Archive of Our Own

A mother drapes a vibrant yellow scarf around her child’s neck, looping it and tucking it over his nose and mouth until only his bright green eyes are visible.

“There,” she nods, a warm little smile pulling at her lips as she playfully pushes her son towards the door. “Don’t want Fire Frost nipping at your nose.”

The young boy nods even though he’s much too old to believe in fairy tales anymore, and he laughs with a bright and cheery wave as he heads off to play in the snow filled world beyond.

The ends of his vibrant yellow scarf slowly unravel and trail in the wind as he runs through the freshly falling snow.

***

Shouto’s eyes snap open.

He’s so cold.

He can’t remember how he’s gotten here…

He can’t remember who he is…

All he knows is that he is so very cold, colder than a living being should be, colder than even feels possible.

There’s an ache in his chest, a feeling like something is missing but when he looks to check there is nothing there.

Nothing save for an intricate marking over his heart that won’t come off no matter how hard he rubs at it.

Shouto has never seen it before but somehow he instinctively knows that it’s the mark of a curse.

“Oi Deku! Don’t tell me you fucking broke something again !”

Shouto looks up. He’d been so lost in his own ruminations that he hadn’t even realized he wasn’t alone. Did they see him pull his shirt up out here? He hopes not. He doesn’t even know how he would explain it if they did.

The blond boy who’d yelled is snarling down at a smaller boy, fire in his eyes and in his heart as he stomps away from the quivering form. “This is why I said you couldn’t play with us, Deku! Your cursed ass always ruins it for the rest of us!”

Shouto’s ears perk up at the word ‘cursed’. If this other boy is cursed too, then maybe he knows something about how to break it. 

“Haaa I don’t think it’s broken,” Deku manages, looking up from where he’d been kneeling in the snow and clutching at his wrist. “I’m okay, Kacchan, I can keep playing!”

“Stupid,” Kacchan grumbles, rolling his eyes as he heads straight towards Shouto. “Just go back home to Auntie so she can wrap it before you fuck it up even worse than you already have.”

“Hey, that’s not very nice.” Shouto finally says, stepping into Kacchan’s way so he won’t just leave Deku on the hard snowy ground. “You should help him up before you—”

Kacchan walks right through him. 

Kacchan who’d been acting like he couldn’t see or even hear him and Shouto chokes on his own words at the icy cold that chills him to the bone at the sensation of being passed through even as Kacchan himself barely pauses in his stride to fight back a shiver of his own. 

“Damn wind,” he grumbles, crunching his way down the snowy path without even a backwards glance for Deku. “Fucking hate winter.”

Shouto stands there, utterly frozen, thrown by what has just happened and the way his body has reacted to it. His hand clutches at the front of his shirt as he struggles to catch his breath over the icy panic flashing through him.

‘You need to breathe Shouto,’ a memory of a voice tells him and Shouto gulps for air even though he can’t remember whose voice it is that he’s thinking of.

Breathe. Breathing. He needs to–

Wait.

That’s right. Shouto can breathe. Needs to in fact. He tries holding his breath to test it out but can’t get past a couple of seconds before the need for air has him gasping for it once more.

Relief crashes through him even as his heart rate clearly struggles to return to normal.

Whatever this is… whatever is going on… At least Shouto isn’t dead.

“Ngh,” Deku groans through clenched teeth as he slowly pushes himself to his feet one handed, his injured wrist cradled against his chest as he tries not to move it anymore. 

Shouto slowly releases a breath that frosts in the air as it leaves his mouth. Right. Deku is apparently cursed too. Maybe if Shouto follows him he can learn how to break it himself? He definitely can’t ask about it, that’s for sure.

It’s as good a plan as any so Shouto slowly treks through the snow after him, his bare feet crunching lightly through the frost with every step. 

At a certain point Deku glances behind him and Shouto almost trips at the thought that Deku can somehow see him. But no, Deku, like Kacchan before him, looks right through Shouto, frowning at the ground below him instead, before shaking his head and resuming his walk towards the village. 

Shouto follows in his wake, now silent as a falling snowflake. 

Deku’s mom clucks her tongue sympathetically and shakes her head. “Oh Izuku…”

Shouto frowns. Izuku? Then who is Deku? 

Perhaps… a parental familial name… and then a public identity name? 

Yes, that makes sense. Shouto used to have one of those too. 

He pauses at that, the frown deepening as he tries and fails to remember. 

Huh. At least… he thinks he did. 

He slowly sits down on the very edge of the bed in the corner of the room and silently watches Mrs. Deku fuss over her son. 

Once the final bandage has been tied off she heads over to a ceramic pot set just so in the center of the table and carefully lifts the lid. 

“Oh,” she frowns, gently lifting the pot itself so she can squint and peer deeper inside. “We’re almost out of Chill Ward Tea.”

Izuku, Deku? immediately looks up. “Will we be okay without it?”

His mother doesn’t answer, but the hand holding the pot trembles just a bit. “…I hope so. The winters have been ever colder as the years go by. Ever since…” 

She trails off and shakes her head. “Well I suppose that’s just an old wives tale anyway. We’ll be fine, Izuku. This will last us, I’m sure.”

But anyone with eyes could see that even she doesn’t believe it. 

From within the sling now encasing his injury, Izuku’s fist clenches in determination. 

Shouto finds himself hoping that the cursed boy isn’t planning to do anything stupid. 

The cursed boy proceeds to do the most stupid thing imaginable, sneaking out in the dead of night into the freezing chill of the heart of winter, all for some herbs and plants that only grow in the mountains.

Shouto has no choice but to follow if only to see to it that the boy returns back home safe.

Right?

He isn’t sure himself why exactly he feels so strongly about it. But as Izuku reaches for a bright yellow scarf Shouto finds himself getting to his feet to follow.

The journey is mostly uneventful.

Izuku shivers in his cloak, not even the thick brown wool or the yellow scarf wound around his face enough to combat the harsh winter chill that plague these lands now. 

The boy is preoccupied with his cold, unable to see through the icicles clinging to his eyelashes.

Only Shouto notices when he slips off the snow covered path onto rougher coarser ground.

Only Shouto notices when he steps onto the surface of a frozen lake. 

His warnings go unheard and when he tries to grab hold of Izuku from behind his hand goes right through him.

Blast it! Blast it all! Blast this thrice damned curse!

The rushing water below the icy surface keeps the lake from fully freezing even in so cold a winter as this.

Izuku steps further onto the ice and an ominous cracking pierces the air.

Shouto sees Izuku freeze in place, sees the dawning horror slowly take over what’s visible of his facial expression.

He turns to run, the ice cracks some more and at the very last second before Izuku is plunged into the icy black waters below, Shouto slams his hand down onto the ice beneath him and freezes the lake surface smooth once more.

Izuku slips and crashes to the ground, a fall that has most definitely exacerbated his previous injury.

But Shouto can only breathe out a sigh of relief that he was quick enough to keep the boy alive.

A gust of icy breath blows out, swirling from between Shouto’s parted lips to curl through the air. It stirs up nearby ice crystals and rustles the bright yellow scarf that has now fallen loose and finally… it nips at Izuku’s nose. 

Said nose twitches at the feeling and then suddenly Izuku is looking up from his previously horrified gaze on the refrozen ice. Green eyes gleam wide-eyed and bright as Izuku twists his head this way and that, almost like he’s searching for something. 

Shouto too looks around then but much as he does, he can’t see anything that could possibly be drawing the boy’s eyes. 

There is no one here after all, no one except for Shouto. 

Izuku’s mouth opens, blue lips cracking apart to slowly, breathlessly, shiver out a name that Shouto had long forgotten.

“Fire Frost?” Izuku breathes, suddenly looking directly at Shouto. 

Shouto freezes. “What?” he manages. 

Izuku slowly pushes himself back up against the hard cold ice and Shouto wants to warn him about the dangers of touching it with his bare skin but before he can uselessly try, Izuku is back on his unsteady feet, taking one shaky step towards Shouto followed by another. 

“It’s you isn’t it?” he continues, eyes wide and gleaming with an almost childlike awe. “Fire Frost. The Guardian of Winter.”

Shouto’s eyes widen as the title seems to ring through him. 

Oh. 

He remembers now what he’d forgotten. 

A low heat slowly seems to fill Shouto, spreading outward from that cursed mark over his heart as with every pump and beat his icy chill is beaten back by the warmth of the blood pulsing through him.

He stares at his hands as the icy pale chill finally returns to a normal– his normal– skintone and he takes a deep breath in and feels something within himself slowly start to thaw. 

Shouto has felt so cold for so long but with his true name finally returned to him he can finally feel warm. 

The winter spirit is not simply of snow and ice, blizzards and chill. Winter is also of bundling up for warmth, snuggling together before a cozy fire, and drinking fresh hot teas and soups. 

Fire Frost too is both; hot and cold. 

Shouto slowly waves his left hand and a warm breeze billows past, around and through Izuku, melting the frost off his clothes, the ice from his hair, and the chill from his skin. 

He’d forgotten this part, that was the curse laid upon him for defying his father— but no more. The years long harshest winters that Mrs Deku has spoken of so fearfully have now officially ended. 

Shouto will make sure of it. 

“Thank you,” he says, bowing low in a gratitude and appreciation that he will never be able to fully express. “For breaking my curse.”

“O-Oh?” Izuku stammers, flushing pink now that Shouto has warmed him enough to restore proper circulation. “I-It wasn’t anything special. I. I'm just glad I could help.”

Shouto smiles and Izuku’s cheeks flush brighter. “U-Um I! Th-Thank you Lord Fire Frost!” He practically yelps the words, dipping into his own low bow that almost serves to trip him over onto the ice again. “If it weren’t for you, I…” he trails off, most likely remembering how close he’d come to dying in the freezing waters below and Shouto takes mercy on him and interjects before the boy can devolve into a panic. 

“Shall I accompany you on your trip to forage the herbs?”

Izuku blinks, taking a slow look around at the snow that is visibly melting off the trees now that Shouto’s warmth has been restored.

He takes a slow hesitant step back towards his village. “I uh. I don’t think there’ll be as pressing a need for Chill Ward Tea anymore…” he says slowly.

Shouto too looks around and nods in agreement. “True. Then shall I accompany you back to your dwelling? I should very much like the opportunity to return the favor and help you with breaking your own curse.”

“Curse? What curse?”

Turns out Izuku is just really really clumsy.