Work Text:
“Listen to me closely, Natsuo.”
The view outside of the living room window was gorgeous.
The trees were twice, three times, quadruple his height, crested leaves fluffy and pillow-like in their snow-covered decadence. Sometimes, in between the branches, komadori hopped around like little red beacons, playing with fireflies that rose out-of-season. It was a game to spot them - one for charm, two for happiness, three for luck, four for … something. Natsuo always forgot what that something was. He’d spied two already, sat by the hearth of the living room furnace. He hoped for a third one, or maybe four more - then he could share the luck with his big brother and sister.
Snowflakes bounced against the ground and accumulated - gathered. Power and strength, sturdy ice balls that were the size of his face; icicles grew sharp and tall (long? thin? down?) and caught the light in his eyes almost painfully. His little hands struggled to count all the crystals he could see from his position under the windowsill, giggling faintly as the moon peaked from its perch up on high to greet his curiosity warmly.
It was always warm around the Todoroki Estate this time of year.
“... Natsuo. Look at me, boy.”
His head was turned with great care - with great force bleeding from every fingertip, silent like carbon monoxide - to look at the looming figure of his father. His eyes were sharp, the force of a thousand oceans staining his irises a brilliant blue, reflecting something that may have once resembled mirth. He looked almost a little out of his element, hands worn and brutalized by dreams and self-made introversion trying their hardest not to break the little bones in his hands as he held them. Dwarfed, like little forgotten planets.
Were Natsuo any older, he might’ve seen the plot or the tense air - might’ve heard the complaints and disdain from his older siblings up the stairs, or the hushed apologies of his mother even further away.
But he wasn’t older.
He was three.
The moon was kind tonight.
“This year, you’re going to be four. This year, you’re going to get your quirk. Do you know what that means?”
Quirks… it was one of those things that Natsuo had trouble remembering, sometimes. Rei liked to tease him that he was as forgetful as a goldfish, and he tried to parrot something he’d heard Touya-nii say about the actual strength of a goldfish, but it never came out quite right. In the end, he’d just resigned himself to being a goldfish brother, secretly hoping the komadori didn’t dive to eat him like they did the koi in their pond.
Natsuo thought.
“They’re … superpowers!”
Enji’s voice was gruff, usually, but it almost seemed as though someone had smoothed him out with sandpaper as Natsuo talked, his father’s laugh unusually soft as he nodded.
“That’s a way to put it, yes. When you turn four, you will get your own quirk; your own superpower.”
That’s right; that’s what Natsuo always forgot. Everyone got a quirk, and everyone had their own. It passed down from person to person, but only the coolest people got to be heroes - like Enji. Like Touya, eventually. He pulled one of his little hands out of his father’s grip, pointing up at his face like he was a work of art, like he’d never seen anything like it in his life.
“Like you? With .. the wooshy flames?”
There was a sudden spark of glee on Enji’s face and, as if he was reciting his actions perfectly from a script, he sat back on his knees and reached into his pocket. Natsuo watched his hands pull out a semi-flattened thin box, cradling it between the two of them as though it was made of solid gold, despite its dings and bumps. His young eyes, large as saucers, watched with intrigue as Enji pulled a thin stick of reddened wood from the inside of the box and, as if it was nothing at all, began burning the small stick from the base upwards.
“These flames … they are your legacy. And they start like this - small and simple, so little that you can barely see them.”
As Enji spoke, he squeezed the match a little harder, and the embers became a small blaze that wound up the length of the little stick, flames licking gently at the edge of the red tip. All of a sudden, as if a second hand had begun the blaze at the top, the red was engulfed in a dramatic flare of flame that equalled out, leaving a burning pile in the centre of Enji’s hand. He sat there as if it was the finest work of art he’d ever made, and Natsuo just wanted to know how he got his eyes that dramatic a colour.
What fine paint.
“And just like that match, the talent is cultivated and explodes into a brilliant fire. That’s what being a hero is all about - reaching the very top. Doesn’t that sound like something that you want to do?”
A match. Natsuo had to think about that too and, against his better nature, he reached a tentative finger out to touch the still burning match in his father’s hand. Enji didn’t seem harmed by the billowing streamers that grew and died as quickly as they appeared and made no attempt to stop Natsuo’s curiosity either, his fingertips a hair length from the burning wood. At once, summoning his boundless courage, he picked the burning twig up and cupped it in his own hands, watching as it danced and swayed away from its originator.
It didn’t hurt - far from it. The natural warmth in Natsuo’s skin kept him swaddled and safe as if he was merely holding his brother’s hand, potential burns warded off by a set of genes that by all means were not his. Enji’s smile grew a little larger as he watched his little firestarter sit, entranced, at the rhythmic sway and pull of the fire: He extended his large hand out, ruffling the soft white tufts on Natsuo’s head.
“That, boy, is your legacy. When you’re four, you can become a hero.”
A hero. Like Enji? Like his dad, and Touya, and All Might?
Oh, but Enji wasn’t his father’s hero name, was it? He’d forgotten the other one.
Maybe he’d have to give up his name too.
Maybe that wasn’t so bad.
“Yeah!! A hero! Like you and Touya!”
Had Natsuo been older, he would’ve seen a passing moment of regret and remorse in his father’s eyes - would’ve heard the flinch in his big brother’s sneaking footsteps as he walked away from the living room door, three little komadori perched on an unstable tree branch.
But he wasn’t older.
He was three.
The moon was kind tonight.
<><><><><><>
Natsuo was four and a month years old.
The late summer haze was almost impenetrable this time of year, young bodies sprawled out under the shade of trees and playing idly with nothing but flavoured ice pops to act as fuel. Flowers wilted, grass lost sections of chlorophyll to poorly placed drops of water, yet Natsuo felt cold; ice in his veins, frost at his fingertips, his body heat sapped as his knees trembled under the weight of some invisible iceberg that’d decided to cling to his back. The jacket around his shoulders wasn’t nearly enough to still his shaking, or quiet the tears in his eyes.
“Woah, Natsu! Is that your quirk?”
No. It couldn’t be - not at all. He was meant to be a firestarter; his hands were as warm as the sun, his eyes as stunning as the thousand oceans bleached with his father’s will. His hero father - the man that held the weight of the world.
Crystalline ice structures danced over his hands as his classmates ‘oo’ed and ‘ah’ed, his teachers patting his back gently as the heat left his core, his lips turning a pale blue as the ice thickened and grew more wild, spiralling up his arms as small snowflakes dripped from the dorsal side of his hands.
“That’s so cool, Natsu!!”
“I wish I had my quirk by now…”
“Ha, that’s probably because you’re quirkless, Juno!”
“What?! Nuh-uh!”
The rabble of the classroom began to fade from his ears as hot tears stung his cheeks, hiccuping a few desperate pleas, willing flame to emerge from the growing crystals.
He was a firestarter.
He was the one that was going to be a hero, right?
“Congratulations, Mrs Todoroki!” The classroom attendant had beamed as Rei picked up her little firestarter, crying and weeping at the front gate, “Your son has a wonderful quirk! Can I assume that he got it from you?”
Rei had smiled absently, offered a hand for Natsuo to take, holding him close like he was a precious ice statue.
“Of course.” She hummed, her words as bland as the summer sun, dying Natsuo’s lips their typical ruby red.
“I’ve been complimented on my quirk’s strength before.”
“---insolent woman–!”
“S-Stop, Enji–!”
They’d been screaming for hours. Natsuo had counted on his fingers. The warmth of Touya’s side only did so much to calm his rapid heart rate - he didn’t understand why they were fighting, just that they were, and they did it a lot these days.
Touya said it was something to do with the bruises and cuts and burns he had, that Natsuo helped Fuyumi patch sometimes, just to be helpful. She’d ruffle his hair, and say he’d make a good doctor someday if he wanted that.
He didn’t want that.
He wanted to be a hero.
Slowly, deftly, as lightly as his little feet could take him, he wandered downstairs towards the kitchen door. The voices were louder, more defined – so was the crying, and the tumbling of the washing machine, and the beeping of the microwave, and the buzzing of some electronics that’d been shattered with the force of a thousand suns.
“I told you not to interfere with training! These boys–! If Touya falls through, I can’t have you babying Natsuo!”
“He’s four! What if he’s quirkless?! Then what?! He’ll break like Touya’s going to because you keep telling them they have these grand aspirations to live up to! Why can’t they be kids–?!”
Her words were ceased sharply by the shattering of glass, and at once, Natsuo felt like he shouldn’t be there anymore.
Rei white-knuckled the steering wheel.
Streets of houses and shops had passed the windows, and Natsuo was too upset to notice they’d been driving in circles, Rei’s mind abuzz with ideas. Perhaps she could get Natsuo to lie - to say he was quirkless, and have that be that. Perhaps she could convince him to be a hero anyway like he wanted to - that he didn’t need his father’s approval. Maybe she could use this as the excuse she needed to take her kids and run far, far away.
Natsuo’s voice shivered.
“... I can’t light matches.”
Her heart withered.
“Oh, Natsuo… it’s okay. Ice is a wonderful quirk - you can do a lot with it–”
He shook his head firmly, large tears billowing in his eyes, glass balls down his cheeks, wide and frightened. Rei got the acute, unsettling feeling that it wasn’t for himself.
“I don’t want ice! I want fire! I want to make Papa happy, and I want him to stop hurting Touya-nii and Fuyumi-nee, and to stop being mean to you!”
Rei damn near crashed the car.
Her hands shook as she forced the car into a hard shoulder, slowing down to a painful halt, pulling her baby out of the restraints of the car – to her, to her arms, to safety. He shook as he thrashed and sobbed, the blue of his lips returning as the temperature lowered dramatically, snowflakes falling from his damp eyelashes.
“Oh, Natsu …. Natsu … shhhh …”
It was all she could do.
In an hour, they’d go home. They’d eat dinner. Enji would learn.
In three hours, Natsuo would be dyed black and blue. They’d go to bed.
In a day… a year… ten…
He wept.
She bawled.
<><><><><><>
It wasn’t warm around the Todoroki Estate anymore.
Despite the heavy rain that melded with snow, despite the sleet that stuck to roof tiles, despite the steadily beating heart in his veins, the warmth that used to surround their little compound had all but disappeared. If he strained his ears, he could hear its remnants buried in the walls — the sobbing of their smallest brother, Shoto, as Endeavor broke yet another ceramic vase; the silent, whispered prayers of Fuyumi; the absence of two other voices like a car through a brick wall.
He could hear the blood rush in his ears.
The couch seemed emptier than normal, too, sinking his entire body weight into the manilla cushions, concealing his limp arms and blank face. If he could hide himself, then maybe he could find where the other two had gone. Maybe he could even find a different world to hide away in; a perfect world where everything was fine, and Touya was the hero he was supposed to be, and he could follow safely in his footsteps, and Rei hadn’t left him and the others all alone.
Instead, he watched smoke escaping the dying dregs within the fireplace’s maw curl around face-down picture frames, the smell of incense suffocating. Funeral flowers were fed and nurtured on the coffee table - white lilies that wilted and died under Natsuo’s glacial gaze. They weren’t even Touya’s favourite flowers, just stereotypical flowers that’d been picked up at the last minute.
“I’m sorry for your loss. ” He imagined the funeral director saying, handing Endeavor or Fuyumi or whatever third party the flower bouquet. “ There was so little of your son left that we cannot hold a funeral. You may be better off building a shrine, if your house has a room dedicated to that. ”
Natsuo didn’t want to see the shrine.
He didn’t want to see how shoddy it probably was.
He didn’t want to see Touya’s face like that; trapped, neutral, within a slowly rotting photo frame.
Darkness encroached around Natsuo’s vision, his eyelids threatening to close. Exhaustion, perhaps, but a nagging thought at the back of his head mumbled that maybe this was his end too - maybe that wouldn’t be so bad. Maybe he could see—
“Boy.”
Natsuo’s entire body shook, sitting straight up like a metal stake driven into the ground: The unwavering heat of Endeavor melted his bones to nothing but water and ash. His father’s footsteps were usually loud; demeaning and hateful, charging the ground and raising it all at once. Had Natsuo really not heard them? Was he really that in his own world? Was he really that ignorant of possible threats?
Touya had taught him better than that.
A small box landed in his lap, thrown with such precision that should it have been aimed even a little higher, it would’ve hit Natsuo dead in the heart.
A matchbox.
“Light the fire in here, boy. Do not let it go out, do you understand?”
As if it was a sufficient reply, Natsuo opened the matchbox, the familiar smell of sulphur and phosphate burning his nose. They were smaller than he remembered, smaller than when he’d last held them. Had he been younger, perhaps they’d remain as daunting and magnificent as they always were; brilliant miracles of science, billowing with streaky gasps of fire and air that threatened to kill anything it touched. Had he been younger, perhaps the Todoroki Estate would’ve been warmer than it was right now.
But he wasn’t younger.
He was nine.
The moon wasn’t out tonight.
“I said , do you understand? Do not mess with me tonight, boy, I have enough to do.”
Natsuo forced his head down and then back up in a flimsy nod, his legs just barely responding to his quiet pleas to move. The air seemed thin as he stood, eyes swimming with uncried tears.
He wouldn’t cry.
Couldn’t.
Not here. Not in front of him.
Pulling a small match out of the box and ambling over to the fireplace, the ground meeting his knees far harder than he wanted them to, the darkness teased the edges of his pale eyes. His head was heavy. His lungs were heavier.
For a moment, the dwindling smoke in the fireplace reminded him of Touya.
His eyes.
Exhaustion wrapped around his ankles like a pair of concrete shoes. His hands barely obeyed him, the match shaking against the aggravated mesh on the side of the matchbox. Was this … was he dying?
It felt like he was dying.
He was drowning.
Fire.
He drew a sharp breath. The match caught against the side of the box and at once, the blossom of fire nudged the tip of his fingers. It was nice - warmth. Mirth.
Life.
He held it there, watched it burn. Watched the tip dance and sway, wrapping around his fingers and inviting itself into his palm as if he’d created it himself. It blossomed, petals peeling away as the matchstick began to run out of fuel. Endeavor’s words echoed, dull and empty, as he watched the petals begin to die and blow themselves out, the dregs of the flames clinging to his unburnt fingers like little sunbursts. They whispered and screamed, the charred bark in his palm barely worth mentioning.
Would the fireplace become like that, too?
Broken and vapid?
“ Boy! ”
A strong hand grabbed his own, his knuckles crunching uncomfortably together as his eyes tore themselves away from his palm. The blurry outline of his father drew his mind closer together, frail threads spilling over the edges of his eyes with no regard for who could see. Was he crying? He couldn’t be crying. He didn’t even feel sad.
“I told you to light the fire! What is your problem?! Follow instructions or–”
“Or what ?”
Natsuo’s voice echoed in his ears, unable to register it as his own. It was distant and dull, anger dripping off of each empty syllable. The world wavered. Tears blurred Endeavor’s face, a sliver of a smile wriggling on to Natsuo’s mouth. It was like looking through a stained-glass window, or opening his eyes in a pool.
Floating. Dormant.
“ Or you’ll find it’s hard to pass written exams with a broken wrist.”
A sick sort of pride welled in his chest, the shadow of a smile spreading over his mouth, pressed in a straight line.
It’d been so very long since Endeavor had hit him.
“Whatever.”
“Insolent fucking child! ”
A scolding heat collided with his left cheek and at once, Natsuo found himself on his side, staring into the empty cinders at the bottom of the fireplace. His tears stung the sides of his face, mouth refusing to make a single sound as his arm was taken in a firm grip.
From out of the living room window, four komadori sat, all in a row.
It was the kind of thing that Natsuo had trouble remembering, sometimes.
He remembered now.
One for charm.
Two for grace.
Three for luck.
Four for death.
<><><><><><>
“Yo, Natsuo!”
“Hey, Natsu!”
“You wanna go play basketball, Natsu?”
“Heeeeey, stop studying, Natsuo!”
Natsuo couldn’t become a hero. He’d learnt that by now.
His skin shrivelled at the sight of snow and frost, the sun in his hands faded and was stamped out at the side of the curb, blue streaking across his lips. At the age of four, he’d learnt that not all men were born equal - even those that had their gifts practically never made it to their lofty goals.
He wasn’t stupid.
He’d been studying since then — trying to figure out what kind of world permitted a life like his. A life like his siblings. Like his mom. What world, politically, geographically, would ever take them in without shame.
It’d come up empty.
He’d study further, too, about the body and about quirks. The immune system, how the heart beats – how the body responds to massive trauma. Studying anything he could to see what’d made him so weak. Why his baby brother had been born perfectly, had been blessed with the perfect quirk. Why Touya had–
Natsuo forced himself to blink.
The words on his desk taunted his eyes.
“Now that you’re all getting to that age,” his teacher had announced, a smug kind of confidence that can only be gained through no real challenge in one’s life, “It’s time to start thinking about your futures seriously. You kids only get one shot at this, you know?”
There was a tense silence over the classroom as the teacher shifted his tie, meeting Natsuo’s eyes. They covered themselves in ice, lips pressed in a thin line, and he was a ghost again.
“... But that’s pretty much the same for all of you, right? You all want to be heroes?”
The classroom erupted. People were cheering - chattering here and there about trivial things. Hero names, future agencies, ultimate moves. How many people they were going to save.
A sick feeling rose in Natsuo’s chest.
He still remembered the heat of Endeavor’s hand against his face.
“Now, I’m going to hand out your future planning sheets! Depending on test grades and things like that, they’ll be tailored to each of you, so make sure you consider this carefully!”
Most people had been given one sheet - the words ‘HERO PLANNING SHEET’ emblazoned on cheap printer paper. Others still had been given another sheet, labelled ‘ESSENTIAL WORK PLANNING SHEET’, detailing all kinds of important non-combat hero work.
Natsuo had been given them both, the gentle gaze of his teacher bouncing off of his glassy eyes and shuttered soul. That kind of kindness was for show, as most things were, and he had no energy to try to understand why people sat behind false words.
His eyes blurred in and out, through faint tears that he couldn’t cry and exhaustion that turned his bones black, tapping his pencil softly to keep himself present. Maybe he could become a hero anyway - shove his father’s legacy off a cliff, go to a small-time school and become someone’s sidekick somewhere. Maybe he could become a doctor like Fuyumi said — he was pretty good at that stuff, after all.
He really didn’t want to be a doctor.
“Yo! Frost boy!”
His head snapped up from his dazed stupor, stiff muscles and a dreary mind blurring the image of three boys standing in front of his desk. He knew them well – boys slated to be transferred to a hero prep school before senior high. They were tough, with flashy quirks and money to their name, their entire life road-mapped in front of them that they barely cared enough to follow. They hated Natsuo’s guts (not that he thought they could hate them more than he did, but they got pretty damn close).
“Oi, Todo dork i, where are you going after junior high?”
Touya was going to go to UA.
He’d like to go to UA too.
But he couldn’t.
His pencil floated over the hero planning sheet, over the extraneous sheets of paper, over bored doodles of chemical structures in the margin of his notebooks.
He took great care to breathe.
“What, not gonna grace us with an answer? With your dad’s money, you could get into damn near everywhere!”
The taller of the three boys rolled his eyes, elbowing the shorter one straight in the face. His lips curled into something resembling concern before slipping into a cruel grin, patting Natsuo softly on the head. His skin stung like he was struck by lightning, head swimming at the sudden contact. Hot, like the tears he’d sobbed silently. Cold, like the ice that swarmed his multiple bruises.
He fought the urge to throw up.
He couldn’t.
That’d tarnish his family name.
“Awwww, c’mon guys, be lighter on the guy! I heard his mom’s a nutjob anyway, so he’s probably gonna end up the same way!”
The laughter was cacophonous.
It pierced every section of his body, threw knives into his skull, tore his nerves up. But he couldn’t say they were wrong to think that - Natsuo had never been popular for the right reasons. Endeavor, his mother, his brothers, his inability to do hero work. It’d been the same since he got into school, and since the news broke of his baby brother’s quirk, it’d been worse than normal. Calls and howls that he was still at some second-rate school when his brother was already stronger than most hero candidates.
Standing up with all the confidence of a man put to death, he slid his notebooks into his bag, his phone into his pocket, his watch onto his wrist. He watched as the boys stood, not a word between them, as he swung his bag onto his back, bowing to them quietly, eyes burning holes through the wooden floor.
“I’ll see you guys tomorrow. Do your best to be great heroes.”
Rehearsed. Practised.
He’d said it time and time and time again. At one point or another, praise like that was reserved only for his brother.
It was two years too late for that.
Soon, it’d be three years too late for that.
Never mind.
His feet dragged against the schoolroom floor as the three boys stood at the empty desk, like if they threw their hands through the air, they’d be met with an icy facsimile of Natsuo himself. There one minute, gone the next — a ghost.
The taller boy shook his head, rubbing the back of his neck.
“ .. ‘s hard to make fun of him when he responds like that. ”
“ Yeah dude, no kidding - he could at least stand up for himself. ”
Natsuo’s hand latched onto the door handle as the shortest boy called out; a last-ditch attempt to get his attention.
“If you’re gonna blow us off like that, you’ll really piss off your dad y’know! My mom knows him! I’ll tell him everything !”
Three pairs of eyes watched as Natsuo’s shoulders square, straighten; the light fixtures flickered if only for a moment, the glass strangled at the sudden arctic temperatures. Natsuo’s breath was visible as his hand trembled, and then, as if he’d been standing there all his life, he let go.
The door screamed as it was pulled open, the noisy mess of voices in the hallway suffocating Natsuo as he nodded, stepping out. He was sure Endeavor would hear about it, in some way or another. He was sure he’d get a long lecture about keeping his head down, about not tarnishing the Todoroki name, about how he was better off just sitting behind a desk forever, how people like him were the reason that heroes were more and more of a joke these days.
How people like him were the reason that Touya–
He was too cold.
“... Have a good day. Please, do your best to be great heroes.”
The door shut behind him.
<><><><><><>
It was cold out tonight, unusually so for a summer’s evening.
The clouds bulged and grew as a storm crept towards the horizon, wind whipping at Natsuo’s hair, his breath chilled and visible in the air. Faint crackles of lightning, so far away you could barely hear them, hummed and buzzed like little fireflies in the air, burning themselves into Natsuo’s corneas momentarily; grabbed, pulled and pushed, and at once they were gone.
Natsuo pressed his hands on the railing of the bridge and gazed out.
It was a nice night to be alone.
“You’re… applying for Yokonara Hero School, Natsuo?”
He’d never seen a look like that on a teacher’s face before – then again, Natsuo wasn’t entirely sure he really paid mind to people’s expressions anymore. A look of astonishment painted the man’s face, and inexplicably, Natsuo felt as though his father was lurking outside of the door.
It was a last-minute, hate-filled decision. Sure, Yokonara was no top-end hero school, but it was still pretty good – he’d heard that it was Best Jeanist’s second choice before UA, so it must be worth something. He’d met the man, once, when he was younger.
He didn’t remember the meeting at all.
“Y.. Yes, sir.”
The headmaster folded his hands down, a smile replacing his stunned expression.
Natsuo felt hot.
“Well… colour me surprised, young man! I wish you the best of luck!”
His fingers trembled against the metal.
It was unusually desolate out tonight, thinking about it – families were probably having their last huddles before entrance exams, doctors were preparing for their exams, lawyers studying for their bars. Busy people, running around like a queen was in her hive, ordering them all about.
His stomach churned a little.
Fuyumi’s face had been a tell-all.
The house was hot.
“... He … He’s in the training room.”
Natsuo nodded blankly, trying to ignore the small bruise on her cheek. Trying to ignore the strained sobbing of Shoto elsewhere in the house, his little seething breaths trying to disguise themselves.
The sound of silence was deafening.
Natsuo felt something in his leg shift as he got closer to the edge. If he knew any better, he would’ve assumed it was broken; his ribs, too, and his left wrist. His left eye ached, calling to the black pit of the sea beneath them. ‘ A cold compress, ’ something in his brain whispered, hours of medical textbooks trying to get his attention, ‘ and a splint. It’ll be okay.’
The tatami mats in the training room were soft, if mildly dented from all the impacts they’d taken. They were comfortable, and even without blankets, Natsuo’s body was warm enough to sleep there forever.
Metal stained the inside of his mouth.
He shut his eyes.
“Retract that application.”
His body barely wanted to move.
It ached.
Maybe he could be a doctor.
“Yes, sir.”
His body shook.
He breathed.
“Hey, stranger. What are you doing out here on a night like tonight? Stargazing? Not really the night for it, I think.”
A sudden voice broke through the memories playing on repeat, light, confident steps approaching his side and stopping a foot away. It was calm - smooth, like the finest sheets of linen or a future that’d gone exactly as intended. Natsuo refused to turn his head.
He wasn’t asking to be talked to.
There was a controlled pause, and despite Natsuo’s obvious refusal, no hint of annoyance was audible in the boy’s voice.
“... Nnnnno? Not a talker? That’s okay - I’ll talk for the both of us then.”
Settling next to him on the railing, the voice suddenly had a pair of legs, sitting precariously on the edge - dangling, like a naughty child taking delight in disobeying their parents. Natsuo kept his eyes firmly on the sea below him. Calm. Swaying. Infinite.
Void.
He felt the eyes of the voice scour his body, inside and out, up and down. If he were any more engaged, he would’ve assumed the stranger tried to look through him too.
“I couldn’t help but notice you don’t have a bag on you. Not going anywhere? Well … from personal experience, the bridge isn’t the best place to sleep. You’re better off going to a youth hostel down the road. Actually … you look young. Senior high?”
Natsuo nodded his head, stiff as a board. The charm of the voice had been rubbed off by his abrasive inquisition, and the sudden feeling of being observed filled his bones. Not looked at — observed. Like an animal raised in a laboratory, collared and chained by organisms he’d never seen before and released into a world he’d never even touched.
“Man, I remember being there - it’s tough as hell, huh? Are you at some kinda specialised school, or a state school?”
What sort of question is that? Asking an utter stranger…
Natsuo wasn’t an idiot. Questions like that were thinly veiled attempts at parsing worth, if he knew anything about people (and he liked to think that he did).
“ Are you in a Hero School?” The question typically meant, “ Or are you somewhere else and not doing anything? ”
He held his silence.
The voice swung its feet casually.
“Too personal of a question to ask, huh? Don’t worry about answering - I’m just a stranger on the side of the road, after all. That being said… you’re not a hero student, are you?”
Natsuo’s shoulders rose in frustration.
Frost crackled over his knuckles.
“... Would you leave me the hell alone, man? I clearly don’t want to talk to you.”
The voice whistled, chattering out a laugh. Something light and warm touched his back, and the sensation of shivering overtook him.
Ice rooted him to the floor.
“So you do have a bite to you, huh? That’s good - that’s really good, actually. Means you’re alive. I was getting worried you weren’t listening at all. But hey! Way to prove me wrong, ice boy.”
There was a note of playfulness in his words, carrying a hidden venom that stuck itself into the crevasses of Natsuo’s brain. He could barely pay attention – hell, he barely wanted to – but his rhythm was like a pulse, like the beating of wings. It was deliberate. This guy sounded young, too — young enough to be talking to a high-schooler like a friend and a parent all at once.
Natsuo refused to turn his head.
“Yeah, so you got me to react. What are you, twelve? Shut up and leave me alone!”
“No can do, ice boy. ‘Cause … a non-hero student injured that badly, on his own, at night, on a bridge, way too close to the railing? That’s asking for trouble.”
Oh.
It was like that .
“Might be asking for my own trouble, but not asking for more of someone else’s, thank you. For all you know, I could be some kind of villain setup to get you close enough to kill you, like they did in the 90s.”
A part of Natsuo hoped that was true - hoped that some miracle villain or hero or someone would take this asshole away. Could take the warmth on his back away, or stop the voice’s carefree legs from kicking like a kid at a paddling pool. He hoped that somewhere, he was important enough for someone to use him like that.
Instead, the voice laughed again, his sugary-sweet words never failing.
“ ‘More of someone else’s’ trouble? Regardless, we both know that’s not the case - however tough or young you are … you’re just out here because your thoughts were as loud as your heartbeat.”
The voice’s legs stopped swinging, and for a single contemplative moment, there was a pause. It wasn’t uncomfortable at all, and Natsuo found his shivering beginning to cease. The voice was thinking, and for a second, Natsuo thought that perhaps he’d been a bit too abrasive.
That this guy was trying to help.
The voice moved, as did the comforting warmth from his back. He watched the legs go from bent to completely erect, the rolling of thunder in the distance—
–and for a single horrifying moment, Natsuo thought he’d jumped.
A rush of colour pushed through Natsuo’s quiet eyes, his neck cracking as he snapped his attention to the pull of a leather jacket, a blur of red, the glimmer of blonde hair, and the crack of a mischievous smile. The blonde hair settled just out of vision and, as if a tape was being reversed, it began to come back into view.
He was floating, his wings beating behind him like he was some hellish angel.
Was that his quirk?
“Made you look~”
“W… What the fuck, man?! You could’ve died– you just– jumping off like that–”
His laugh was infuriating.
Calm. Perfect. Calculated.
Unendingly kind.
His eyes radiated a kind of maturity no one of his age should know — 16? 18? — a calmness pulsing throughout his whole body. Natsuo’s eyes followed the folds of his baggy jacket, to the fluttering of each individual scarlett wing. They couldn’t be real, and yet, they shivered and twitched in the wind as if talking to it, a glint in each follicle like they knew they were being observed.
The boy shook his head.
“Those could’ve been my lines, you know. You haven’t looked my way once.”
“W– Well– Of course not! You’re a stranger and I’m out here and it’s just–”
“Hey, hey, that wasn’t an insult. I was just observing.”
“Yeah, observing — why are you even out here?”
There was a less calculated pause, the boy swinging his feet in flight as if he was really trying to think of a response. He reached up slowly as he thought, the soft beating of wings became more and more audible, fiddling with the ends of two feathers that looked loose. There was a punctual snap, and he held them in his hand, observing them for some unknowable answer.
“.. I don’t know. I just came over because … it looked like you were asking for help.”
Natsuo blinked.
For the first time in a long time, he began laughing.
“You came over here… because you wanted to help me? You’re my age , why are you–”
“—worrying about that kind of thing? That’s what you were gonna say, right?”
“ Yes! Don’t you have entrance exams to worry about or something?”
The boy rubbed the back of his neck, lowering himself until he was eye-to-eye with Natsuo, on the other side of the railings. He placed his hands lightly over Natsuo’s own, the warmth foreign; soft and gentle, like a fireplace crackling on a winter’s morning.
He’d be late home at this rate.
“Not really - mine’s a … special case. But … I knew the kind of face you were pulling.”
“And it was asking for help?”
“Yeah. Like a textbook.”
Natsuo watched the boy think, staring up at the rapidly clouded sky. It’d barely been five minutes, and yet… he suddenly looked like he was in a rush. His shoulders rose a little, and if Natsuo squinted incorrectly, it almost looked like he was nervous.
He wondered how many times the same look had been on his face.
“Hey, turn your hand over for me.”
With some force, Natsuo pried his palm off of the railing, shivering as the cold night air hit his skin. He watched as the boy opened his hand, the red feathers he’d pulled earlier shining and dancing in the limited moonlight, the grin the boy wore doing the same.
“I … have to go real soon. I’m sorry I couldn’t hang around longer, but … maybe look at the stars some time. They help me when my thoughts are too loud - and hey.”
Slowly, deliberately, the red feather dropped onto Natsuo’s palm, freezing instantly.
“Maybe we’ll meet again, yeah? But you better be alive, or I’ll be really mad.”
Scarlet fibres clung onto his blackened fingertips.
Out of the window, somewhere, he remembered. Laughter and light that he’d long since lost, hope he’d held that’d been dashed so young. His voice trembled in his throat, suddenly years smaller than he’d ever been.
He watched the boy’s feet falter in their flight.
“A… Are you … a komadori?”
There was a long pause.
Laughter. Raucous laughter. Nowhere near as controlled and kind - it was the kind of laughter a friend would give at a joke, or at a fun present. A friend? Were they friends? Natsuo shook his head. He didn’t even know where the guy lived, or what he liked - they’d only met each other for a few moments.
And yet…
“A.. a komadori?! Man, that’s a new one! If you want me to be a komadori, then your wish is my command~ What was that old nursery rhyme … one komadori being a charm, or something?
“How about it? Do you think I’m charming?”
The boy fell back into the air, the wind holding him like he was nothing and everything all at once, a reverence about his movement that he couldn’t place nor explain.
A smile etched itself into the corners of Natsuo’s mouth.
“No. You’re an asshole.”
“Good! Remember that annoyance - you better pay it back tenfold when I see you next.”
Natsuo stared at the feather well past the stranger’s tenure, the faint ocean smell lingering in his bones, seeping into the dull synapses of his brain. A thousand ocean’s worth of paint stained his eyes, and slowly but surely, he uprooted himself from the ice and began to walk. A youth hostel didn’t seem that bad, and the one up the road … was close to his school, anyway. He’d be back by tomorrow evening, and no one would ever know he was gone.
The feather bent, but did not break, under his tight grip; two small komadori chirped on a telephone pole as he shuffled by.
How lucky.
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