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During the Final War, the heroes knew that there was one chance to stop Dabi, so they made a brutal calculation. If Dabi could not be detained, then he might still be reached. They built a dome for that reason alone. They separated him from the main battlefield and sealed him in a one-on-one combat zone with the one person who could get through to him: his brother Shoto.
A containment barrier flickered overhead, cutting them off from the world. Around them, the ruins of a city stretched in every direction. Concrete was shattered. Steel frames glowed faintly with heat. The sky hung heavy and grey, thick with smoke and falling ash.
The fight had already happened. Silence settled inside the sealed-off ring of reinforced light, broken only by the metallic sounds of steel cooling and the crackling of fire... and two brothers breathing, loud and hard, under skeletal buildings.
Dabi was collapsing, physically and mentally, after pushing his quirk far beyond its limit. He had screamed that he did not want saving. He would burn everything, even his family. But Shoto had not fought as a hero. He had fought as a brother. He refused to see Toya as a villain. In the end, he used Phosphor, the technique that balanced his fire and ice, and it was enough to bring Dabi down.
Dabi lay slumped against the blackened remains of a streetlamp. His skin looked like burnt paper, dry, crumbling, split. His breathing was wet and shallow. One eye was nearly swollen shut. The other still burned.
Shoto stood a few steps away. He was bruised and bloody, one shoulder hanging low. There was a raw burn streaked across the side of his face. His chest rose and fell, steady but uneven. He looked down at Dabi and did not speak.
The world outside the dome was still moving, but inside, there was only quiet. Only two brothers in the ruins, facing each other at last.
Then Dabi laughed.
It was a low, cracked thing that shook in his chest and ended in a cough. He spat something dark into the dirt and grinned with teeth gone red.
"Go on, little brother. Put me out. That’s what good heroes do, right? You even got the costume. Clean lines, bold colours. Bet Endeavor cried when you put it on. Tears of pride, of course."
Shoto’s lips twitched. “You sound jealous.”
“I sound right.” Dabi smirked. “Tell me I’m wrong. Tell me he didn’t look at you like a second chance, while I burned in a gutter.”
Shoto didn’t answer at first, didn’t move. He stared down at his brother, his brother, not just the villain named Dabi, and tried to see the boy he never really knew.
"I’m not here to kill you."
"Oh?" Dabi tilted his head. "Then what was all that? Some kind of family therapy exercise?"
He looked up, one eye bloodshot, the other nearly closed. “What’s wrong? You’ve finally beaten the monster. You should be happy.”
“I’m not,” Shoto said quietly. “You’re not a monster. You’re just… what was left behind.”
Dabi scoffed, head lolling back against the lamp. “Oh, save me the pity speech. You don’t get to stand there with your perfect little technique and pretend you understand what it’s like to be discarded. Especially not after kicking my ass like that.”
"You gave me no choice."
"You could have walked away."
Shoto’s jaw clenched. "So could you."
Dabi laughed again, louder this time, but more unsteady. "No. No, I couldn’t. Not when I spent years crawling through hell trying to be seen. Not when everything I ever was got buried the second he decided you were better."
"You think I wanted that?" Shoto snapped. "You think I asked to be the next project?"
"You were born to be the project!" Dabi barked, eyes wide now, manic. "Perfect little Shoto. Balanced quirk, handpicked genes, a mother to raise you and a father to forge you. You had everything I was never allowed to keep. You were the masterpiece. I was the prototype. When I broke, he made you to replace me.”
Shoto stepped closer, wary. Not of Dabi, of what this conversation might force him to admit. “I hated you for a long time, Toya. Before I even knew you were alive.”
Dabi blinked slowly, he winced at the name. “Good. That’s something we have in common.”
“I hated how everyone talked about you. How much pain your death caused. I thought… I thought if you’d lived, maybe he wouldn’t have needed me.”
Silence stretched. For a moment, Dabi didn’t even breathe.
Then: “You thought I was the lucky one?”
Shoto nodded. “Yeah. Until I saw what he did to you. Until I realised you weren’t lucky. You were just first. He didn’t raise me. He used me. Same as you."
Dabi’s grin twisted. "But you made it work. You became his prize. Even after he hit mother. After she snapped and poured boiling water on your face, you still played the good son. You still wanted his approval."
"Don’t talk about her like that."
"Why not? It’s all part of the story, isn’t it? What, are you ashamed that even your perfect little home life had cracks in it?"
For a moment, they both remembered.
Toya, eight years old, knuckles split from hitting the floor again and again, trying to push past his limit before the clock ran out.
Shoto, four years old, hiding behind a bookshelf, listening to his mother cry, while Endeavor slammed the door hard enough to make the walls shake.
The house had always burned. Just not in the same rooms.
"You think your pain matters more because you broke first?"
Dabi’s head dropped back. His chest rose in a long, slow breath. Then he looked up, and his voice dropped low.
"He trained me until I bled, Shoto. I wasn’t allowed to cry. I wasn’t allowed to stop. He told me I had to burn hotter. Had to be stronger. He stood over me with that damn stopwatch, counting the seconds until I screamed. I was five."
Shoto’s hands trembled. "I know."
"No, you don’t," Dabi hissed. "You think because you hated it too, that we’re the same. We’re not. You got to hate him from behind a locked door. I hated him while he watched me fall apart."
"You hated me too."
"Of course I did. You were everything I was supposed to be. You got the training I wasn’t strong enough for. You got the love he didn’t have left."
"It wasn’t love."
"It was close enough."
Shoto’s voice cracked. "Then why did you try to kill us?"
Dabi stared at him. His mouth opened. Then he smiled again, but smaller this time.
"Because I thought I already had."
The silence that followed felt suffocating. Dust drifted in the air. The city groaned in the wind. Shoto looked down, fists clenched at his sides.
"You’re still my brother."
"No. I’m what’s left of your brother."
"That’s not how it works."
"You want to save me?" Dabi asked, voice hoarse. "What then? Drag me back to prison? Let Mom visit me on weekends? Have dinner with Natsuo while everyone pretends I didn’t try to roast them alive?"
Shoto shook his head. "I don’t know. But I don’t want this to be the end."
"It was over the day he gave up on me."
"You gave up on us first!"
The words came out louder than he meant them to. Sharp and sudden. His voice echoed through the dome. Dabi blinked.
Shoto’s chest heaved. He wiped his face and found his hand wet with tears.
"You left us. You died and left me with him. You didn’t come back. You let us believe you were gone. You let me grow up in that house. Alone."
Dabi tilted his head. His smile returned, slow and mean.
"There it is. That temper. You're just like him, you know. All that cold control until something finally snaps."
Shoto stepped forward and slapped him.
The sound cracked through the air like a gunshot. Dabi’s head snapped to the side.
“You think I wanted to be him?”
His voice rose. Loud. Uncontrolled.
“You think I wanted his name? His power? I used to burn my own skin just to prove I wasn’t like him!”
Dabi blinked, almost startled.
For a second, there was nothing. Then Dabi chuckled again, low and rough.
"There it is."
Shoto’s hand trembled. He looked down at his brother, face soaked with sweat and tears and soot.
"I’m not like him," he said. "I’m not."
Dabi looked up at him. His face was bloody and bruised, but there was something else in his eyes now. Something almost human.
"I know."
He coughed again, something thick and painful. For a moment, he looked like he might fall unconscious.
Shoto moved before he could. He crouched beside him, not touching him yet, but close. Closer than either of them had been in years.
"I saw the old pictures. I saw you," Shoto said. "Before everything. You were smiling in them."
“I used to be good at pretending,” Dabi murmured. “Made it easier for Fuyumi. For Natsuo. For Mom. I didn’t want them to see how much it hurt.”
"Fuyumi said you were kind."
Dabi’s breath caught. He looked away.
"I was. I tried to be. Until I realised it didn’t matter. Kindness didn’t keep you warm when your father locked you outside for crying."
Shoto’s throat tightened.
"I’m sorry."
Dabi didn’t answer. His eyes had closed.
“Fuyumi used to pray for me,” Dabi muttered. “Lit a candle every year on my birthday. Natsuo couldn’t look at my picture without tearing up.”
“They still talk about you.”
“They talk about a ghost. Not me.”
“You scared them,” Shoto said. “With what you became.”
“I know.” Dabi turned his head, staring at the sky. “I wanted to. I wanted to burn bright enough that even he couldn’t look away. That the whole world would see what he did.”
Shoto’s voice cracked. “They saw. Everyone saw.”
“Too late.” Dabi closed his eyes. “Always too late.”
A gust of wind swept through the wreckage, carrying ash like snow.
After a long pause, Dabi whispered, “Would you have saved me? If you’d known? Back then?”
Shoto didn’t speak right away. He looked at his brother, his burned, broken brother, and remembered his mother’s screams, his father’s silence, and all the birthdays no one celebrated.
“Yes,” Shoto whispered. “Even now.”
Dabi smiled. It didn’t reach his eyes.
“You’re too late.”
Shoto lowered his head. “I know.”
There was no answer. Only breathing. Shallow. Weak. But still alive. They sat there, the smoke curling around them like ghosts. Neither knowing if they’d get up again.
Shoto sat beside him, not as a hero, not as a Todoroki. Just as a boy who lost a brother and found him again, too late to stop the fire, but maybe not too late to feel the heat.
They waited in the ash, side by side. Two boys who grew up in the same house, in the same fire, each thinking the other had everything.
Neither of them had anything. But for a moment, they had this.
“You shouldn’t have had to fight for his love.”
“You shouldn’t have had to hate me for having it.”
They sat in the quiet. Somewhere outside the dome, something exploded. Inside, nothing.
Laughter rose, carried by the air over the ruins of the city. Shoto turned to look at his brother, his onii-san, surprised at the truth it uncovered. Dabi sounded like he had no care in the world, like a child, finally free.
Then his head dropped. His chin hit his chest.
And the chuckles turned into sobs.
Ash fell over them both, soft as snow.