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Fire has ruled her life since Fuyumi’s birth.
It permeated everywhere in the Todoroki residence, through the Todoroki family. Todoroki Enji – Endeavour saw to it.
Fuyumi has been fascinated by fire since she was a baby. It scares her. It mesmerises her.
Her father burns. Ignites. And then so does Touya. And later so can Shouto.
Her mother burns too, differently. Todoroki Rei burns from her husband and sons. She because of them. But as much as Fuyumi loves her mother and her creeping frost, it doesn’t captivate her.
And then Fuyumi’s quirk comes in. Frost dances at her fingertips just like it does for her mother.
Fuyumi doesn’t burn.
It’s wrong.
Endeavour’s fire is a thing of beauty. Grace and pomp. Perfectly controlled devastation.
Fuyumi has been reaching for it since she was born. Baby hands making grabby gestures at the mask of fire he forms as a Hero.
It scares her, it terrifies her, but she can’t stop reaching for it. Even as she grows older.
“Heat resistance with a frost quirk. An inverse of your oldest.” The doctor tells her parents because they’ve brought her to him after she grabbed her dad’s flaming beard without care. And then didn’t burn. Didn’t scar.
Fuyumi barely listens, because she’s reaching out for Endeavour’s beard again, grabbing at the fire.
She keeps reaching for her father’s fire. Even once she grows older.
If she could just touch it long enough. If she could subsume it. Maybe then she’d come alight.
Endeavour pulls away every time. “No Fuyumi. You’re not meant for this.” He chastises her. Draws his fire away even when she’s the one reaching out for it, unlike Touya.
It’s wrong. He’s wrong.
(Natsuo holds her sometimes when it gets too much. When she has to cry. His voice is gentle as he soothes her.
“He’s wrong Fuyumi. You were meant to burn.”)
Touya starts to burn well before her. Fire dancing at his fingertips well before frost dances at her own. And it is beautiful no matter how weak it is. Sparks of mesmerising reds and oranges.
And Fuyumi is scared. Not of the fire. She’s always scared of fire no matter how much it draws her. But now the fear is different.
She’s scared for Touya. Because when Touya’s fire comes, he screams.
His body can’t handle it. It wasn’t for this. It was built for frost like their mother is. But Endeavour persists in drawing out Touya’s fire. Endeavour is wrong about Touya, he’s not meant to burn. Not like she is.
It’s the first time Fuyumi realises her father is hurting her family.
Touya tries though. He keeps trying. He never stops trying.
“You don’t understand Fuyumi,” he snarls at her when she tries to get him to stop. He refuses to listen. To her. To Mom. To Endeavour. Refuses to realise he’s not meant to burn.
Blisters dot his skin. He smells of burnt flesh and wood smoke.
And Fuyumi knows, even though she was made for the fire, for the ravening burn, she can’t do it now. Can’t do it until she saves her brother from their father first.
(One day, she thinks hysterical, I will show you what it should look like. So that you know you have to stop.)
Touya sets himself ablaze. Burns bright and blue.
Fuyumi is rooted to the spot as she watches her older brother transform.
He is terrifying. A hellscape come alive. Skin blistering and melting away. Blackening like charred earth.
(And he’s not reforming. Just burning away to ash while he screams.)
Touya is dying.
Touya is beautiful.
Fuyumi should do something. She has to stop him. She has to save him.
Fuyumi is enchanted.
(If she could touch it. Take it in. Consume it. Make it hers.
Maybe she’d be able to show him how it’s supposed to be done.)
And then his fire goes out. Because of course no matter how much Touya tried, this was not for him.
And rational thought sweeps back in with her guilt and horror and despair. She’s left with her failure to save him. Left with the body of her older brother. The husk of his body after he burned so bright and beautiful. She cries as he’s taken away burned and blistering and broken.
(It’s wrong. It’s wrong.
It should be her.
She should’ve stopped him. He was never meant for this. She’d failed.
Why can’t it be her? Why? She’s the one meant to be set ablaze.)
Shouto alights, orange and red and yellow and pink when he’s four. Fire dances along with frost in a beautiful display.
Fuyumi sees it. Sees Endeavour’s hunger. Sees Touya’s growing jealousy. Sees her mother’s further withdrawal. And once again she is scared. This time for Shouto. Because again for all that he’s got a powerful Quirk, this is not for him.
(She’s angry because once again another of her brothers are in the line of their father’s madness. Her mother is wilting under her own frost to help.
She’s hungry because it should be her.)
Endeavour forces Shouto. Forces him to come alight. To set himself ablaze. He burns Shouto. Touya tries to kill Shouto. And then their mother burns Shouto.
But Shouto survives. Shouto is small. Shouto is mangled. Shouto is hurt.
Shouto is smart. He knows he’s not meant to burn.
Shouto refuses to burn.
Fuyumi breathes a sigh of relief.
Touya is gone.
Their mother is gone.
Natsuo will leave soon. Natsuo would always leave. It’s something she’s known for years.
He tells her she should leave too, but….
She can’t leave Shouto. Who knows what their father would do to Shouto?
And then one fateful day Shouto does come alight facing a green haired, green eyed boy.
Fuyumi is scared. Fuyumi is terrified.
Her father comes home pleased that Shouto finally used his fire. Starts making plans to further Shouto’s training. Celebrates over how now he can begin to truly train Shouto.
And it’s wrong. Shouto has fire but he’s never chased it. Not like she does. He’s not meant for it, just like Touya was never meant for it. Not like she is.
Shouto comes home. Quieter but celebratory in a different way.
“Promise me,” she begs him frantically that night once Endeavour has gone to bed. Maybe she’s scaring him because for once there’s alarm on his usual stoic features. “Promise me.”
He promises her. Not understanding what he’s agreeing, but that’s okay. As long as nothing takes him, it’s okay. Fuyumi cries that night. Relief and desolation soaking into her core.
“How long are you going to hold out?” Natsuo asks her.
It’s a rare moment of quiet they’re sharing instead of the usual bristling arguments and heated words that’s more common between them these days. It’s just them in the house. Endeavour is busy with Shouto’s Internship week chasing down Stain.
“It’s not yet time,” she tells him. Her hands shake from the cold of her own quirk even though the weather is warm out. Her body wasn’t meant for it.
“I still don’t get why.” He tells her. His voice sounds faraway, and he’s not looking at her.
She wants too. Oh gods, she wants too. Wants to set herself alight like Touya did. Burn brighter than him. Have her useless skin melt off her weak body. Leave nothing but ash and char in her wake and become a raging inferno.
But if she goes, who’ll be there for Shouto? Endeavour will turn him to a husk like he did with Touya.
So she’ll wait.
Natsuo is different.
Natsuo doesn’t burn.
It’s the only thing Endeavour is right about. If not for the correct reasons. Because it’s not the lack of a Quirk that spares Natsuo from the fire.
Oh he’s touched by the ravening burn like the rest of the family. Touched by so many fears that haunt their home – choke, and forsaken, and pitch, and the always watching, forever hungry, and I do not know you – like the rest of her family are. Natsuo is the one who eventually names them for Fuyumi. Describes them. Explains to her what they are.
Natsuo is different from them all.
Natsuo doesn’t burn. He was never claimed by it.
Fuyumi still worries about him. He’s her brother. She loves him. She’ll always worry about him.
It’s nice to be with him. They have a strange solidarity for all their differences.
It stays even as they grow older. As their family splinters and fractures, while Fuyumi runs on fumes trying to keep it together and whole. As Mom and Touya are gone. As Natsuo begins to leave, going to become what he was always marked for, while Fuyumi chooses to stay for Shouto. For all their heated arguments about Dad, mom, Touya, Shouto.
They’re both Endeavour’s failures – they’ll always have that.
They’re both different.
“One day,” he tells her long after Touya has gone, after their mother has been taken away, after Shouto has gone to bed nursing new bruises, and frost is still dancing at Fuyumi’s fingertips, dangling from her hair after overusing her quirk to soothe Shouto’s bruises, “you’re going to burn Fuyumi.”
His voice echoes. His eyes are limitless. Natsuo is like her. Marked for something. Fuyumi knows he’s chosen. He’ll leave too one day.
Fuyumi buries her face in his chest and sobs.
“You were always meant to burn.”
(One day, she will.
She will leave this useless body behind and become anew.)
She confuses her family. Fuyumi knows it.
They’re worried for her. They scared for her. They don’t understand her.
How many times as a child did mom pull her away from open flames? How many times has Endeavour stepped in, in a rare display of common sense and parenting and maybe a sliver of fatherly love winning through, to pull Fuyumi away himself? From his Quirk, from the open fire on the stove, from Touya, from Shouto?
Endeavour thinks she’s broken. A failure from birth.
Touya thinks she’s jealous.
Her mother worries Fuyumi’s going to fall apart trying to keep the pieces of them together.
Shouto initially doesn’t bother, but later he’s the one that’s most scared for her. Tries convincing her to leave the house. Leave Endeavour.
Natsuo is the only one who gets it. He buys her candles. Sneaks her matchboxes. On her bad days, she burns them down to the wick.
(“What are you even waiting for?” Natsuo asks.
Fuyumi remembers Touya. His body made for the ice that infests her. The wrongness of cold and frost that seeps out of her even though her body was made for heat. How Endeavour broke him. Made him burn himself to a husk. Thinks of Shouto, who Endeavour is trying to do worse too, blinded only by ambition.
“One day. Not yet. But one day.” She tells her brother a strange trance overtaking her. Her voice goes dreamy. Natuso doesn’t chide her. He’s the only one who understands.)
Endeavour burns everything around him for his ambition.
Their safety.
Love.
Their family.
He sets it all ablaze in his hunger.
But he refuses to burn Natsuo. Because Natsuo is the only child Endeavour’s realised was never meant to burn.
He refuses to burn Fuyumi, no matter how much she welcomes it. Leans into the fire, still mesmerised and enchanted after all these years, how much she was made for it. Tells Fuyumi, “no.” Like he’s scared to burn her.
(Fuyumi seethes, and boils.
How dare he? How dare he? He’s the one who’s causing her to become this. His rage, and ego and ambition, his need to burn and take and leave everything else husks. He invited the fears in, gave them ample reason to grow. He’s the one who causes the steady stream of fear that lets it feed and thrive.
Natsuo when he overhears their father, scoffs. “If anyone was meant to burn, it’s you Fuyumi.” He says it even when frost still dances at her fingertips.)
Natsuo is right.
Why is Fuyumi holding on?
Her mother is gone. Touya is gone. Shouto now has friends. He’ll move on to better things. He’s already moving to the dorms. Finally away from Endeavour’s grasp.
Natsuo was marked to leave. And he’s gone too. Off towards doing his own things. He only comes back to check on them. To check on Fuyumi. To ask her to leave with him, and every time the offer gets more tempting.
So now why is Fuyumi holding on?
“Did you know Touya’s alive?” Natsuo asks her nonchalant.
He’d refused to visit until Shouto moved to the dorms. Wouldn’t tell her why. Only came by when Shouto was safe in the Yueei dorms, and Endeavour was too busy with work to come home.
She should call him a liar. He knows better than to bring up Touya. She should ask him how he knows. But Natsuo would never disclose it. And he’d not lie. Not about this.
Fuyumi stares at him. His voice is uncaring. But his eyes are angry.
And Fuyumi...
Snaps.
The Todoroki household is empty. Dark and yawning and strange and lonely and cold and suffocating. A haven to fear. A monument to fear as Natsuo used to call it.
Todoroki Rei is gone. Trapped in a hospital room far away. She’s never coming home.
Touya is… alive. He’s alive. Too unbothered about them. Only having eyes for their father. Stupidly chasing him in his hatred. Becoming the same thing Endeavour used to be.
Endeavour is gone, busy with work. Having been told he would be handed the one thing he was blindly chasing off his whole life. The same thing he destroyed his family for. Fuyumi thinks of the contrition he’s asked for. Tastes ash and wax on her tongue instead.
Natsuo has long chosen. Natsuo has long become. “What are you waiting for?” he asks her with vacant limitless eyes.
Shouto is at the Yueei dorms. Fuyumi knows he’s going to use this to finally escape their father for good. She’s done her job. She’s saved him from their father.
Fuyumi’s frost doesn’t come anymore. Finally all the cold in her exhausted.
There’s nothing left anymore. Nothing to protect. Nothing to save. Why should she stay? For a sad old man’s attempt at atonement after taking everything she loved away? To be the little doll that builds him back up when she's empty herself and he's the one that helped hollow her out.
Nastuo’s words echo in her head, a truth she’s known for years. You were always meant to burn.
Fuyumi ignites.