve got a bad feeling about that guy. He was already pretty deranged, but at least he kept his books clean. But this? Double crossing his buyers? Stealing money from other criminals? Not a good look.”

That’s to say nothing of the fact he could heartlessly torture an innocent young girl for his own gains. He’s more than just deranged— he’s straight up psychotic, and apparently able and willing to do some drastic. 

Gojo doesn’t waste any more time. He disappears before Rock Lock’s eyes, and heads straight for the coordinates for Endeavor’s team. 

He reappears above a sprawling building complex, dangling in reach of the sky. His Six Eyes unfold across the landscape, every single life in his radius resonating in their celestial orbit. 

He appraises everything in the singular instance it takes him to blink. 

Eraserhead is down, hit by some kind of stasis quirk. The owner of said quirk is engaging against two signatures he immediately recognizes as Izuku’s monstrous amalgamation quirk and Shouto’s fire-ice quirk. Then there’s Overhaul, ripping apart walls only to construct them again as he faces off with Endeavor. All around them the walls come alive as they expand and contract with a pulsing, corrupted quirk energy. Gojo’s never seen anything like it in this world— as if the entire building was a sentient quirk, with the heroes in the belly of the beast. It’s Mimic, he realizes quickly, and he must have injected himself with Trigger for his quirk to be this powerful. 

It’s concentrated within the foundation of the building, a human-sized bundle of energy farther apart from the twisting basement the others are fighting in.

Within a second, Gojo has calculated all of it. 

The trajectory of each of the fighters, their speed and velocity; the exact timing of the intricate web of quirk energy that seizes and shudders with each pull from Mimic; the density and construction of the building materials, the angles in which they’ll fall when pressure is applied; the distance between where he plans to aim and the rest of the squadrons lost in the underground maze. 

He raises his hands in a stance he hasn’t used in decades— the motion comes easy to him. 

“Hollow Technique: Purple.” 

//

Even if he hadn’t been hovering in the skies above the Shie Hassaikai’s headquarters in perfect view of whatever news cameras have sniffed out their operation, it would be impossible to miss the enormous, blazing pillar of blinding purple light that lit up across the skyline as Dabi released his technique. 

His nonchalance and blatant disregard for property damage of any kind are only amusing when Nighteye isn’t the one directly responsible for it, he can’t help but lament. 

It’s quite a statement— not that Dabi needed any more of those. Between Kamino and Humarise, every single mission he’s directly or indirectly been a part of has ended up with Dabi displaying some kind of impossibly powerful technique that will end up frontpage news for weeks to come. Dabi appearing in the skies above Tokyo to smite the yakuza out of their homes like some kind of vengeful god is only going to be the most recent in a long list of famously photographed exploits. 

His entire mission control room goes dead silent, to his endless annoyance. They’re supposed to be battle-tested, grizzled veterans of the field, not lemmings distracted by bright shiny lights that obliterate everything in their path. 

“What are you all standing around for?” Nighteye barks out at them. “What’s Fatgum’s status?” 

The poor analyst closest to him starts to stutter out an answer. Out of the corner of his eye he watches Dabi disappear in the searing aftermath of his dazzling display of pure destruction on the live feed at the front of the room. There’s no way their camera crew is the only one around who managed to catch that; even if the Shie Hassaikai EMPs are disrupting signals in the immediate vicinity around their bases, that blast was too big to miss. With the beginnings of a pounding headache he realizes he’s going to have to come up with some kind of narrative for Dabi’s presence— he doesn’t think his poor PR team can handle that kind of mess alone. 

It’s a small price to pay, if Dabi’s participation on the mission means they come out of this without a single casualty. 

//

Eri watches the tall man with the glasses as he barks out orders to all the busy-looking people in the room around him, uncomfortably reminded of Chisaki. But aside from the way he raises his voice and commands the others, not much about Sir Nighteye reminds her of her former captor. He might be a bit terse with his subordinates, but Eri doesn’t think he’s a mean person. The way he put a warm palm over her head, and spoke to her in a gentle voice as he told her he’ll fetch her some children’s books so she can color in the other room, made her think he was actually very kind. He’d also made certain she wasn’t bothered by any of the curious onlookers, who all seemed perhaps a bit too eager to chat her up. That was probably the reason Satoru asked her to play that game of his— she didn’t trust these people, and neither did he. Telling the truth to any of them was the last thing she wanted to do. Even Sir Nighteye was met with only warry acceptance from her, despite his nice voice. 

She chews on the end of one of the markers she’d been given, observing the chaos of the other room as they all talk over each other and run around. She’s heard Satoru’s name— or well, his other name— being thrown around a lot, and he’s come back a couple times already. Each time he gives her a jaunty little wave as he reappears in the center of the room, startling everyone in the place no matter how many times he does it. It doesn’t startle Eri, though. She’s reassured every time. She can’t hear what he says to Sir Nighteye every time he comes back, so she doesn’t know what it is he’s supposed to be doing. 

Eri glances up at the clock on the wall. This is the longest it’s been between appearances. 

She hopes he’s okay. 

As Sir Nighteye paces up and down the back corridor, glasses glinting blue from all the computer screens, her gaze drifts away to the reflective wall behind him. She quickly averts her eyes when she sees that man staring at her again. 

Eri doesn’t know his name, nor does she recognize his face. 

Maybe he’s a perfectly nice person who works for Sir Nighteye. Maybe he’s a hero, or a police officer, helping with the mission. Maybe Eri has no reason to feel uncomfortable whenever she accidentally sees him watching her. Maybe it’s all just in her head. But his eyes are piercing and unerring whenever Nighteye is distracted, and always, always focused on her. She thought she was just making it up at first, but every time she uses the shiny backwall to spy on him, she sees him staring. 

She bites her lip, gripping her marker tightly in her hand. 

Sir Nighteye promised Satoru he’d look after her. And everyone else has been nice so far. But that man is making her nervous— there’s something in his eyes that makes her think of Chisaki, makes her instincts clam up and scream at her to run away. 

Eri leaps to her feet, consciously ignoring the eyes she can feel on her as she keeps her own gaze fixed straight ahead of her. She walks right up to the blue lady who’d been very nice and introduced herself as Bubblegirl when she’d given Eri a set of markers. Bubblegirl is busy at a computer like everyone else, but she still spares a smile for Eri when Eri taps her on the shoulder. 

“I’m gonna go to the bathroom,” Eri mumbles, to her own feet. Satoru missed a hole when he’d laced up her shoe this morning, she notices. 

“Oh, okay Eri-chan,” the blue-haired lady replies, absently, squinting at her screen. “Don’t forget to wash your hands.” 

Eri nods, even though she won’t see it, and carefully hedges out of the room. Once the door closes behind her, she runs to the end of the hall where there’s a row of windows that look into the mission room. Her heart drops to her stomach as she reaches up on her tiptoes to peer into the room; the man with the dark eyes is getting out of his seat. He’s saying something to Sir Nighteye, who stops in his pacing to briefly nod in his direction, before he continues on towards the door. Eri gasps, and jumps back from the window. 

She hears the door she’d just close creak open again, and doesn’t waste a second sprinting down the hall. 

After all this time with Chisaki, she’s learned to trust her gut. And right now, it’s telling her to run. She doesn’t care who he is, she just knows that man can’t be trusted. 

Eri has no idea where she’s going, she just takes turn after turn and keeps running. She almost runs into a pair of women carrying stacks of paper as she hurtles down the hall, ignoring their shrieks of surprise while she rushes past them and skids to a halt as she rounds the corner, finding herself at a dead end. Her heart is in her throat as she hears the man chasing her find the women, casually asking about her. They recognize him, they call him Ushio-kun like they know him, and when he asks if they’ve seen a girl with silver hair they tell him she just ran by. She doesn’t wait to hear the rest, just picks a door at random and shoves through it. It’s a stairwell. She’d collapse in relief if she wasn’t too busy dashing down the stairs. 

The stairwell door creaks open just as she hits the other landing. 

“Eri-chan, are you in here?” The voice is sweet and patient— too sweet, and too patient. It might fool others, but Eri can hear the predatory tenor just beneath. “Sir Nighteye is looking for you. He’s worried.” 

Eri refuses to listen and wrenches the door open, bolting down the open hallway she finds there. 

She has to tell someone. She has to find someone safe. But she doesn’t know anyone in this building, doesn’t know anyone she can trust but perhaps Sir Nighteye and maybe Bubblegirl, but she left them both upstairs. She shouldn’t have left them. She should have stayed up there and just dealt with the staring, because at least up there with Sir Nighteye in the room that man couldn’t have tried anything. 

But who can she tell? Who would believe her? That man is called Ushio-kun and apparently people here know him. He’ll tell people she’s just a frightened girl who’s gotten lost, that he’ll take her back where she belongs— just like Chisaki always did. 

She races down the corridor, panic high in her chest as she hears footsteps picking up pace behind her. She’s too little. She’s too weak. She’ll never outrun him.

She takes another turn and with growing dread sees yet another dead end, this time with a bay of elevators and no doors. Tears spring to her eyes as she realizes she has no way to escape, even as she furiously presses the elevator buttons and desperately wishes them to appear. 

Miraculously, one of the elevator doors slide open with a soft ding!

Eri doesn’t even look, just bolts into it and ends up colliding with something hard. Something that yields against her with a noise of protest. “Whoa there!”

Shocked, Eri stares up into a face she recognizes. 

“H— Hawks!” Her tears spill over her eyes as pure relief floods her body. 

“Eri-chan,” the familiar blonde replies, surprise coloring his voice. “What— what are you doing here?” 

“Eri-chan?!” A loud yelp comes from the other person in the elevator. She turns in their direction and sees that this man is also blonde and also somewhat familiar. Her eyes widened. That’s the hero from her first escape attempt! Not the one who held her in his arms, the one with the kind hands and fluffy green hair, but the other one, in the red uniform.

He tried to help her, once. He’s probably trustworthy. And Hawks— Hawks is maybe married to Satoru. He sleeps in the same bed as him. He kissed him on the lips, like a fairytale prince. He’s definitely trustworthy.

“They’re after me,” she cries, shaking in Hawks’s arms as the winged hero gathers her close. “He’s coming now. The man with the mean eyes. He chased me down the halls. They found me again.” She’s sobbing by the end of it.

Hawks and the other blonde hero exchange grim glances. The one in red nods, then strides out of the elevator. “I’ll give Sir our reports, and take care of this. You just get her out of here.” 

“Of course,” Hawks says, and then jams the button to close the doors. Just before the doors slide shut, she hears the other hero casually asking the man with the scary eyes if he’s looking for a little girl with silver hair. Eri squeezes her eyes shut. She hopes it’s enough.

“It’s alright now, Eri-chan. Everything’s gonna be alright.” Hawks pets her hair gently, as the elevator lurches down. He sounds like he’s just saying that because he doesn’t know what else to say, but she appreciates the attempt all the same.

She buries her head in her hands, shaking from head to toe. “I— I want Satoru,” she hiccups, pitifully.

The hand in her hair stills. “Oh, Eri-chan,” the winged hero starts, sounding conflicted. “I know it’s scary— I know you’re scared. But, right now, Satoru is… it’s not safe where he is.”

Eri shakes her head, even though she knows on some level that Hawks is right. Satoru left her with Sir Nighteye because he had to go do something dangerous. Too dangerous for Eri to come along. But it doesn’t matter, because this place is dangerous too. She can’t think about anything else but Satoru, and the feeling of warmth and safety she gets whenever he’s near. She needs to see him right now. 

“Eri-chan…”

“I want to see Satoru,” she repeats, tears streaking down her face. 

The elevator slows to a halt. The doors open behind her. “Eri-chan, I…” Hawks doesn’t seem to know what to do with her, hovering awkwardly. 

“Please, Hawks?” She looks up at him with a tremulous gaze. She’s not meaning to manipulate him— tears never got her very far in the Shie Hassaikai, and she doesn’t assume they’ll be any more effective now— but he still folds like a house of cards.

“Fine,” Hawks sighs, running a wary hand through his wild hair. “I’ll take you to where he is, but we might have to wait awhile to see him, okay? He’s in the middle of something right now.”

Eri nods furiously, wiping at her eyes. “Okay.” 

Chapter Text

The entire world seems to shudder apart in the middle of their fight but Izuku has eyes for none of it, every ounce of his concentration focused entirely on keeping he and Todorooki alive. Chronostasis already defeated Aizawa-sensei; his quirk is no joke and his hand-to-hand is just as good as Dabi’s. 

Even with he and Todoroki tag teaming him, it’s impossible to get a good hit when the walls around them keep warping and changing. And with Mimic controlling the environment, he’s made sure to keep it as unfavorable for them as possible. He keeps narrowing the walls into cramped, maze-like hallways that make it impossible for Todoroki to use his quirk without worrying about hitting Izuku, and give Chronostasis the advantage in getting close enough to hit them with his quirk. The only reason he hasn’t gotten them yet is luck and some fairly clever applications of Todoroki’s ice walls. 

All of that goes entirely out the window when an explosive blast of purple light eradicates half the compound— and probably Mimic with it, from the way the walls stop aggressively attacking him.

The walls Mimic had been controlling freeze in place, some of them only half formed, as a blinding beam thunders through dozens of layers of pure concrete in the space of a second. In the ensuing dust and debris that shoot into the air as part of the ceiling collapses, right before he’s lunging out of the way as a pillar of concrete threatens to fall on him, he’s fairly certain he sees a flash of striking white hair. 

“Dabi!” He cries in relief, catching sight of the man just before another pillar crashes down and the cloud of dust it kicks up obscures his view. 

“Nobody move!” Overhaul’s voice booms down the dilapidated corridor, ringing with terrifying assurance.

Izuku rolls out from beneath a fallen support beam, ready to come at the villain again when he freezes and takes stock of the situation at hand.

Whatever relief he might have felt at Dabi’s outrageously climactic entrance shatters to pieces as he sees Todoroki kneeling in the center of the room. He looks unharmed, which is the only good thing Izuku can say about the situation, because Overhaul has his bare hand against his neck, wrapped around his skin like a treacherous collar. Across the room from him, Endeavor has stopped his assault as well, flames drying up as he sees his son pinned down by a villain who could easily kill him at any second. 

“Shouto,” Endeavor breathes, horrified. 

“If you don’t want him to be a pile of spare parts on the ground, you’ll all stay exactly where you are,” Overhaul commands, calmly, staring them all down. His eyes narrow at Dabi as the dust settles down, standing in front of the cave-in he’d caused. “Except you. Hands where I can see them— that’s it.” 

Izuku watches with stunned disbelief as Dabi complies. He raises both hands by his head, body relaxed and at ease as he stares down Overhaul with an impassive expression. The galaxy in those vibrant eyes glows a haunting sapphire blue in the dim light. His plush, pink mouth is set in an indifferent line. Dabi doesn’t even have a witty quip back for the villain, which is how Izuku knows the situation is really, really bad. 

Mimic might be taken out of the equation, but Overhaul has his bare hands on Todoroki. 

“One wrong move, and the boy dies,” Overhaul adds, casually, his bare hand wrapped around Todoroki’s neck, fingers dangling across his collarbone. Izuku has the unbearable urge to rip those fingers off his hand, one by one, for daring to put that look in Todoroki’s eyes. “And I’m sure you don’t want that, do you, Dabi? You’re always such a soft touch whenever kids get involved— I don’t think you want to see this one end up paste on the floor… do you?”

“No.” Dabi replies, simply, when it becomes clear Overhaul is waiting for his answer.

Overhaul nods. “Good, good. I see you understand the situation you’re in. If I even think you’re about to pull one of your tricks, I’ll start by ripping apart his limbs.” 

Todoroki jerks in the villain’s grip, eyes wide. Overhaul tuts at him in warning; Todoroki grits his teeth, but stops struggling. 

“Do you understand me, Dabi?” Overhaul prods, sharply. “This boy’s life is in your hands right now.” 

“Dabi, you can’t,” Todoroki cries, lurching forward in Overhaul’s grip. The man tightens his fingers around Todoroki’s neck, other ungloved hand coming to rest warningly on his shoulder. 

“I hear you, loud and clear,” Dabi responds, ignoring Todoroki’s plea, and though his tone is even the fury in his eyes says he wants to rip Overhaul apart with his bare hands.

The only thing stopping him from doing it— the only thing stopping all of them— is the plain and simple knowledge that Overhaul is insane enough to do it. He’d kill Todoroki, the son of the Number One Hero, right in front of the man, just to prove his point. Endeavor looks more frightened than Izuku had ever thought possible, the fires deserting his face, leaving the pale and shaken features of a father fearing for his son’s life. Izuku himself is too close to sheer terror to think clearly, animalistic fear clouding his thoughts until all he can concentrate on is the knife edge of survival they’re all dangling on. 

It’s an impossible position to be in. Panic claws at his chest, a splintering, unbearable pain that ratchets into a numbing terror as Overhaul holds Todoroki in a death grip and bargains Dabi’s life for his and none of them can do anything about it. 

“Don’t,” Todoroki whispers, tears gathering in his eyes. “You can’t. Not for me. Please.”

Finally Dabi’s gaze drops from Chisaki. He spares a tight, wan smile down at Todoroki. “Sorry, Shou-kun. But I won’t gamble with your life.” 

Todoroki makes a terrible, wounded noise. 

“I’m glad we’re on the same page,” Overhaul replies, chuckles. “Because I don’t plan on taking any chances with you. I’m going to put a bullet right between your eyes, and if I don’t see you good and dead on the ground, then the kid is next.”

Izuku’s knees feel weak as he sees Dabi only nod in response. No, no, no. This can’t be happening. Not Dabi. 

“No!” He thinks it’s his own words wrenched from his throat, but the tenor is too deep. He’s shocked to see it’s Endeavor who shouted, his own eyes shining with a tortuous fear that mirrors Izuku’s own. “Dabi, no. You—”

“Stay out of it, Endeavor,” Dabi cuts him off sharply, without even looking at him. Endeavor looks like Dabi just punched him in the gut. 

“Do we have a deal, Dabi?” Overhaul drawls, talking over both of them. 

“Yeah, we have a deal,” Dabi replies, curtly, eyes never once leaving Overhaul. 

“It’s nothing personal,” Overhaul has the fucking gall to add, shrugging. “But you’re just too powerful to keep alive. Chrono?”

Chronostasis nods, picking himself up from where he’d been tossed off when Dabi obliterated half the building. He strides towards Dabi, gun raised.   

“Not that one,” Overhaul barks at his subordinate, something surprisingly sharp in his tone. “Don’t waste that bullet.” 

His lackey only nods again, and then switches out the revolver for the pistol at his side. He flicks off the safety, and levels the gun directly at Dabi’s face. Dabi meets his gaze unflinchingly. Izuku can’t breathe. He can’t feel his fingers, or any of his limbs. There’s just the blood rushing in his ears as his whole world narrows down to the open barrel of the gun. 

“No!!” 

It’s all over so fast. 

The shockingly sharp clap of a bullet leaving the chamber. The scream that wrenches out of Todoroki’s throat as he jerks in Overhaul’s grip, the hollowed shock in his expression as Dabi’s body crumples to the floor. It’s almost like an afterthought, the dull thud of his empty corpse dropping to the ground. Blood sprays from his temple, just a bit off center, closer to his hairline and off above his right eye. Not exactly right between the eyes. The splatter is unreal. Izuku has never seen anything quite like it. 

He hadn’t even realized he’d tried to move, tried to lurch forward towards the man’s falling body, tried to run— run and do what, he didn’t know. Catch him as he fell? It wouldn’t matter. There’s already a bullet in Dabi’s head and Chisaki still holds Todoroki. He’d just force them all to do it all over again, puppets in his sick little play. But he’s not fast enough. He’s never fast enough. He reaches Dabi’s side far too late; the light has already left his eyes. 

“There, that wasn’t so hard, was it?” Chisaki says, casually. Izuku barely hears it over the din of his own hyperventilating. 

“So much for being the strongest villain in the world,” Overhaul continues, sighing. There’s a malevolent gleam in his eyes as he watches blood drip down from Dabi’s limp, unmoving form. “In the end, he had a weak human heart like everyone else, hm? Couldn’t even stomach seeing a brat like this get hurt.”

“You sick bastard…” Izuku curses, raising his head. 

He can’t let Dabi’s sacrifice be in vain. He can’t even fathom the idea of it, even after seeing the man die in front of his eyes. Dabi can’t die like this, at the hands of some sick madman like Chisaki, in some dilapidated basement holding in a Yakuza stronghold. He deserves so much more. But he’d given his life for a chance to save theirs. Izuku has to focus on that right now, or he’ll break down into pieces. His trembling, teary gaze meets Todoroki’s across the room— his own gaze is swimming with tears, spilling down his cheeks in silent tracks. He can’t let him down. He can’t let anyone else down. 

“I’ll fucking kill you!!” He lunges at Chisaki, just as he hears Endeavor shout at him in protest.

He ignores it, leaping at the masked villain with his hands raised, rocketing off his spot beside Dabi’s prone form with enough force to splinter the ground behind him. 

“Have you forgotten the situation you’re in, little hero?” Overhaul chides, clicking his tongue. Todoroki gives a shuddering hiss under his grip, shoulders trembling as if he’s forcing himself not to make a sound.

Izuku sees a strange blackness seep into his skin from beneath Chisaki’s bare hand, and skids to a halt as all his anger evaporates under an onslaught of guilt. Fuck. He’d been so caught up in his own fury he’d forgotten Todoroki, still at the mercy of the deconstruction villain. He goes from hot to cold so furiously he can barely think straight. Pure, unadulterated fear and a kind of hatred he’s never felt before for anyone warring inside him. 

“Move again and your friend might just lose his head,” Overhaul reminds him. Then he chuckles darkly. “Your other friend, I should say.” 

Izuku growls low in his throat, entire body trembling in rage. 

“Chrono, how many bullets do you have left?”

“It’s fully loaded, sir.” 

“Excellent. So you have plenty more for Endeavor.” Izuku can’t see the vicious grin spreading across the man’s face behind his mask, but he can hear it. 

His anger dries up again, as cold fear slips down his back. Kill Endeavor? Is Overhaul insane? Probably. No, definitely. He… he already killed… — Izuku can’t even bear to think it. But Dabi’s always been an incendiary character, loathed by heroes and villains alike. Dabi’s killed plenty of people, and had plenty of enemies who wanted him dead. Somehow, the idea of Overhaul killing Endeavor, the country’s Number One Hero, with that same detached efficiency is what makes Izuku realize they are well and truly dealing with a madman. The repercussions alone would stop most villains from even considering it. It would be a death sentence. He’d be hunted to the ends of the earth. But Overhaul is an already demented man pushed into a corner with nothing left to lose. 

He’s been at the end of his tether for weeks, Izuku belatedly realizes. Probably since Dabi took Eri. The frantic searching across the city that’s fractured the Shie Hassaikai, the rumors Sir Nighteye has been hearing about Overhaul pulling away from even his closest subordinates, the bank seizures and arrests Hawks has been making, the supply routes the winged hero and Tokoyami have uncovered... Overhaul had bet everything on Eri, on the quirk-erasing bullets he could make with her. And now he’s been cornered by this assault, and he can either put all his chips on the quirk-erasing bullets he has left and securing Eri, or he can crash and burn right here, right now, and take as many people down with him as he can. 

But if that’s the case… if he’s really gone past the point of no return… then none of them are safe. Even if they do comply, he’ll probably just kill Todoroki once he’s killed Endeavor. Once he’s killed Izuku. Just like he… just like he killed Dabi.

He’s trembling all over as he meets Todoroki’s gaze, and sees his friend has come to the same solemn realization as he has.

Izuku chokes back a sob, as he sees determination burn brightly in his classmate’s eyes, the unbelievable fear he must be feeling at the thought of what he must do overwhelmed by his own strength of will. Todoroki has already made his choice; he’d rather die here than let Izuku and Endeavor become Chisaki’s next victims. 

But Izuku doesn’t know if he can let his friend make that choice. He’s just watched another of his friends make a wretched, impossible choice (he can’t be dead, he can’t be… Izuku can’t even bear the thought of looking back to confirm it right now) and he doesn’t think he can watch yet another person he holds dear permanently slip away from him. 

He can’t help but think on Aizawa-sensei’s earlier words, about missions always going to shit. 

This went to shit in the worst possible way, but Izuku has no presence of mind to string two thoughts together, let alone come up with an actionable plan to get them all out of here. How is he supposed to find a way out of this when he can’t even stop shaking? Dabi is the strongest person he’s ever met, the strongest in the whole world, and even he couldn’t— No. Izuku can’t think about this right now. He can’t think about Satoru and his lovely smile as he tells Izuku that his greatest strength isn’t his quirk, it’s his head, and that a hero’s greatest asset isn’t their power, but their heart. If he thinks too much on Satoru his heart will burst and he won’t be able to come up with a plan and then Todoroki’s going to fucking sacrifice himself and Izuku will be all alone again and he doesn’t think he’d have the strength to keep going if he was—

— And next time Aizawa-sensei tells him missions always go to shit, and you need to keep your wits about you when they do, he’ll have a counterpoint for his teacher.

Missions do always go to shit, and sometimes they go so terribly you can’t even think straight, but that’s why you’re not alone. 

“As long as someone else is around, there’s always an opportunity for teamwork!” He’d parroted those words to Dabi in what seems like a distant summer dream, and when he sees the ruffled head of Aizawa-sensei stealthily hidden behind a large slab of concrete, the glint of a knife in his hands, he knows all hope isn’t lost. They can make it through this. Maybe he can make Dabi proud one last time, even if the other man is no longer around to see it. 

Overhaul is distracted by ordering Chronostasis around. “You know what? Use the other one. He’s not nearly as much of a threat as Dabi, and I’m curious to see how someone with as strong a quirk as the Number One Hero might be affected.”

While he’s focused on his subordinate, Izuku meet’s Aizawa-sensei’s gaze. His sensei nods grimly at him, knife in his hand. Izuku nods back. Aizawa-sensei needs an opening to take Chisaki by surprise. 

Izuku knows just what to do. 

“Of course, sir,” Chronostasis replies stoically, lowering his gun. 

He switches his pistol for the revolver in the holster at his side, and that’s when Izuku acts. He swings his leg in a roundhouse kick, powered with One for All. The resounding shockwave is fierce and sharp and perfectly controlled, knocking the revolver right out of Chronostasis’s hand. 

Chisaki whirls on him, incensed. “You fucking little brat—!!”

There’s the glimmer of a knife soaring through the air. It strikes fast and hard, aimed directly for Chisaki’s head. 

Overhaul sees it from the corner of his eye at the last second, flailing inelegantly as he jerks backwards. The knife misses its mark, barely, slicing a fine line straight through Chisaki’s cheek. Todoroki shoots to his feet and scrambles away from the villain. 

He howls in rage as he clutches at his face. “Chrono!”

Chronostasis reacts immediately, reaching for his sheathed pistol and shooting from the hip. 

The shot rips through Eraserhead’s side as the underground hero attempts to dodge. Izuku shouts in alarm as his sensei drops to his knees, blood splattering beneath him as he puts a hand against his wound. Todoroki skids to a halt next to him, sliding into a defensive posture nearly identical to Izuku’s as they move to stand back to back. It’s a seamless and perfectly executed move, just like Dabi taught them. He’d be proud, to see such flawless teamwork. But he can’t think about Dabi right now. Can’t think about the man’s laugh while he flings them around a veritable trash heap on a hot summer’s day, his smile when he teasingly corrects Izuku’s posture for the third time in a row. Can’t think about the man’s dead body lying not even ten meters from him, blood pooling beneath him and beautiful blue eyes lifeless and cold—

Fuck. 

He’s in the middle of fighting for his life here. Fighting for all of their lives, trying to make sure Dabi’s death wasn’t in vain, trying to live up to the man’s expectations and legacy and save the people who need it most. He has no time to grieve, no time to cry over his cooling body, wipe the blood from his perfect face and close those perfect eyes and—

He can’t help it. Even as Chisaki is shouting in fury and Chronostasis is still leveling a gun his teacher’s way and Todoroki is finally out of imminent danger but still shaking in terror, he looks. It’s just a glance. Just a way to remind himself what he’s fighting for, what he still has left to lose, but there’s nothing there.

Dabi is… gone. 

//

In the end, he’s a failure twice over.

When Chisaki threatens the life of his youngest son, he can do nothing. When Chisaki’s subordinate puts a bullet between his eldest son’s eyes, he can do nothing. All he does is watch in silent agony, rooted in place by his own fear, as weak to his own terrors as he always has been. 

Dabi— no, Touya, falls dead to the ground, and it’s young Midoriya who runs to his side in tears, while Endeavor remains immobilized in his spot. He does nothing as Midoriya rushes at the villain, as Shouto flinches in the man’s grip and reminds him that he still has another son to lose. That Overhaul still holds his life in his hands even if he’s already unknowingly crushed a part of it. 

Touya did it to protect Shouto. Sacrificed his life for his younger brother, just as he did all those years ago. He’s always been a better hero than Endeavor could ever hope to be. A better person. A more deserving man. 

Yet it’s Endeavor who remains alive once again. Endeavor, who would gladly have traded his own life, gladly traded places with either of them and taken a bullet to the head or been deconstructed into bloody pieces, then lose the son he’s only just found again, or the son who can barely stand to look him in the eye. He doesn’t think he can bury Touya a second time. Not now that he’s trying to atone, not now when his only reason for living is to be the kind of hero that can forge a better world for the children he’s wronged so terribly. He can never be forgiven for the sins he committed against his own family; for what he’s done to Touya. 

It should have been him.  

He’s the one with a ledger that can never be balanced, with a debt that cannot be paid. If anyone deserves to die in this room, it’s him. Not Touya, not Shouto. 

So why is he the one alive and unharmed? 

When Chronostasis levels a gun at him, it almost feels like fate. A part of him is even relieved that he cannot fight back. To die so Shouto can live— it’s a sacrifice Touya has made twofold, and one Endeavor is more than happy to bear. He just has to buy time for his son; the task force will know something’s gone wrong and send backup. There’s Ryukyu, Fatgum, Nighteye, Rock Lock— even Hawks. Hawks is lauded for his pristine record for hostage situations. He’ll be able to save Shouto and Midoriya. Knowing the fastest hero, he’s probably already on his way. 

Then Eraserhead reveals himself by nearly slamming a knife in Chisaki’s skull, freeing Shouto and earning a bullet to the gut for his troubles. 

No, Endeavor realizes, it’s too soon to give up. 

He can die for Shouto, can lay down his life so that one of his sons lives to see the end of this encounter, but he can fight for him too. And if they both live to see tomorrow, he can spend the rest of his life fulfilling his promise to Touya, and doing what he can for his family. He’ll protect his family, and the little girl his eldest son left behind, because that’s all Touya has ever wanted or expected from him. 

His flames roar back to life. 

A pillar of fire jets out towards Chronostasis while his attention is still fixed on his master. The yakuza member flings himself out of the way, rolling off to the side as both Shouto and Midoriya use the opening to hammer him with attacks. Midoriya uses his shockwave attack to knock the man off balance, sending his next shot ricocheting off the ceiling, and he and Shouto keep the man occupied and on the defensive while Endeavor slides to take point against Chisaki. 

Their quirks are a good matchup for Endeavor, now that Dabi has taken care of Mimic and he doesn’t have to worry about the environment closing in on him. The basement is a large open space surrounded on all sides with rubble, with plenty of room for Endeavor’s flames to keep Chisaki out of range. 

Eraserhead is wounded, but alive. He has no idea how the man managed to overcome Chronostasis’s quirk, but he’s thankful for it for giving them this opportunity. 

He couldn’t win against Overhaul alone before, but that was because Overhaul had both Mimic and Chronostasis on his side. One on one like this, with the environment decidedly in his favor, he thinks he has a much better chance, even if he’s fighting alone.

But when he turns back to Overhaul, he realizes he’s not alone, and he’s not going to be the one to fight Overhaul.

Because there’s someone else standing between him and Overhaul. Someone who shouldn’t be there— who shouldn’t even be alive. 

“... Touya,” slips out of him before he can stop it, eyes wide. 

It is Touya. 

He’d recognize his eldest son anywhere. He’s spent months pouring over every small detail of Dabi’s physical appearance, and the past few weeks combining what he knows of the former cremation villain with what he remembers of his eldest son. There’s absolutely no one else it could possibly be. And yet… he watched a madman put a bullet in Touya’s head. He watched his son die before his eyes. 

So how can this white-haired man standing between he and Overhaul possibly be Touya? 

But there’s no one else it could be. There’s even blood still painted down the side of his face, matted in his bright white hair, dying half of it crimson in a ghastly similar fashion to his youngest son’s hair. It drips down his neck and into the deep black of his uniform, seeping into the fabric with a wet sheen. 

“You—” Overhaul stumbles back, knees buckling as he stares at Touya like he’s seeing a ghost. For all Endeavor knows, maybe he is. Maybe Touya is a ghost. It would make as much sense as anything else about the boy. “No. You can’t— I saw it! You were… I saw it with my own eyes!!”

Touya takes a step forward. Overhaul scrambles backwards blindly, sprawling to the ground. 

“You died, I saw it,” Overhaul rasps, eyes wide and shaking in their sockets. “How— how are you still alive?!”

Endeavor is too shocked to truly comprehend what the hell is going on here, but he at least has the presence of mind to look back to the spot Chronostasis had shot Touya dead. It’s still there, bloodstains and all— but the body is gone. The body is currently up and moving about, slowly, leisurely, sauntering towards Overhaul as the man seems to come apart at the seams with every bloody footprint Touya leaves on the floor. 

“D— Dabi?” Shouto’s classmate gasps. 

When Endeavor turns to look at him, he’s staring at Touya with tears in his eyes, a wide, relieved smile on his face. It looks like they’ve gotten into yet another stalemate with Chisaki’s second in command, Midoriya in position to attack but Chronostasis with his gun pointed towards Shouto. Unfortunate, but unsurprising; students aren’t nearly as trained for handling villains using live weapons as they are villains using quirks. Something that will be rectified shortly after this mission if Endeavor has any say in it. Regardless of their compromising position, neither of the two students look concerned. Shouto is actually smiling — a sight Endeavor doesn’t think he’s ever seen in his life— looking absurdly reassured for someone still being held at gunpoint. 

Touya grins ferociously down at Overhaul. His mouth is full of blood. 

“Clearly you didn’t do a good enough job,” Touya says, casually, staring down at Overhaul with cool indifference. “Should I teach you how to kill someone and make sure it sticks?”

He thrusts a hand out to the side, fingers spread wide. 

Chronostasis gets out a choked off, muffled grunt, and then, in a grisly display that will stick with Endeavor for the rest of his life, the man holding a gun at his youngest son is disemboweled and pulled apart before his eyes. He’s torn to shreds; ripped apart until there’s nothing left but a bloody, flayed pulp and a warped gun. It’s a nauseating, sickening sight— and Touya doesn’t even care. Can’t even be bothered to look at it. His vibrant, shining eyes never waver from Overhaul even as he rips another human apart from across the room; the cold, unyielding wrath of a predator stalking its prey, a god denouncing a sinner. 

Endeavor just watched his eldest son die in front of him, again, only to rise up from the dead, again, and then promptly murder a man without a single hesitation. He does not know how to come to terms with any of that. 

Somehow, it’s the Midoriya kid that kicks himself out of his shocked stupor first and hauls Shouto and himself back behind Endeavor, the closest able-bodied hero in sight, where he can guard them properly and take point against the villain; a perfectly executed textbook response for a hostile situation involving dangerous criminals. Endeavor isn’t entirely sure how warranted it is, with Touya turning Overhaul into a cowering mess just by existing in front of him. He gives them both a once over as they stumble towards his flank. Aside from scrapes and bruises, they both seem fine enough. Physically, anyway. Shouto still looks like he’d just seen a man get eviscerated in front of him, which did in fact happen, face deathly pale and eyes rimmed red. Endeavor is more surprised to see Midoriya— who’s been a nervous mess every time he’s seen him— looking alert and utterly unfazed by the carnage he’s just witnessed. Maybe he’s just burying his shock for later. 

Touya crouches down in front of Overhaul, face sliced through with a savage, vicious smile.

“There, that wasn’t so hard, was it?” He taunts— the exact words Chisaki had said as he’d stood over Touya’s dead body and gloated. 

Then he levels two bloody fingers straight at Chisaki’s face, an imitation of a gun. “Bang.”

Chisaki flinches back immediately, jerking his head back so fast his mask goes clattering off to the side. Revealed in full, his face is sticky white with fear, eyes swimming in their sockets. His chest heaves with each frantic breath he sucks in, painfully loud in the choking silence of the basement. 

That same silence splinters apart as Touya rises to his feet again, tossing his head back and letting out a loud, jarring laugh. It’s a sight that sends shivers down Endeavor’s spine; his undead son covered in his own blood, bellowing laughter with his enemy laid out at his feet. 

“Oh come now, you didn’t think I’d let you off that easy, did you?” Touya chuckles, laughter dying down. 

His eyes still burn like hollow pinpricks of light, searing cold and full of a malice Endeavor doesn’t think he’s ever seen on the boy before. Not even when he called Endeavor a worthless human and a failure of a father. He’d been angry then, and disappointed, but nothing like this. This is infinite, absolute, unforgiving wrath. 

There’s nothing but complete and unconditional fear in Chisaki’s eyes as he stares up at Touya, a helpless, wriggling fly caught in a deadly spider’s web. Too powerful to be left alive indeed. Overhaul knows with the utmost surety that there is nothing he can do to stop Touya, that there will be no mercy from Touya for the man who ordered him dead. 

Endeavor clenches his fists, knowing he too is just as helpless to stop Touya as the villain sprawled out on the ground. If Touya wants to spend the next half-hour ripping this man to shreds there’s nothing he can do to stop him. Touya is too powerful for any mere mortal to handle. After watching him rise up from the dead and obliterate a man with a flick of his fingers, he doubts there’s anyone in the whole world strong enough to stop Touya. That is the reality he’s forced to accept, as he watches his eldest son enact his bloody vengeance. 

For a long, endless moment, Endeavor holds his breath and thinks Touya really will do it. He’s going to kill Chisaki, in the most gruesome and horrific way he can. 

He killed Mimic because it was necessary. He killed Chronostasis to make a point. But this? This is about power, plain and simple. 

Then he murmurs, quietly, “Death is too good for you.” 

He flings out a hand again— the same one he used to kill Chronostasis, the right, with fingers drenched in his own blood— and even Endeavor flinches this time, expecting something horrific to result from such an innocuous movement. This time though, Touya only summons something into his hand. The revolver Midoriya had knocked away from Chronostasis earlier flies through the air and snaps into Touya’s hand. 

With an unflinching indifference he brings the gun down and shoots Chisaki in the knee. The snap of his kneecap shattering is drowned out by the clap of the bullet leaving the chamber. There’s a moment the whole room seems shocked into stillness; then Chisaki begins to howl.

Touya ignores him. The gun burns to nothingness in his hands under his infamous cremation, metal exterior and bullets helpless against the wrath of his quirk. He  walks around the shrieking villain and makes his way to Eraserhead. 

He crouches down next to Eraserhead, meeting the man’s gaze— and his quirk— with that same unflinching indifference. And why wouldn’t he? A mere quirk is nothing in the face of his powers. Then he looks down, hands ghosting down Eraserhead’s side. 

“He just clipped you, huh? Nasty scar, but the exit looks clean enough,” Touya murmurs, frowning. “Best to let the medics get a look at it, though.” 

And then, with Eraserhead’s eyes still trained on him, they both disappear. If there was any further evidence that Touya’s abilities were not quirk related at all, this would be it. He teleported them both without issue, erasure be damned. 

Endeavor lets out a shaky breath when he leaves, as if his mere presence created a tangible pressure in the air. For all Endeavor knows, that could very well be true. He leaves Chisaki moaning on the ground, no longer a threat now that Touya ruined his leg and erased his quirk. He suppresses the shudder he feels at the mere thought of those bullets. Thanks to Hawks, all the temporary bullets have been rounded up and confiscated. And thanks to Touya, the only permanent versions have been cremated from existence. 

He heads towards Midoriya and Shouto, who are still clutching at each other like newborn kittens. Or rather, Midoriya seems to be holding most of Shouto’s weight, as Shouto seems held in some kind of fugue state. Endeavor frowns deeply at the black mark scrawling across Shouto’s neck, in the shape of Chisaki’s hand. Well, Touya’s methods might be brutal to the point of disturbing, but when he thinks of Shouto helpless in Chisaki’s hands, he wonders if perhaps the former villain had the right of it. Death is too easy for that man. 

“Are you two both alright?” He asks quietly, and despite his words it's only Midoriya he looks to for an answer.

As predicted, Shouto doesn’t even appear to have heard him. Midoriya just nods, biting furiously at his bottom lip. “Minor injuries, Endeavor-san,” the young hero says. “And Shouto is just— it’s just shock.”

Endeavor nods, glancing back towards Shouto. His eyes are closed now, and Endeavour would almost think him asleep and listing on Midoriya’s arm if not for the way he’s clutching at Midoriya’s hand. Endeavor elects to say nothing about that.

Touya’s teleportation is just as unnerving in person as it had been on television. One moment he’s gone, and then without any sound or sensation to announce his presence, he’s merely there again. 

“Alright, your turn kiddos,” Touya says, and at the very least, the usual insouciant tenor of his voice seems to have made a reappearance, even if he still looks a fright and his eyes burn so bright they leave imprints in Endeavor’s vision even when he’s not looking at him. And when he does look at him, it takes everything he has to meet that unnatural gaze head on. “Were there any other bullets, or just the ones in the chamber?”

Endeavor has to force himself past the instinctual urge to freeze up in place when he meets those unbearably bright eyes. “They had a case. The rest of the temporary bullets, I believe. The only permanent ones were loaded in the gun.” 

Touya nods. “Find them, if you can. You can handle the rest from here, right?” He tosses a pair of cuffs at Endeavor, who barely has enough presence of mind to catch them before they smack him in the face. 

He fingers them in his hands. They’re just regular cuffs. Likely nicked from an officer above. He supposes they’re all he’ll need, now that Chisaki is quirkless. 

Then Touya claps a hand on both the kids’ shoulders, and they too are gone without a trace. Presumably back up to the surface, where the EMTs and first responders are probably crowded all over the scene, and undoubtedly the media has caught wind of their mission. 

Endeavor is left entirely alone, with one villain buried under a beam of destruction (presumably dead), another villain mangled beyond recognition (and definitely dead), and the last still whimpering on the ground (probably wishing he was dead). 

He sighs. 

//

@ru-kun | My Own Worst Enemy (The Remix)

Nothing can kill me not even death and it’s the fucking worst

Comments 6.1k |  Likes 6.9k | Retweets 5.5k

Chapter Text

@ru-kun | My Own Worst Enemy (The Remix)

being awake has ruined my life

@ru-kun | My Own Worst Enemy (The Remix)

what doesn’t kill me should have seriously tried harder

@ru-kun | My Own Worst Enemy (The Remix)

you ever look around and think man you know what would solve this??? Death

@scrubsbaby

OUR LORD AND SAVIOR IS STILL ALIVE

 

@miserybusiness23 

Omg @ru-kun are you okay

 

@daftydraft

Is this the great (twitter) return of the Chosen One™??? 

 

Replying to @ru-kun

@noscrubsmako | Mako-chan

Jesus fucking christ YOU HAD ONE JOB  

//

Makoto: Stop posting or I WILL MAKE you stop posting

Ru-kun: Mako-chan I’m dying. Put me out of my misery pleaseeeee

Makoto: What is wrong with you?? Where are you right now? Where’s Eri?

Ru-kun: Not here 😭the police have her and idk if they’re going to give her back to me

Makoto: omg ok I get you’re having a crisis but for fucks sake DO NOT have it on twitter

Makoto: are you both okay? You’re not actually dying are you

Ru-kun: Not anymore

Makoto: fuck off are you being serious

Ru-kun: lol 

Makoto: THAT’S NOT AN ANSWER SATORU WTF

Ru-kun: jk I’m totally fine just bored to tears rn dealing with the police

Ru-kun: and no not because of something I did

Ru-kun: not entirely* because of something I did

Makoto: this is not inspiring confidence whatsoever

Ru-kun: don’t worry I’ll let you know if I need you to spring me out of jail

Makoto: please tell me you’re exaggerating 

Makoto: …

Makoto: SATORU

Makoto: don’t ghost me you asshole!!! 

//

Makoto is probably, unfortunately, correct. 

It’s probably not a good idea to air out his grievances on twitter right now while she’s trying to lay the groundwork for the band’s comeback, but he just needs somewhere to vent and everyone around him is looking at him like he’s a god or a devil or worse. 

Yeah, okay, in hindsight, he maybe went a bit overboard. 

If he stopped using twitter as free therapy and went to an actual therapist, he’s sure they’d have quite a few choice words to say about his behavior. 

You’d think he would have learned his lesson on his own hubris after the first lethal wound to the head he’d ever received, but if he had a penny for every time his own arrogance got the best of him and he’d ended up (mostly) dead on the ground— well, he’d have two pennies, which isn’t a lot but is still all kinds of fucking stupid. One of these days he’ll learn his lesson on not taking his own immortality for granted but that would require way more self introspection then he can handle right now and in the meanwhile he can literally cheat death, so why even bother? On a related note, this is probably why he needs to see a therapist. 

There are a lot of things he needs to be doing, incidentally, and he’s avoiding all of them because they are once again all problems of his own making that he just does not have the mental capacity to care about right now. 

He just resurrected himself from the dead, again, okay. He thinks he’s entitled to a few minutes of quiet to disassociate and eat the rest of this banana some stressed out EMT shoved at him earlier. 

He doesn’t even get that. 

Everyone was giving him a wide berth after the initial wave of first responders saw what he’d done to the trio of villains down in the bowels of the Shie Hassaikai headquarters, and he’d expected the trend to at least hold long enough for him to finish this banana in peace, but instead he sees the one person he’d rather not have to deal with right now lumber over to him with more hesitation than Gojo’s ever seen from the old man. When he approaches Gojo’s spot camped out in a somewhat secluded corner of ambulances, it’s not with his usual overbearing fanfare. For once, he’s finally displaying the sort of caution that someone of Gojo’s caliber deserved. And it only took Gojo pulling a reverse-uno card on death, crippling one man, and eviscerating another, for him to finally see exactly how dangerous that son he used to push around as a kid really is. Well, better late than never he supposes.

It’s actually pretty boldly stupid or remarkably brave of the man to approach him, knowing what Gojo is capable of. 

“They’re unlikely to press charges on you,” Endeavor begins without preamble. 

Gojo just takes a bite of his banana, watching him with hooded eyes. 

“Chronostasis was using a live weapon, fired multiple times, injured Eraserhead, and threatened the lives of your teammates,” He adds, watching Gojo carefully. 

Teammates. Gojo almost gags aloud. He doesn’t think there’s a word he hates more in this world. Teammates and Gojo never end well. 

“Even if they factor Overhaul as an unarmed prisoner— which is already a stretch— since he’s still alive, the most they could charge you for is excessive force.” 

So he didn’t actually kill Mimic with his initial cursed technique, huh? He can’t say he’s all that pleased to hear it, but he’s beyond caring about it now. Chisaki is worse than dead now, and can live out the rest of his pathetic days quirkless in a jail cell. 

Endeavor looks like he’s expecting some kind of response, so Gojo chews, swallows, and says, “Okay.”

Endeavor is staring at him. “... Okay?” He repeats, as if he could have possibly expected more. 

Gojo shrugs, taking another bite. What else is he supposed to say? It’s a lucky break he won’t have to deal with the legal circus that will inevitably follow this dumpster fire of a mission, but he already had plenty of contingency plans in place if such a thing were to occur. First and foremost would be hauling Eri to Otheon and building them (and, begrudgingly, the cat) a veritable palace right on the Rhine. 

“How’s Eraser?” He asks, instead of elaborating on the current subject. 

“They’re taking him to the hospital, but his injury is non-life threatening.” 

That’s good to hear. From what he could tell with his Six Eyes, it didn’t appear to be critical, but he’s hardly a doctor. 

Endeavor doesn’t say anything else. Gojo is content to ignore the awkwardness of it all and let the silence settle like a heavy, overbearing presence between them, finishing up the rest of his banana. He has nothing to say to this man that he hasn’t already said. If the same can’t be said for Endeavor, that’s not his problem. He pops the rest of the fruit into his mouth, then tosses the peel up into the air and disintegrates it. Endeavor flinches back at the display of power, but Gojo ignores that too. 

Surprisingly, he does feel a bit more settled and energized after eating something. Less like he’s ready to give up on life and crawl into the bottom of the ocean and more like a reasonable human that can deal with all the problems of his own making. Maybe the health nuts are onto something when they tout the benefits of healthy sugars. 

He hops back up to his feet, figuring he may as well stop sulking in his private corner of the world and start dealing with said problems, now that he’s feeling alive enough to do it. Setting himself back to rights after a jaunt through resurrection is never pleasant. 

“Touya,” Endeavor says, drawing his gaze. His hands are clenched tight at his sides, eyes overwrought with some emotion unknowable to Gojo. “... Thank you.”

Gojo just blinks incredulously. 

“If it wasn’t for you, Shouto would have…” He trails off, jaw flexing. He sucks in a shuddering breath, and tries again. “Without you, this mission would have ended in tragedy.” 

Gojo’s honestly not sure how to handle this much emotion from the man. It’s sort of weirding him out. If he wants to end this day with his sanity still somewhat intact, he decides a hasty retreat is probably his best bet right now. 

Gojo walks past him with a glib shrug. “I was just doing my job, Endeavor. Don’t get too worked up over it.” 

If he can’t even handle his own emotional meltdowns, he’s sure as hell not signing up to handle his father's. 

//

Hawks is worried. 

Over Satoru, over Japan’s most feared (former) criminal and S-rank cremation villain Dabi, over the world’s most divisive champion, pro-hero Six Eyes. It seems absurd when he thinks of it like that. Satoru brought a global army to its knees in a matter of hours. He blew up half a mountain while facing off against a dozen armed assailants and laughed.  

(When Hawks had lost himself in those celestial eyes and said, “those aren’t a quirk, are they?” Satoru had just smiled back and said, “what gave it away?”)

Considering all the young heroes involved in this clusterfuck of a mission, there were far better candidates for Hawks’s fears than a man that had proven himself invulnerable on multiple occasions. Sure, Tokoyami was relatively safe working with the police and some of his sidekicks to guard the confiscated bullets, far away from the front lines, but the same couldn’t be said of his classmates. Hawks honestly can’t fathom the logic behind including them all, especially when it became clear the mission had veered far from its original parameters. Personally he’d taken one look at the escalating situation and sent Tokoyami as far away from the danger as possible; maybe he wouldn’t see any action, but at least he had a good chance of coming out of this thing alive. The same could not be said for his classmates. 

Well, either way that’s not his jurisdiction. Maybe the other hero mentors were confident they could handle it, or maybe this was supposed to be something of a trial by fire for their apprentices— either way that was their own prerogative. Nighteye had made the call to continue with the mission. Hawks didn’t envy the guy the choice; he was likely facing pressure from all sides to push the advantage, to carry on because failure wasn’t an option, not when a mission grew to this size. All eyes were on Nighteye and the task force to shut down the Shie Hassaikai and their horrific bullets. Public safety and public opinion were resting on the mission’s success. In light of that, it was no surprise the man chose to continue, despite their intelligence failure. Too big to fail, indeed. 

At any rate, the last person on the planet Hawks should ever be worrying about is Satoru. 

Which is precisely why he worries. 

The man might be invincible, but he’d also proven himself to be a veritable magnet of chaos. 

Eri clings to him in a death grip, and Hawks isn’t sure if it’s the thought of being carried hundreds of meters up in the air with only his arms as assurance or her own fears over Satoru that have her fisting her hands into his jacket. Or maybe it's her own harrowing close call that has her holding on tight. He hasn’t heard anything on the subject of her assailant from Togata or Nighteye, but he’s not sure if no news is good news at this point. It probably doesn’t even matter. She’ll be safest with Satoru. 

When he soars over the last outcropping of skyscrapers and reaches the mission site, he can tell just by the angry hive of EMTs descending upon the place that the mission is long over. Unsurprisingly the paparazzi are camped out along the borders of the crime scene, along with the foot traffic and spectators cordoning off what was probably once the Shie Hassaikai headquarters, but is now mostly a smoldering hole in the ground. Satoru’s work, he has to imagine. He doesn’t know anyone else who can casually cause this much destruction without taking down the whole city with it. 

He spots the man in question after circling the premise a few times, a smudge of white hair off by the rows of ambulances, far from the worst of the chaos by the remaining upright walls of the yakuza complex. He’s standing on his own two feet, alone without a flock of medical personnel hovering around, which Hawks tries to take as a good sign. 

That optimism lasts until he drops down in front of him, and sees him in full.

Hawks sucks in a breath. 

He’s covered in blood. 

He barely has any presence of mind to even think about Eri, who wiggles out of his numb grip the moment they’re back on the ground. She probably shouldn’t see him like this, but by the time that thought crosses his mind she’s already lunging towards Satoru. 

“Eri?” The white-haired man says, shocked, as she buries her face in his hip. 

Satoru looks towards Hawks, and he sees the question in the other man’s eyes but can’t quite form the words to answer them. He’s too caught up in staring at the trail of dried blood painted down the side of his face. Crimson stains the hair around his temple, drips down his cheek and clumps in his lashes, framing one crystal blue eye in haunting scarlet. There’s no wound that Hawks can see, but… that’s an alarming amount of blood. A deadly amount of blood. And it looks like it had formed from a wound in his temple, just above his eye. There’s only so many ways that amount of blood could come from an area like that.

“What happened?” He asks, a cold pit forming in his stomach.

Satoru looks down, putting an arm around Eri. “Everything’s fine.” 

That’s not an answer. Hawks swallows with difficulty, then tries a different tact. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah,” Satoru replies. “No injuries.”

Hawks stares aggressively at the blood dripping into his collar. 

“No injuries anymore,” Satoru amends, wincing. “Look it’s— everything’s healed already. There wasn’t even anything left for the EMTs to do but give me a banana. I’m perfectly fine.”

There’s blood dripping from his temple in a manner that suggests not just any head wound, but a bullet to the head. 

He is most emphatically not fine.

Hawks opens his mouth. What the hell does he mean, no injuries anymore? Hawks has never heard of a healing quirk that could heal something of that magnitude. But Eri beats him to it. 

“... Satoru is hurt?” She peers up from her spot buried into his side. 

Satoru smiles, but it looks more like a grimace from this angle. “I’m all healed now Eri-chan, promise.” 

Eri stares up at him with a solemn expression. “Just because it’s healed now doesn’t mean it didn't hurt before.” And it’s an entirely different kind of pain that clenches in his gut, knowing she’s speaking from experience. 

Satoru’s expression falls. “You’re right, Eri-chan,” he says, solemnly, resting his hand along the back of her head. “But it’s alright now. I’m fine, and you’re here with me. The Shie Hassaikai can’t hurt you. Not anymore.”

Eri looks up at him with wide, disbelieving eyes.

Satoru smiles slightly. “I promised I would protect you, didn’t I?” 

Eri’s eyes well up with tears. Satoru glances down at her with alarm as she starts to sniffle. He turns a panicked expression towards Hawks.

Hawks winces. “Yeah, about that. That’s sort of the reason we came.”

“What happened?” Satoru asks quickly, holding Eri close as she hides her face in his vest. 

Eri answers before Hawks can even attempt to string along a cohesive summary of a series of events he’s not all that sure of himself. “There was a man who kept staring at me,” Eri mumbles, into Satoru’s side. “He wouldn’t stop. I got scared and went to the bathroom… and he followed me out. I got even more scared and started running. He chased me.”

Satoru listens with a darkening expression, getting to his knees so Eri can throw her arms around him. “What happened next?” His voice is dangerously low. 

Eri buries her face into his shoulder, and doesn’t seem particularly interested in finishing the rest. Fortunately Hawks knows this part.

“She ran into Togata and I in the elevators. I had Togata detain the man for questioning, and, well, Eri-chan was pretty understandably distraught about the whole thing, and all she wanted was to see you, so I promised to fly her over…”

Hawks might have protested more over flying a young girl straight into a crime scene, but privately he thought she had the right idea. No one else can protect her like Satoru can. Unfortunately, the same could be said about a lot of people, the students on this mission included. And Satoru is only one person. He can’t be everywhere at once, no matter how much his presence saves lives. 

The expression on Satoru’s face is probably the exact same one that gives human traffickers nightmares and has drug kingpins forking over their cash without a word of protest. Hawks doesn’t think he’s ever seen Satoru like this. Even when he’d been taking down a global terrorist organization, he’d seemed focused and serious, but not particularly angry. Anger might not even be the right word for it— this was unmitigated, ice-cold fury. If Chisaki wasn’t dead already, Hawks had the feeling he wouldn’t be alive for very much longer. 

Hawks holds his breath for a long moment, wondering if the very ground beneath him might splinter apart under the weight of Satoru’s wrath. He wouldn’t put it out of the realm of possibility. 

Then Satoru breathes in sharply, closing his eyes. He wraps both arms around Eri, burying his face in her hair. “Don’t worry, Eri. You’re safe with me now, remember? And even if someone tried to take you from me, I’d hunt them down to the ends of the earth and find you.” 

Hawks has no doubt that’s not an exaggeration in any sense of the word. He only hopes no one is foolish enough to try it. 

There’s shuffling from behind Hawks, as someone seems to have found their secluded little enclave. He turns around just as a familiar head of green hair rounds the row of ambulances, a bit out of breath as he braces one hand on the building wall beside him. Hawks needs a moment to place him. 

“... Midoriya-kun?” 

Midoriya glances up at him in surprise. “H— Hawks-san!” Then his gaze drops back to Satoru, and he gasps. “Eri-chan!!”

He zips past Hawks, just as Satoru looks up. “Izu-kun,” he gives the U.A. student a wan, tired smile.

“Satoru-san,” Midoriya’s breath hitches. “Y— You’re okay…” 

“Of course I’m okay,” Satoru assures him. “Sorry if I scared you, back there. I promise I wasn’t in any danger.”

Midoriya gives him a long, incredulous stare. “You took a bullet to the head.”

Hawks chokes.

“In front of me.” Midoriya continues, accusatorily. “I thought you were dead! What else was I supposed to think?!”

It’s one thing to see the evidence and come to his own conclusions in his head. Hawks had seen the blood splatter, the obvious entry wound, and prayed he’d been wrong. But to hear Midoriya confirm it like this… it’s a hard reality to accept. Satoru should be dead right now. And instead he’s trying to pacify a teenage hero student whom he obviously shares some kind of familiar relationship with. 

“I know, and I am sorry about that,” Satoru says, pained. “But I needed a way to get Chisaki to drop his guard, without risking Shouto’s life in the process.” 

“Risking Shouto’s life?” Midoriya repeats, voice shaky. He wipes furtively at his eyes. “What about risking your life? Did that not even cross your mind?” 

Satoru looks genuinely torn, as he runs his hands through Eri’s hair. “I knew what I was doing, Izuku.” 

The worst part is— Hawks can believe it. Satoru’s powers are not a quirk. He already knows that. That Satoru can use those powers of his to reverse deadly injuries is shocking, but not entirely surprising. Satoru has impossible precision over all aspects of his abilities; he’d probably taken stock of the situation at hand and known right away that the best way to mitigate risk to everyone involved would be to take a bullet to the head that he knew he could heal. Hawks can see the logic in it, because it’s the sort of course of action he’d take himself. Hawks has unshakeable faith in his own quirk, because he knows the limitations of it in and out. It’s not a gamble to him, to rely on his abilities even in terminally dangerous situations. Satoru is most likely the same. 

Of course, he can see it from Midoriya’s perspective too. To see something like that happen, not knowing the full picture… 

Yeah, he can imagine it was pretty traumatic. Hawks didn’t even see it happen in front of him, and he’s still shaken up. 

Midoriya looks whole and mostly unscathed, physically, but his expression paints a whole different picture. There’s so much anguish there, fear and helplessness mixed with a wretched despair. 

“Maybe so,” Midoriya replies, tremulously. “But did you know what it would do to us?”

Satoru frowns. 

“Todoroki-kun is… the EMTs don’t know how to help him,” Midoriya reveals, expression despondent as he looks down at his feet. “He doesn’t have any lethal injuries, but he’s unresponsive right now. The medics called him hysteric, and said they might have to rush treatment if he doesn’t get better soon.”

Satoru stands abruptly. “Where is he?”

//

“Sorry, Shou-kun. But I won’t gamble with your life.” 

He can hear the medical staff fussing over Midoriya in the next truck over, the low din of first responders rushing around in coordinated chaos, the distant shouts of civilian bystanders outside the courtyard and behind the police picket line. If he listens closer he can hear the police chief talking on the phone as he lingers by the ambulance, the scuff of boots on pavement as people bustle around him, the rhythmic beeping of the medical machines beside him. It’s all washed out like white noise, like he’s submerged under the depths of the ocean and not just a threadbare shock blanket. 

Shouto sits in the middle of all the pandemonium like a quiet oasis, trying to pull thoughts together in his head but grasping at straws. 

Dabi isn’t Midoriya’s older brother, he’s Shouto’s. 

And it only took watching him die in front of him for a second time for Shouto to finally put that together. 

In his defense, the last time Touya had ‘died’ before his eyes he’d been a four year-old child with only a tenuous and unreliable grasp on his own mental facilities. And death, to a four year-old, seemed so final and unfathomable. It had never occurred to him to question it— to question any of the circumstances surrounding Touya’s death. To a young and impressionable Shouto, Touya’s death was an irrefutable fact of life that he’d grown up with. His father was a hero, his mom was very sick and in the hospital, and he had an older brother named Natsuo and an older sister named Fuyumi and an older brother named Touya that was dead. He had flames like Shouto, white hair like Natsuo, a face sort of like Fuyumi’s, and a voice that Shouto could only ever really recall in his dreams. 

To find out that Touya was alive, and not only just alive but also masquerading as a man that had become a fundamental part of Shouto’s life— 

He wasn’t exactly sure how to feel about it. 

Shouto felt numb, more than anything. 

Maybe in a few hours (or days) he might feel a bit silly for coming up with so many outlandish theories on Dabi’s identity when hindsight made it all seem fairly obvious, but for now he just doesn’t know how to feel about any of it. 

Dabi was Touya. Dabi was his older brother. Dabi unflinchingly sacrificed his life for Shouto’s, again. He’d died for Shouto, in front of Shouto, again. 

Dabi had told him not to live for the past. When Shouto had confessed he’d become a hero to live up to his older brother’s legacy and become someone he’d be proud of, he’d told him that was silly because his older brother was already proud of him, exactly as he is. 

“Well, I can only speak for myself— but if I was your older brother, I’m sure all I would wish for is your own happiness,” Dabi had told him. 

Dabi was Touya. Touya had been with him all along. Training him, advising him, watching out for him. Walking him home when it’s late out at night and giving him gifts just because he thought Shouto might enjoy them. And Shouto could have lost all of that before he’d even realized what he was missing.

Shouto doesn’t know whether he wants to laugh or cry. Well, he can’t find it in him to laugh right now, so crying it is. 

It’s quiet enough at the start, just silent sobs as his shoulders shake beneath his shock blanket. But it soon becomes uncontrollable, grasping breaths shuddering out of his chest, tears clouding his eyes as he buries his face in his hands. It’s enough to alert Midoriya, who pushes away from the doctors to anxiously hover over him. 

“T— Todoroki-kun? What’s wrong? Does something hurt? Are you bleeding?” He frets, hands waving helplessly in the air. 

Shouto has enough presence of mind to shake his head, even as wretched, heaving sobs steal all his breath. He can barely hear it as the paramedics try to ask him questions, Midoriya’s voice ratcheting up with panic the longer Shouto goes without answering. Someone is trying to calm Midoriya down. Shouto loses the plot a bit after that, as Midoriya’s words taper off and a clamor of unfamiliar voices take his place. He doesn’t know how long he sits there, ignoring the commotion around him; minutes, seconds, hours? It could have been an entire lifetime passing him by, and he wouldn’t have been any the wiser. 

Then the unrelenting noise stops abruptly. Someone is talking the paramedics into leaving him alone. There are hands on his shoulders, large and warm and distressingly familiar, hauling him off the ramp ledge and into the ambulance proper. 

He doesn’t have to look up to know who it is. 

Now that he knows the truth, it’s so stupidly obvious. There’s a subconscious part of Shouto that’s always recognized Dabi’s touch, that always remembered what it felt like to be safe in his arms. 

He’s settled on the bench by the door, still mostly hidden under his blanket. Dabi shuts the door behind him. Shouto doesn’t look up as the former villain settles in beside him, knees pressed to his chest as he buries his head in his arms. 

“...Touya… Or Satoru…” He mumbles, without looking up. 

The man beside him jumps at the suddenness of his words. Shouto distinctly remembers asking a similar question, months ago during the training camp fiasco. In his confused state he hadn’t been sure what name the cremation villain had wanted to be referred to as. Similarly, he’s at just as much of a loss now. 

It takes a moment for Dabi to respond. “Touya is… you can use it, if you like. But I prefer Satoru.” 

He appreciates the honesty. He can’t imagine what it must be like, to go so long using an entirely different name, to be so divorced from a life you used to live. Shouto finds he doesn’t really care what name his elder brother is going by. He’s here, and that's all that matters. 

He’s here, and Shouto could have lost him again, right after he’d found him again. 

The thought has him burying his head further into his knees, panicked, shuddering breaths wracking his frame. There’s a hesitant touch to his shoulder, that grows bolder when he doesn’t immediately throw it off. After a beat, Satoru starts to rub his back in a soothing motion. 

“I’m sorry,” the white-haired man says, quietly.

Shouto wipes at his nose. “What are you apologizing for?” He asks, voice hoarse.

“What am I not apologizing for?” Satoru chuckles mirthlessly. “There’s so many things I need to make up for when it comes to you; I don’t even know where to start.” 

Shouto’s honestly at a loss. 

Shouldn’t it be Shouto who should be apologizing right now? This is the second time in his life that Touya— or Satoru— has had to put his life on the line for him. 

“I’ll start by saying I’m sorry I scared you back there. I’m not sorry for approaching the situation the way I did, because I said I wouldn’t gamble with your life and I meant it. And I know it looked bad, I know it might have looked like I gambled with my life instead, but I promise you I wasn’t. I knew that bullet wouldn’t kill me.” Satoru sighs. “Nonetheless, I am sorry you had to see that. I know it was… unpleasant.”

Shouto stares at him with wide, watery eyes, saying nothing.

The former villain runs a brisk hand through his hair. There’s dried blood around his temples, causing the strands to stick up in an artless mess. “And I’m sorry for leaving you, all those years ago. I was never a very good older brother to you, and there’s nothing I can do to make up for that.”

“What— what are you talking about?” Shouto rasps, confused. 

‘Not a very good older brother’? How could he possibly think that? Satoru is the reason Shouto’s entire childhood wasn’t a trauma-filled mess. Satoru is the reason Endeavor finally turned on a better path. He’s the reason Fuyumi and Natsuo turned out to be even remotely functioning and well-rounded adults. 

“I left you,” Satoru says, sadly. “I abandoned you… probably before you were even born. I didn’t even know you existed at all until you were about three years old or so. And it took me even longer still to actually even learn your name. I wasn’t there for any of it— your birth, your first words, your first steps or a single one of your birthdays.”

“And the one time I was actually home, and you were there with Endeavor… I decided it was all too much. I was never around much before that, but after that day, I decided I just didn’t want to be around at all. Endeavor labeled me dead and I did nothing to fight it. I left you there, Shouto. I left all of you there.” 

Shouto just stares at him, tracing the lines of his face. 

It’s rare to see Dabi without his glasses or his blindfold, with his face revealed in full. Shouto’s not entirely certain he’s ever even seen it, outside of the news. And certainly never so close. 

Satoru… he looks a lot like Shouto. Shouto always thought Fuyumi looked the most like him out of everyone in his family, mainly because at the time the only other members he could compare himself to were Natsuo and Endeavor. Shouto doesn’t look like his father at all, and Natsuo takes after the man the most, so that makes sense. Fuyumi was said to favor their mother, but Shouto could never really remember her face. After finally meeting his mother again, he sees the resemblance. But it’s easier to see the similarities between Fuyumi and Rei, because they’re both girls. 

But Touya— or rather, Satoru— might have been the piece Shouto was missing. He imagines Satoru and Fuyumi were mistaken for twins an awful lot when they were younger, just on looks alone. Shouto remembers staring at the photo of Touya on the altar, and thinking he and Fuyumi were the only two who really looked like siblings. But staring at him now, Shouto sees a lot of himself in there. He’s the perfect blend of the girls in the family, with his pearlescent hair and lashes, but he has the same nose and cheekbones as Shouto, the same striking blue eye color as Shouto’s left-side, with the same color and texture of hair as his right. 

“That’s not your fault,” Shouto croaks out. 

The hand rubbing his back stops.

Shouto remembers what it was like, being a small child in that house, with the frightening shadow Endeavor cast looming over all of them. He cannot even fathom how horrible it must have been, to be considered the man’s prodigal son for as long as Touya-nii had to endure it. Shouto himself only had a few months of it, but even that had been enough to give him nightmares for years, to cower in fear at the first sign of footsteps behind his door. 

“It wasn’t your responsibility… to be there for any of that,” Shouto rasps, staring up at the older brother who insists he was never there for him, and yet has always been there when Shouto needed him most. 

Satoru is blaming himself for things that were never his fault. Satoru had just as little a say in being born into the wretched Todoroki family as Shouto or the rest of their siblings— none of them had asked to be a part of Endeavor’s quirk genomics scheme. Shouto had been wronged and abandoned by his own two parents, just as they all had been. That wasn’t Satoru’s fault. Shouto can’t blame him for leaving, not when he knows just how much his elder brother suffered in that house. 

Satoru looks at him, stricken. Shouto doesn’t hesitate to uncurl from the bench and throw himself into his older brother’s arms. 

Satoru is stiff beneath him, at first, but slowly loses his tension and even tentatively wraps his arms around him.

“I don’t care about birthdays I don’t remember, or first words I’ll never care about,” Shouto mumbles, into the collar of his uniform vest. It smells like dust and blood, but underneath all that, he can hear the steady beating heart under his ear and feel the warmth of a living, breathing body and know his older brother is alive, and that does more to heal his old hurts than Shouto can ever put into words. 

“I… Shouto…” Satoru’s hands are hesitant as they linger around his shoulders. 

“You’re the reason I passed the hero exam,” Shouto says, into his neck. “You taught me how to stop relying so much on my quirk and learn to work together with other people as a team, even if I didn't like them. I wouldn’t have passed without that.” 

“You were there the first time I ever fought a villain. You saved me. You’re probably the only reason I wasn’t cut to pieces by Moonfish’s blades. You saved me from Endeavor, too, all those years ago. He would have never stopped, if you hadn’t made him.” Shouto takes a shuddering breath. “And— you saved me today, too. Even if it was hard to watch.”

“Shouto,” Satoru’s grip tightens around him. 

“You never left me,” Shouto croaks out, squeezing his eyes shut against the burn behind his nose. 

“Not when it really mattered.”

Chapter Text

Look, it’s not like Hawks tries to eavesdrop on emotionally exhausting moments between Satoru and all the people in his life, it’s just— ...really hard not to, when he keeps having these conversations well within earshot of the pro hero. 

He does his best to tune it out, as the younger Todoroki starts to cry in earnest, and Satoru does a hilariously hapless job of attempting to comfort him through it. Not that Hawks could have done all that much better, to be fair. Sure, he’s not too bad at comforting civilians during missions, but that has less to do with any emotional availability on his part and more to do with the hours of training he’s had on the subject. If he and Satoru were to switch places, Hawks would be doing as much of a laughably bang-up job as the former villain is. Not that Hawks could even fathom the idea of it. He doesn’t have any siblings, and the concept of them is so profound he wouldn’t even know where to start in attempting to comfort them.

The idea of Satoru having siblings, at all, is still sort of throwing him off. 

He barely knows where to start when it comes to sorting out his own feelings on Satoru in general, so it’s really no surprise even this small facet of his life throws Hawks into a spiral.

It’s not that he’s been avoiding that entire saga of reveals— rather, life just got in the way before he could try to digest it all. Before he even knew it, he was thrown into this final mission to hunt down the rest of the quirk-erasing bullets, once again tossed into Endeavor’s orbit as if nothing was amiss. As if he hadn’t learned some hard truths about the man he’d once idolized that he still couldn’t quite accept. His professionalism forced him to push all that to the side and focus on the work in front of them, to put Satoru and his past on the back burner and focus on what he knew mattered to the white-haired man the most; keeping Eri safe. 

Luckily, Eri seems to have taken to him well enough. She sticks close to him, and seems to trust him with her safety as much as she does Satoru, which he tries and fails not to preen at. Satoru’s not-quite-yet daughter had ran to him when she thought her safety in jeopardy, and clings to him now while Satoru is off trying to comfort his youngest brother. He’s not entirely sure what he’s done to earn her trust, but he’ll do his best to live up to it. Much like the idea of Satoru having siblings, the idea of him having a daughter in his care is a prospect that’ll take some getting used to. 

On the subject of familial relations Hawks can’t really fathom, another one of them is walking up to him right now.

He hears the man before he sees him, the heavy footsteps unmistakable even above the noisiness of first responders and law enforcement working around them. 

His first (and perhaps not entirely illogical?) response is to tuck Eri against his side, one wing curled protectively around her. Midoriya doesn’t seem to notice the abrupt change in his demeanor, too distracted by his fretting over what’s going on inside the closed ambulance doors. Eri does notice, but doesn’t seem interested in questioning him. A kind medical technician had given her a lollipop earlier, which has served as a convenient distraction as they wait for Satoru to have his heart to heart with his estranged little brother, and continues to serve as one as Hawks squares himself for his first real encounter with Endeavor after his talk with Satoru. 

The Number One Hero looks exhausted more than anything, as if the stress of the day has aged him decades in a matter of hours. Hawks doesn’t know how to feel about it. It doesn’t feel right to pity him, even though he’s a father who’s watched one of his sons be held hostage by a madman, and watched the other get shot in the head. He’s also a father Hawks now knows abused both of those kids, to varying degrees, throughout their childhoods. It’s hard to have any sympathy in light of that. 

“Hawks,” he says as he nears, a flicker of surprise ghosting across his eyes. That flicker grows when he glances down at the girl by his side, recognition coloring his features. He doesn’t say anything to the little girl though, which is probably for the best, because Hawks isn’t entirely sure what he’d do if he so much as glanced at her the wrong way. 

Endeavor clears his throat. “Where is Shouto?”

Hawks tenses, just slightly. “He’s inside.” Endeavor’s gaze flicks towards the ambulance, alarm growing on his features. “He’s fine,” Hawks hastens to add. “He’s just having a chat. With Satoru.”

Realization crosses the flame hero’s eyes. His expression turns uncomfortable, as he shifts his weight. “... I see.”

It’s grown quiet in the ambulance behind him. He’s dead certain Satoru is listening in, waiting to see if he needs to leave Shouto’s side and deal with this. But Hawks had told Satoru he doesn’t have to deal with his father on his own, and he’d meant it. 

“It might be a good idea to leave them be for now,” Hawks says, something unyielding to his tone even as he keeps his voice casual.

Endeavor evidently picks up on it, expression a bit discomfited. “But Shouto—”

“I’m sure you’re busy with all the mission clean-up. I can see them both back safely to their dorms— I already promised Nighteye I’d take Midoriya,” he cuts in, casually. 

He’d done no such thing, but Endeavor doesn’t need to know that.  

Hawks makes a mental note to send a note to Nighteye about the change in plans, and also to his sidekicks, to make sure they escort Tokoyami back to the dorms. At this point, better safe than sorry. Hawks would feel better knowing all the kids were seen back to their dorms by senior heroes. 

The man’s lips purse into a thin line, brows creasing. Hawks hopes he just takes the hint and leaves, for everyone’s sake. If Endeavor is anything like the man Hawks had truly thought him to be— the man he’d thought he’d come to know these past few months— he’ll accept that his presence will only distress his kids further, and leave without kicking up a fuss. But if he’s still the man that hurts his own kids with purpose and intention, that has Satoru swearing to end him if he dares to lay a hand on his little girl, then he’ll try to bully his way past Hawks regardless.  

Finally, Endeavor sighs. 

“Very well,” Endeavor says, after a beat. His shoulders drop. “... Please look after them, Hawks.”

Hawks feels the tension leave his shoulders. His wing uncurls from its protective guard around Eri.

Hawks nods, seriously. “Of course.” 

//

Makoto: I’m coordinating with Nighteye’s PR team

Makoto: Thanks for the heads up jerk

Makoto: You owe me at least two magazine covers for this

Makoto: And a primetime news slot

//

And the list of people I need to apologize to continues to multiply… Gojo sighs, and tucks his phone into his pocket after he reads Makoto’s messages.  He’s probably giving her premature gray hairs right about now— the least he can do is a couple interviews for her. He’s going to have to do those anyway, at this rate. 

He’s never been famous before. It’s still kind of a novel and exciting prospect, to have news outlets the world over clamoring for a fraction of his time.

He’s never done an interview exclusive with a magazine before, either. He supposes if he has any questions about it, he can always just ask Hawks. The guy seems to have at least three of them a day. And he’ll probably be more than happy to offer his help, if these past few minutes are anything to go by. When he’d offered to put himself between Gojo and Endeavor, Gojo had… well, it’s not that he didn’t believe him, per say. Rather, he just really didn’t think Hawks understood the true depths of the Todoroki family drama, and what it was like to be dragged into the middle of something like that. It was the sort of thing Gojo wouldn’t ask of Hawks— or anyone, really. But Gojo hadn’t asked. Hawks had volunteered.

And now he was staying true to his word, turning Endeavor away while Gojo was preoccupied with Shouto. 

Endeavor probably wasn’t going to forget that any time soon, but that sounded like a problem for future-Gojo. Current-Gojo had enough problems already… starting with the one still in his arms. 

Gojo doesn’t even remember what he’d been rambling on about before Makoto’s text had distracted him— he’d started talking just to fill the silence, when it had become clear the quiet was only making Shouto’s hyperventilating worse. His younger brother seemed at least passingly interested in Gojo’s home ownership woes, or at the very least less likely to have a panic attack when he was ranting about them, so it seemed to be working. 

“—Not that I know a damn thing about installing an HVAC system, but I’m pretty sure it’s standard, right? Like, I get we eschew central heating as a collective nation, but surely I’m not the only person in this country who’s looked at winter temperatures and decided maybe central heating might be nice,” Gojo blathers on, because frankly, this has been a great opportunity to vent on a lot of riveting subjects no one else in his life seems to care about, and Shouto has been an excellent listener. If he’s even actually listening. That’s still up to debate. 

“And central cooling is hard to give up, once you’ve gotten used to it,” he adds, because living in various hotel suites of one of the nicest luxury hotel franchises has truly left its mark on him. “Anyway, it’s hardly unreasonable given the rest of the neighborhood. I should probably shop around for prices, just to make sure they’re not scalping me. A little competition never hurt anyone, right?” 

He hadn’t really expected an answer, so he’s surprised when Shouto shifts against him and mutters, “I don’t know. I’ve never owned a house.”

Gojo is so startled he huffs out a little laugh. “Well, neither have I. Let’s just say it’s a hell of a learning experience.”

And he hasn’t even gotten to all his troubles figuring out his own damn alarm system. Who makes fire alarms, and why do they make it so damn difficult to get into them? 

Shouto shifts again, and this time pulls away. Gojo lets his hands fall out of the boy’s hair, giving him space to wipe at his eyes. 

“... Thanks,” he mumbles, still not meeting Gojo’s eyes.

Gojo raises a brow. “For regaling you with the petty troubles of home ownership? You’re welcome, I guess.”

Shouto shakes his head. “For sitting here with me.” 

He sounds so genuine about it, as if someone taking time out of their day to just sit with him when he needs the company is such a profoundly unusual circumstance it deserves such heartfelt thanks. It makes his heart hurt. How many sad, lonely kids has this world managed to produce? And on a related note, why does Gojo always end up with all of them? 

“Anytime,” he says, quietly, ruffling his hair. 

Shouto blinks rapidly, looking like he’s making a valiant effort not to cry again. Gojo thinks its a bit of a lost cause, considering his uniform vest is covered in snot, but he politely pretends not to see it nonetheless. 

“Ready to face the music?” He asks, looking back towards the closed ambulance doors. 

The last thing he wants to do is make Shouto feel rushed, but it has been at least half an hour, and he does feel a bit bad tossing Hawks onto guard duty when he’s sure the hero has briefings and statements to make. Gojo himself had happily sloughed that off onto Nighteye, figuring the guy would rather have control over the statements than risk whatever chaos Gojo might accidentally upturn on his own. Shouto probably still needs to give his statements as well.

Shouto gives an indifferent shrug, arms folded in on himself. 

Honestly, Gojo thinks rehashing the trauma of the past few hours is only going to throw his mental state right back into disarray just after Gojo’s made progress in calming him down, but he doesn’t make the rules here. He may as well ask if it’s possible to have Shouto give his official statement at a later date— who knows, maybe they’ll be so intimidated by him they’ll agree even if it's against protocol. 

Gojo cracks the door open, peering out into the blinding afternoon light. 

He’s a bit startled to see Izuku is right there, as if he’s just been waiting right at the mouth of the trunk for someone to open the door for the past half hour. 

“Izu-kun,” Gojo leans back a bit, because the little bean sprout’s face is awfully close to his own. 

“How is he?” Izuku blurts out immediately. 

Gojo props the door open further. “Why don’t you see for yourself and keep him company while I find Hawks?” 

“I’m right here!” A voice calls from beyond Gojo’s small field of view. 

Gojo smiles at Izuku’s eagerness as he scampers up into the ambulance. Shouto is in good hands. He closes the door behind him to give them some privacy, hopping down to see Hawks is doing his level best to occupy Eri while Gojo was occupied himself. 

The hero’s phone has been offered up to the altar of childhood attention spans, with Eri propped on the bumper of a nearby police car, phone in hand as little tinny game noises erupt out of it. He’s also procured her a lollipop at some point, which reminds Gojo that he’s once again failing as a parent and hasn’t actually managed to feed her since her melon bread this morning. 

“I forgot to feed her again,” he laments, dragging his feet towards them.

Hawks shoots him a small smile. “I snagged her a banana and an apple earlier, but she probably needs a real meal soon.” 

“I could use one of those myself,” Gojo admits. 

He’d kind of forgotten, with the advent of far more emotional drama than he was properly equipped to handle, that he’d kind of resurrected himself from the dead and also teleported all across the greater Tokyo area today and unleashed his Hollow Purple technique and cremation at some point in the last few hours. No wonder he feels like collapsing into bed with a grilled cheese sandwich.

“Well I did just volunteer myself for babysitting this afternoon— might as well throw in a dinner as part of the bargain. What do you want to eat?”

Gojo feels himself have a visceral reaction to the very thought of food, nearly salivating before he drags himself back to the sad reality of a reasonable adult with responsibilities. “We can’t just leave yet. Shouto still needs to give his statement, and I have a feeling Nighteye will need more from me than what I already gave him.”

But Hawks just shakes his head. “I already took care of that.” 

Gojo blinks in surprise. 

“I had Midoriya-kun give statements for himself and Todoroki-kun,” Hawks explains. “And Endeavor already agreed to do the rest of the follow-up from Chisaki and Mimic’s arrest. If the police need any further statements, they’ll go to him first.”

Gojo is a bit caught off guard to hear it, even knowing the flame hero had to have already given at least a customary statement to the police, judging from what he’d told Gojo before. And even if Chronostasis had been holding a live weapon at a hero after shooting another with the intent to kill, Gojo had still committed premeditated murder. Even if he’s cleared of wrongdoing, he knows from his experience with Humarise that there’s still a hell of a lot of paperwork involved. But hell. If Endeavor wants to take on that burden, who’s Gojo to stop him really?

He looks down at Eri, who still looks content and preoccupied with smashing pieces of candy together on Hawks’s phone. Looks like there’s an iPad in her future.

Seeing her looking surprisingly calm reminds him that there’s a reason Hawks brought her to him in the first place.

“Any word on that guy from earlier?” 

“Nighteye’s got a hold on it. He’ll probably have his hands full cleaning house for… the foreseeable future.” 

Satoru nods absently, wariness creeping up across his shoulders as he watches Eri’s little nose scrunch up in focused concentration. He’ll have to check and confirm the danger is truly over himself, before he can feel confident in her safety. Just another thing to add to his growing to do list. Cursed energy pulses through his entire body, a tempting, covetous power that whispers in his ear. He wouldn’t be so tired if he just used a little more. He’d already expended plenty using his reverse-cursed technique, to say nothing of his constant teleporting and usage of his limitless techniques. He needs more, right? It’ll be fine, it’s just for a little while longer. And he has so much left to do still. That ever growing list wouldn’t seem so daunting if he just had a bit more energy…

He viciously shakes those thoughts away. Using his technique like this is… a slippery slope. It’s all too easy to fall into the seductive promise of limitless energy, but he needs to stay human. Now more than ever. 

There’s a sudden tension in his Infinity barrier, and it takes more conscious effort than normal to bring it down. He knows it’s just Hawks at his side, probably reaching out to put a hand on his shoulder or something similarly benign, but cursed energy is flooding through his body still and it’s hard to calm down enough to control it. He turns just in time to see a hand much closer to his face than he’d expected, something soft and cool against his cheek. 

“Ah— sorry,” Hawks says, hand retreating as Gojo flinches. “It’s just— you’ve got a little blood.”

His eyes flicker down to the towel in Hawks’s hand. ‘A little’ is putting it mildly. 

Ah, shit. 

He’d totally forgotten that healing the wound isn’t the same thing as cleaning the wound. Has he seriously been walking around with blood covering half of his face this entire time? Why has no one said anything to him? Well, probably precisely because he was walking around like that. He’s likely terrified the majority of the first responders. No wonder they’ve been giving him such a wide berth. 

“Oh,” Gojo says. He turns his face in an open invitation. 

Hawks gently swipes the cloth across his face. It quickly turns a lurid red from all the blood. The hero drops it on the car and fishes out another one. Gojo watches the proceedings with vague bewilderment. 

“... Why exactly do you have so many wet wipes?” 

“The nurse who saw me with Eri dropped them off with the food,” Hawks explains, sheepishly. “Apparently they’re a mandatory staple when dealing with small children.”

Gojo briefly flicks through all his memories with Eri, and finds it to be outrageously sound advice.

It doesn’t escape his notice that Eri has grown comfortable enough with the winged hero’s presence to accept food and touch from him. Nor is he blind to how well Hawks takes care of her. 

“Thank you,” he says, softly. Hawks’s hand stills against his cheek, golden eyes finding his. “For taking care of her.”

“Of course,” Hawks returns, easily. 

Hawks finishes up wiping the worst of the blood off his face. Gojo probably could have done it himself, but he has to admit the open care and affection in the touch is incredibly pleasant; a little touch of humanity to remind him that there’s more to life than infinite power. He’s reminded that Hawks has not only been out here feeding and entertaining his kid, he also just put himself in front of Endeavor for him not even an hour ago, and a weird, squirrelly feeling erupts in his gut. He’d like to blame it on indigestion, but he’s a little too self-aware for that. 

“So, dinner?” Hawks prods, when he’s finished up. 

Despite his visceral hunger from earlier, dinner is sort of the last thing on his mind. 

Oh, he’s viciously hungry, but he’s also bone dead tired. He wants to nap for eternity, or maybe just until tomorrow afternoon. He also desperately wants a shower, now that he’s been reminded he’s basically a bloody walking corpse. But Eri needs to be fed, and frankly he does too, for all that he currently feels as detached to his stomach as he does the rest of his body even as it gnaws at him in hunger. Then he remembers Shouto and Izuku, apparently in he and Hawks’s care for the rest of the evening. 

How the hell is this even his life right now. 

He started the day taking down the yakuza, took a brief jaunt into the arms of death for the afternoon, and has now ended up the impromptu babysitter for three minors with varying degrees of trauma. 

“Is there something quick and easy nearby?” He asks, tiredly. 

//

Ru-kun: Fine I’ll do your interview but you’re giving me back my twitter.

Makoto: FINE

//

Todoroki doesn’t outwardly look any worse for wear, but Izuku has long since learned how to read his tells. The way his shoulders are hunched in on himself speaks of a vulnerability Izuku doesn’t think he’s ever seen from his classmate, and the way he curls his hands on his thighs reads as decidedly anxious. Izuku doesn’t know what he and Satoru talked about— or why even that it was Satoru at all that managed to calm him down— but he thinks it was something Todoroki needed to hear. Even though he looks tense, his expression seems a lot calmer. 

“Everything okay?” Izuku still asks, worriedly, as he climbs onto the bench next to him.  

It’s oddly quiet, in the back of the truck. With the doors shut he can only make out the muffled voices of Hawks and Satoru outside, which is probably for the best. The only reason Izuku has been able to even look Hawks in the eye at all today was because he was too caught up in the stress of the moment to be awkward about it. He definitely doesn’t need to know what the two talk about when they’re alone. Eri’s with them, though, so surely it can’t be that embarrassing. Or maybe it is. You never know with Satoru, that guy really has no shame. 

Todoroki takes a long time to respond. Izuku fiddles with his fingers in his lap. 

Finally, Todoroki nods. “I’m… better.”

He pauses, then faces Izuku. “Did you know?”

Izuku blinks at him. “... Know what?”

Todoroki lifts his head to stare at him with a searching gaze. 

“Oh,” he says, after a beat, leaning back a bit. “So, you didn’t know.”

“Know what?” Izuku repeats, blankly. 

“Touya— I mean, Satoru… he’s my older brother.” 

“WHAT?!”

Izuku is so shocked he leaps back, knocks his shoulder against the ambulance door, and hurtles out of it in a heap of limbs at the base of the truck. He lays there in a daze for a few seconds. 

So much for being All Might’s secret love child, he thinks, hysterically. 

To be honest, he’d thought Todoroki’s whole theory was a little ridiculous, but figured there might be some grain of truth to it. Certainly not the part where Satoru and Izuku were long lost brothers, but Satoru being All Might’s long lost love child? All Might didn’t speak much on his past, but he certainly could be old enough… and he had such piercing blue eyes, just like Satoru. His mentor never mentioned anything like that, but Izuku figured it could be possible. 

Apparently though, Satoru was not the long lost son of the former Number One Hero, but the current one instead. 

The man in question peers down at him with an amused smile as Izuku crashes to a heap right in front of him. “Oh, Izu-kun, perfect timing! Let’s get some food before we drop you back off at your school. What do you feel like eating? Ramen? Sushi?”

Izuku stares up at him, mouth open, doing an excellent impression of a stunned fish out of water. 

He just stares and stares and stares. Satoru doesn’t seem to notice anything is amiss. Probably because Izuku sending wide-eyed looks his way is such a regular occurrence in their relationship that it doesn’t even register as odd. 

He doesn’t look any different, is the thing, even if he’s upturned Izuku’s world at least three times in the past twelve hours. First when he’d all but died in front of him, again when he somehow resurrected himself from the dead, and a final time when his true identity was revealed. That last one was probably more Shouto’s fault than Satoru’s, though. 

“... Sushi,” Izuku says, even though he barely understood the question. But Satoru looks like he’s expecting some kind of response, and Izuku just answers on autopilot.

Maybe it was just one too many shocking surprises for the day, or maybe Izuku is just a hell of a lot more tired than he thought, but he has a hard time concentrating on anything beyond keeping himself upright and walking in a vaguely straight line. Satoru corals Todoroki out of the ambulance, carts Eri on his hip, and prods Izuku into following Hawks around like a lost duckling. They sneak out of a back entrance to the compound, far away from the rowdy lines behind the crime scene tape, and shuffle their way through questionable back alleys until they end up at a basement kaitenzushi restaurant. The inside is mercifully empty, with just an entranceway full of kiosks and an interior maze of conveyer belts winding along the rows of booths. 

It feels surreal to just sit there, cramped into the end of a sticky plastic booth with Todoroki pressed tight against him, mere hours off his very first mission as a licensed hero that nearly saw him and his friend killed, watching Hawks and Dabi sit across from him and argue about whether or not a strawberry parfait can count as an adequate dinner, Eri looking squished but very satisfied on Satoru’s lap. 

Since he’s sitting directly across from him, it’s hard not to stare.

It’s even harder to ignore the suddenly obvious similarities between the man in front of him and the boy by his side. 

First of all, they’re both unbearably, almost inhumanly attractive. Izuku probably should have clocked them as siblings just from that fact alone. Neither of them look much like Endeavor (discarding Todoroki’s left side) but they do look an awful lot like each other. Even some of their mannerisms are similar. The way Satoru wrinkles his nose at a piece of sashimi is nearly identical to the way Todoroki does it when he smells something bad. Satoru is by and large more expressive than his classmate, but Izuku can see the echo of his gestures in many of his classmate’s behaviors.

Of course, personality-wise they’re night and day. But even then, Izuku can see how they just sort of seem to… fit together, somehow. Maybe it’s a sibling thing, how seamlessly they can coexist together. Looking back on it, nothing about Satoru’s admittedly difficult personality has ever seemed to bother Todoroki. He certainly handled all the teasing and pranks with a lot more grace than Izuku ever managed.

There’s a tiny part of him that’s a bit jealous, honestly.

For all that he knew Todoroki’s outlandish estranged-brother-and-son-to-All-Might theory was totally and categorically false, there was always a part of Izuku that sort of longed for it to be true. Having Satoru as a legitimate older brother, and not just as a quasi-mentor figure, has always been something he’s quietly wanted. 

And for some reason, as he sits there chewing absently on a tempura roll, he looks across the table to where Satoru is holding Eri in his lap and feeding her bites of sushi while Hawks is beside him gently fussing with a napkin at her cheek and a couple wires get crossed in his head and suddenly it’s him and Todoroki juggling a small Eri-like child between them and he thinks—

There’s more than one way to acquire Satoru as an older brother. 

— and then promptly begins to choke on his shrimp roll. 

//

After Midoriya dodged the worst of any life-threatening injuries that could have landed him a hospital stay during his earlier mission, he very nearly choked his way into one on the back of a fried shrimp tail, startling the entire table into a frantic grapple for water and a napkin. Once he’s not in any danger of suffocating, Shouto sees when both Satoru and Hawks seem to figure it’s a good enough time as any to finish up here and get them all to bed. As much as Shouto doesn’t want to part with Satoru quite yet, he can’t deny that the thought of his bed is an alluring temptation. 

He gives an impressed glance to their careening towers of empty sushi plates, stacked in the center of the table like a haphazard castle. Clearly they were all pretty hungry. Even the little girl, Eri-chan, ate her fair share of food, although Satoru and even Midoriya had to coax her into trying a lot of it. Predictably she likes the fried stuff a lot more than the raw fish, but when Satoru ordered his dessert parfait (eliciting an eye roll from Hawks, to which Satoru immediately protested that he was allowed to have it because he’d finished up his dinner) that was the clear winner. Shouto himself isn’t terribly fond of sweets, but it's clearly something Satoru shares with both Eri and Midoriya, who happily helped him devour the whole thing. He and Hawks were content to forgo the sweets and share a pot of adzuki tea instead, along with a few exasperated glances at their companions when they devoured their parfait and immediately ordered another. 

Shouto can safely say he never expected this mission to end with him squished into a sushi booth next to his best friend, with his long-lost older brother holding his maybe-kid in his lap seated across from him, and top hero Hawks sharing a drink with him. It’s too much to take in all at once, honestly, and he thinks all that crying from earlier has exhausted him far more than the mission itself did, because he’s almost too tired to truly appreciate the surreality of it all. 

So instead of freaking out about it, he just leans back in the booth next to Midoriya and enjoys the peacefulness of the empty restaurant. 

Touya— Satoru— is alive and well and currently fighting over the bill with Hawks, and that’s all he really wants to focus on right now. 

He looks happy, even as he pouts ferociously at Hawks— who just smirks back as one of his feathers returns with his credit card. There’s still blood in his hair, although the worst of it has been cleaned from his face, and there’s perhaps a tightness in the corners of his striking blue eyes that speaks of a similar bone-deep exhaustion to the one Shouto feels, yet none of that shows in the open smile he sends his way when he catches Shouto looking at him. 

He’d told Satoru, earlier, that he didn’t care that his older brother had missed so much of his life. 

And that was true, for the most part. Satoru might have missed most of his childhood, but he was here now. He’d always been there for Shouto, even if he hadn’t known it at the time. He doesn’t doubt for a second that Satoru had been watching over him and his siblings even after he’d left. And when he’d found himself in Shouto’s orbit again, he hadn’t dismissed him as a fragment of a past he wanted to forget. He trained Shouto when he asked, he rescued him from the League, he gave him a guitar and in a somewhat convoluted way, even a group of friends, and he even helped him pass his hero exams. 

But there was still so much of his older brother’s life that he missed. 

He knows Satoru doesn’t hate him. In fact Satoru cares enough about him to take an allegedly-not-lethal bullet to the head for him. But is that the same thing as wanting Shouto in his life again? 

It’s Satoru who drops them off back at campus. 

Hawks might be the fastest hero, but Satoru can teleport, so they agree that the former villain will escort the two students to their school and Hawks will return to Nighteye Agency and tie up all the loose ends to the Shie Hassaikai mission. Shouto can’t say he’s a fan of teleporting after trying it, even if he can see the obvious benefits to the method of transportation. Midoriya seems just as disgruntled by it, even if he handles it a lot better than Shouto does. Eri, surprisingly, doesn’t even seem to notice it at all. 

It’s well into dusk by the time they blink into existence just outside the school gates. Shouto is grateful to see that the entrance to the school is blessedly empty at this hour, unwilling to have to deal with Dabi-levels of infamy after the day he’s had. Perhaps that’s something he’ll have to get used to, if Satoru’s going to be a part of his life from now on. 

That’s a big if, though. 

He’s still not even sure if that’s even something Satoru wants. 

“Rest up you guys, you deserve it,” Satoru says, as he ruffles Midoriya’s wild hair. Midoriya whines as he ducks from his hand, pouting as he tries to flatten his untamable hair. Satoru laughs at his pitiful attempts. 

Shouto watches them with a tinge of envy. Their relationship just seems so… easy. That shouldn’t be surprising though— Midoriya in general is just an easy person to get along with, as evidenced by his own friendship with the boy. 

Satoru steps away from Midoriya, bouncing Eri lightly in his arms. The girl has her head on his shoulder, eyes blinking drowsily as she clings to his neck. Satoru turns a small smile at them both. 

“Look, I know today was a lot, but I don’t want you guys to stress over it. Stuff like this… it’s hard to cope with. I can’t tell you the best way to handle it, because even I haven’t figured that out. But it’s going to take a while to process everything you’ve been through in the last twenty four hours, and that’s fine.” 

His gaze flickers over both of them. “It’s okay, to not be okay right now. I’m sure Eraserhead and your teachers can give you a better lecture on how to take care of yourselves than I ever could, so listen to them. And in the meanwhile, just take it easy tonight. Can you guys do that for me?”

Both he and Midoriya nod. 

“Good.” Satoru lets out a long breath. “And— I know I don’t say this often enough, but I’m proud of you guys, y’know? You handled yourselves really well. I’m sure all your teachers and mentors feel the same.”

“Thanks, Satoru-san,” Midoriya mumbles, red in the face. 

Shouto is too overwhelmed to respond. 

“That person… I’m sure they’d already be proud of you, just for being who you are.”

It’s one thing to think his Touya-nii would be proud of him in the abstract— it’s entirely another to hear it directly from the man’s mouth. 

Fuyumi is the only one who’s ever told him she’s proud of him. He knows Natsuo-nii loves him and wants him to be happy, but he’s never been particularly keen on heroes and has always found it difficult to understand why Shouto would ever want to be one. Fuyumi is the one who always encourages him, and celebrates every accomplishment in his life, big or small. Even silly things like test scores or report cards or even that one embarrassing time in middle school when he’d been voted the most handsome student. 

This feels a lot like those moments— except a thousand times more profound, because it’s coming from the older brother he’s looked up to his whole life. 

He doesn’t know what to say, so he just ducks his head and stares at his scuffed up shoes. His entire uniform is scuffed up and dirty. It honestly might be unsalvageable. 

“Alright. Well, I’ll see you guys later. Don’t do anything I would do, and definitely don’t do anything I wouldn’t do!”

Shouto’s not sure where the sudden swell of panic comes from, but it surges up into his chest unbidden and unwelcome. 

Maybe it’s the way he says this, the way he stands in the fading golden light with a small, wan smile, the way he looks at him with ghostly bright eyes. It feels too final of a farewell, even though objectively Shouto knows Satoru is fine and well and not in any danger of a permanent ending it still scares him. And after thinking his eldest brother dead a second time after only just finding him again, Shouto finds the thought of parting from him utterly unbearable. 

Before he knows it he’s lunging towards Satoru, burying his face into the open side of the man’s chest. It smells faintly of blood, but still it’s warm and dry and very solid beneath him. 

“Don’t go,” he mumbles into his vest. 

He feels like an idiot. A childish idiot. Of course Satoru has to go. He has an actual child to take care of, and he deserves his rest just as much as they do. Probably more so. And what is Shouto going to do, smuggle him into the dorms? Satoru can’t stay. And Shouto can’t leave. Not without inciting mass panic from the school faculty, at any rate. 

“Shou-kun…” Satoru trails off. 

Shouto takes a shuddering breath, wondering if this is the moment Satoru throws him off. 

Satoru doesn’t hate him. He says he’s proud of him. But Satoru also has his own life to live. A very busy one, from what little Shouto knows of it. And liking him and being proud of him doesn’t necessarily mean he wants Shouto in his life. For all that Shouto doesn’t blame him for it, his older brother left their family for a reason. He stayed away for a reason. It’s very possible he’s not actually interested in any kind of reconciliation. 

Satoru shifts beneath him, but doesn’t actively move to push him away. Shouto’s not entirely sure what he’s even doing, until he hears the click of a phone screen. Then Satoru speaks. 

“Izu-kun, I texted All Might. He knows your back. He’d be a good person to talk to, about everything. If that’s something you want to do.” 

Midoriya is quiet for a moment. “Yeah. I think that would be nice.” He sounds a bit relieved at the prospect, as if it was an idea he’d already given thought to but wasn’t sure how to voice it. Huh. Was he just embarrassed to have to ask his dad for help? Shouto can relate. 

“And could you let him know I’m taking Shouto off campus?” Shouto startles in his arms. “I’ll clear it with Endeavor, but I’d rather not have the school up in arms about it.”

“Uh? Oh! Yes, okay!” 

“Great. Thanks, Izu-kun.” He can feel it when Satoru reaches with his free arm to mess up Midoriya’s hair again. “Don’t worry, I’ll take good care of your precious Shou-kun~”

“... Satoru-san!!!” Midoriya’s ensuing wail could probably be heard from space. 

//

@ru-kun | My Own Worst Enemy (The Remix)

My toxic trait is thinking i have the emotional bandwidth to deal with my problems so I just create more problems

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Chapter Text

He feels terribly silly about the whole thing when he wakes up the next morning. 

The bed is unfamiliar, neither the childhood futon he’d spent years sleeping on nor the dorm equivalent he’d made for himself. He doesn’t think he’s ever slept this high above the ground before. The western bed is unusual to him, and forces him to remember the previous evening with more embarrassing clarity than he’d prefer. 

Satoru had taken him to the house Shouto had heard so much about, after they’d said goodbye to Midoriya at U.A.’s gates. He’d gotten a tired and weary Shouto into one of the bathrooms, and hustled himself and Eri into the other. Apparently it was nearing her bedtime, and the regularity of a sleep schedule was important to kids her age— regardless of how tumultuous the day leading up to it had been. That was news to Shouto, who couldn’t really remember anyone caring about his sleeping habits at that age. Fuyumi, maybe, but she’d been a child herself and hadn’t understood things like REM sleep cycles and childhood growth rates at the time. 

For all that he hadn’t wanted to be separated from Satoru, he also hadn’t had the energy to do much else but stumble out of the shower and fumble around for a bed. His brother had left out a pair of sweatpants that were far too short to belong to him and a hoodie that was long enough that it probably did, and both were soft enough to make him drowsy despite all the stress and tension still vibrating in his body. 

Eri had apparently been through her own harrowing experience during the mission, so it took Satoru longer than usual to put her down in the other room. He explained she was likely to wake up multiple times throughout the night, and it would be easier to have her sleep with him. There was a guest room down the hall though, he said, which might be a bit bare but at the very least had a serviceable bed. He said he’d be over once Eri was asleep, but by the time that happened Shouto was almost asleep himself. Satoru had just ruffled his hair, and said they could talk more in the morning. 

Shouto isn’t entirely sure what there is to talk about though, aside from his impending embarrassment. 

He’s not a child who needs bedtime stories and reassurances before bed. Satoru has a real child who needs those things currently; his provisionally licensed hero of a brother just a few years shy of adulthood is not that child. He hadn’t been thinking rationally yesterday though. He’d felt like a little kid again, laboring under the delusion that the presence of his older brother nearby could solve all of life’s issues. 

As he blinks into the foreign ceiling, he hears drifting voices carrying up from downstairs. They’re quiet enough that he could easily bury under the covers and fall back asleep, if he wanted. Then someone laughs.

His eyes widen.

He recognizes that laugh. 

Shouto rolls out of his bed, staggering out of the bedroom. 

In the light of day, the house is positively gargantuan. 

It had been difficult to tell how big it was last night, with the darkness and the fact Satoru had teleported them directly inside the house, but in the morning brightness Shouto is taken aback. Theoretically, he knows it’s probably smaller than the colossal estate he’d grown up in, but the spacious architecture makes it seem much larger. Unlike the Todoroki family house, done up in a traditional style with many rooms cordoned off by walls of sliding doors, Satoru’s house is aggressively modern. It’s all vaulted ceilings and open spaces and smooth, glossy surfaces. He wobbles out into the second floor hallway, overlooking the large living space below. The back wall is entirely made up of glass, revealing a spacious patio leading up to an infinity pool. 

It’s a little hard to reconcile the sight to Satoru’s words from yesterday, when he’d referred to his impromptu property purchase as ‘a work in progress’ at best and a ‘trash heap’ at worst. 

I’m pretty sure this is the opposite of a trash heap, Shouto thinks, dazedly. 

There’s not a piece of garbage in sight. In fact, there’s really not much at all. The expansive living room below is a ‘living room’ in name only— there are no artifacts of human life to denote living at all. 

As expected, when he stumbles down the stairs, there’s a familiar head of long white hair standing in the imposingly grand kitchen. Fuyumi is hard at work at the stove, the smell of freshly cooked rice heavy in the air. Natsuo is sitting at the kitchen island, facing Fuyumi with his back to Shouto, coffee cup in hand. Satoru paces down the hall, Eri on his hip, talking on the phone. As he looks down the hall he sees some evidence of what could possibly constitute as ‘trash’, but mostly looks like piles of construction material. 

“—I’m not saying it’s a bad song,” Natsuo is in the middle of saying. “Just that if they’re going to release a single before the album, it should be Holiday. I just think it's catchier.”

“I think I trust the band to know what songs to push over others,” Fuyumi returns, spinning around with an eye roll. “And for the record, I like 1979.” 

She perks up when she catches sight of him behind Natsuo. 

“Shouto! You’re awake!” 

She doesn’t look remotely surprised to see him there, even if the sentiment isn’t shared. It still feels rather surreal to see her here of all places, spatula in hand, looking entirely at ease in this foreign home.

“Fuyumi-nee-san…” He trails off, rubbing at his eyes.

The movement shifts his borrowed sweatshirt, causing Natsuo to hiss. “Yikes. That doesn’t look pretty.”