Warnings: Child abuse, AU, violence, family issues, quirkless character.
Chapter One - Life is Too Short
Todoroki Shoto is five years old and his face is burning under his father's fingers.
If he was older, he would have commented that this wasn't common. His father preferred to let him hurt and exhaust himself from his trials. Hurting him himself was counterproductive and inefficient. He would be obvious that way and be in jeopardy in some way. And it would make him more of an ineffective clone than a superior product.
Todoroki Shoto is five years old and therefore has yet to swallow a dictionary like Yaoyozoru Momo or even Iida Tenya. Instead, he's focusing on the fact that he cannot see and everything hurts and his parents are screaming at each other.
He's focusing instead on how his sister is carrying him out of the house, running so loudly her bare feet are slapping the ground and bleeding, he can smell it. Her tears are cool like the night air. Her tears are freezing and feel nice where his face hurts.
His are just tears and they hurt even more.
He can't open his eyes for hours.
By the time he can, it's only the one. He breathes sharp gulps of air and looks at Fuyumi even though that hurts too. Her grey eyes are puffy red and she's trembling as she smiles.
His parents are nowhere in sight.
There's a man, a police officer he thinks, at her side. Todoroki Shoto is too young to be just angry at his father, yet not broken enough to lie. Because he has seen good heroes, real heroes, alongside his father. And his father doesn't lie, except to himself. He's always painfully honest.
So when the man and the people behind him ask what happened, he tells them honestly, as a good hero should.
(A different Shoto, the Shoto without his mother around, the Shoto who burns and freezes, would not have said a word. He would have, seemingly, known better. He would have come to the conclusion that he would not have been saved, nor gotten help.)
It's both fortunate and unfortunate for him that a strange skinny man with drooping blond hair happens to be passing by. He sees him walking by with a soda and pausing for a candy bar. He overhears. Shoto doesn't think anything of it.
Because he has to answer the questions, and that includes answering the data ones on the clipboard. And so, without hesitation, he tells the doctor and the policemen, to Fuyumi's utter horror, that he is Quirkless. He doesn't look at them while he does this because he is supposed to be ashamed. And he is. He is other things, but he was being a disappointment.
(This word he knew because his father has said it enough to his sister and brothers. It was easy to figure out.)
Ten minutes after the strange, whispering men leave, there is a bright, beautiful glow from one side of the hall. It hurts his one seeing eye and yet he can't look away from it.
Because out of the light walks All Might, ducking through the doorway and smiling. His hair seems sharper than usual. He is unmistakable, though, dressed in clothes that barely fit, warmth rolling off like he is a walking heater.
"Hello, my boy!" His voice booms as he seats himself in a small chair. It looks… silly. But one does not laugh at All Might, ever. It's just not done. "And hello, dear girl! I heard you have been through quite an ordeal tonight, so I am here to keep you company!"
Fuyumi looks at her brother. She stares back at him and perhaps it's because of the needles sticking out of his arm but she looks too small for the chair, fragile and stuttering, with snowflakes melting in her hair.
His sister is really pretty, he thinks from far away. She's pretty even with those burns on her arms. When did they get there?
"It doesn't help that All Might is in the room, bright as a good, warm fire.
"You're here for us?" And in the back of his mind, Shoto realizes his voice sounds like a frog croak. He giggles. Everything is very funny now, swimming with fish and seaweed.
Shoto giggles again.
All Might discreetly reaches over and presses a button on the wall. "I am, my boy." His gravelly voice is softer now, gentle in a way his father never was. "I used to be in hospitals quite a bit you see. I know how boring and lonely it must be."
That has to be a lie, because this tall man, a monster of strength and heroism could never be in a hospital, and certainly not because his father was angry.
"Not for your reasons," he continues in that steady voice. "But my body wasn't built for life at first. We had to put me back together and then my Quirk could work properly." He reaches out and his hand is so big and all-encompassing that Shoto can't help but flinch. The man pulls it away and without thinking, Shoto reaches for it. His small hands loop around an index finger.
He is… so small.
"You will grow," All Might says with a pleasant, soft smile.
Shoto is five years old and only one adult has betrayed him, second to the doctor who checked him for Quirks. Even his father has not betrayed him yet.
He believes in his hero, the greatest hero of all.
Her brother sleeps in the bed. Their parents are still not here.
Fuyumi can only guess what is happening at home. A lot of ignored phone calls and paperwork as the two of them try again to make the perfect child and her brothers tiptoe around to get leftovers.
Mother won't say so, she won't because she was raised better but there's a sickening part of her that wants what Father wants. The perfect, ultimate child, the perfect Quirk only hindered by humanity, which can't be removed but can be knocked out.
She believes the lie. Otherw,ise they would have stopped a long time ago. Father can melt mother's ice, but only if she lets him. Otherwise, their brothers would not have been forgotten, ignored, after manifesting. Or not, as the case would be, once.
Shoto had looked perfect, had looked complete and necessary and needed. He was meant to have the quirk that would surpass Father.
And he just did not. He could not. It was genetic.
Fuyumi studied Quirks, studied their pathway through the body, the way they altered and why it was four years old and not at birth where they truly manifested in completion, despite beginning to form from the womb.
She had been able to grasp what her father and mother refused to hear: their quirks had canceled each other out this time around, rather than merging in perfect harmony.
And now their perfection was ruined.
(It's not that she hates her mother more than her father, it's not that her mother is not kind and good and that her father isn't merciless and unfair.
It's that Fuyumi watches two boys after her go through the same as her and is sick with guilt, of her own silence, sick with the memories of closed doors and pain, pain, pain and knowing why, and knowing it will happen again.
It's not that she doesn't know what kind of monster Endeavor is, and what he can make people do, who created him, she's the only child who does, but she remembers her mother's silence.
She remembers begging and getting nothing back. She remembers a kindergarten teacher on her first big mistake, saying to her excuses that she only watched that "it takes two to tango" and never ever forgetting it.)
"Dear girl."
Fuyumi jumps. "Y-Yes, sir?!" She remembers being Shoto's age and one moment too far and needing glasses ever since from being unable to look away from the bright hot flash agony. By contrast, All Might glows like a fire from behind the grate. He is safe and far away, to a point.
"May I ask you a few questions?"
She goes stiff, tongue in the roof of her mouth. She can lie. She can lie well. She has been betrayed, ignored, bullied just enough. But All Might gives off the aura that pierces through even the most cynical heart. So she nods.
"Where are you injured?" His voice is sober and big and encompasses even the sounds of her brother sleeping. There's a tiny (likely actually huge) first aid kit in his lap. "Your feet tracked blood into the room."
Fuyumi can do it herself. When he leaves she can hide in the bathroom and fix everything. But he's likely not going to leave until her parents return. She moves to lift her legs and then restrains a sob. Because she had carried her brothers out first and fallen multiple times in the process. They had cried and spit and snarled but let themselves be locked in rooms with open windows and instructions on where to go and what to do. They are old hands at this too.
And by the time she had gotten back to Shoto she had had just enough power to save the eye, just enough to misdirect the burns with her body and pay pay pay and run run run-
She must look as bad as she feels, she realizes.
His touch is quick, firm and gentle, applying medicine and gauze too fast for humans to do and Fuyumi can't help but cry because stings still hurt and she had almost been the forgotten older one so the memories had faded away into some drawer somewhere. But they hadn't. Not enough.
She tells him many things that she shouldn't in those moments. Tells him that Endeavor only drinks when he can destroy the evidence and never smokes, tells him he makes every meal for their birthday and no one cares if it's burnt because it's him being kind. She tells him about how her mother makes cold drinks perfectly and sometimes she marks them with her pen because she confuses two of the boys and that she babbles to her parents when she thinks her door is locked. Fuyumi tells him that she has all the records of the marriage, all the records of her father's work. She tells him everything that she can.
Except one that she will never tell anyone until it comes out.
Kindness opens so many doors but a reputation does even more.
And when he asks, "What is your quirk, dear girl" Fuyumi, drunk on common decency and a chance at being safe and even her own guilt and hypocrisy, raises her hands.
One hand forms snowflakes, then shards of ice and a pillar of flame rises from the other. Then, with ease, they slip, one over the other, to the other side.
"My fault," she says. "All mine. But I was lonely. I was alone and he's heavy. You understand because you have to save everyone, you understand, right?"
All Might pats her head and watches her lower her arms in defeat. "Yes," he says in an old voice that doesn't sound like All Might at all. "I do."
A/N: Been sitting on this fic for a while! Yahoo! I finally figured out how I wanted to do it and boy has it changed since I started. This was just supposed to be about Shoto and coming to terms with his place having the Quirk of the man his father envies the most but I realized I needed a lot of setup so here is the setup and it's a lot of fun. Not for the characters though. But this has become quite a ride, so thanks to the members of the MHA BROFEST on tumblr for making it.
Challenges: MHA Brofest (Championship Tier), Novella Masterclass MHA 5.