Chapter Text
When Shouto is eleven, he runs away from home.
There was no real breaking point; no training exercise of his father’s that hurt a little too much, no reprimand or shouting match that finally tipped him over the edge. Really, it was just the way Fuyumi had stared through him as she murmured, “I wish you had been born someone else.”
He wasn’t angry; it was a thought he himself had had many, many times. There was just something in the way his older sister said it, not really looking at him as she patched a burn on his shoulder, that set something loose in Shouto, and he finally realized: He had no obligation to be put through hurt just because it was his father’s wishes. Especially when his two older siblings walked the halls of their own home like ghosts, but watched him with grief concealed in their eyes
.
After she had finished, he had stood up and gone to his room. He had taken his school bag, upended it on his bed, and thrown a few articles of clothing, his toothbrush, some cash he had stashed, and the photo he kept tacked to the wall above his bed inside, hesitating over his phone.
He didn’t really have any friends he would want to contact, but it could still be useful, so he slid it into his pocket, climbed out his bedroom window, hopped the fence bordering the Todoroki property, and started running.
Musutafu isn’t a small city, but Shouto knows that if he doesn’t want his father to find him, he needs to go far. He whispers a quiet apology to Natsuo and Fuyumi, for leaving them behind, as he stops on the corner, breathing hard. He almost turns back; doesn’t want to leave them, but Fuyumi’s words come back to him and he thinks of the way Natsuo looks at him sometimes like he’s someone else. Shouto keeps running.
He gets on the earliest train, curling up in the corner of one car and propping his chin on his knees, staring out the window as the city races past. He has nowhere to go, and no one he could rely on. It doesn’t matter, what happens now, because he’s out. He’s free to do whatever he wants, and the weight of it seems to come crashing down. Shouto buries his face in his knees and wraps his arms around his head, breathing deeply. The train is suddenly too loud, the rattle of the window ear-splitting, and the press of his bag against his back painful. He locks into position, eyes squeezed shut, and just tries to breathe. Fuyumi’s voice floats back to him, a gentle hand on his back, there and then gone, her quiet voice coaching him, breathe, Shouto, it’s okay. In, and hold for four seconds, out for four seconds. Can you just try it once?
Shouto does, counts down from four as he inhales through his nose, holds it in his chest as he counts back up, then exhales as he counts back down. Good, can you do it just one more time?
In, one, two, three, four. Hold, one, two, three, four. Out, one, two, three, four. Slowly, he pries his eyes open, staring at his lap, the ghost of Fuyumi’s fingers at his back. He misses her. He looks out the window, he misses his sister, he misses his brother. He doesn’t regret leaving.
A few hours later, Shouto steps off the train and onto the bustling platform at Kyoto, gripping the strap of his backpack. He hurries through the crowd, slipping between late-night commuters until he emerges onto the bright-lit streets. He stares at colorful neon signs and the busy streets, the buildings towering up into the sky. It’s overwhelming and entirely foreign to him, but Shouto sets his shoulders. He walks out into the city, and doesn’t look back.
Two months later, Shouto is curled up in an alley, wedged between an old air conditioning unit and a pile of cardboard boxes, clutching his now ratty backpack to his chest. Rain drips onto the top of his head lightly, and he shivers, bringing his knees up.
He’s out of cash. He lost his spot in the hostel he had been staying in about a week ago, and nobody wants to give him a job. He wraps his arms around his bag, burying his head in the dirty fabric. He misses his bed.
Shouto drifts in and out of consciousness, falling asleep intermittently and waking up when rainwater drips down his scalp. He shivers, trying to dry his head with his quirk without setting his hair on fire, palm glowing lowly in the dim light. It’s while attempting to alleviate the sticky feeling of the city run off atop his scalp when he hears a loud bang from the end of the alley.
Shouto stops, staring wide-eyed towards where the alleyway opens onto the well-lit street. It’s pretty late at night, and he sequestered himself in what he thought would be a fairly quiet part of the city in the hopes of avoiding other people, but there’s a shadow at the mouth of the street.
Shouto stops using his quirk, hoping the person hadn’t seen the slight glow of the fire. He folds himself further into the corner, watching as footsteps echo on the wet pavement, signaling the shadow’s approach.
Shouto grips his bag, beginning to activate his quirk as the shadow pauses a few feet away. He can’t see much, but they look like a taller man, hair dark and sticking up all over, head swivelling as they scan the area.
“Huh.” The man’s voice is gravelly, like grains of sand scratching against metal. He takes another step, and Shouto tries to draw his knees in as quietly as possible.
The man stops. He looks down, and suddenly swings a leg out, kicking over the pile of cardboard boxes to Shouto’s left.
Shouto scrambles away, frantically pushing himself to his feet. He grips his bag, ready to throw it at the man and make a run for it, quirk simmering just below the surface as he fixes the man with a hard glare.
The man just stands there, leg still out, hands in his pockets. His eyes glint in the dark, his skin looking mottled and almost bruised, though it’s difficult to tell in the low light. He’s looking at Shouto, mouth slightly open. They stand like that for a while, Shouto ready to run, the man standing stock-still, before finally a noise escapes him, sounding almost like a laugh.
“Well, well. What do we have here?”
Shouto tenses as the man leans forward, and raises his right palm. “Stay back.” He says, keeping his voice from wavering.
The man stops. He’s grinning, but there’s something off about it. “Calm down, kid.” He leans back and moves to the side, so that he can prop a shoulder against the wall, running a calculating gaze over Shouto, “You a runaway?”
Shouto eyes him, and the now open space leading to the street. “None of your business.”
The man snorts, but doesn’t say anything. He just looks at Shouto, like a total creep, considering. Shouto shuffles forward as the silence stretches, preparing to slip past, but then he speaks, “You’re that kid on the news. The one the cops have been looking for.”
Shouto freezes.
“In Musutafu. The one who went missing. Yeah, yeah! They plastered your face like, all over the place. Could hardly watch anything without your ugly mug popping up.” The man pushes off the wall, and cackles in a sing-song voice, “There’s a reward out for any information on where you are.”
Shouto’s moving before he even realizes what he’s doing, right hand shooting out as he runs past, pressing a palm to the man’s chest and freezing him in place.
The man shouts as Shouto sprints past. He’s almost to the street before an arm closes around his shoulder.
Shouto whips his head around, eyes widening as he sees a wreath of blue flame flickering around the man’s torso.
“Hey, kid-”
“No!” Shouto shouts, struggling to release the man’s grip, “Let me go!”
The man does the opposite, tightening his grip. “Ok, ok, listen, shit, stop wiggling, you fucking- come on, ki-”
Shouto kicks him between the legs.
The man wheezes, immediately crumpling, and Shouto shakes him off, sprinting into the street without looking back.
He doesn’t stop running until he feels like he’s about to throw up, and stumbles his way into a park, curling up under a plastic dome-like play structure. He presses his back into the wall opposite the entrance, and stares into the darkness. Every slight sound makes him jump, heat flaring up his side, rain pattering quietly against the plastic roof.
Shouto stays awake, wide-eyed for what feels like hours, flinching at every sound, scanning the darkness for the silver glint of eyes or the flicker of blue flame, until his eyes unwillingly slip closed, head dropping onto his knees from exhaustion.
He wakes with a start, head snapping up as flimsy sunlight trickles in from the opening. There’s a man crouched in the entrance.
Shouto is wide-awake in an instant. The man’s black hair sticks up from his head, and the rising sunlight catches on the metal staples in his skin, bridging the space between the bruised - burned skin - and the unblemished skin, and his eyes are blue-
Angry, glaring blue, bright and- ugly, ugly and unsightly- the kettle whistles-
“Morning.” The man drawls.
Shouto stares, unmoving. The man runs a hand over his scalp, sighing, “You’re a little bastard, you know?”
“What do you want?” Shouto asks.
The man stares at him. It seems like there’s a lot he wants to say, and he chews over the words before eventually saying, “Why’d you run away from home?”
Shouto tenses. “I didn’t.”
“Don’t lie, kid. I know a runaway when I see one.”
“Why do you care?”
The man shrugs, “Humor me.”
Shouto looks him over, at the burns wrapping around his jaw and the exposed parts of his arms, at the glint in his eyes.
“My dad’s an asshole.” Shouto says.
The man’s eyes widen, then he ugly snorts.
“You have an ugly laugh.” Shouto says.
The man stares at him again, then cackles, snorting again. He has to take a moment to collect himself, propping a hand on the ground before looking back at Shouto, “So, your dad’s an asshole?”
Shouto nods. “He’s rich, which is probably why I’m on the news. But he doesn’t actually care. He just wants to- uphold his image. He’s an asshole.”
The man lets out a breath, sitting down in the entrance, but not blocking it. “You’re preachin’ to the chorus here, kid.”
They stare at each other for a while. There’s something strange about him, something that itches at the back of Shouto’s brain.
“You have a fire quirk.” He says.
The man stiffens slightly, before forcibly relaxing and grinning lazily, “Yeah, what about it? Upset your ice attack failed miserably?”
“Not particularly. You folded pretty easily with just a physical attack.”
The man grimaces, scowling, “That was a low fucking blow.”
“Physically, or metaphorically?”
“Shut the fuck up.”
Shouto shuts up, drawing his knees onto his chest and wrapping his arms around them. “Are you also a runaway?”
“No, I’m a fucking adult, is what I am.”
“So? You could still have run away from home.”
The man cocks his head, watching him. “You aren’t scared?”
“Of what?”
“Strange men who corner you in alleyways and follow you around.”
Shouto shrugs. “What’s it matter?”
The man leans back, propping his chin in his hand. “It matters a lot.”
Suddenly cognizant of the fact that there is only one exit and the man is sitting in it, Shouto shifts uncomfortably, the temperature around him lowering slightly.
The man stands up, and Shouto tenses, but then he steps backwards, waving a hand in a slow circle. “Whatever. See you around, kid.”
Shouto watches him walk away, eventually disappearing from the limited view of the play-structure’s entrance, and then he gets up and walks off in the opposite direction.
He doesn’t see the man for several weeks. In that time, Shouto manages to set up a temporary shelter in an abandoned school, overrun with weeds and mice. He blockades a classroom on the second floor, melting metal sloppily into the seams of the doors and stacking desks in front, melting all the window locks but one, so that he can use his ice to get up and down from his impromptu shelter.
He spends a few days chasing the mice out, then scours the school until he finds a supply closet. Most of the cleaning products are old and expired, but he uses the broom to sweep dust and debris into the corners of the room. At night, he curls up under two desks pushed together, head on his backpack, and sleeps fitfully, dreaming of fire-blue eyes and a whistling kettle.
Sometimes, when he’s searching the school for usable items, he runs into other people. Mostly adults, who appear to be squatting in the building, like him. He runs away from them whenever he sees them, and after an incident where he froze a man into a solid block, they stay away from his room, too.
Shouto steals things to avoid starvation, and it leaves a strange feeling in his gut. Everytime he slips a protein bar or a packet of ramen under his shirt, he feels shame fill him up, so that when he walks out of the convenience store he can imagine it dripping from his skin, marking him as just another deviant of society, another washed-up dreg. Someone his father would look down his nose at, hate and disgust rivalling in his gaze. Shouto tries and fails not to think too much of what his father would think of him.
But when he curls up in his room, hungrily tearing into the stolen food, he only feels viscous satisfaction for managing to survive. He stares up at the underside of the desks, protein bar clutched in his hands, and wonders if Fuyumi would be proud of him for surviving. Maybe she would just be disappointed in him too.
He thinks the convenience store is onto him, though, so he starts leaving the neighborhood the school is in to find food. He passes by the park several times, and watches the other children run around, screaming and playing. He thinks of Fuyumi and Natsuo. As far as he knew, they might have been to the park hundreds of times, running around just like these other kids. Shouto can imagine an excited Natsuo demanding Fuyumi push him on the swings, and Fuyumi swinging from the monkeybars. She was always stronger than the two of them. Shouto remembers how she would prop him on her shoulders and march around, and the time they got in trouble for stealing the crackers from the tall cabinet. Father had been furious that she had upset Shouto’s diet, but Shouto hadn’t minded. He rarely got to spend time with either of his siblings.
He gets immediately kicked out of several stores. They don’t want a dirty, ratty little kid walking around, Shouto supposes. He needs new clothes, and a bath.
It’s on one of these failed trips, when he’s shuffling past the park close to sundown, when he sees the man again. Leaning against the park railing, earning him reproachful stares from the parents still lingering around and watching their kids.
He has his eyes closed, arms folded across his chest. There’s a duffel bag by his feet. Shouto tries to go around him, but the man’s eyes snap open when he gets near, and a lazy grin spreads across his face.
“Hey, kiddo.”
Shouto stops a few feet away, wary. The man looks him up and down, and sneers, “You look terrible.”
“You’re one to talk.” Shouto says.
The man scoffs, then kicks the bag over. “Open that.”
Shouto steps back, eyeing the both of them warily. “Were you waiting here for me?”
“No.”
“That’s really creepy.”
The man scowls, “Just open the damn bag.”
Without taking his eyes off him, Shouto leans down and unzips the bag. Inside are clothes.
Shouto’s eyes widen, and he snaps his gaze back to the man, who shrugs and sneers again, “Like I said, you look like shit.”
Then he pushes off the railing and begins to walk away. Shouto looks down at the bag, which appears to contain a few small shirts and two pairs of pants, then looks back up at the man’s retreating back.
“Thank you.”
The man pauses, then without looking back waves his hand in a slow circle.
The clothes, as it turns out, are stolen. Shouto is rifling through the bag in his room when he discovers they still have anti-theft tags stapled on. He tries pulling at them, to no avail, before just melting them off, leaving small singe marks on the new shirts.
They were clearly stolen from a kid’s outlet, mostly bright colors with silly designs, one of a big circular blue cartoon character waving, and another with some English phrase with at least four exclamation marks after. Shouto scowls at the bright-eyed face of the cartoon character, before going to the corner of the classroom. He forms a large block of ice above his head, before reaching his left arm and melting it at a steady pace, rubbing some (stolen) soap onto his scalp before washing the rest. Once he’s decently clean, he evaporates the water left on the floor and puts on the new clothes. They smell a little antiseptic, but clean. He uses his old, tattered ones as fuel for a fire that night so he doesn’t have to keep using his quirk, boiling water for ramen.
He lays under the desks, head propped on his backpack, and thinks about the man. The weird, strange man who gave him clothes for no reason. The scarred, burned man who sounds a familiar chord in Shouto’s brain. He thinks about his blue-fire eyes and stapled skin and burns.
Fuyumi, he thinks, I’m not sure what he wants. He’s weird and strange and kind of creepy, but I think you would appreciate that he’s looking out for me, at least. I hope you and Natsuo are okay. I’m sorry if Father got upset with you about me leaving, but I think you would have told me to go anyway. I didn’t tell you because I was scared. You look at me sometimes, and it reminds me of Mom. Before the accident, she used to look right through me, too. I didn’t want what happened to her to happen to you - I think it would be better for everyone if I just left.
Shouto shuts his eyes and falls asleep.
_
Katsuki hates Kyoto. He hates his granndparent’s shitty house in the shitty suburbs, he hates the shitty park and the noisy kids, and he hates the shitty city and all the people who live in it. He hates that, somewhere deep inside, he misses the shitty nerd and his shitty parents, too.
Katsuki was perfectly ready to start middle school as the best of the fucking best. He was going to blow all the other extras out of the fucking water, top of his class and indisputably better than everyone else, and then his old hag had decided to send him away to live with his even older, hagg-ier grandparents, for “character growth,” and to “try to mellow out a bit.”
“It’s only for the summer.” She had said, packing his bags into the car, “Just to get you to calm the fuck down, you know Katsuki, you’re rather high-strung.”
It was fucking stupid, if you asked Katsuki. He was already perfectly character growth-ed, and he did not need mellowing. It wasn’t his fault he knew he was better than every other person his age and older.
There is one interesting thing here, though, and Katsuki only knew about it because his stupid grandparents had explicitly told him not to go there. Naturally, it was the first place he went after the obligatory few days of outings with his grandparents.
Near the edge of the neighborhood, there was an abandoned school. It used to be the old middle school, before structural damage to the foundation forced them to relocate. His Grand-Hag had told him not to go there, because a lot of “transients” hung around there. She could have just said homeless people, Katsuki didn’t fucking care.
He wasn’t interested in all the adults squatting on the premise; couldn’t give two fucks about them. No, on his first day visiting, late in the afternoon, he had seen a kid, maybe his age, make a giant fucking ice ramp up to the second-story window, and then reach a hand out to melt it.
The kid had looked pretty dirty and beat-up, definitely homeless, but his quirk was fucking cool, okay? Katsuki had staked the place out every day, but he had only seen the kid one other time, making a ramp to get down to the ground. He had followed him to a nearby convenience store, and watched him steal a bar of soap and a couple protein bars.
Katsuki had grinned. His own personal villain. Perfect.
He would stake the place out, watch the kid come and go, gauge the strength of his quirk, then he’d fucking beat his ass and dump him at the police’s feet. A perfectly productive summer, and he could spit his Hag’s bullshit about character growth right at her ugly goddamn feet.
He was a day out from the confrontation when he saw the newsfeed. It was at breakfast one morning, his Grand-Hag in the kitchen with the TV blaring, and Katsuki had gone in to turn the damn thing down, when a familiar head of red-and-white hair had scrolled on screen.
There was a reward out for any information on the kid’s whereabouts. He was a runaway, and his parents were desperate to find him, anybody with information should come forward, yadda yadda, useless white noise. Katsuki had stared at the kid’s face. He had never seen him up close before, but he knew the hair. He didn’t know, however, the giant burn scar on the left side of his face, surrounding one bright blue eye.
He stared at the angry, damaged skin as the reporter droned on. The kid had been missing for almost two months now, national searches had turned up empty, more boring white noise.
There was a sudden sick feeling in Katsuki’s stomach, something about the kid’s dead-eyed stare shifting something uneasy in him.
The next day, a Saturday, Katsuki had gone back to the school, and he had watched. The kid appeared, carrying a duffel bag, and ramped himself up to the window and then disappeared inside. He reached out, melted the ramp, and shut the window, just like usual.
Katsuki watched, sitting on the curb behind some bushes for maybe an hour, thinking. The sun was lowering towards the horizon when he finally stood up to walk home, and that’s when he saw the man.
He had no idea when the man had walked up, somewhere in the time where Katsuki had been zoning out, but he was just standing in the street, staring. At the second floor, at the window, and this man looked like a real villain.
Like a bolt of lightning, Katsuki remembered the news broadcast, “There’s a reward for any information about him, if you’ve seen anything…”
The sick feeling in his gut intensified, and Katsuki stalked home angry, throwing himself onto his bed and glaring at the ceiling. He had made up his mind; tomorrow, he was finally going to do something.