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White noise.
Distant voices.
Voices speaking gibberish.
He couldn’t make out the words.
Touya took a shallow breath.
Well, that was unexpected.
Everything hurt.
It wasn't supposed to hurt!
He'd lost his sense of pain in the fire…
He blinked, then sat bolt upright.
“Sleepyhead! Sleepyhead's awake!” It was a girl; not one he'd ever seen before…
Touya stood up. He was definitely dead; he was… alive?
Voices, chattering, from beyond the door. They were speaking… English, he realized.
Touya summoned his fire.
It hurt. The yellow flames dissipated as quickly as they'd appeared.
“You're awake,” said a man with brown hair and black eyeliner.
“Who are you… what's going on? I should be dead.” Touya lit his hand on fire again and lunged for the man.
The man punched him in the jaw.
Touya stumbled backward and collapsed.
His head hurt.
Of course. He'd hit it on the floor.
His head wasn't supposed to hurt.
He wasn't supposed to hurt.
He was supposed to be dead.
Someone tapped his shoulder, and his head cleared. He sat bolt upright, then was hauled to his feet by the brown-haired man, who'd grabbed the front of his shirt. He nearly lit the brown haired man on fire.
The brown haired man drew a revolver and in one fluid movement had it pressed to Touya’s chest. “My name is Marco Angelo. I am the leader of this team. I don't care how much the Doctor will pay for you, if you hurt anyone on my team, I won't hesitate to end you. Understood?”
“What makes you think I want to live?”
“Fine, then. Go ahead.” Marco let go of Touya's shirt.
The other person… a girl with a white jacket, and jarring pink streaks in her hair, and a VR headset pushed onto her forehead, put her hands on her hips and said something sharply.
Marco snapped back, in the same language, then turned back to Touya. “This is Reboot. I don't expect you to feel any gratitude, but she's the reason you're not a burnt husk right now.”
Touya felt his face. He was missing his other arm. He was missing the staples.
He was sore all over. But, there was something… normal about the ache in his joints.
Not that it mattered.
“I don't think he'll live long, even to the best of Reboot's abilities.”
Someone…
Someone had said that. Recently… he couldn't recall exactly when. So it wasn't just a blank? Perhaps a haze.
He glanced at Reboot.
“Sleepyhead! Three years! He was asleep for three whole years!”
“What is this place?”
“Home, silly!”
No. Not home. He had no home.
“How… How long? Where am I?” Touya managed to say.
“A couple months. You’re in America. We had to bust you out of a high security facility in Japan. You were in pretty rough shape.”
That was an understatement. The understatement of the year.
Reboot said something else.
“Fine,” Marco said. “Your instructions. Cooperate, and we won’t have to lock you up. Hurt my friends, and like I said, I’ll end you. You’re also not to use your real name… or the one you went by as a villain.”
“Fine…” Touya wheezed, sitting down on the bed. He didn’t feel like fighting any more.
Marco said something in English. Reboot responded, and they both left.
Touya looked around the room. It was small, just a few meters long and wide, and there was nothing but a bed and a dresser. He looked at his arms.
He was missing one.
He didn’t remember losing an arm.
It must have been after he’d been too far gone to notice…
His remaining arm was splotched with deep colored scars, probably from his fire, but while they were still dark and dramatic, they looked healed. The scars largely tapered off at his wrist, like they had when he’d been Dabi. There was a band aid on the inside of his forearm, near his elbow. He peeled it off. A small spot of dried blood. Probably from an IV, since he’d been in a coma for a couple of months.
He stood up, again. The room tilted disorientingly for a moment, then straightened out. He made his way to the door, then tried the handle.
Locked.
He leaned against it while he surveyed the rest of the room.
There was the bed, a dresser, and another door. He went to the dresser, and opened all the drawers.
All empty. Except for dust.
He then checked the other door. It led into a bathroom.
Touya stopped cold in front of the mirror.
He looked different. Not the first time he’d felt like that, but it was still disorienting.
His face was still very scarred, a purplish burn scar running down each cheek from the underside of his eyes to his jawbone, then down either side of his neck. It didn’t look like it was festering. He looked closer, leaning against the bathroom counter. He couldn’t find a trace of where he’d once stapled his face. Just healed burn scars. They met at his collarbone, and disappeared below the neckline of the loose white shirt he was wearing. His hair was shorter than he’d ever had it, only a few centimeters long, and pure white. It was completely free of the cheap black hair dye he’d used constantly since he was sixteen. He’d managed to get most of it out after he’d revealed his identity, back…whenever that was… but there’d still been a bit he hadn’t managed to bleach out, even with Toga’s help.
Touya made his way back out to the main room and sat on the bed again.
Somehow, he’d have to escape.
But… then what would he do?
+++
“Really, Marco? Threatening him with a gun? The dude’s half dead!”
“He can use fire at 2000 degrees Celsius. He could kill all of us if he wanted to. Did you even bother to read his file?”
“Did you? He burned himself to kingdom come. I don’t think he wants a repeat experience. Besides, I could undo my healing.”
“It’d be faster and much less painful if I ended him.”
“And undo all my healing?”
“What did you literally just say?”
Reboot shrugged. “I'd prefer if we kept him alive. I don't think he's as dangerous as you think.” He'd been basically dead. Severely burnt, to begin with, and the only reason he hadn't died of infection years ago was at first because of the high temperatures, then after he'd been locked up, antibiotics, not to mention the fact he’d been on life support. The Doctor had something more to do with it, Reboot was sure.
What did the Doctor want with him anyway? He certainly wasn't useful. He'd summoned fire, but it'd burned him.
The files said he lost his sense of pain. Basically burned off his nerve endings… poor guy.
Marco was unconvinced.
But then again, he hated nearly everyone.
+++
Marco checked on Dabi every couple of hours. After the first time, when Dabi had jumped up and then nearly passed out from lightheadedness, he didn't bother reacting. Marco didn’t say much, probably just making sure Dabi wasn’t trying to escape. Or dead.
Touya was dead, Dabi told himself, sitting on the floor.
Touya was dead. He died three years ago… at Sekoto Peak… no, wait… eight years ago… at his family's house, in front of a shrine in an empty room… no… a… year?
Ice… so much ice… and hatred…
“I hate you all,” he'd rasped, the words catching in his charred throat.
“I'm sorry! I'm sorry I never came to Sekoto Peak…”
The apology had come a decade too late.
Endeavor, the corrupt, sorry excuse for a hero. Enji Todoroki. His, no, Touya’s father, came, like he promised, every day. He listened to Dabi rant until his heart rate was so elevated the guards came and asked Endeavor to leave. He listened to Touya rehash every reason he hated his family, hated heroes, hated society. And on the days when Touya was too tired and delirious to form a coherent thought, he told Touya how Shoto was doing in school. How Fuyumi got another job. How Natsuo got married, and Touya would be an uncle.
All the mundane ways life went on.
It didn't matter.
Dabi had no regrets.
Touya regretted everything.
No, he couldn't.
After all, he was dead.
And Dabi?
Dabi wasn't doing too great. He'd stood up and tried pacing the room from one end to the other, and he'd gotten dizzy and had to sit down.It was probably because he'd not eaten for… months, if the man with the gun could be believed. He also just… ached. All over. He hadn’t felt like this… ever, really. He’d suspected, no, he’d known, he was in bad shape back after he’d run away from the hospital, but he hadn’t been able to feel anything. Not emotion, not pain.
“Every organ was damaged, your senses, your ability to feel pain– all dulled,” the disembodied voice had told him.
Now?
His chest hurt.
He shivered. What if he'd been unconscious longer than a few months, and they were lying to him. What if he'd been asleep for years, and he just didn't know?
It doesn't matter, he thought.
“I've got to go home! My dad was probably busy and just couldn't come see me…I did something terrible… said something terrible…I need to apologize to mom and the others… I just want dad to look at me again…”
“I'm afraid that won't be possible.”
The voice had been disembodied, coming from a nearby computer.
“Restoring your burnt and broken body was a monumental task. You're a changed man… yet you survived.”
“I'm changed? I don't get… what you're saying.”
He did get it. And he desperately hoped he was wrong.
“You'll never exhibit the power you once did. You'll never be the same again. Your body was damaged beyond repair.”
“You were a failure.”
No, he wasn't.
Touya was.
No, he wasn't. He ran. He went home.
And nothing had changed.
They'd forgotten him, and moved on.
And it was there, unnoticed, in front of his own shrine, that Touya died, and Dabi was born.
And since then, Dabi had lived on force of will. When his skin grafts rejected because of the heat, he stapled them back on. He rarely got cold, and when he did, it didn't bother him. After all, he had his mother's ice resistance. He’d toughed it out on the streets for years, until a broker working for the League of Villains had found him, and brought him to Shigaraki.
And there, he’d discovered that the doctor who kept him alive after the fire had worked for All for One.
Doctor Garakai.
The creator of the Nomu.
Turns out, by running away, he’d likely escaped a worse fate, miserable as living dying for revenge was.
But this time, he had nothing. No home to return to.
What if I went back to the League? No. They’d moved on, surely. They would be living in hiding. Or maybe they were imprisoned. He’d never asked his family.
Because they’re all dead, and you know it.
No, they weren’t.
They couldn’t be.
“Hey. You.”
Dabi looked up. Reboot and Marco stood in the doorway.
Dabi sighed, then coughed. “What is it?”
Marco tossed some sort of package at Dabi. He nearly lit it on fire reflectively, but simply blocked it last moment. It fell with a thud.
He picked it up. It was some sort of prepackaged rations, emblazoned with ‘MRE’ on the front.
“It’s food,” Marco said distinctly.
“What do you want with me?” Dabi demanded.
“You’ll find out eventually. We don’t even really know.”
Reboot said something. Maybe a question?
Marco jerked his thumb at Reboot. “She wants to know what kind of clothes you like.”
“What does it matter?” Dabi hid his face in his hands. Wouldn’t they just leave him alone?
“She and the rest of the gang are running some errands, and they figured if you’re awake and sort of joining us, you might as well wear something that’s not that.”
Somehow Dabi figured Marco wasn’t part of this group. He looked down at what he was wearing.
Basically pajamas.
What did he typically wear? What had he worn when he’d…? White. The color of traditional funeral attire. He’d gone into that final battle planning to die.
Before that?
“Black. Or grey. I don’t care,” he mumbled. He didn’t mind blue, either, but Reboot, judging by the neon colors she was wearing now, would bring back something garish.
Marco left without another world.
Reboot hesitated for a moment, looking like she had something to say.
Dabi gave her one of his insane grins, summoning a fistful of flame.
She left.
The MRE was awful.
+++
The door creaked open, waking Touya from a uneasy sleep. He sat up, rubbing his eyes. “What do you want?”
“We’re moving hideouts. Put these on, and come out. If you cause trouble, well…” Marco patted his revolver.
“Put what–”
Marco threw a bundle of clothes at him, then left, slamming the door.
It was mostly black and grey, probably secondhand. He got dressed quickly. They didn’t fit amazingly, but all things considered, it was all right.
He tried the door. It was unlocked.
He peered both ways down the hallway. From one direction came a low murmur of conversation, punctuated by an occasional louder interjection.
He looked the other way. A door.
Touya crept out, then started down the hallway away from the noise.
Click. “And where do you think you’re going?” Marco stepped out from a storage room, holding a parcel in one hand and his revolver in the other.
Touya stopped, not bothering to respond.
“Come on,” Marco said, tilting his head. “Other way.”
And thus began Touya’s second life of being a ghost.