Chapter Text
Tuesday, just before dusk
On a brisk December day in the downtown pedestrians, tightly bundled against the cold, crowd the streets. Above them, the glow of lighted offices and bright flashing signs cast a comforting glow over the citizens below. Everyone politely goes about their business, except one man, steadily cutting through an otherwise organized flow of foot traffic. His presence is largely ignored with only a few glances. His unsettling aura causes most people to veer out of his path.
Stalking down the street, Dabi is also bundled up well for the winter season. Not because he’s cold by any means, but because he’s concealing his identity. He wears an oversized grey hoodie with overly long sleeves and cutouts in the cuffs for his thumb to peek through. The hood covers his dark hair, shadowing the paper mask covering his mouth. Dark blue sunglasses conceal his shockingly blue eyes and the scars underneath. If anyone saw his face, they’d be running scared in a heartbeat.
Dabi glances up at the brightly flashing advertisements plastered on every building in sight. He sneers behind the pale blue mask at the loud and garish displays. Disgusting endorsements by star-studded heroes mock him from above. The Laundry Hero: Wash, advertising a mundane cleaning product. The Snake Hero: Uwabami, flaunting some beauty product or another. Worst of all is an enormous and tall picture of the recently crowned number one hero: Endeavor. Disgusting, Dabi thinks. How he wishes he could burn that arrogant face into ash. Not right now, though. He’s keeping a low profile as he pushes through the crowd.
He weaves through the crowd, head down, and doesn’t see the young man directly in his path. A stranger and a nobody named Uchu Kintsugi, with the appearance of someone whose goth fashion sense belongs on the streets of Harajuku. Slicked-back black hair, heavy buckle boots and red plaid pants. An anarchy pendant adorning his neck. This inconsequential pedestrian is so engrossed playing on his cellphone that he doesn’t realize he’s on a collision course with a villain. Endlessly dark eyes with black sclera snap up at the last second to meet icy blues. The young man attempts to sidestep to avoid the crash, but they shoulder-check each other regardless. The force of it spins their bodies around to face each other again. Pedestrians veer around the disturbance, minding their own business, none the wiser.
Dabi growls, earning a look mixed with fear and instant recognition. Indignant anger burns inside the villain for the slight he’s endured. He’d show this nobody for crossing him. He’d give this man something to fear. Reaching out with his right hand bent like a claw, he aims for the stranger’s face. He sees delicious horror in the man’s black eyes as his hand comes down. The man tries to lean away, but Dabi’s hand encloses around his face. Dabi intends to push the man down roughly, barely hearing the quiet whisper, “No.”
A blast of pain strikes Dabi’s mind. It goes blissfully blank for a second before hundreds of images hit him like an oncoming train. Visions too bright to look away from and too quick to hold onto drown his brain. His world turns on its head, and he’d tumble backward except his body locks up. He can’t pull his hand away from the other man’s face. It’s like they’re glued to each other. Dabi also can’t hear the stranger chanting multiple, “No.”
A few seconds (or maybe days) pass before Dabi and Kintsugi can rip away from each other. Both men stumble for a few steps, and Dabi feels himself starting to collapse. He’s caught as arms loop under his right side to bodily drag the villain. He’d protest it if he could. The stranger hurries them off the main street, quickly ducking into a nearby unassuming alley. No one pays them any mind.
The dark-haired man clumsily leads them down the middle of the dark alleyway. There’s a shadowed nook next to a shut garage door and a company van parked for the night. It’s as good as a hiding place as any. Night approaches and no one should have any reason to come down this alley and find them. He fumbles the criminal into leaning against the aluminum garage door. Dabi falls over with a barely noticeable groan. The stranger beside him rambles on with useless apologies. Something about his quirk, and how he can’t touch people. So many words that go unheard. Dabi’s blue eyes are void, staring at nothing, because he sees nothing, and everything all at once.
It's like a bad high—everything is moving too fast and too slow. An overwhelming hangover where you wish you could rip your brain from your skull. It’s being detached from your body, like the empty void of death might feel. He wouldn’t mind dying at this very moment, just to stop the kaleidoscope of thoughts. Dabi is overwhelmed as hundreds, maybe thousands, of visions rip through his brain. He couldn’t even try to comprehend them all. His mind vaguely realizes that they’re memories—memories that are not his own, yet confusingly very much his. Confusing visions of the past, present, and future that’s yet to happen, and that will never happen.
It doesn’t make any sense, like a fever dream, but it’s all so very, very real.
In an alternate life… he’s a villain, a vigilante, a hero, and a nobody.
He returned to his family after the accident to open, loving arms. He stays trapped in that twisted fake orphanage, resigned to his fate. The fire on Sekoto Peak never happened. Alone on the streets a hero found saved him from death’s door.
He’s an ice skater, a firefighter, or a tattoo artist.
He’s got the same cursed defective quirk. Sometimes though, his fire doesn’t burn him because his body was made right. Other times he’s got an ice quirk or blessedly no quirk at all.
He’s born a heteromorph, and once he was a common house cat (weird, but also fitting.)
He’s alone, a rogue waiting on the cold embrace of Death.
He’s a whisper that no one ever knew existed.
He is loved and treasured. He lives in worlds where he has a partner and a family all his own. Doing better than his parents ever could. At another time (as much as he doesn’t want attachments), the League of Villains is his family. But they died one by one, never reaching their goals, never destroying anything, and self-destructing on their own. They completely obliterate a single town off the map, but sometimes they are massacred in that same town. Their whole organization is manipulated by All for One, and Shigaraki sweeps Death’s scythe, turning his allies to dust in the wind. Pointlessly, half of Japan sinks into the ocean due to a mundane natural disaster. Civilians, heroes, and villains alike are all insignificant in the wake of Mother Nature’s cruel hand.
He lies on his deathbed, hooked up to every wire and piece of equipment possible to uselessly keep him alive long past his expiration date. He can barely speak, barely hear, and barely breathe, but he can suffer. He deserves this death. Yet he has regrets he wasn’t expecting to feel, and he hates how they burn his chest. Some of these strange, adjacent worlds are nice, and he thinks he’d like to live there. Others are horrible and bleak, and they suit his blackened heart just fine. It’s insanity, and he’s drowning in it.
In all of these worlds, one thing remains the same: Dabi never defeats that man. That man never sees him.
Outside of Dabi’s mind, his body viscerally experiences the same cosmic roller coaster. His body morphs and changes to match each new reality in quick succession. His scars fade, as does his dyed hair, shifting from black to white. His skin blackens into charcoal down to the bone. It bursts into flames that change from red, blue, and white until his normal scarred skin returns. Cold frost forms over his mangled skin and disappears just as quickly from the radiating heat. Cuts and bruises paint his body. Blood seeps from the seams in his flesh, and his nose while miraculous clear tears stream down his face. Blood blooms red from his gut, soaking through his tattered white shirt. The villain silently screams as his body tears itself apart to build itself up again, and again.
After an unknown amount of time, the visions die down, and the transformations to his body settle. Dabi awakens with a start. Cold sweat drips down his brow, his breathing ragged as if he’s just come up for air. His skin feels like it’s on fire, with all his nerves experiencing unbearable pain. His brain is pounding, trying to break free of his skull. The man who brought this upon him hovers over him, speaking words Dabi can’t comprehend, with a look of genuine worry .
That can’t be real, the villain thinks, because no one genuinely cares about him. The man speaks with hushed urgency, asking if he can help the villain sit up. Words are starting to make sense as Dabi’s blue eyes clear of fog.
Kintsugi hesitates multiple times before taking hold of his shoulders (protected by the hoodie so their skin doesn’t touch) to ease Dabi into sitting up straight. He leans his victim against the aluminum garage door, and Dabi’s head lolls back.
“Can you hear me?” the man, Kintsugi asks, “Forgive me! I don’t know why this happened. I’m so sorry.”
Dabi squints at the other dark-haired man, barely seeing through blurry eyes. It takes several blinks and squinting to make out the human beside him. His mind is reeling, but he’s lucid enough to growl, “What did you do to me?”
Acid crawls up his throat, and his gut throbs. He remembers being stabbed in the back (even though it never happened). His blue eyes water even though he knows he can’t. His mouth is filled with the metallic tang of blood; he realizes that he definitely bit his tongue.
“I’m sorry!” Kintsugi doesn’t stop to breathe as he explains, “It’s my quirk. It’s called Parallel Sight, and because of it, I can’t touch other people. I have no control over this damned thing. It’s never done anything like this before, never so severely. Maybe someone sees a vision of their life in another timeline or even reality, but God, not like this. No one has ever experienced hundreds of different worlds. You’ve been out of it for almost 20 minutes. I thought I might have killed you! I’m not—I’m not a killer!”
“Just… shut up,” Dabi rumbles, thinking he’d barbecue the man, who shouldn’t be left to his own devices with such a dangerous quirk. If only he didn’t feel like he might collapse again. The alley they hide in is blanketed in darkness now that the sun has almost set. He takes stock of his body, and it looks like it actually was hit by that bullet train.Feels like it too, Dabi muses, but he was nothing if not a survivor.
The annoying pipsqueak suddenly gasps again, the sound setting the villain’s nerves on edge. Dabi follows that worried gaze down to his right arm, hanging limply at his side. His jacket sleeve is ruined on that arm. The melted grey fabric is glued to his skin, and staples have melted to burnt skin leading up to his shoulder. A cobalt fire that Dabi didn’t will into existence lights up the arm. He grits his teeth against the pain that he can miraculously feel now. He doesn’t whimper or scream as the flesh and muscle melt off the bone. He just knocks his head repeatedly into the wall behind him. He lifts the extremity to eye level and giggles behind labored breathing as it crumbles to ash.
“I ought to incinerate you,” Dabi can barely snarl behind the weakly spoken threat. His muscles cramp as his destroyed, mangled arm flickers back into existence. He lifts his left arm (not nearly as messed up), igniting red fire in a cupped palm. He can’t seem to will the fire to a hotter blue, but his meaning is crystal clear.
“Wait! Wait! Wait! If you kill me, you’re going to be stuck here for who knows how long. You’re not in any condition to move, and if you stay here, a hero might eventually find you. And since I don’t know what’s happened with my quirk, you may get stuck in an infinite loop or even die. You need help, and I am here.”
Oddly scared lips pull in disgust. He lets his hand drop uselessly to his side. It’s gross that this nobody used THAT heroic catchphrase while talking a mile a minute. He’s not wrong, though, and the villain knows he’s a sitting (and lame) duck. Dabi has no energy to move his newly messed-up (in new and unexciting ways) body. He doesn’t think he could stand or even fight without falling apart at the seams. His left arm gestures pointedly to express the same: just look at the hot mess I’ve become.
“I can call you an ambulance—no, that would get you arrested. One of the League members? They can help, right? I can use your phone.”
A small poof of fire lighting up his boot against his will answers the question first. To Dabi, it feels like his foot was cut off and returned just as fast. He can feel the blood pooling inside the shoe. So, in short, he absolutely is not going to let the League see him vulnerable like this, especially while they're tied up with—other engagements. Blessedly, the man is smart enough to understand his silent refusal.
“What about Doctor Ujiko?”
“Fuck no,” There’s no hesitation. He will not be going anywhere near that madman to be put on a slab to be dissected all over again. How the hell does this guy even know who Ujiko is?
“It’s the quirk,” the stranger answers like some kind of telepath, “I saw, what you saw, but I won’t tell anyone anything about you. I believe in confidentiality. It’s kept me out of trouble with the law.”
“I really should kill you.” It’s still a weak threat.
Another wave of pain drills into Dabi’s skull. It takes all his strength not to scream as a tsunami of worlds pummels his brain again. The effect is debilitating, and Dabi needs the quirk’s effect to end—like yesterday. Parallel Sight has already stolen too much of his precious time.
Decision made, Dabi awkwardly wrenches a burner phone from his right pocket with his left hand. His vision is swimming again, so he tosses the phone into the other man’s hands. He won’t dwell on the fact that he’s going back on what he thought just a moment ago.
“The broker?” he asks redundantly, as the number has already been dialed and put on speaker.
“Don’t ask questions you already know the answer to, asshole.”
The pair wait impatiently as the call connects. The phone rings once and goes straight to voicemail: "Leave a message, or don’t."
Just in case, they try once more, only to be put through to voicemail after one ring.
“Figures,” Dabi groused. There was no point in leaving a message. Giran, if and when he got this call, would know who it was. The stranger squatted back, listlessly staring at the cheap disposable phone. His boots cut through the encroaching silence, crunching over loose pebbles. Frustrated, Dabi scrubbed his scarred face with his left hand, looking to the sky for some sort of salvation. He couldn’t stay in this alley. He didn’t want to stay with this nobody who did this to him. He pulled his hand away to find it covered in blood from the seams near his eyes and, surprisingly, tears.
That couldn’t be right, the villain thought. Damnit! This night was such a shit-show, and it had started off so deviously nice.
The silence stretched for minutes before the man spoke up, “Do you want me to call… him?”
Annoyed, Dabi’s head flopped down, chin to chest, and he didn’t answer right away. Kintsugi didn’t have to say who “him” was, because the villain knew good and well. It was a shitty solution to an even shittier situation. What else could he do with two options already axed? His pale fingers tangled in his white hair, frowning a hard line. His mind saw glimpses of red wings and a too cocky smile, and somehow Dabi knew that he would help.
Screw it all to hell, if that fake wanted to prove himself, then he could start with this.
“Fine. Let the hero earn his keep.”