"What do you want me to do?" Natsuo asked, staring directly at his childhood home. A place not filled with laughter, memories and games as expected, but with tears, sorrow and screams.
"Burn it all to the ground," Touya Todoroki replied, shrugging. "It is as simple as that."
"You know that that doesn't change anything."
"It is symbolic, Natsuo," Touya said, feeling his own flames flaring from excitement under the layers of burned skin. "Don't you want to go to bed at night, knowing that this place is gone for good? That the only thing left will be the stories only we know."
Natsuo's eyes shone with awareness. His brother had the right. He wouldn't have to look at this house ever again. Wouldn't have to come to "family" dinners and pretend that he could breathe the same air as his so-called father.
Everything would burn down - the damn training room, from which Toya would come back every day and complain and cry, in which Shoto had to waste his childhood. The dining room, where they would awkwardly sit and pretend to be something they were not - a family. All would be gone for the better.
Natsuo turned his gaze to look at his older brother, also known as Dabi from the League of villains. The first thing he always noticed were the staples that held his flesh together. The sight of them made his blood boil as usual. They, as was the burned skin, were the prime examples of his father's cruelty. Endeavor himself had admitted that he could have also killed Touya with his bare hands. That was before they all found out that Toya was still alive.
Natsuo thought that this was worse - Endeavour hadn't killed him, he had turned his brother into a living dead man, forced to endure pain every day until the end of his life.
The cold wind caressed his cheeks as he watched his childhood home from a distance. The emotions he was feeling could not be pinpointed. It was a weird mixture of a lot of feelings that Natsuo couldn't understand.
Yes, he was angry and he knew why, but to his surprise, there was some hesitation in his heart about what Touya asked him to do. There was this weird sensation that just made breathing a little harder and his chest a little tighter.
Why would he feel bad about it? This place wasn't good or special in any way. To his siblings and mother, it only brought pain and bad memories. Why was he of all people so conflicted? He was the one that refused to give his father a chance for atonement or forgiveness. He was the one that stood up to him and hated him for what he had done. He was not as caring as Shouto to actually want to see where Endeavor's intentions went. Why would this damned home mean anything to him?
Touya, on the other hand, didn't seem to have any holdbacks. There was one clear emotion present on his face, reflected in the drop of blood streaming down his cheek - excitement. In its pure, raw form.
Natsuo was aware that his brother wasn't exactly sane and he gave that to the years of emotional abuse from their father. Currently, he looked like a child about to set off some fireworks, which in their case could be seen as true.
"No one will miss this place, Otouto," The older brother broke the silence that had spread between them. He sounded as if he had picked Natsuo's inner turmoil and the tone of his voice was that of someone who wanted to convince.
"I know," The younger one replied and glued his gaze to the ground.
This was his childhood home. Where he would hear Shouto and Toya cry, his mom scream and see Fuyumi cover her ears as if to stop the world.
It also was the place of a lot of late-night conversations with Touya and Fuyumi about literally everything. A place where they played lots of different games and would dream about the future.
Dreams that didn't even have a chance, a future that would never come.
One breath later and Natsuo opened his eyes, his gaze still towards the ground. Burning their house wouldn't change a thing - it wouldn't erase the pain or help him stop hearing the crying and screaming. It wouldn't heal his brother's scars or abolish Shouto's trauma, nor help this family get together as Fuyumi dreamed.
Deep down, Natsuo knew that the hesitation came from that. He needed something to remind him of the hate he bred for his father. The house was the perfect symbol of a rotten picture-perfect family. Being inside, or even the sight of it was the perfect reminder of why he couldn't stand Endeavor.
Something in his grey eyes lit. "Screw it." The thought echoed in his head and he turned to face Touya.
The wind was still as cold as before, but Natsuo felt his body getting warmer. "Give me some of your fire," he extended his arm and opened his palm.
A smile spread on Toya's face and his own finger turned blue from his flames. "With pleasure."
Natsuo absorbed the fire and his own hand blazed with blue. He had just recently found out that his quirk wasn't only an iced based one. It actually allowed him to control his body's temperature in a way that allowed him to hold ice as well as fire, but not being able to produce any of them himself.
At first, it was a revelation that he despised just because it made him look a little more like his father. It was recently that he had come more in terms with it and wanted to make it work in his favour.
He spread the fire to both of his hands, which he clenched in fists.
Touya's smile grew even wider as he watched his younger brother hold the colour of his flames. "Let's go then," he invited and both walked down the hill towards the big wooden house. It was the hill, where Toya burned, where Dabi was first born.
With just two touches, one from Touya and one from Natsuo, the building was set on fire. The blue flames hungrily scorched the wood away and smoke rose into the sky.
The two brothers stayed a long time, watching from back on the hill their childhood home - if it could even be named a home - burn down.
Endeavor's own flames destroyed what he had built. But in reality, this house was destroyed years ago, however, only internally. Now, externally as well, in an attempt to leave this only among the ones that had been inside to witness it first hand.
Even when nothing was left of it, but ash, the ghosts of what had happened would still inhabit this place.
"The past never dies," Touya Todoroki whispered under his breath as the blue flames reflected in his eyes, causing them to glow in a strange, almost mystical way.
Without thinking at all, Natsuo Todoroki found himself repeating his older brother's words, as if he wanted to taste them in his own way, "the past never dies."