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“You know how sometimes you wake up and you’re certain as the grave that’s it for you and sleep? That’s how it was.”
~Radiance, by Catherynne M. Valente
…
Even before his accident, Touya had always had a fragmented relationship with sleep. He would lay awake for hours fretting over everything that had gone wrong, everything he’d done wrong, trying desperately to think of ways to fix his world until sheer exhaustion brought him into a restless sleep.
Now, he woke suddenly, feeling as though he’d been dreaming but unable to recall anything from the dream. His room was quiet, save for the fan running in the corner and bringing some relief to the otherwise humid evening. He stared, wide awake, at the underside of his ceiling and thought about going back to sleep or getting up to piss. He contemplated what had woken him. He scowled at the heat and turned onto his side to let the fan blow air across his back, but it was no use. So he got up with a sigh and stretched, wincing as the piercings and scars pulled unpleasantly, then stepped into the hallway. The way he wandered around the house at night when he couldn’t sleep, Natsu used to call it prowling, and after years of doing it, Touya supposed it was an apt description. Through Yumi’s open door, he saw her fast asleep, curled around a body pillow and snoring lightly. Natsuo’s room was of course empty. Shouto’s door was closed. Dad slept in a room on the other side of the house. Sometimes Touya prowled in that direction and stood outside the old man’s door for no particular reason.
But not tonight.
Tonight, he used the bathroom and crept downstairs, leaving the lights off as he went and treading only on the floorboards he knew didn’t creak. A floorboard that creaked sounded like a gunshot this late in the evening. Or early in the morning, he supposed as he neared the kitchen.
When he reached the door, he froze.
Seated at the table, Shouto looked up at him. “Hey,” his brother said after a startled beat.
Touya didn’t answer.
“Can’t sleep?”
“I don’t sleep,” he said automatically. “Too much noise in my head. It hurts.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.”
It annoyed him how affable he was. So accepting of everything. No offers to help although that would have annoyed him, too, because what the fuck was Shouto going to do about the endless spiral of thoughts in his head? So Touya took in a deep breath and frowned. “Why are you just sitting there in the dark? Normal people make some tea.”
Shouto was silent a moment, then whispered, “I don’t know how.”
Didn’t know——not even tea? “You’re hopeless, you know that?”
His brother hung his head further, as if he wanted to argue. “…I never learned.”
That was fair. He supposed if their father succeeded in making him the ultimate Pro, Shouto could hire any help he needed for cooking, cleaning, and what else and he would never need to learn to keep his own house. Or he’d have a wife to do it for him. Touya’s skin crawled at the idea of Endeavor setting Shouto up with some poor girl and continuing the quest for the perfect successor. Did he think about redoing what the Himura Clan had done, only with fire? He dismissed the thought for now. No sense in dwelling on something they wouldn’t have to worry seriously about for another few years.
“All right.” Touya crossed the kitchen floor and pulled out the saucepan. “I’ll learn you now.”
Shouto lifted his head in surprise.
“Everyone usually has a cup of tea at dinner,” he said. “And since there’s two of us, we’ll heat two cups worth of water.
“Isn’t there caffeine in tea,” his brother asked. “I do want to try to go back to sleep.”
That was true. “Yes, but just this once, you can have some of my herbal stuff. Helps me sleep.” Touya reached into the cupboard above the counter and pulled down a tin of rooibos marked aggressively in permanent ink with his name and set it next to the stove. “Rooibos is bitter if the water is too hot, so keep an eye on it or use a thermometer. In the meantime, you put the tea leaves in the infuser. One teaspoon per cup is standard.”
“Okay.” Shouto watched him in silence, then asked, “Why aren’t you using the kettle?”
“Huh?”
“Why aren’t you using a tea kettle?”
Touya frowned and checked his phone. “It’s three in the morning, Shou. The whistling would scream the whole house down. It’s quieter to boil water in a saucepan.”
“Oh.”
To his surprise, Shouto seemed to relax a little. His shoulders slumped somewhat and his face looked at ease. It was only for a moment and had he been distracted, Touya would have missed it entirely. He didn’t know what to make of it. Did he have a problem with using a saucepan opposed to a——
“Does that sound trigger you?”
“What?”
“The whistling tea kettle,” Touya clarified. “Is it a trigger for what happened?”
Shouto looked down at the table, his eyes hidden from view. “…yes.”
Touya said nothing.
“Every time I hear that sound, all I can think about is Mom standing where you are now and the look she gave me before…and it doesn’t even have to be a tea kettle either. It’s any high-pitched sound.”
Touya didn’t know what to say. He wasn’t close to Shouto, so he’d half-expected him to deny it, to say the sound didn’t bother him at all, why would he think that, and so on. He wasn’t expecting this vulnerability, and the thought that his youngest brother would confide this in him of all people made him uneasy. He was picking at his nails the way Mom used to. “Why did you never say anything?”
Shouto shook his head as if he weren’t sure. “I guess I always figured it was my problem. I didn’t want anyone to know I hadn’t gotten over it.”
Touya looked down as the water began to hiss and simmer. “Have you talked to Mom about this during your visits?”
“Of course not. She feels horrible enough about it as it is.”
“Friends then? Yumi?”
“No.”
And he doesn’t see Doc Honda or anyone like Yumi and I do. Touya clicked his tongue against his teeth, then poured the hot water into the infuser, and set the timer.
“It’s been ten years. Shouldn’t I be over it by now?”
Leaning against the counter to wait, Touya fixed him with a direct stare. “Did you know I used to panic when I heard white noise?”
Shouto frowned at him. “White noise?”
“Yeah. A crowd of people talking, rain sounds, the ocean, static. You know, a constant drone of background noise that some people need in order to sleep. It,” he sighed. He couldn’t believe he was sharing this. “It reminded me of being surrounded by fire, and when I heard it, I’d panic. You remember in the first couple years after I came back how I would freak out during thunderstorms?”
“I remember.”
“Dad wanted to admit me to Fujiya, too. Said I was being disruptive. And I burned Grandmom a few times when I got like that, so a part of me started to believe him. He probably thought I would snap one day and hurt you the way Mom did.”
“Hang on,” Shouto said. “I don’t remember seeing Grandma Himura with burns.”
Touya shook his head. “You wouldn’t have. Her Quirk was hyper-regeneration. Any injuries she received healed in a matter of hours.” The Himura Clan had included her in their Quirk marriages in hopes her children with their grandfather would carry her healing factor and resolve the frostbite concerns of the ice-Quirk. It hadn’t worked as well as they’d hoped.
“What happened,” his brother asked. “I definitely would have noticed if Endeavor dumped you in Fujiya.”
“Grandmom got me into therapy,” Touya said. “Brought me to a couple different people to try out. Honda was the first, but I liked her best. I like her voice. She taught me a few coping techniques to help out with the white noise problem and now——” He paused as his timer went off and he stood to get the tea. “I’m not over the fire. But at least the sound doesn’t bother me all that much anymore, so no one can say I haven’t gotten a little better. Honey?”
Shouto said no.
“So moral of the story is time isn't the only thing that heals a bad memory. You can't fix something if you don’t figure out how to deal with it. You know, talk about it. Let people know what’s going on.”
“I’m talking to you.”
Touya set his unsweetened cup in front of him. “I guess you are.”
For awhile, neither of them spoke. Shouto started drinking the tea right away. Touya had to wait for his to cool down, but he kept stirring it to keep the honey from settling on the bottom. Their brother and sister teased him all the time about sweetening tea so dramatically. More like liquified honey than actual tea, they said, but he liked what he liked. He thought of the crêpe he’d bought Shouto when they’d run for groceries, how his brother had only been able to eat a fraction of it before he found the taste of sugar too overwhelming, and he’d given it to him to finish. Guess that’s what a strict nutrition regimen gets you. Small blessings.
Shouto lifted his head as though he were going to speak.
Touya waited.
“That day Mom,” his brother trailed off and lightly tapped his scarred eye. “You know. What do you remember?”
He vaguely remembered coming back from Sekoto Peak when it happened, and the only reason he remembered that much was because he’d been pulling off his shoes, managing only one when the screaming started, and having a distinct memory of being distracted by the one sneaker inside the house where it didn’t belong. “Not a whole lot,” he said and drank some tea. “I don’t really remember much in the months leading up to the fire if I’m being honest.” He didn’t know if that was because of the coma or if there genuinely wasn’t much to remember. School probably. Training himself on Sekoto. Normal, everyday, uneventful stuff.
Shouto was picking at his nails again. “Not even that day?”
Touya took a bigger gulp of tea, not caring that it burned on the way down. “I think I was in the genkan when I heard you screaming. I remember thinking it sounded different than usual. Normally, you just sounded upset, but those screams sounded like a dying animal. So I went running because what else do you do when you hear that?” He jerked his head in a nod toward the doorway. “I stood right there and watched Dad pull Mom off you. I think he made sure you were okay before he started hitting her. Then I picked you up and carried you out of there.”
Bicolored eyes widened. “That was you?”
He could remember hot breaths sobbing into his shoulder, arms clinging to his neck, and small legs wrapped around his waist. He kept screaming apologies to their mother because he thought he’d done something wrong and that was why she’d dumped scalding water on him because only the logic of a confused and scared five year old could come up with something that horrifically stupid. Or stupidly horrific. “Mama, I’m sorry! Mama, Mama!” Touya began tapping his foot in agitation. “I knew Yumi or Natsu had probably heard you scream, too, and they would come get you, and I didn’t want them to see that. I told one of them to call an ambulance. It was probably Natsuo because I think it was Yumi and me who sat with you in the bathroom.”
He remembered running a cloth under cold water and wondering what the fuck had happened while he was gone. He remembered Shouto looking up at him and Fuyumi with that swollen, red eye and quickly covering it with the cloth so he wouldn’t have to look at it anymore. He remembered thinking, My shoe, I have to take my shoe off, where is that ambulance, why is Mom still screaming, I’m not supposed to wear shoes indoors, why can’t Mom shut up, shut up, shut up, shut up, SHUT UP! Then the bathroom door opened and there was Natsuo with a middle-aged firefighter who assured them everything would be all right and just let him see what was wrong. The ambulance arrived soon after and took Shouto away. Dad went with him.
Mom locked herself in her room.
Touya remembered telling the lady police officer what had happened. They had to have thought it strange their father had left three minors alone with a woman who’d allegedly attacked the fire year old. Even if the oldest was thirteen at the time, they had to have been questioning that decision. Maybe they thought it was a father’s panic in a crisis, no matter the hero’s training. Maybe they hadn’t thought about it at all and only cared about the potential threat Todoroki Rei now posed to her family.
“What happened to Mom,” Shouto asked. “All I know is when I came home from the hospital, she was gone. Endeavor said he sent her away.”
Touya’s fingers clenched around the lukewarm cup. “The police took her away after Yumi, Natsu, and I told them what she did. We didn’t know they would do that. But they determined she was a danger to herself and to us, and so they thought it best to her into custody. She fought back.”
Oh, she’d fought.
He remembered standing in front of Fuyumi and Natsuo, terrified as she’d tried to get at them because she hadn’t calmed down after what she’d done and her mind was so warped by fear that she couldn’t think rationally. The officers were sympathetic. So was the Pro who’d been called to deal with the potential threat of Quirk usage. He remembered them trying to calm her down. After Mom was gone, the lady officer sat them down and explained to them that ‘Mommy wasn’t in trouble.’ They just needed to make sure the three of them were safe and that she couldn’t hurt them or herself. She said she believed Fuyumi when their sister insisted Mom hadn’t meant to hurt Shouto. Everyone believed that, but it would be a long time before Touya and his siblings understood that what the authorities saw was an unstable, unpredictable mother who’d harmed her child for unknown reasons, that mother refused to explain what happened, was unable to cooperate or think calmly, and so the best course of action was to bring her to the nearest hospital for treatment and psychiatric evaluation. It was supposed to help.
Had it not been for their father mucking it all up, maybe it would have helped.
“Because she’d harmed you unprovoked, Dad was able to issue an emergency psychiatric hold on her.”
“I thought only a doctor or judge could do that.”
“No, it falls under a Pro Hero’s jurisdiction, too, if they personally witnessed the incident. Since Dad didn’t, he abused the system a bit, but hey, what Pro hasn’t.” Dad clearly hadn't told the police the truth about how Mom had gotten those bruises on her face. Touya drank the last of the tea. “I watched them haul Mom away kicking and screaming, and I haven’t seen her since.”
Shouto didn’t answer and he finally seemed to realize what he was doing with his nails, so he placed his hands in his lap.
“Did Fuyumi or Natsuo never tell you this?”
He shook his head. “I asked when we were kids. But I think Endeavor forbade them from saying anything.”
He probably decided the best way to deal with it was to put away all reminders of it. It’s what he does.
“How did you get over the sound,” Shouto asked. “The white noise, I mean. How did you get it to stop bothering you?”
He’d needed to ‘get over it.’ He didn’t have a choice. The problem with white noise was that it was everywhere. It was part of life and if he couldn’t cope with the sound, then he couldn’t function as an independent adult, and then he would actually belong in the psych ward with their mother. “Well,” he began. “First, it was learning to accept what had happened to me. It was sessions with Honda. It was revisiting where the fire happened. It was taking medication. It was learning to recognize what was causing my flashbacks and figuring out how to cope. It wasn’t easy.”
“I can imagine.”
Can you? You really think what happened to you is in any way comparable? You didn’t even lose sight in that eye. You don’t live with debilitating pain, you don’t live with a terminal prognosis, you don’t live with people staring at you in disgust on the train.
“What are the coping techniques you did?”
Touya sighed. “Are you asking for your own triggers?”
He nodded.
Another sigh. “Um,” he said. “There’s a few you could try. Deep breaths, mantras, a charm.”
Shouto furrowed his brow. “What do you mean by a charm?”
“An object or something you can associate with a better feeling. Something to comfort you.”
“Like,” He paused to think. “You mean like the way children have a special toy or blanket?”
“Yeah, exactly.” Touya lifted his head. “Do you remember that one sidekick of Dad’s? Epimetheia? She’s retired now, but I think you met her.”
“Aunt Mai? I remember her. She was the one with the nightmare Quirk, right?”
“Right.” He despised her as he despised all of their father’s senior sidekicks, but damn if he didn’t respect the hell out of that woman's mental fortitude against the hellish visions she’d endured during her years of service. “When Epimetheia used her Quirk to touch the minds of kidnapping victims or people otherwise trapped and needing locating, she was able to pass along small items to them. Usually, she used a house key. She called it a good luck charm, something to cling to while they waited for rescue.” Touya lifted his arm. “She also has the key tattooed on the inside of her left wrist. She used to say, ‘remember where you are, and then you can never be lost.’ The key reminded her of that. That kind of thinking kept her sane in a way a lot of other people would have crumbled with her power.”
His brother looked thoughtful, fingers turning the empty cup in circles against the table. “I think Endeavor would blow a gasket if I came home with a tattoo. Like a delinquent.”
Touya smirked. “You’re probably right.”
Shouto jerked his head up as though he’d just thought of something. “Do you have a tattoo?”
“Yeah, I’ve got Plus Ultra inked on my ass.”
Stunned silence. Or horrified. Touya couldn’t tell.
“I lost a bet.”
More silence. Shouto lifted the cup of tea to drink, only to remember it was empty, and set it back down again. “I can’t tell if you’re joking or not.”
“Suffer. Although, hang on,” He stood up suddenly and opened the junk drawer. There was a permanent marker somewhere in there, and after a few seconds of rifling around the rubber bands and paper clips, he found it and sat down again. “Arm.”
Shouto hesitated.
“Arm,” Touya repeated.
“I don’t think I want to.”
“Not gonna do anything bad. Just give me your arm.”
Had they been in opposite places, Touya definitely wouldn’t have trusted Shouto, but his little brother proved to be as gullible as he’d expected and slowly held out his arm. Touya made two parallel lines across his wrist, then notched each with half an arrow in opposite directions. “There. Now you have a charm.”
“Can I ask why you’ve graffitied my arm?”
Capping the marker, Touya pointed. “That is the sign of equilibrium. When you write a chemical equation, you use that sign to show that a reaction is reversible. In theory, all chemical reactions are reversible, but in practice, this isn’t so. Fire is a chemical reaction, but you can’t undo what fire burns. You can’t undo the scars and you can’t unmake the hormones responsible for the fear. But using your fire, you can change the state of water. You can melt the ice to water, and if you heat it further, you can turn it into vapor, and then you pull it from the air as ice again. In that sense, your fire and your ice are opposing forces and perfect equilibrium. So if you don’t feel right, draw that on your arm and remember what you are and what you can do.”
For awhile, Shouto didn’t say anything as he studied the symbol. It wasn't a lot, and Touya wasn't sure if it would even help. But it was a start.
“So it’s a more technical version of the Yin-Yang?”
Touya blinked. “I mean, I guess. I wouldn’t call it the same since it’s not so much harmonious contradicting forces and more to do with the state of matter and physical changes aided by chemical——whatever, just wash it off if you don’t like it.”
“No, it’s not that.” His brother was smiling a little at the mark on his arm. “I like it. It’s a nice way of looking at my Quirk. Thank you.”
He’d expected the gratitude. What he didn’t expect was the warm feeling he felt when he got it. Suddenly, swallowing was difficult and his stomach roiled in confusion. Absently, Touya lowered his head and buried the fingers of one hand in his hair, pulling lightly. “Listen,” he heard himself say.
Shouto looked at him.
“There’s never going to be a moment where a switch flips in your head and everything’s all good. You’ll probably make it to thirty and you’ll still wake up every now and then from a nightmare about what Mom did. It gets easier, but it’s going to live there forever. So,” he muttered. "So don't get impatient with yourself and think you should 'be better.' It doesn't work like that."
“You have nightmares about the fire then?”
Touya stood up. “I’m going back to bed. You should, too. You got school in five hours.”
He looked as though he wanted to say more, and part of Touya was curious on what else he would say, but he needed this conversation to be over now. It was too much to think about.
“Sure,” Shouto said. “In a moment, though. I want to sit and think for a little more.”
“Suit yourself.” He put both cups in the sink and washed the tea leaves out the infuser, then started for the hall. When he looked back, he found his brother again smiling at the mark on his arm. “Good night,” Touya said without thinking.
Shouto’s head shot up. “Oh. Night.”
He crept away.