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There had always been an unspoken law in the Todoroki household: The strong overpower the weak. It was never uttered aloud, but it settled into the oppressive silence—when a slight word from Enji’s mouth made Rei’s hands tremble, when Fuyumi learned to bleed through her own wounds, when Natsuo withdrew into a world where only fire and blade could reach him.
Shouto, ever the observer, deciphered this law in his own way. Strength, to him, was protection. He learned that Touya, the brother he barely knew, the one whose shrine had devolved into the coldest room in their house, had once shielded Fuyumi and Natsuo from the cold, his fire a fleeting comfort against the endless winter of their home. Fuyumi spoke of him in murmurs, of a lanky boy with bony hands that warmed even the most frigid ice, of soft white hair and a brittle smile.
At Enji’s agency, Shouto saw a photograph, framed in a simple piece of wood—a relic of something tender. His father and mother, side by side beneath falling snow. A tall Enji overpowers Rei by at least an entire head as she quirks her mouth to the perfect degree for a picturesque smile. A quiet lie, perhaps, meant for strangers to believe. Yet, the smallest glimpse of truth gleamed in Enji’s hand, resting atop Rei’s, glowing ember-bright. And Shouto knew he was wrong, but if he didn’t know any better, he might’ve thought that the crinkle of Enji’s lips was something of a smile.
So he took it upon himself to become what Touya had been. Night after night, even beneath the weight of punishment, of flames licking at his skin and roasting him inside out, of ice freezing his sweat and blood, he crept into the cold. His fire, gentle, curled around Natsuo and Fuyumi, a flickering rebellion against the laws of their childhood. And each time Enji found him, something in his father hesitated. Every blow of fire was tempered with sorrow, and it hit just a little bit softer.
The first time Shouto saw Dabi up close, he felt something unravel inside him.
It wasn’t the destruction that did it. Not the flames, blue and unnatural, twisting like ghostly wraiths in the air. Not the acrid scent of burning asphalt, nor the distant screams of those too slow to escape. It was the way Dabi looked at him.
Like he had already seen everything Shouto could be. Like he already knew the weight he carried, the blood in his veins.
Shouto had seen that expression before—not on a villain, but in the mirror.
Dabi’s eyes burned with something deeper than rage, more hollow than hatred. They carried the exhaustion of a man who had long since given up on being saved. And yet, beneath the soot and scars, beneath the jagged grin and the sneering words, Shouto saw it—the flicker of something achingly familiar.
You have your father’s eyes.
The words had once made Shouto’s blood curdle. But now, standing before Dabi, he wondered if they had always been meant for his brother instead.
For all the ways Touya had tried to burn himself away, he still looked like Enji. The sharp cut of his jaw, the furrow of his brow, the way fire curled around his fingers like an extension of his will. Even the way he carried himself—straight-backed, chin high, commanding the room like some kind of king. Shouto had spent years resenting those same mannerisms in Enji. And yet, in Dabi, they were not a symbol of power but of something shattered beyond repair.
There was no lanky boy, with bony wrists and a warm crackling fire that screamed comfort. He looked into tired blue eyes, sharpened like an old blade, again and again until the metal had ripped itself from the inside out.
The resemblance clawed at Shouto’s throat.
He had spent so much time trying to be anything but his father. And yet here was Touya, his body stitched together with charred flesh and agony, still bearing the same ghosts. The same power. The same blood. He had burned himself, and boiled himself and yet all that remained was his father.
Dabi’s eyes, wild and tired all at once, flickered over Shouto’s face. His lips curled, a grin splitting the dry, damaged skin.
"What’s wrong, little brother? Do I remind you of someone?"
The words sent a sharp chill down Shouto’s spine.
Because Dabi did remind him of someone. But not that young boy that remained like a static memory in the air of their cold house. But of the man who had terrorised it with his flames.
For the first time, Shouto didn’t know who he was fighting. His brother or his father’s sins? The villain before him, or the ghost of who Touya had once been?
His grip tightened. Ice formed along his fingertips, fire curled in his palm.
He didn’t know if he wanted to strike—or reach out.
—-
In the end, Touya Todoroki did what he had always been meant to do.
He burned.
Not in the way he had been burning for years—slow and bitter, a fire consuming him from the inside out. No, this time, it was final. A detonation of heat and ruin, an explosion so bright it swallowed everything in its path.
Shouto barely remembered the battle. He only remembered the aftermath.
The smoke cleared, but the embers remained. Ash clung to the wind like falling snow. Funny how the cold managed to follow him, even though he died by fire. The battlefield was quiet in the way that followed devastation—silent, reverent, waiting. And there, at the center of it all, lay the ruin of a man who had once been his brother, mutilated into something beyond recognition.
His body was a broken thing, twisted into unnatural angles, white bones peeking through burnt flesh. The charred remains of his coat clung to him like the last remnants of a life long abandoned. His breath came in rasping gasps, the rattle of something failing, something ending.
And his eyes—his eyes were still blue.
Dull, unfocused, but unmistakably Touya’s. And Shouto saw that they had more color in them now than they had ever had in Touya or Dabi’s entire life.
Shouto stepped forward, feet unsteady, as if the ground beneath him might give way. He barely registered the shouts in the distance, the movement of others around him. None of them mattered. Not now.
Because Touya was still looking at him.
A rasping chuckle clawed its way out of his ruined throat. Blood bubbled between his lips, staining his teeth. "Looks like… I finally did it, huh?" His voice was smoke and embers, crumbling at the edges. "Burned out… just like he said I would."
Shouto dropped to his knees beside him. He didn’t know what to say. Didn’t know if there was anything left to say. The distance between them had always been one of silence, of things left unsaid, of the space between them growing wider and wider until there was nothing left but this.
Touya had always been chasing the fire. Chasing the man who had made him. And now, at the very end, there was nothing left for him to chase.
Shouto clenched his fists, ice cracking along his knuckles. “Touya.” The name felt foreign on his tongue, heavy with something he couldn’t define.
Dabi—Touya—let out a breath, ragged and uneven. His expression was something unreadable, something frayed and distant, as if he were already half-gone. But his gaze stayed on Shouto, searching. Looking for something neither of them had the words to name.
For the first time, there was no fire between them. No battle. No anger.
Just this.
Shouto reached out, hesitated for only a second before pressing his palm against the unburned part of his brother’s cold arm. His fire, usually so controlled, so measured, flickered uncertainly. But it was warm. Not the scorching, destructive heat Touya had always wielded, but something softer. Gentler. A warmth that had never belonged to Enji.
Touya’s breath hitched. His eyes widened slightly, as if he were surprised by the touch.
And then, for the briefest moment—so quick that Shouto thought he might’ve imagined it—Touya smiled. Not a smirk, not a sneer, but something raw. Something real.
And then he exhaled.
And didn’t breathe in again.
The silence that followed was deafening.
The twist of Touya’s features had slackened, and he almost looked at peace.
Shouto kept his hand where it was, even as the warmth beneath his fingertips faded. Even as the weight of it all threatened to crush him. He stayed there, kneeling in the wreckage, in the aftermath of a brother he had only known as a myth until he saw him burn.
Because for the first time, Touya had let himself be warm.
And for the first time, Shouto let himself grieve.
-
Rei Todoroki had always known she would outlive her son.
She had known it from the moment she saw him as a small child, fire licking hungrily at his fingertips, his body too frail to hold the weight of his own power. She had known it when he ran to her, soot-streaked and shaking, asking if he was strong enough yet, if his father would love him now, with a voice filled to the brim with childhood innocence.
She had known it when he disappeared, when the house grew quieter, and the air dropped to a degree Touya would have never let it reach.
And now, kneeling before what was left of him, she wondered if the knowing had made it hurt any less.
He looked so small. He always had been, but the part of him that was alive made him tower over most of the world. Even in death, even burned beyond recognition, he was still her child. The first life she had brought into this world, the first name she had whispered in the dark. The first person who had called her mother – the role she had irrevocably failed. She reached out with trembling fingers, hovering just above his ruined skin. A mother’s hands should soothe, should comfort, but what comfort was there in this?
“I’m sorry,” she whispered. It was not enough. It had never been enough.
She had failed to protect him. From Enji, from the fire, from himself.
But she could do this. Just this.
With a shaking breath, she reached out and smoothed back what little remained of his hair, the way she had when he was small, when he had still let her touch him. When he had still believed she could protect him.
She never watered the blue flowers after that – the ones in that white vase that looked stuck between shades of ice and the warm tones of fire. She let them wither.
—
Fuyumi remembers the evenings that Touya was home and their father wasn’t. They were warm evenings, and Fuyumi remembered the bullets of sweat down her forehead as a happy memory, hot food under her chopsticks and loud laughter that would have pierced the cold air of the house and made it just that much warmer.
Touya had loved spice, the kind that burned into the tongue and made your eyes water. As a child, he would pile red pepper flakes onto everything, grinning through the heat as Fuyumi gagged on the same bite.
“Gotta build a tolerance, Yumi-chan,” he’d tease, ruffling her hair. “One day, you’ll thank me.”
She never did, really, because nobody had really wanted to eat the food she made. Now, she never would. Death didn’t leave such mundane condolences. It took whatever memories she had and singed it with a black tone.
At the next family dinner, she caught herself reaching for the spice jar, a habit so ingrained it felt like muscle memory. But her fingers stopped short. She let her hand fall, curling into a fist against her thigh.
That night, she scrubbed the jar clean. The spicy flakes fell into the sink, all the red and orange color dissolved in them as she ran a tap of water over them until they were lifeless, grey and white little husks without any value.
The next time Shouto’s blonde, explosive friend came over, he asked her where the usual spice in her food was, and nobody really noticed the change in the set of her eyebrows and tensing of her shoulders (the only person who could ever notice was gone) when she smiled and said they were out.
In reality, the spice jar lay in cracked glass splinters, at the back of her closet, with Fuyumi’s blood on them.
—
Natsuo had several fond memories of his brother that he would never remember. That’s what the therapist told him – something about his stupid brain suppressing them because he couldn’t process them yet.
Everytime he thought of his brother, all he could think of was a long road dimly lit with short bursts of light from light poles and with smatterings of convenience stores that lined the sidewalks and the slow uphill and downhill of lush green trees.
It was stupid, really. But Touya had always hated short routes. Never wanted to go home, it seemed. He’d wander the streets for hours, hands stuffed into his pockets, eyes flicking over the world like he was trying to memorize it, and walk into every store despite having no money to his name.
“Why rush?” he had once said, kicking a stray rock down the sidewalk, watching it tumble out of view, “We’ve got time.”
Natsuo wondered later, when he saw his brother with scars on his body, whether Touya had ever taken the long route again, or if Dabi had just burnt everything in his way until he got where he needed to go.
And now Natsuo found himself dragging his feet on the way back from work, taking detours that led to nowhere, stopping at street corners and convenience stores just to stand there, to breathe. To exist in spaces Touya might have once stood in. Make a memory with a ghost.
That was better than nothing.
—
Enji had a distinct memory of his house – he had built it with a strong family in mind, he had built it to impress. The rooms left nothing to want, spacious beyond measure, and with proud features like a dining hall that could seat at least twenty, and a large fireplace that could tolerate even the most towering flames.
Today, Enji sat in front of it, all alone. Nobody was home – and no matter how much he tried, the cold in the house never lifted. It was like a mausoleum of his own creation, and his mind couldn’t bear to think this was the place that his children had somehow survived in (one hadn’t). So Enji let his hands go out in front of him, and lit a fire.
Just a small fire. A flickering ember.
It had been years since he last used it. It caught slowly, hesitantly, like even the fire itself wasn’t sure if it belonged here anymore.
Enji sat in front of it, shoulders hunched, shadows flickering across his face. He didn’t know why he was doing this. Maybe he just needed to see something burn without it destroying everything.
Maybe—just for a moment—he wanted to pretend his son was sitting beside him, grumbling about how small the flames were.
He never let the fire go out, and the smoke reached through the chimneys and surrounded the house like an isolating fog.
—