Warning: child abuse, implied spousal abuse and vomiting.
It had been a long week.
The thought floated through Shoto's mind as his car pulled to a stop before a red light, and the driver flicked on his left indicator and tapped against the wheel impatiently. It hadn't felt like a four day week, with the way his mind was constantly on the Sports Festival: on what he would need to accomplish to win; how far he needed to push himself; how many hours of trivial daily life (things such as food, sleep, social interaction and entertainment) that he could chisel off his schedule in order to have more time to train; how many hours of Father's intense scrutiny and suffocating control he could stomach before he gave in to the urge to scream—
Anyway, the week had been a long one, and even knowing that the next would be just as long (even with the addition of a national holiday on Monday, a holiday in honor of Empress Michimoto), Shoto was feeling slightly optimistic about his progress. His stamina was slowly building by the day, he was maintaining his body's fat-to-muscle ration in accordance with Father's wishes (thus sparing himself a tedious lecture), and his control over his right-side was reaching pin-point accuracy.
It had been a long week, but a good one overall. Shoto idly took in the familiar houses near his own as the front gates to the Todoroki household opened, and hoped that the next would prove to be just as successful.
The car Father usually took was absent in the driveway when Shoto's own car pulled in through the gates, which wasn't too unusual, given the time of day. Fuyumi would be absent as well, as she had been thoughtful enough to message him earlier in the day about covering a shift for a coworker. Shoto stepped out of the car and made his way over the stone path leading to the front entrance, wondering if Father's chauffeur was on holiday, if he'd taken the shinkansen to work or if he was simply trying to lull Shoto into a false sense of security. Saito-san was on her way out the door when he pushed it open, her work ending early on Fridays, and she bowed shallowly to him as he stepped inside.
Dinner would be on the low, carved wooden table (created from a single, 800-year-old tree, and with an eight-figure price tag to match) in the Chrysanthemum room where they partook a majority of their meals. Shoto lined his shoes neatly in front of the gap between the wooden flooring of the front entrance and the tiled genkan, an image of the room floating to the front of his mind:
The Chrysanthemum room was a large, 10-mat room, with the wall facing the outdoor garden covered in floor-to-ceiling yukimishoji: the delicate paper doors made specifically to be able to slide the bottom half upwards, allowing for a view of the snow in winter. They functioned as curtains, with thick glass doors on the outside to keep the elements out.
The ten tatami-mats were forever green and smelling of freshly-mowed grass (due to a careful schedule for changing them out on a monthly basis without disturbing any of the occupants of the house, something Shoto had happened to come upon after going out for his morning run ahead of schedule). The room had gained its name—the Chrysanthemum room—due to the fuchi (the cloth covering the edges of the tatami mats) on the tatami, which came in dove gray and had delicate white blossoms dotted throughout its complicated pattern of ever-green colored vines.
Two large Chinese characters (制御), together forming the word for 'control', had been written in a brisk, masculine hand on a beautifully patterned scroll, and it hung in a place of honor above the fragile flower arrangement artistically placed upon the recessed space of the toko, made of smooth, shining oak.
Shoto had stepped into this room (the one with the nearly-invisible stain on the floor cushion, from a cup of tea thrown in anger, that the cleaners had yet to notice) every day for as long as he could remember; and for as long as he could remember, he had made it a habit to come in from the Peony room (which was farthest from the kitchen, and closest to the stairs) and out through the wide, smooth balcony, in order to crouch down at the start of the long line of glass doors leading into the Chrysanthemum room. One of the yukimishoji doors would jam if not jimmied in the proper way, and before leaving any meal, he (and Mom, in the beginning, which later changed to Fuyumi) would ensure that the window stayed open that crack, even if it meant waiting to leave last after a meal, or finding some excuse to be near the window. This enabled them to take a quick look into the room the following day, giving them some forewarning of what they would be walking into, or—as Shoto had been allowed in his later years, if he was careful to stagger the days and give a good enough excuse—to skip the meal, depending on how bad Father's mood appeared to be.
Today, Shoto nodded to Saito-san, kicked off his shoes, ran up the stairs (quietly, quietly) to dump his things in his room, ran back down, and went about the familiar song and dance until he was crouched in front of the thin space between the floor and the wooden frame.
Empty. He straightened, expelling an unintentional breath of relief, and slid open the glass sliding door. Sneaking around like this became exponentially more difficult in winter, and some days Shoto would simply skip eating altogether rather than risk getting caught and having to be in the same room as the near-visible cloud of bad temper Father could carry around with him on the bad days.
Today was not one of those days, and Shoto gave a disinterested glance down at the food laid out with meticulous taste (jiru—made from buri, from the smell—takikomi-gohan, fried croquet, stewed root-vegetables and an assortment of pickles), and reluctantly dropped down onto a cushion and began eating.
Shoto enjoyed being alone. One of the only downsides, which was always on his mind as he ate quickly and with little regard for manners, was knowing that being alone was never something that could last.
But today, Shoto was in luck.
Though he ate as fast as he dared, there was no other sign of life in the house by the time he had muttered a quiet, "Gochisousama," and placed his chopsticks on their holder. Beginning to feel hopeful that Endeavor was on one of his patrols that would go late into the night, Shoto strolled out of the room (through the main sliding door with its green, hand-painted pines and sprawling mountains in watery-green and black ink), homework and thoughts of his training regime already running through his head, and only a vaguely-apologetic thought for Fuyumi, who would no doubt the left to clean up the dishes.
Rigid self-discipline was in his nature (or had, at least, been hammered into him deeply enough to pass as natural) so whether his Father or Endeavor were breathing down his neck or not, Shoto was perfectly capable of following the routine that sometimes felt as if it were engraved into his skeleton.
Homework (English, studying for tomorrow's quiz in Modern Art History, reading ahead in his math workbook) he completed within good time, and by the time he resurfaced, it was barely going on 7PM. Dinner had been eaten quickly and, in hindsight, too early, so Shoto got to his feet and stretched, thinking to get in his training hours already, in the off chance Endeavor would return home early and feel in the mood for a spar. Warming up had never helped, but looking exhausted sometimes encouraged Endeavor to give way to Father, who at least had some consideration for the fact that Shoto had this thing called School and this other thing called Appearances that must be religiously maintained.
He walked down the stairs and towards the dojo. On a whim, he decided to walk there using the balconies and around through the garden. Slipping into the wooden clogs lined up at convenient places for this very purpose, Shoto stepped through the smooth white stones lining the gray-stone path and forwards, under the long line of trees.
Looking at all the greenery made Shoto miss autumn with all its majestic glory. Shoto enjoyed the effervescent nature of fall, the way short-lived things could be made all the more beautiful for the way they were not meant to last.
(He loved fall and its short-lived glory, and at the same time, he hated and dreaded it with all of his being, because he had learned to fear fragile and short-lived things (people) just as he had learned to fear for them. But some things were to be repressed for the very sake of survival, and this was one pattern of thought Shoto put an incredible amount of time into packing away into the dark.)
He ran absent fingers over young Japanese maple trees as he passed them, waved to Blue, the red and white koi fish, and All Right, the gold koi fish in the pond—
("We'll name this one Blue, and this one All Right," Mom whispered, holding his waist tightly so he could lean forward to take a look.
"Whyzzat?" he whispered back, too loud in the way of all children everywhere.
He was too enraptured by this new exciting development to notice the way Mom kept glancing over her shoulder, or the way her shushes were threaded through with a bit more urgently than normal.
"Because this one is red and white, so all it's missing is blue. And this one is gold, and gold is a lucky color so… so gold is All Right, because… Because Mommy needs to believe that everything will be All Right, and because gold is a lucky color, so if I wish on it maybe... maybe it will come true."
Mom patted his head with a delicate, trembling touch when he tilted his head at her, still confused. Shoto's eyes began sparkling, then, as his mind made a sudden connection. "Izzat like All Mi—"
A hand pressed suddenly against his mouth, a hand that trembled even as it pressed hummingbird light. Shoto blinked at Mom, surprised and a little scared.
"You can't say that honey," she whispered, a sharp note of something in her voice Shoto was too young to recognize as fear. "You can't say that name, okay? It's just... I know you love All Might, but that's not the fishy's name! And..."
She dropped her hand, but solemn now from sensing the change in mood, Shoto only looked up at her quietly with large eyes and kept his lips zipped shut.
"You'll understand when you're older," she said, eyes dark and liquid in the warm glow of the electric lamps. The bruising along the edge of her jaw was well covered enough to not be obvious at first glance, and when she smiled, it was more than enough to hide the damage and the sadness in her eyes from Shoto, who only saw his mom, happy and smiling at him.
She pushed back flowing strands of powder-white hair and squeezed his small hand with her own.
Her dark gray eyes shutting against whatever she was holding back, Mom murmured: "And this should stay between us. It'll be our little secret, okay, darling? Just our little secret.")
The memory had been long buried and entirely forgotten.
Shoto's stared blankly at the small decorative pond, mind gone white with static. The hand raised to wave at the fish faltered, and dropped back to his side, limp.
Blue. All Right. How had he never seen the connection before?
The details of the scene became clearer, as the memory slowly crystallized in his mind's eye: after dark, no snow on the ground, but Shoto recalled seeing stars, now, crystal clear in that way only winter could manage in an area so close to the city. They must have been sneaking around, trying to avoid disturbing Father, who had very strict rules about sleeping schedules and bedtimes, even then. But, no—Shoto's short-lived obsession with All Might had been still going strong then, so he couldn't have been older than four or five. Mother had looked as young and as tired as she always had, back then, so all Shoto had to go on was the way his grammar and syntax hadn't been anywhere near up to par. She had most likely been hiding bruises, even then.
Shoto strained to remember, but he had been young; the knowledge wouldn't come. Endeavor had probably still been hiding the abuse; it hadn't seriously started until about a year after Shoto's Quirk came in. Until then, Endeavor hadn't done more than give Shoto bruising and strained muscles in the name of training, so Mom hadn't felt the need to step in.
His feet wanted to stay there, in the spot between the two white-speckled decorative stones—the ones with the perfectly smoothed tops, just right for sitting and staring at the sōzu, and waiting eagerly for its shishi-odoshi.
Shoto wavered, but in the end, with a clack-clack-clack of wood on stone, he moved on.
If he stopped to consider every memory that came welling to the surface in this house, he would never get anything done. Father could be home any second, Endeavor quickly roaring to the surface to bring about whatever new kind of hell he had managed to think up.
Sliding his hand over the railing absently, Shoto took one deliberate, solemn step after another. Taking a jump-and-slide over the smooth wood of the balconies no longer seemed appealing, in light of the new pictures crowding his mind. He walked over varnished wood, meticulously maintained, and around to the back of the sprawling estate, where Father had had the dojo built.
There had been mirrors lining one wall and thick padding on the floors (not the typical tatami, or the bill for changing out the singed mats on a daily basis would quickly cost more than the family's yearly budget) when Shoto first started using the dojo. When Father had stopped trying to be gentle and started bringing Endeavor into play, the damage to the room had escalated by the day. Soon, there wasn't a day that went by where they weren't shattering a mirror or starting a fire that would quickly spread. Endeavor had tried to pass it off as extra training, claiming that Shoto would have to learn to avoid collateral damage eventually, so it was good practice. The fire he had used he urged Shoto to absorb with his left side, or put it out with his right.
Shoto, still young and with almost zero control of his quirk, had tried and mostly failed.
In the end, after a month of continued damage and one nearly-catastrophic accident involving glass shards from a broken mirror and Shoto being thrown into them, Endeavor had given up and called for the room to be reformed.
Now the dojo had a slightly-absorbent material for its flooring, with cold-resistant and flame-retardant walls. The windows were high up in the ceiling and had no glass, only bars—cold had no effect on the members of the Todoroki household, though some less than others, and the risk of the glass shattering from the extreme temperature changes was too high. Shoto and his father were the only ones to use the dojo on a regular basis, and as the room was on the north side of the premises, there wasn't much direct sunlight. In the height of summer, when even being in shadow didn't do much to take away the suffocating humidity, Father would reluctantly allow Shoto to practice primarily with his right side.
(What Father had only belatedly realized, about two or three years ago, was that Shoto had no intention of training with his left side ever again, regardless of Father's opinion. This had, understandably, not gone over well.)
Shoto opened the reinforced door (titanium alloy blend, capable of withstanding extreme levels of heat) with the key in his pocket. Father had given it to him the first time he was 'allowed' into the dojo, telling him that it was 'for him alone', and 'not to be given to his siblings, under any circumstances'. Because he was special—because he was the child Endeavor had chosen to be his legacy.
What an honor.
Shoto shrugged off the thought, unwilling to let his mood be soured when he had this rare chance to train alone. The dojo had a small changing room off to the side, and he went in and changed into his gi.
His bare feet slap-slap-slapped against the floor as he walked, the sound bouncing slightly against the walls. He folded himself into lotus position on the floor in the middle of the room, wanting to let the quiet of the room settle his thoughts and get him into the right mindset. After a few minutes of quiet meditating, Shoto began his warm-up stretches.
On the far-left side of the large, auditorium-sized room, a series of work-out machines and free weights lined the walls. Shoto's daily training regime whether Endeavor was involved or not consisted of going through his kata, doing weight training, and running seven to ten kilometers a day on the treadmill or at the near-by running path that ran along the river (it went without saying that on the days where the injuries stood out like streaks of dark paint on a blank canvas, Shoto was forced to stick to the treadmill and forbidden from leaving the house at all. Given the choice, Shoto would always choose to leave the constricting house with all of its ghosts, even if that meant having a silent shadow, or sometimes even a car, intruding on his solitude.)
He swung his right arm out and to the side, fingers rigidly straightened like a blade, muscles tensed and aim true: if there had been a person before him, their trachea would have collapsed inwards and shattered under the hard side of his hand. Then he stepped back and exhaled, long and deeply. Sweat had lightly beaded across his face and neck during his training, and he walked over to one of the training benches to grab his towel and water bottle.
Shoto drank deeply, content with the warmth seeping from his skin and the feel of activated muscles; when finished, he placed the water bottle down again and looked at the machines contemplatively.
Yesterday had been cardio-intensive, with a new yoga routine he had been attempting that focused on flexibility, abs, and glutes. Today's routine was supposed to be upper-body strengthening with a focus on delts and traps, but…
Biting his lip, Shoto flicked his eyes to the door. Nobody was home; there wasn't anyone to tell on him, or even tell him what to do. No one would know if he decided to just… not work out. Just this once.
Shoto would know, but he wouldn't, and so long as he was careful…
Mind made up, and with only a slightly guilty conscience, Shoto flipped the towel over his shoulder and headed to the showers.
Just this once, just today, he would allow himself this. He would make up the difference tomorrow.
Stepping out of the shower and marveling at how different it felt not to be in some kind of pain, Shoto headed back to the main complex of the house, feeling surprisingly cheerful.
There was a small, separate housing complex on the grounds that housed the security personal. The Todoroki family outsourced their cleaning staff, and they tended to rotate companies every month for security purposes. There were cameras dotted throughout the grounds and about the outside of the house, so simply climbing over the wall to get out of the house was, while not impossible, quite difficult (a memory, an old, unpleasant one, tried to force its way into the front of his thoughts, but Shoto shoved it back down, unwilling to be distracted by unimportant, long-forgotten events). Shoto briefly considered trying anyway as he walked across the balconies, but in the end, shook the thought from his mind. It wasn't worth the hassle. He didn't feel any particular need to go out at the moment, anyway. Perhaps he would go to the Hydrangea room and watch some television. He had one in his room, but it was smaller than the one in the entertainment room, and Shoto felt the sudden urge to see what it was like without the constant pressure of his Father's presence. (There was nothing quite like being forced to watch a movie with someone you hated to make whatever you were watching awful.)
While passing the Wisteria room, Shoto paused. There had been a sound, almost like the car-wheels on gravel—but the sound of a group of bosozoku (motorcycle gangs that took unfortunate pleasure in disturbing the peace by removing the mufflers on their exhaust pipes and letting rip the intrusive roar of their revving engines) passing the house quickly overtook whatever sound had caught Shoto's attention, and he leaned physically away from the noise, disgusted, and forgot about anything else. Being near the Wisteria room—which was next to the Peony room and across the hall from the kitchen—made him remember that Fuyumi had bought muscat grapes yesterday, and feeling suddenly peckish, Shoto opened the windows to the Wisteria room instead.
The kitchen was spotless, as it always was.
Shoto's eyes slide carefully over the empty spot where an old-style kettle had once sat and headed directly to the fridge without taking in anything else. He flicked on the electric kettle with one hand as he dug around the fridge, vaguely considering the pros and cons of drinking something caffeinated this late in the evening. The highly-concentrated levels of caffeine in coffee meant that it stayed in your blood for something like six hours whether you wanted it to or not, and a quick look at the clock told Shoto that if he wanted to sleep before midnight, he'd better not go for that.
What about green tea? Shoto finally spotted the grapes, hidden behind a container of miso, and pulled it out to wash.
They had an excellent selection of green tea, which Shoto honestly preferred to coffee, most days. There was also a great plum-flavored tea that was Fuyumi's favorite, though Shoto, as he was running a finger over carefully organized rows of tea bags and containers, had the sudden thought that he'd like a cup of herbal tea, maybe something like camomile?
It was as he was pouring water into his cup, delicate white-and-yellow flowers floating on the surface of the water, that the kitchen door slammed open with a bang.
Hand jerking in surprise, Shoto let out a loud gasp of surprise as the hot water went flying, landing on his exposed arms and partially on his leg. The cup and kettle both dropped from his suddenly numb hands as Shoto stared.
He hadn't bothered to turn on the light, choosing to move to the fridge from memory. The fridge light and the hallway light had been enough light to see by; Shoto was suddenly regretting that decision.
The terrifying apparition that was silhouetted in the light of the hallway seemed larger than life and twice as frightening. Father ducked under the door frame—slowly, so slowly—and moved his large figure towards where Shoto stood, arms and leg throbbing in time with the beat of a heart that had jumped into his throat.
In the next instant, his head went flying to the side, and Shoto fell to the ground, stunned, the entire right side of his face throbbing.
Father had hit him.
"What'er you doing here," a low voice, slightly slurred, breathed at him. Father leaned down, putting their faces nearly together, and Shoto could smell the overpowering scent of alcohol on his breath. "What're you doin', hiding about like… like a thief, boy. What're you… you outta be, training, gettin'… gettin' stronger. You slackin' off, huh?"
Father had hit him. Father had… hit him.
His heart-beat throbbed in the place of contact as well as on the places where hot water had made contact, pain and disbelief merging together to create sickening nausea. His stomach lurched, and Shoto brought a trembling hand up to his mouth, unable to look away.
Fire burst to life along Father's chin and under his eyes, illuminating glowing blue eyes, the whites shot through with the red streaks of broken capillaries, and Shoto flinched back, unable to help himself, or the rise of fear.
"Your jus' like her," he said, and something in Shoto's chest attempted to gnaw its way down to his gut. "Week an' too soft to… you ain't got the balls to… you ain't got what it takes. Why do you have to… look like her. Soft, pretty. Useless. Jus' like her, you look jus' like her."
("He looks more and more like him every day… some days, his left side… I can't bear to look at it, and I can't… Mother, please, I can't take it anymore. I don't think I can continue to raise him. I don't think… I don't think I should be allowed to."
"…Mom?")
The image before his eyes—Fire billowing, Father looming, the pain in his arms and face and leg—merged with the image clawing its way to the front of his mind (Mom, on the phone, the fear in her face changing to disgusted horror, then pain, pain, and more pain).
It was too much. Over the sound of Father's rumbling voice, Shoto bent in half and threw up.
Mostly-digested food splattered across the wooden-paneling, and Shoto distantly heard Father curse. He heaved again, and again. There was the sound of someone stumbling away. A chair clattered, then fell to the ground with a dull clack.
"You're… disgustin'. Clean yourself up and get to the dojo, we've… we gotta…"
What they had to do, Shoto never found, as Father chose that moment to stumble out of the door. The sound of his heavy footsteps stomping their way towards the second floor broke through the piercing waves of pain radiating throughout his body.
Shoto, unmindful of the mess, flopped down onto his side and covered his face with both hands. Hysteria pressed fingers deeply into his eye sockets while panic took a tight grip on his lungs, and even the world behind his eyelids had begun to spin. His stomach ached, disgruntled at being empty, and his arms and legs stung with any physical contact. The right side of his face wanted to flinch away from any contact as well, but Shoto pressed all the harder, desperately trying to keep himself together, as if he could physically hold back all the little pieces that wanted to break away.
He failed, eventually, and the world blurred, all of the pieces that made him Todoroki Shoto floating away.
(Hours later, Fuyumi would come home after a dinner with friends to find him on the kitchen floor, and call security. He would spend the rest of the three-day weekend bedridden, unwilling and unable to leave his room, all the parts of himself still stuck in a distant, empty place. Later, Fuyumi would tell him that Father had spent most of the weekend checking on him, and wondered at the sign of concern; Shoto would turn his back to her, the little bits of himself that had managed to float back down to Earth wondering, too, and hating himself for it.)