Shouto Todoroki is a lot like many people, in some ways. But in other ways, he is the most unique and one of a kind of himself there is.
Like few — yet still far too many — people, Todoroki's home history isn't ideal.
But like many — almost all — people, Todoroki has good days and bad days.
When he was younger, he used to have more bad days than good, obviously. Fuyumi had been there to soothe a lot of the bad days, but even she could do only so much.
Lately, since coming to U.A., since learning from his classmates and bonding with them, Todoroki has more good days than bad. Fuyumi notices it too, and it makes her both proud and relieved. Even more so when he starts going to talk to their mother too.
The days he visits his mother are difficult, but he still comes home to Fuyumi's proud smile, and he thinks that even as difficult it is, even if he's not really yielding any instantaneous results, at least he's trying.
And for now, that is enough.
But even though the amount of good days he has grows, it doesn't stand to mean that he doesn't have bad days anymore.
He has good days, he has alright days, he has bad days, and then sometimes, he has dark days.
The dark days are the hardest.
On Todoroki's darkest days, he doesn't want to be.
Be what? Be anything.
He doesn't want to be here, or there, or anywhere, or wherever, or real, or not, or in between, or something, or nothing, or anything, or whatever, or any other adjective that exists; he just simply doesn't want to be.
The only word he wants to fit into is not.
And maybe this arrangement of words doesn't make sense, but that's as close as he can get to describing how he feels. He doesn't want to be.
Tonight, is one of those darkest of nights that Todoroki has. He doesn't know where it's suddenly come from, and he doesn't want to rack his brain trying to figure it out either. He doesn't consider calling Fuyumi, one because it's the first night all week she's gone to sleep at a decent time, and secondly because he doesn't think there's anything she could do to pull him out of whatever dark slump he's found himself in tonight.
He knows why the dark has decided to visit his thoughts tonight.
Normally a single mistake doesn't do much to affect his mood. He takes a blow, obviously, because at the end of the day, he is still just halfway between a child and a young adult, and it's the most delicate age to be at. The pressure of all his personal and public goals don't help to comfort him when he makes an error either.
But if it's just one error he doesn't let it get to him, because as Fuyumi says, he's still growing, he's allowed to make mistakes.
The reason the dark has visited him tonight isn't because he made one error in his training earlier that day. No, the dark has visited him because it's been a handful days where he's not been satisfied with himself.
And it's stupid, to hold himself to such high standards, but to be honest, he doesn't really know any other way to live, doesn't know any other way to be.
It's how Endeavor has raised him — if raised is even the word that can be used for what he's done — pointing out his errors and belittling him for not doing everything to absolute pin drop perfection. Every little mistake he makes cumulates and is going to affect his future, always, his future, everything, his future.
Well maybe he doesn't want a future. Maybe he doesn't want to be.
Everything would be easier if he just wasn't.
If he wasn't, everything would be better. Endeavor wouldn't be raising a weapon to surpass the kindest soul the world's ever known. His mother wouldn't be locked up in the hospital, shunned from the world for over ten years. Fuyumi could actually concentrate on her own work and life, instead of spending so much time worrying over him, when all he had done was cause her trouble. His brothers would probably still be in their family's lives.
Fuyumi reads, so he knows of the way some people are described as glue and anchors, described for how they keep their families or their friendship groups together. Todoroki knows he is the opposite to his family. He's like a pair of scissors, tearing the bonds and love between his mother and his siblings and his father and everyone else farther up his family tree. He's like a virus of sorts, eating away and deteriorating every bond and every good thing he comes into contact with. Todoroki knows he's the anti-glue to his family, the anti-anchor, the one reason none of them want anything to do with each other.
He doesn't want to be, he really doesn't want to be, especially at a night like this. A dark, cold, lonely night like this.
It dark both literally and figuratively. The lights in his room are off — he'd tried to sleep but his insecurities had kept him up and now it was far too late to go to sleep and wake up on time. He's not even in his bed anymore. It's far too comfortable than what he deserves. Instead he's on the floor, like the filth he knows he is, in the corner, curled up into himself. He's not crying — that's not a luxury he deserves either.
He knows he deserves terrible things, he knows it in his very being, he feels the truth of it in his veins, but he doesn't pursue them.
He stays where he is, in his comfortable room, provided by the earnings of his hardworking father, where he is safe, where it is familiar.
He wants to leave, he wants to go, he doesn't want to be.
But he doesn't leave, he doesn't go, he stays. He stays because it's what he knows how to do. He doesn't know how to go, how to leave, where to go, what to do, what will happen if he does; doesn't know if it'll be the pain he deserves, or less.
He knows of people who have escaped in terrible ways, people who have chased down their own deaths to be free of everything keeping them in this world.
Todoroki's considered it before, he has, he'd be lying if he said he never has. But he's never pursued it seriously, he's been too scared. Everyone has a fear of the unknown, and the fear of what's on the other side of death is probably the greatest fear of the unknown mankind has ever known.
The other thing is, the people who have sought out death, sought it out as a means of an escape, to be free, because whatever life they had was worse than what they deserved, and death was the only peace they could get. It was an easy way out, complicated on the surface, but at its core, it was an easy solution.
That's where Todoroki differed. He wasn't looking for an escape. He was looking for punishment. He was looking for the terrible things he deserved. Because the coward's way out was the last thing he deserved. Someone as terrible as him deserved to suffer, to hurt. Hurt more than what he had been already, because the pain he had suffered his life was next to nothing compared to what he deserved. He needed to hurt, he deserved to hurt.
He had hurt the people he was supposed to love and protect, had ruined their lives, scarred their hearts and memories, just by existing, just by being.
All in all, it was easier to just not be.
He wouldn't have to rack his brain trying to figure out the most fitting punishment for himself, he wouldn't have hurt his family, who had done nothing wrong.
But Todoroki didn't know how to not be, so he did what he always did. He forced his thoughts to the back corners of his mind, covered them up with mundane and trivial ones like if he had time to go grocery shopping tomorrow, to ease the load off Fuyumi, if he should redo his notes from class, make them neater, fill his mind with facts he already knew, cover up his dark thoughts.
He supposed in a way, as he picked himself off the floor and climbed into his bed, that this kind of mental, emotional suffering was probably the best punishment he would get. It was a strenuous journey, a special kind of suffering where he was alone, one he didn't know how to solve, if it could even be solved, if he even deserved to have it solved. But it hurt, it hurt so much, and he never understood anything in his own head, and he didn't think he could, because he was alone, didn't deserve it either.
Yes, Todoroki decides, surviving like this is probably the strongest torture he can find, and therefore, the one most befitting him.
And he drifts off to sleep, wondering if there will ever come a time when he breaks. If he could just keep on going like this forever, repressing his darkness in the dead of night, by himself, because maybe he could. And maybe that's what made this hell perfect; the unanswered question of whether this would ever end, how it would end, if it would ever end.