Notes: I don't write from his POV often, but I love writing Deku. Because this is how my brain works and it's something awful and wonderful at the same time. Also, Shouto continues to be one of the funniest characters ever. Be prepared for unexpected Todoroki fam feels. Touya has been flippant if nothing else.
Working overseas was one of the strangest parts about being a hero. To be honest, Midoriya hadn't thought about it much, although he knew All Might had spent time in the States as a transfer student and later on as pro hero. It simply hadn't occurred to him that being a hero would mean spending so much time away from home. There was also the added pressure of being the number one hero. If there was no rest for the wicked, then there certainly wasn't any rest for the top heroes.
Deku was in his mid-twenties and had reached the same point as All Might, but that didn't mean he could slack off. He was an oddity, seeing as how he didn't have an established hero agency of his own yet. Unlike Todoroki and Bakugou, he wasn't in a rush regarding that. He had been after graduation, but after he took a job overseas, he came to the conclusion that he could do more work if he wasn't tied down to any one place. An agency meant being stagnant - it meant a certain type of responsibility - and he didn't want that. It wasn't his path.
He did miss home though. Calls, texts, facetime, snapchat, and emails could only do so much to keep the homesickness at bay. He did his best to stay in the know about things happening in and around his hometown, but he knew that he wouldn't be able to catch everything. Some news was bound to spring up on him and surprise him in the worst way. That was just the way it was and had been since high school. It was like he was the main protagonist in an anime. News just seemed to follow him.
Now that he was back home, Deku couldn't wait to take a break. It wouldn't be a long one - potentially less than two or three days - but he needed it after dealing with a crisis in China. What he wanted more than anything was some homemade katsudon from his mother, a reassuring pat on the shoulder from All Might (who, in his slightly healthier thin form, was still somehow taller than him), and hugs from his closest friends. It had been too long since he'd seen them and he missed them greatly - Uraraka's bright smile, Iida's encouraging words, Todoroki's impassive but sly looks, and even Bakugou's explosive behavior. He missed them all.
His mother and All Might didn't know he was due home today, so Deku had thought to surprise them. It was the little things that counted. His mom would probably cry upon seeing him, but he'd learned at an early age that some tears were good and it was important not to hold them in. He wasn't upset with his mother for teaching him to be free with his crying. Being in touch with his emotions had helped him with villains more times than he could count. Other heroes could stand to do with such compassion.
After carefully unlocking the front door to the house, Deku set his travel bag down and tiptoed through the house. He wasn't as small as he used to be, but he knew how to keep quiet thanks to training under Aizawa during high school. A hero couldn't always burst into places in order to do what needed to be done. Eraserhead's style relied much more on stealth, which came in handy with his shooter style moves. He knew All Might was there because of his car in the driveway, but the muffled voices from the kitchen told him that he and his mother were having some sort of discussion over tea.
"...don't know how he'll handle it," All Might was saying, frustration evident in his voice.
"He's proven to be strong before," his mother replied.
"I don't know," All Might sighed. "This is something different entirely. And he won't accept help. It's a terrible mixture of stubbornness and pride. I don't know what to do with him."
His mother laughed lightly. "Sounds like someone I know."
"It would be funny if there wasn't a life involved," All Might grumbled. His voice was barely loud enough for Deku to make out even though he was standing right outside the door.
The whole conversation was odd. Deku furrowed his brow in thought. What were they talking about? More importantly, who were they talking about? There were only a few people in the world that made All Might sound like that and he was one of them. Kacchan was another, although he refused to admit it. The other person - the one none of them liked to talk about - was Tomura Shigaraki.
"Who knows?" his mother replied soothingly. "He might surprise you."
"I hope so," All Might said. "I don't expect him to be perfect by any means. Not everyone is a superhero like you-"
"Oh hush!" his mother giggled.
"-but on the list of things Shigaraki is ready for right now, single fatherhood is not one of them," All Might finished.
Midoriya nearly fell on his face. Single what now? Shigaraki was...a father?
Unable to hide any longer, bursting with enough energy to make him feel like he was back to figuring out One for All again, Midoriya stumbled into the living room and exclaimed in an embarrassingly hysterical voice, "Shigaraki's a dad?"
All Might nearly spilled his tea on his lap as he practically yelped, "Izuku!" Only his mother's quirk saved the hot cup from tipping over, floating it into her outstretched hand. He spun around to look at Midoriya with shock and embarrassment in his sunken blue eyes. Oh, he wasn't meant to hear that, at least not yet. It wasn't his business. He would've been told when All Might knew more about the situation. But how good he was at keeping secrets depended on what it was and who was involved.
Midoriya knew exactly what was going to happen: there was no way he was going to be able to keep this to himself.
His brain kept doing mental leaps as he tried to figure out what was going on. Shigaraki was a father. Which meant that he'd, at least casually, been seeing someone. Dating someone? Hooked up with someone? Oh, god, why was his brain doing this to him? There were things he wanted to think about and other things he didn't want to think about so much that they never even crossed his mind. This was definitely the latter, but he couldn't stop himself.
Not that Shigaraki was terrible-looking since being freed from prison. Midoriya had seen him once shortly after his release, if only because he wanted to check up on him out of curiosity and wariness. It couldn't be helped. This was the man had spent three years actively trying to kill him, especially once it became clear that he was the protege of his and All for One's enemy - and it was partly thanks to Midoriya's testimony that he was able to apply for parole so soon.
It had been surprising to see Shigaraki in the role of an average citizen. He'd looked so...normal. His hair was shorter and he was a little thinner, but the most remarkable change had been his face. He must have started to actually take of himself. Midoriya knew that Shigaraki's quirk dried out his skin, especially around his lips and eyes, but with the right care, he didn't look bad. He certainly didn't look villainous or obsessed with vengeance.
If he still looked like that, Midoriya could see how a woman might… find him… attractive enough to sleep and produce a child with.
It still made Midoriya's head spin and his stomach do an impressive flop. He'd known that his old high school friends would eventually start getting married and having families of their own. It was sometimes odd to consider, but he knew it. His old enemies though? Yeah, that wasn't something he'd thought about.
"I…" All Might swallowed and then sighed again. "Well, you were bound to find out soon enough somehow."
He was probably resigned to the fact that Midoriya managed to get himself in the middle of things whether they involved him or not, typically while actively trying not to be involved these days. It didn't matter. One way or another, Midoriya found himself in a mess. It came from his desire to help everyone he could, but also because he was some sort of magnet for these things. Even when he tried to stay out of stuff, it found him.
This was probably one of those times.
Midoriya meandered over to a chair next to the couch and plopped down in it. "How?" All Might and his mother looked at each other and he flushed. "I mean, I know how! I just...don't know…how…" It didn't make sense. Okay, maybe he was just overthinking things. Shigaraki was out of jail, just trying to live his life. That meant establishing relationships of various kinds. "I never pictured him the 'having kids' or family type, if I'm being honest."
"Neither did I," All Might admitted, "but I don't think he believed he was either. It wasn't exactly planned."
"Oh." Midoriya blinked. "Oh! It was an accident." He scratched his head. "I suppose that makes more sense. He didn't intentionally have a child."
It wasn't that Shigaraki was selfish or anything like that. From what Midoriya had managed to gather about him post-prison, he was just trying to live his life. He worked at a video game store and went home. Thanks to Todoroki, he knew that Shigaraki was still friends and in contact with Dabi, now known as Touya. He'd stopped by his sister and brother's place only, to almost walk into Shigaraki, who was leaving. That had almost caused a fight out of reflex until his sister had intervened, explaining that he was just there to drop a drunk Touya off. (Apparently, his brother was a severe lightweight.) Todoroki had been so caught off guard he forgot to call Midoriya to tell him until the next day.
Aside from that, Midoriya didn't really know what was going on in Shigaraki's life. He kept up to date for various reasons, ranging from being careful to just wanting to know what the hell was going on in his former arch enemy's life and if it was going well. He hoped it was. Midoriya wanted Shigaraki to succeed. He'd been dealt a raw hand in life and he wanted him to be able to actually live and do what he wanted instead of being a villain's puppet.
Well, he was certainly living life - off having relationships and being a dad. Wow.
"So when's the baby due or do you know that?" Midoriya asked curiously. "I wonder who the mom is. I wonder if she knew who he was when they got together. She probably did. He still goes by Shigaraki except for work, right? Wow, he's gonna be a dad." He chuckled and rubbed the back of his neck. "Hey, he completed a life milestone before me! That's something, isn't it?"
"Ah, the baby has already been born," All Might awkwardly explained. "She's about three-months-old." He smiled so faintly he probably wasn't even aware he was doing it. "Absolutely beautiful. She has his eyes."
"You've seen her?" Midoriya leaned forward. "Which means you've seen him." All Might nodded. "How is he?"
"Tired," All Might stressed. "He's under a lot of pressure. This situation was thrust upon him quite suddenly, leaving him no time to prepare."
Midoriya tilted his head. "Uh, he had like nine months? Midnight taught us Sex Ed." He shuddered at the memory. It had been an informative, if not somewhat traumatic, experience. Walking back to the dorms with a bunch of hormonal teenagers after listening to that talk and watching her put a condom on a banana had made him wish Uraraka would use her quirk on him and float him into outer space.
"If only." All Might took his cup of tea back. "The mother of the child did not make him aware of his child until a week ago when she asked him to babysit" - here he grimaced - "so she could continue a murder spree."
Midoriya's eyebrows shot up. "She what?" He fell against the back of the chair. "He had a child with ano- With a villain?" Just when he thought this couldn't get more shocking and absurd. That did bring up some unfortunate and nasty implications, all of which made him chew on his bottom lip. "Is he…?"
"No." All Might shook his head, his mouth set in a determined line. "While he hasn't been doing much with his life, Shigaraki remains on the straight and narrow. He was actually the one to call her in so she could be apprehended without incident. He appears to have been previously unaware of her villainous activities while she knew of his history."
Ah, so she had known who Shigaraki was. It had probably been why she had slept with him in the first place. He should've taken Midnight's Sex Ed class.
"This is, uh…a turn of interesting events," Midoriya murmured. There was no way he could sit on this information and not do anything about it. It was too big for him to keep quiet about. Not telling people (outside of Kacchan) about One for All had been one thing, but Shigaraki having a kid with a villain and randomly finding out a year after the fact was too much. He had to tell somebody. But who?
Shigaraki was still in close contact with Touya, which meant that he probably knew already, and if he knew, then there was a chance Todoroki either knew or would find out soon. Telling him wouldn't be that bad. He was going to find out eventually anyway, so it wasn't really telling him. It wasn't like he was going to blab to Iida or Uraraka (at least not right away). But he had to talk to someone about this or he was going to explode.
"It's a lot to take in," All Might said.
"And he apparently refuses to accept any help too," his mother added, a frown on her face. "It's...admittedly hard for me to truly feel for him, considering what he did to you both, but I can speak from experience that being a single parent, while rewarding, is very difficult."
"You were an incredible mom," Midoriya told her earnestly, "and you still are."
His mother blushed but smiled. "I did my best under the circumstances."
"I think he turned out pretty good," All Might said with a chuckle. The humor died in his eyes as his mind drifted back to the other single parent. "I worry about him though. He clearly wants to do right by his daughter, but he doesn't have any positive influence to look back on." He frowned. "I offered to help, but…"
Midoriya nodded. He knew what All Might was saying. Shigaraki would disintegrate himself before he accepted All Might's help outright. It was too demeaning for him after everything the former number one hero had done for him despite his previous attempts to kill him. Accepting All Might's help with his child would be the final nail in the coffin for Shigaraki's already fragile ego. It was kind of like getting Kacchan to accept help. There was a lot of fighting involved, sometimes making a person question whether it was worth it.
It was. It was always worth it to help people. Midoriya was certain of it.
Right now, however, he couldn't think about it. He needed to speak freely and he couldn't do it around them. He adored All Might with everything in him, even after all this time, but he kind of had tunnel vision when it came to Shigaraki. He needed someone who could understand his mental struggle better.
"Well, this has been enlightening," Midoriya declared, standing up, "but I've gotta...make a call."
His mother aimed a serious look at him. "Izuku."
"I promised Shouto I would call him when I got back into town!" Midoriya insisted. It wasn't a lie. He had promised to call Todoroki, just not for the reasons he was going to now. He hugged both his mom and All Might before telling them goodbye and he'd be back for dinner, all but rushing out the door. He hadn't even shut the front door fully by the time he had his phone out and was dialing his friend's friend.
Todoroki picked up after the third ring. "Izuku?"
"Are you busy because holy shit I've got some news to tell you," Midoriya greeted in an excited rush as he bounced down the stairs.
"So do I."
Todoroki had not been very close to any of his siblings until he moved out. With their father forcibly keeping them apart, and his kind of sad attempts at piecing their family back together later on, he had figured out he could make his own choices. Maybe he could have all along and just hadn't known anything other than his father's rules. Not using the fire half of his quirk had been enough rebellion. After deciding to repair his relationship with his mother, he had also come to the conclusion that he wanted to know his siblings.
There had always been one missing though. A big brother that lingered in the back of his mind but he could never quite call forward. After a while, Touya became more of a vague memory than a brother. He existed, but he also didn't. If talk of their mother was kept to a minimum, not a word was breathed about him. He became more like a myth than anything else, a life lesson, as it were.
Don't be like Touya. Don't fail like Touya. Don't crack like Touya.
After a while, as shameful as it was, it was easy to forget about him. At least, it was for Todoroki, who had been kept away from the others. His memories of Touya included a lot of yelling, fighting, ruffles of his hair, fake smiles, and a vicious protective streak. Most of what he remembered though was the sideways looks Touya would give him. After all, out of everyone in the family, even their mother, his oldest brother alone knew exactly what he went through during training.
Had it been pity in his brother's eyes? Shame? Jealousy? Rage? Disgust? Fear? It was hard to tell after so many years had passed.
It was hard to tell now and Touya was actually back in their lives.
Todoroki looked up from his seat in the living area as Touya practically kicked open the front door and strode into the apartment he had shared with Fuyumi since being released from prison.
Oh, yeah, fun fact: his brother was - used to be - Dabi. That had been fun to learn during his second year of high school.
"I'm back!" Touya called out.
"Where were you? It shouldn't have taken you that long." Fuyumi poked her head out of the bathroom, where she was doing her makeup. Todoroki didn't want to say she had a date, but she usually only put makeup on for work. He knew bringing it up would only serve to alarm Touya. Her twin brother wasn't opposed to her dating so much as opposed to anyone dating her. There was that vicious protective streak that he remembered.
Touya walked through the living room and, despite actually being a few centimeters shorter than him now (not that Todoroki would bring that up either), ruffled Todoroki's hair. "You know, I have a life of my own too. You're the one that sent me out on my day off."
Not one to take her twin's bullshit, Fuyumi narrowed her eyes - or maybe she was just doing that because she wasn't wearing her glasses. "Don't use me as an excuse. You were getting antsy too."
"Whatever." Touya scoffed before plopping down on the couch and stretching out like a cat. He really did whatever he could in order to look taller. Back when they had first clashed at the Training Camp in his first year, Todoroki's memories of Dabi had always made him seem so tall and imposing, when in truth he hadn't been that much taller. It wasn't until after things had fallen into place that he realized why Dabi had unsettled him so much. He had the same look in his eyes as Touya, only more dead.
It was a bit like living with a ghost when Touya was dragged back into their lives, but years later, he was more like, eh, a ghoul. Who was a big brother and did big brother things but also kept a wall between them for their own protection. Todoroki wondered if Fuyumi ever called him out for it. Probably. After the truth came out about Dabi, she had become a lot harder, although she acted like she didn't.
"Well?" Fuyumi prompted as she stepped fully out of the bathroom and put her glasses on.
Touya waved a dismissive hand in the air. "The wiggle worm is alive."
Todoroki blinked. Wiggle worm? And it was alive? What?
"I figured that, since you didn't come bursting in here in a panic," Fuyumi replied.
"Nah, I bet you thought we were doing something shady like hiding evidence," Touya shot back dryly.
"Touya, that's awful!" Fuyumi exclaimed, sounding genuinely distraught. "I know you wouldn't do that now." She pointed an accusing finger at him. "Besides, I know you care no matter how much you try to deny it."
"The last thing I'm gonna do about this whole situation is care," Touya said before throwing an arm over his face like he was planning on falling asleep on the couch. It wouldn't be the first time. It wasn't until he'd seen Touya sleeping on the couch, in a chair, and even on the floor that Todoroki had remembered Touya's ability to sleep anywhere. He could understand that exhaustion. Their father's training, on top of the physical exertion of his own quirk, had made him permanently tired, leading him to pass out the second he got comfortable or laid down.
It was kind of hard to think about that when all Todoroki's brain kept coming back to was the cryptic "wiggle worm is alive" comment though. Whatever it was, it was something that Touya was determined not to give a shit about it (which he said about a lot of things) but also something that Fuyumi was determined to make him care about. She was right, of course, even if he didn't know the context completely. Touya liked to act like he didn't care about things - bored and lackadaisical with the whole world beneath him - but they all knew it was bullshit, even if he didn't.
Touya cared about a lot of things, just not in the way everyone else did. He hated caring to the point where he had a habit of coming across as aggressively not caring.
Whatever was happening was one of those times and Todoroki intended to get to the bottom of it. He wanted to believe that he trusted Touya, but in truth, it was hard to do that all the time with so much history between them. He didn't think Touya would do anything illegal, but more importantly, he knew his big brother wouldn't drag his twin sister into anything bad with him.
That still didn't give him any clues about what the hell was going on.
"What are you two talking about?" Todoroki blurted.
His question immediately sliced through the mood, ending their petty sibling bickering. The two of them glanced at each other, Touya with his arm raised slightly above his eyes. For a moment, they just stared at each other, silently communicating with their eyes. Todoroki was hit with the reminder that despite the fact that Touya had disappeared from their lives, acted out as a villain in the League, and then spent a few years in prison, Touya and Fuyumi were twins. He might've been kept away from Fuyumi and Natsuo during his training under their father until Todoroki's quirk manifested, but there was a bond between them he couldn't quite fathom.
Under normal circumstances, it would make him feel relieved. After everything their family had gone through - after all the things Fuyumi and Touya had gone through personally - they still had that close bond these days. Right now though, it just irritated and left him feeling like he was on the outside looking in. It made him feel like the little brother despite being a grown ass man and the number two hero.
"What?" Todoroki demanded. "What does that look mean?" He tore his gaze from Touya to Fuyumi, who he knew would break easier. He'd thought he was good at keeping secrets, but Touya had a vault that even the world's greatest criminal couldn't break into. "What's the wiggle worm?"
Fuyumi chewed on her bottom lip. "Should we tell him?"
Touya shrugged his shoulders. "I don't care." Fuyumi shot him a glare and he sighed. "He's gonna find out sooner or later. You did tell me to invite him to dinner on Friday. If the bastard does show up…"
"Is this about Dad?" Todoroki asked.
"Wrong father." Touya cackled at his own joke, which wasn't even that good since it made absolutely no sense. "You think I'm gonna have dinner with him? I haven't quite reached that point in my therapy." Fuyumi wrung her hands in front of her, struggling to figure out what to say. Noticing her nerves, Touya huffed and sat upright on the couch. "You heard about the capture of that villain accused of killing like - shit, how many was it? - twenty people?"
Todoroki nodded his head. "Yeah, it's all anyone can talk about on the hero circuit right now. It took everyone by surprise because they didn't think the culprit could be a woman."
"Shit, that just made me realize she killed three of those people while swollen up like a beach ball," Touya said thoughtfully, mostly to himself. He shook his head. "Well, whatever her fucked up reasoning - you probably know more than us - it turns out Shigaraki got her pregnant during a one night, called her in for the heroes to arrest her when he found out he was her baby daddy, and now he's got a three-month-old daughter. Keeping that thing has got to be one of his Top Five Worst Decisions and he came up with the plan to kidnap Bakugou."
"Which you carried out," Todoroki added flatly, his brain too shot to actually process what he'd just been told.
Touya flopped back on the couch. "I didn't say it was one of my smartest decisions either."
Todoroki swallowed and ran his fingers through his hair. Shigaraki was a father? Not only that but he was the father to a child who had been born by one of Japan's most notorious serial killers? And he'd helped her get arrested? This was certainly an interesting and alarming development.
He had kept up with the updates on the League members after their arrests and subsequent trials. Even if he hadn't been so thoroughly embroiled in them because of Touya, he would have simply for the fact that he and his friends had clashed with them for three years. Ever since they'd attacked the USJ, they'd been tied together. He had been unsure of how he felt towards his brother, who had attacked him, right up until the day he was supposed to be called to the stand.
It never happened. Todoroki never took the stand. The trial came to an abrupt end when Touya took a plea deal.
A day later, their father stepped down from the number one hero position. He didn't stop being a hero, but he decided to take himself out of the rankings entirely. It was unheard of. The news didn't know what to think. Then again, they also didn't know the truth about who Dabi was. The trial never got that far. Todoroki's testimony would have blown the whole thing wide open, exposing truths no one outside of their family and a few choice people had ever heard.
That had been what Dabi had wanted, right? To ruin their father? To kill him? Then why had he stopped right when he had a metaphorical knife against Endeavor's throat?
Something similar had happened in Shigaraki's trial, but that had gone all the way through to sentencing. Finding out exactly what All for One had done to groom Shigaraki into the perfect successor had been chilling and made Todoroki sick to this day. His trial had run concurrently with Touya's, keeping everyone involved busy. Todoroki had been there for almost every single part of it. No, they weren't anything alike - but, as much he'd hated Shigaraki, he saw bits and pieces of himself in there too.
It was...unfortunate.
If only the trial had been the last time that Todoroki saw Shigaraki, he wouldn't be reminded of a few ugly truths. It wasn't meant to be. Not only had Fuyumi, in her desperation, used him as a means to get through to Touya, who had spent his first few months in prison refusing to take any visitors, but once Touya got out, the two of them buddied up again. Not that either one of them would call it that. Todoroki wasn't sure he could call it that. They got along like a cat and dog raised in the same household.
Coming over to his sister's for dinner only to see Shigaraki there was startling in itself. It was even weirder when he realized the former villain was wearing the shirt for a local video game shop and cleaned up with some sort of lotion on his face to boot to combat his quirk's effects. He'd almost attacked Shigaraki the first time they'd crossed paths here. They only had crossed paths a handful of times, all of them on accident, but needless to say, Todoroki hadn't expected to be the one person in his old U.A. group to see Shigaraki the most after prison.
He had been pretty sure that would be Midoriya. Looked like he was wrong. Speaking of Midoriya…
"You're taking this...well enough," Fuyumi noted nervously upon Todoroki's silence.
"How else is he supposed to take it?" Touya questioned. "It's weird no matter what way you spin it."
"Shigaraki is a father," Todoroki said. Fuyumi nodded. "And he's decided to keep her and raise her alone?"
Touya sighed. "I told him to safe-drop her, but does he ever listen to me? No."
"That's because you have terrible ideas," Todoroki said without thinking. Touya harrumphed but didn't argue. "I have to make a call."
Fuyumi gave him an uncomfortable look. "I don't think he wants a lot of people knowing yet."
"You know he's going to call Midoriya regardless of what you say," Touya said, back to throwing an arm over his eyes. He did look really tired.
Todoroki shot his brother a glare as he stood up, but… he wasn't wrong. Before he could fish his phone out of his pocket, it began to ring. He pulled it out and raised his eyebrows when he read the caller ID. Midoriya Izuku. Well, that saved him the trouble of making the call and would also make Fuyumi feel less guilty about telling him.
Answering the call with a simple, "Izuku?" Todoroki stepped out of the room to obtain some privacy.
Midoriya's response came lightning fast: "Are you busy because holy shit I've got some news to tell you."
Judging from his greeting, it sounded like Midoriya already knew, but it could also be about the news concerning Bakugou, so he had to be sure. "So do I." Shutting the door to the bedroom behind him, he continued, "You go first."
"Okay!" Midoriya took a deep breath. "Shigaraki got a villain pregnant and now he's a single dad!"
Ah, so it was the news about Shigaraki. That made things a lot easier. "Yeah, I just found that out as well. I was going to call you."
Instead of sounding disappointed that Todoroki already knew what was going on, Midoriya sighed in relief. "How did you find out?"
"Touya and Fuyumi," Todoroki answered. "You?"
"I walked in on All Might talking about it with my mom."
Awkward. It probably had not been All Might's intention for Midoriya to find out that way. "Yeah, Fuyumi sent Touya to check on him. You know they're still close." Todoroki thought back on the conversation between his two older siblings before he'd interrupted them. "I guess they invited him to dinner this Friday?"
"Really?" Midoriya sounded shocked but also kind of intrigued. "Don't you do family dinners every other Friday?"
Todoroki held his chin thoughtfully in his hand. "You're right."
As much as he didn't want to spend his day off hanging out with someone who tried to kill him multiple times… Well, he couldn't say that. Touya had tried to do the same thing, although he had haltingly explained that he had never been actively trying to kill him. He had always held back or aimed slightly off. In fact, there had been a few times when his attacks had actually intervened with others' and saved him in the process. The whole thing was complicated and that included Shigaraki, especially now that he was a father.
It made Todoroki wary. Shigaraki didn't have a good example of what it was to be a father. Then again, neither did he or his siblings, even if their father had spent years working to be better. Still, he couldn't help but worry about the baby. It was completely innocent in this situation, even if it had been to a serial killer and a former villain mastermind.
Besides, this dinner could present a unique opportunity. If he was really worried about the child, the best way to go about this would be to watch how Shigaraki interacted with his daughter. He knew what Fuyumi was like. She took her job as a preschool very seriously. Looking for signs of abuse in her students was a bleak way of looking at things, but none of them knew the consequences of adults ignoring those signs more than she did. She was very protective of her students. Maybe this dinner was a way of getting a better look at what was going on.
Todoroki could use this.
"Well, your family dinner is certainly going to be...interesting," Midoriya concluded.
"Insightful, to be sure," Todoroki added.
As much as he wanted to believe in redemption - as much as he had seen it firsthand - Todoroki was still wary. He knew it made him sound bad. He was genuinely happy Touya was back in their lives and was finally getting the help he needed and had been denied his entire life. It was important to him. Still, he worried sometimes, if only because he had learned to recognize when his temper started to get the best of him. What could have happened if he hadn't? Touya had been filled with enough hate and pain that it had driven him to make the decision to become a villain.
Shigaraki had been molded to be a villain as a child. He was going to need a lot of therapy to get over that. There was a reason Midoriya and Uraraka were the hopeful ones their friend group. Todoroki was coldly realistic. He would believe it when he saw it. That was what he'd learned with his father. It was what he'd do with Shigaraki.
After telling Midoriya that he would keep him up to date on what happened, Todoroki hung up the phone. So focused on his conversation with Midoriya, he hadn't been paying attention to his siblings in the living room. It was only when he hung up the phone that he heard them still talking.
"-just really upsets me that he insists on doing so much alone," his sister was saying. "We know how hard that is."
"Oh, he's not entirely alone," Touya replied, the grin evident in his voice.
"Of course not," Fuyumi said. "He's got us, even if he doesn't realize it yet."
Touya snorted. "That's not what I meant."
Todoroki was curious about what that meant. Maybe it was another reformed member of the League? Were they still in contact with each other? Todoroki wasn't certain outside of Touya and Shigaraki. It didn't seem like Touya had a lot of friends or cared about making any. He'd been like that when he was younger too, before he ran away and vanished. He hadn't found them necessary, even though Todoroki knew now that they were very much so.
When Todoroki walked out into the living room, Touya was in the process of saying, "He's got-" but then cut himself off the second he spotted him. A weird look flickered across his face before it went blank again, which confused Todoroki, before he continued, "He's got his therapist, you know. She's on his ass all the time about his recovery and living his life."
Fuyumi gave him a confused look as well, but then slowly nodded her head. "That's a good point. It still doesn't make up for the fact that he has to do this physically alone for the most part."
"Eh, don't push him." Touya shrugged his shoulders. "You want to help him? You gotta wait for him to come to you. That's how it works. He needs to realize he needs you on his own."
It felt strange to listen to Touya talk about someone like that. There wasn't any mocking or insulting tone to his words, simply understanding. He knew Shigaraki - knew how he worked, his habits, his behavior. Todoroki didn't doubt it was vice versa. He thought he understood Touya better these days, but it was hard to be sure. It hadn't been under they were adults that all of them had realized he had shown different facades to each one of them while they had been growing up.
The villainous one hadn't come until later, but the rage and pain that fueled it had been simmering underneath all along. The hard truth was that, even though Todoroki was the closest to understanding what Touya went through with their father, it was Shigaraki who probably understood that very large aspect of him the most. That…almost sounded like the friendship he had with Midoriya, which was a crazy thought, almost as crazy as the fact that Shigaraki was coming over for the family dinner and bringing his daughter.
This was going to be fun.
