...
It isn't fair to punish someone for something they haven't done yet.
...
It is not long after my resolution to avert the worst of what's to come in the Todoroki household.
Rei picked up the kettle and put it on the back burner of the stove. I watched her wearily out of the corner of my eye from the doorway. She started to move, and before she had finished turning I had wiped the grim look off my face to try and approximate childish curiosity as an excuse for my intent staring. She gave me a tentative smile as she turned to face me.
"Good morning, Touya." She walks across the kitchen to reach a hand out to brush a strand of fire engine red hair behind my ear, and press a kiss to my forehead. "Would you like to help mommy cook dinner?"
"Sure!" I chirruped up at her with a little smile.
You read that right. "Good morning" and "cook dinner" in the same sentence. She phrased it that way because she had just woken up at four pm to feed me, and also because her sense of time was garbage. Rei's sleep schedule was terrible, I found when I became old enough to pay attention. If she got any sleep at night, I would be very surprised, considering how much she slept during the day. She got most of her shuteye done between breakfast and lunch, long after Endeavor left for work for the day, with the occasional nap later in the afternoon as well. On top of that, Rei was a stay at home mother with no friends. She hardly left the house except for shopping and errands. I knew from experience how the days can blur together with nothing to break them up. It's no wonder she eventually snaps.
"Alright..." Rei dragged a chair out from under the kitchen table and placed it next to the stove. She turned back around and scooped me up under my arms and placed me standing on the chair. "Now your job is very important." She said, leaning over to whisper secretively at me with dancing eyes. "Mommy needs you to watch this pot, and tell her when the water boils. Do you think you can do that for me?"
I pretend to think about it for a moment, putting on a pouty-thinking face that I had practiced in the mirror. "Like what dad does to his coffee in the morning? With the bubbles?"
Her smile becomes a little strained. I immediately feel bad for mentioning Endeavor during what I suspected was Rei's 'safe' time, but a real five year old wouldn't have noticed the true state of the family yet. Endeavor hasn't hit Rei in front of me...or, well, he has; but I was young enough at the time that I shouldn't remember that; and young kids loved their parents, even the shitty parents. I needed Endeavor to act more horribly in front of me, before I can start loathing him more blatantly. It wouldn't make sense otherwise.
Rei finally brings herself to answer. "Yes baby, let mommy know when the water is bubbling like daddy does to his coffee in the morning." She says, turning her face away from me as she speaks.
"Ok! I can do that!" I force myself to smile obliviously even though she's not looking anymore, so that the sound of it will be in my voice.
Rei goes rattling around in drawers. "Now if only our knives would stop disappearing..." She mutters under her breath.
"Oh, I think I saw one in the living room on a tv tray! I'll go grab it for you!" I jump down from the the chair and dash off to the living room before Rei can say anything. If I'm quick and quiet and avoid the floorboards that creak, she won't notice that I go straight passed the living room and to my room, where I dive into the back of my closet and shove one of the three stolen tea kettles I have stashed back there off the shoebox that contains all the sharp instruments in the house. I grab the first kitchen knife I find in there and rush back to hand it to Rei, whose brows are furrowed. I hope she hasn't noticed that I was gone slightly longer than it should take to grab something from the living room.
"Is your father leaving his utensils around the house?" She murmurs to herself again. Endeavor is the perfect scapegoat for anything and everything. Rei will never work up the courage to confront him about it, so it will stay a mystery, and I won't have to wonder if Rei is right around the corner with dangerous instruments at hand. Everyone is happy. Everyone except Rei.
The hair raises on the back of my neck as I listen to the thud of the knife on the cutting board behind me, and the whistle of the newest in a line of missing tea kettles shrieks with hot steam on the stove in front of me.
...
I lived a life before this one.
I was a different person before I was Todoroki Touya, I had a different name. You might wonder who I was before, what I did and what my old family was like, how I lived-and how I died. This isn't really the story of all that, though. There is only a few parts of my last life that are relevant to my current one, and only one that is immediately relevant.
...
"Could I get you to clean your room today?" My mother asks as she walks by my door. It is propped open because it makes both the woman and the cats nervous if they can't keep their eyes on me.
"Yes mam." I answer, with only an absent glance at her, and then it's back to my book.
This interaction repeats twice more with no attempt at cleaning made in the interim, each of us tenser each time, until finally she rips the door all the way open, on her face the expression of an offended bulldog, and she brings her hand back to whip my ass for the insolence, but suddenly a switch is flipped in my brain and I slap her hand away.
I'm all grown up now, (I think at the ripe old age of sixteen.) I'm big enough now, strong enough, old enough, that I don't have to let my parents whip me anymore. I have the power to stop them now, and I have had it for a while, and with that sudden switch flip in my head I also have the will.
She is outraged. She reaches out to whip me again, and this time my hand snaps out and smacks her in the face. "No." I say sternly, finger pointed in her face like she is a dog being admonished. Her face is one frozen moment of an enraged stranger. I have one euphoric moment where I am riding high and in control of my own destiny. And then she is on me.
I scramble off the other side of the bed, slapping her hands away all the while. She follows, and I am backing away and pointing and saying, "No. No." still like a trainer talking to a dog. And she...and she...
I collected novelty weapons back then. Throwing knives and swords and-
...and she grabs a double sided ax off the wall, and I am still backing away but the room is small, and I am still saying, "No, no!" but my tone is different now, and she raises the ax in the air and my own mother-
It's not fair to punish someone for something they haven't done yet.
I slip down from the chair and cross the room. I can't take it anymore.
"Can you teach me how to chop vegetables?" I ask Rei innocently, blue eyes peering up at her from behind red bangs, hand held out to take the knife back. "I want to learn how to cook dinner for mommy, so that she can relax more! I know you're really tired all the time!"
"Oh, sweaty." She coos down at me. "I know you like to help mommy, but knives are really dangerous, you know? Maybe when you're a little older..."
My grin is a little strained. "I'll be really careful. I promise!"
"Sorry honey, but I really don't think..."
She has turned her body to face me properly, the knife in her hand turning with her. My hand snaps out without my permission to grab her wrist, and she trembles and jumps at my sudden movement and freezes when my tiny fingers encircle her wrist. Her eyes are locked on my red, red hair. All my attention is locked on the knife in her hand. We wear identical strained smiles.
...
No wonder Rei is going to snap one day, with a son like me.
You know what they say about self fulfilling prophecies.