Warning: canon-typical child abuse and spousal abuse, and Endeavor, who should come with his own trigger warning.

"Ladies and gentlemen, it's the first match of the second round!"

Shoto stalked his way up the stairs to the stage, tunnel vision already forming. His surroundings didn't matter; the roaring crowds, the tense forms of Midnight and Cementoss, and the towering figure wreathed in flames (Shoto's eyes had caught onto the person they had waited to see the second he stepped out of the tunnel and had ignored it ever since) didn't matter.

Midoriya had two fingers on his left hand bandaged. Shoto flicked his eyes down and quickly up again as he settled in his place across the stage. Good. That meant he would truly have a limited amount of times he could use his quirk.

As Present Mic stirred the crowds into a frenzy, Shoto stared into green eyes and thought: Here we are, finally. Are you ready to begin?

Midoriya's eyes glinted back at him, the look in them all determination and focus: Yes, I'm ready.

Shoto narrowed his eyes, and Present Mic readied his call to start.

Whether he had limited chances or not, giving Midoriya a chance to use his quirk would be a mistake. With that in mind, Shoto pulled his leg back and readied his stance to throw out his power the second the buzzer rang.

"Are you ready? …START!"

His quirk shot out through his right foot the second the last syllable left the pro-hero's lips. Frozen spikes burst out of the stage in a quickly building barrage that swallowed up ground in seconds. Shoto caught sight of Midoriya through the gaps in the ice—his wrist braced, hand glowing with lines of shining red—and clenched the muscles in his legs in preparation.

Even knowing what was coming, Shoto was thrown back by the massive gust of wind that exploded out of Midoriya's hand. His ice stood up to the force for one, two seconds, before shattering and flying backward. Shoto himself had had the forethought to place an ice barrier behind him, but it still knocked the breath out of him when he was slammed against it.

He breathed in and out evenly in the seconds that followed, eyes sharply focused to catch any movement, and thought: So that's how its gonna be, is it?

As the wind cleared, the clouds of ice parted to reveal Midoriya, left hand clenched around his right, the middle finger of his right hand dark purple and clearly broken in multiple places.

His opponent was obviously prepared to go to extreme lengths to meet his attacks. Shoto narrowed his eyes and shifted his stance in preparation, because what could he do in the face of such determination, but meet it head-on?

He sent his next attack, a sweeping surge of jagged blocks of ice, and was met with the same blast of wind. He brought his hands up to protect his face from the icy flurry, but managed to hold his position this time. He lowered his hands as it passed, and didn't immediately attack again.

Goading him into attacking first obviously wasn't an option; one glance at the pained, intense look on Midoriya's face told him that unless he got creative with his attacks, this was going to turn into a battle of attrition, wherein the one who held out the longest would win.

A smart move, Shoto had to acknowledge, as he exhaled white clouds into the building chill. Smart, but irritating. He found himself growing restless in the short pause between attacks, wanting Midoriya to go on the offensive, despite knowing that it wasn't going to happen.

Shoulders pulling forwards in annoyance, Shoto brought his foot forward and threw out his next attack, only to again be met by Midoriya's quirk.

It was time to change things up.

"I'll do my best not to drag this out," he promised through gritted teeth. He then hunched his back and threw his arms out for balance as he cast his next attack. On the wings of that attack (even as Midoriya met his ice with the unstoppable force of his quirk), Shoto created the beginnings of a mammoth construct with his quirk: a towering of glittering ice, one that grew further upwards as he ran up its length, to take him up and above Midoriya.

At the apex of his ice tower, and just as Midoriya smashed his platform, Shoto jumped, twisting his body as he fell to bring up his right hand for his next attack.

Midoriya looked up, face twisted from the pain of his fifth shattered finger, this last one on his still-damaged left hand, and jumped back as Shoto brought his hand smashing into the ground. His quirk shot out of the point of contact, creating reaching fingers of ice that chased after the fleeing Midoriya.

His ice, in the end, was faster: his quirk met Midoriya's outstretched-foot—still in the middle of jumping backward—and quickly grew, threatening to climb up his leg, and higher still. Shoto stayed where he was, tensed, in preparation for Midoriya's next move. A part of him hoped that the ice would move fast enough to encase the other boy before he could throw out his next attack, but Shoto began building a solid wall behind him, just in case.

Then—

A cold hurricane threw him off his feet.

Shoto flew through the barrier he had created, shattering it and stealing his breath, and flew still farther back, before finally finding his footing. He scrambled to create another wall and barely managed to catch himself and build a hasty shield in front of him before he went over the boundary line.

He got to his feet, slowly, as the winds cleared, and called out:

"That was considerably stronger than your last few attacks, wasn't it."

The ice shield in front of his broke off and shattered at his feet as he stood, slightly breathless still, and stood tall and strong to glare down at the boy on the other side of the stage.

"Is that your way of telling me to keep my distance?"

That last, desperate move to stop his momentum had almost depleted his quirk. Shoto's right arm trembled from the building cold, his right side not made to withstand it for long, and he knew without looking that the skin would be turning pale-white from frostbite.

Still, what he had left would have to be enough. He had shown the world—and Endeavor—what he was capable of. Speaking of which…

"Look at you, Midoriya," he taunted, his concentration only half on the words coming out of his mouth as his eyes searched the stands for his target. "All you've been doing is defending, but you look dead on your feet. I hope I'm not being too hard on you."

Ah, but taunting a man when he was down wasn't very good sport, was it? Shoto's eyes found what they had been looking for, and opened wide in triumph at what they saw. Endeavor's face in the stands was tense with displeasure, and the sight of it sent a grim thrill through his shivering body. He exhaled, once, and allowed the resulting cloud of steam to cover the welcome sight.

"If I have been… well, my bad. But I have to thank you, Midoryia," he continued, giving the man one last, triumphant look. "Thanks to you, my father's face has gone dark and clouded."

He turned to his opponent, feeling both grateful and slightly apologetic.

It was time to end this.

"With both your arms destroyed, there's not much you can do, is there? You're finished," Shoto said, pointedly, but not unkindly. He felt strangely benevolent in the wake of his triumph, and felt the urge to make this as painless and easy for his opponent as possible.

He couldn't have done this without him, after all.

"Let's get this over with."

With nearly the last of his swiftly dwindling power, in the last few minutes before the frost completely overtook his right side and he succumbed to hypothermia, Shoto sent out a large, swiftly building tidal wave of ice, his largest yet, and waited for the inevitable.

But instead of the graceful defeat he had expected from Midoriya, green eyes glared malevolently up at him from under scraggly green locks, and the boy snarled at him: "What the hell are you looking at?"

The words, and the vicious way they had been delivered, physically jolted him back, and Shoto released a surprised breath, his eyes going wide.

A large burst of wind destroyed his attack in the next second, and Shoto's eyes only went wider as he went flying backward, sliding and scrambling to get his feet under him, and barely managed to build a wall to stop his momentum before he crossed the boundary.

Shoto gasped in the aftermath, unable to fathom how completely he had been caught off guard.

"You crazy bastard," he rasped, stunned eyes tracking the damage, "you used your already broken fingers…?"

He rose to his feet, slow in his shock, and wondered aloud, "What's driving you to go this far?"

"Have you seen yourself? You're trembling, Todoroki," came the reply. Shoto looked up sharply, snapped out of his confused wonder. Something that wasn't cold trembled to life in his body, and Shoto felt a strange premonition of dread.

"Quirks are just another manifestation of your physical abilities. There's a limit to how much your body can take of your quirk, isn't there?"

When Midoriya hit on the simple cure for his right side's limits—using his left side, his fire, to warm his right—Shoto tensed, dread shifting to annoyance. It had only been a matter of time before someone noticed, but Shoto had been hoping he could get through the entire festival without it coming out.

Midoriya clenched his teeth and began to close his fist as he bit out the next sentence:

"Everyone is trying their absolute hardest to reach their dreams, to be number one… and you want to win using only half of your quirk?"

Shoto stared down at the seething boy, that uncomfortable something settling in his gut as Midoriya made direct eye contact for emphasis, and finished with:

"Are you even trying? You have yet to put even a single scratch on me!"

The hoarse yell stung like a slap to the face, and Shoto nearly reached up to his cheek, sure he would find heat there to match the way his breath had completely left him.

"Come at me with everything you've got!" Midoriya screamed, his fist clenched around his broken fingers.

The air in Shoto's lungs tightened as the intent of the other boy's words crawled across the skin of his unused half. "Come at you with everything I've got?" he shot back, something awful bulging out from the lump in his gut. It spread its decaying roots throughout his body, sending sharp spikes of anger through sensitive nerves and intertwining with ribs already throbbing from repeated abuse. It was an ugly feeling to go with an ugly emotion, and Shoto felt his mouth twitch up in a snarl. "Did my shitty old man buy you off or something?"

He sprang forward, that ugliness catching fire to become a burning rage.

His feet quickly closed the distance separating them, but he found himself moving slower than his rage commanded he run as the overuse of his quirk truly began to make itself known. Shoto threw himself forward regardless, determined to prove his point.

When he was close enough, he jumped, knowing that from such a close distance there was no way the other boy could dodge—

Midoriya's eyes narrowed, and Shoto felt a jolt of realization: he had moved at the instant Shoto's foot left the ground.

Glowing lines appeared on bruised and broken skin, and Shoto's eyes widened, but it was already too late—

A fist plowed through his gut, expelling every iota of air from his lungs, and Shoto was sent flying back.

As he tumbled to the ground at full force, unable to do more than attempt to roll and limit the damage to any particular part of his body, Shoto's only consolation was that he had managed to ice one of Midoriya's arms as he was thrown back.

Gritting his teeth on all the questions building on his tongue, Shoto launched himself forward in time with another wave of ice, distantly noting that the power and speed of his attack had noticeably dropped.

He drew closer to Midoriya and threw out ice carelessly, heedless of the way he occasionally got caught in his own quirk. Midoriya matched him quirk for quirk, and they both began to throw out fists and kicks as their stamina levels steadily dropped in unison.

They kept their dodging, floundering attacks until one of Shoto's attacks nearly got through Midoriya's guard.

Shoto watched, eyes flying wide, as Midoriya stuck his thumb—one of his last, unbroken fingers—in his mouth, and activated his quirk with barely a second's hesitation.

The resulting gale threw him back again, and Shoto put another wall at his back, aware that he had maybe one, two tries left before his ice would no longer cooperate with his violently shaking limbs.

"Why are you going this far?" he asked, desperately, as he got to his feet. "This is a sport, not a battle, and you... what are fighting for? Why won't you just let this go?"

Shoto had his reasons—good, important reasons—to win this fight; what was driving Midoriya to such dangerous, unnecessary lengths? Why couldn't he just sit back and admit defeat? Why couldn't he give Shoto this win, and leave the stage with his head held high, knowing that he had at least tried his best?

"Because," Midoriya gasped, his voice laced with the excruciating pain he must be under, "I have expectations I have—that I want—to live up to."

The arm that had been broken was purple and oddly lumpy, no doubt from bone shards poking out at different points; but his fingers looked infinitely worse, most of them nearly black, twisted beyond belief and dripping blood at a consistent pace onto the frost-covered ground.

Why, Midoriya? Why, why, why?

"Because I want to be able to respond to those expectations with a smile, every single time, without fail... and become the coolest hero ever!"

The words rebounded within his mind, knocking against deeply buried memories and hurtling them to the surface.

("Shoto….")

His moment of inattention cost him. Midoriya got under his guard and punched him in his middle again, sending him skidding back on his feet.

"There's no way for me to know or understand the true extent of your circumstances, nor your resolve. But for you to become Number One without giving it your all, without using the entirety of your quirk, in order to completely reject your father…"

Shoto gagged, and staggered upwards, unable to help the way Midoriya's next words burrowed their way into his mind and sunk their claws in deep:

"When I hear that? All I can think is that you need to stop fucking around!"

(He gagged, and lost his breakfast all over the dojo floor. Tears streamed down his face as he tried to control his heaving, arms moving to cradle the throbbing bruise now marring most of his chest from where Father's fist had made contact.

"Stand up!" Father barked, and he tried his best, but he couldn't seem to get his breath back, and his legs weren't obeying his commands.

"If you're downed by something as simple as this, never mind standing up to All Might, you won't be able to survive a simple villain attack—"

"Please, stop!" Mom cried out. She touched his back (gently, always gently) and continued desperately: "He's only five!"

"He's already five!" His father countered with a roar. Shoto flinched away from the noise, and heaved again. "Get out of my way!"

Crack. The by-now-familiar sound of a hand meeting flesh and a cry of pain shocked air back into Shoto's lungs, and he struggled to sit up, weeping eyes fighting to find—

"Mom—")

Midoriya ran at him, slowly, as if someone had reached out and put the world on hold. Shoto felt frost creeping up to encase his leg, equally as slowly, from outside a world that had narrowed down to a dark point: a point wherein nothing else existed but the familiar sight of his mother, on the ground, motionless.

...Shut up.

("I don't wanna, Mom," Shoto sobbed into his mother's arms. "I… I…"

He clenched his fingers into her shirt, his body shaking with the force of his sobs.

"I don't want to be like Dad! I don't want to become someone who bullies you, Mom!")

Shut up. Shut UP.

(A hand reached up, smoothed over his hair.

"But you want to become a hero, don't you?" she asked kindly, in a voice as sweet and clear as the chiming of bells.

Shoto's breath hitched in confusion, and he pushed himself far back enough to look Mom in the face.)

The boundaries of his frozen world widened, then, showing:

Midoriya, right arm cocked, desperation and determination in the lines of his jaw, in the tensing of his eyes—

—Particles of Shoto's ice, floating in the air from the continual back and forth of their quirks—

(Mom, lips pulled in a sweet, beautiful smile, mouth moving to form the words: "You can be a hero, if that's what you want; if that's the kind of future you feel so strongly about.")

—Then Midoriya's fist met his middle, and Shoto was, again, sent flying.

(Shoto looked down from the balcony as he walked, pausing at what he saw:

His siblings—Natsuo, Toya, Fuyumi—playing ball together in the courtyard. They were clearly enjoying themselves, Natsuo choosing that moment to break into raucous laughter as Toya tripped over his feet and fell, losing control of the ball.

Shoto leaned over the rail, longing pulling at him. What he would give to be able to join them.

Seconds later, a strong hand captured his wrist in a punishing grip and pulled him at a speedy, too-fast stride down the smooth wood of the balcony.

Shoto, too weak to fight it, let his father pull him away, unable to silence the words shot down at him sternly:

"Don't look at them, Shoto. They are from a different world than you.")

Shut up. Please, stop it.

("Mother, I'm going crazy…"

Shoto stopped at the slightly-opened door to the kitchen, his attention caught.

"I can't do it anymore. Every day, the children look more and more like him."

Mom stood, her back to him, her phone against her right ear. Steam rose from the kettle boiling on the stove.

"Shoto's… that child's left side, sometimes I can't bear to look at it…"

The kettle bubbled and gurgled, more than hot enough for a cup of tea, but Mom didn't move to turn off the fire.

"I can't raise him anymore. I almost feel like I… like I shouldn't."

Shoto gripped the sliding door, unsure of what he was hearing, but positive he didn't like it. He needed to know… he wanted Mom to explain what she was saying. He wanted her to tell him that it was alright, that she was just being silly.

He wet his lips, and into the short silence, hesitantly called: "…Mom?"

At the sound of his voice, Mom's back went rigid, the arm holding the phone dropping limply to hang at her side.

Mom turned to look at him, slowly, so slowly, and when she had faced him fully, he could see that her eyes were wide with terror.

The kettle whistled. Shoto took two, three, four steps inside, his mouth open on a question—and his world disappeared into an excruciating spiral of pain.)

I.…

The sky was blue, occasionally dotted through with white; the sun shone down, reflecting off flying crystals of ice.

And Shoto was once again sent spiraling.

("Good grief, and at such an important stage in your development, too…"

Shoto stood, his back to the door. He stared, blankly, at the space in front of him, not acknowledging the words. His entire right eye was covered in bandages, and every time he breathed it throbbed, throbbed, throbbed.

"Where's Mom?" he asked flatly.

"Hmm? Oh, she injured you, so I had her committed," Father said dismissively, the careless tone of his voice announcing he had washed his hands of the matter, and considered the topic closed.

Shoto hunched his shoulders, shuddering on the rage catching in his throat, and snarled, "This is your fault."

"What was that? Speak up, boy."

Shoto glared through the tears blurring his vision and set his teeth deeply into the resolve building in his heart.

"You made her like that. You did that. And I hate you, and I won't ever forgive you.")

"As long as I have air to breathe, I will continue to reject..." The words fought to be released, nearly lost in the swell of all the emotion taking up space on his tongue. "...That man's power."

Endeavor's power: that awful, horrific power. Shoto would reject it in its entirety. He would build up a future as the Strongest Hero, without once having to rely on—

"BUT IT'S NOT HIS POWER, IS IT? IT'S YOURS, TODOROKI! IT'S YOURS!"

The words punched the breath out of him, and this time, when the bright colors of memory overtook his sight, the emotion that filled Shoto was not one of fear, anger, or dismay:

("Yes, it's as you say! Children do inherit quirks from their parents. The important thing to focus on here, however, is not that connection with the previous generation, but with their flesh and blood, your own flesh and blood—recognizing yourself, that that power is in you, and a part of you. That is a large part of why I say: I Am Here."

All Might grinned down at Shoto from behind the TV, sending his heart soaring.

"Do you understand?")

("But you want to be a hero, don't you? It will be all right, if it's you.")

Before he knew it, he had forgotten. How could he have forgotten?

("You don't have to be caught in a prison of your blood. It's okay for you to become—)

The scar on his eye tingled, and with the smallest of sparks, heat built, and grew, and continued to grow.

(—the person you want to be.")

…Then the world ended in fire. And out of the flames, Shoto felt his world realign, and be reborn anew.

The air itself tasted different. He breathed in, and out, and felt no fear—only the strangest sense of relief, and building gratitude that swelled like the fire billowing up and out, into the air, from his left side.

"Even though you've been fighting so hard to win… damn you."

The frost on his right side began to succumb to the heat, and Shoto felt a burst of energy as his ice settled and reconnected, gathering at the tips of his fingers, ready to be unleashed. The thrill of it was addicting, this feeling of fullness as his right and left sides met and two contradictory sources of nature, rather than erupting, consolidated their power.

"To help out your enemy like this—which one of us is fucking around now?"

He pulled at his flames, trying to control the output, but quickly giving up, upon realizing he couldn't actually bring himself to care.

This feeling… what was it? It burned like the fire of his quirk, but it didn't hurt the way it should. Whatever it was, it pulled at the corners of his mouth, until Shoto couldn't have stopped the fierce grin from transforming his face if he tried.

"SHOTO!" A familiar voice billowed, from somewhere far away.

Shoto could hear the words, distantly, but they never registered in his brain as anything more than noise. Shoto was too caught up reveling in this new revelation, this almost-religious experience of remembering that this power, his power, was not something to be feared.

This power was his, and no one—not his father, his mother, his panic or his fear—would ever be able to take it away from him again.

His right eye blurred and leaked a trail of icy water down his face.

His fire, his ice, his quirk. His, and his alone.

The heat dried the tears, clearing his vision, and showed Midoriya's smiling face.

"What are you smiling for?" he rasped. His quirk thrummed with power, demanding to be released, and he had every intention of doing just that.

"With those injuries, in this situation… you're absolutely insane."

Shoto swiped at his face and pulled his tired, battered, exhausted body into a fighting stance.

His abs ached from the repeated strikes; the skin on his left side, unaccustomed to the heat, tingled distractingly, even while it twitched and shuddered with the fire eagerly pushing to be set free.

Everything hurt, but his mind felt truly at peace for the first time in a long, long while, and Shoto couldn't remember ever having felt so alive.

"You only have yourself to blame for what's going to happen next."

Ice exploded out of his right foot and gleefully took off in all directions, throwing gushing clouds of air up to feed his forever-starving flames.

Across from him, Midoriya's left leg took on the characteristics of his quirk, his body bending forwards in preparation. His eyebrows tightly knitted together as he tensed, and his eyes glowed fiercely with the reflection of Shoto's flames.

Shoto's ice grew, and grew, and kept on growing. It filled the full expanse of the stage and crawled its way over into the corners of the arena. Waves grew and fell, shattering to make way for more and more. As Midoriya leapt over the ice, using his quirk to get over the frozen mountain shooting towards him, and lunged, directly at him, Shoto drew his arm back and let heat build, and build, and build.

Midoriya, quirk shining brightly in his one-usable arm, and Shoto, hand glowing white-hot with his quirk, made contact.

Thank you, Midoriya.

The world took a deep breath... and detonated.

Typhoon-level winds blew, launching massive chunks of concrete—from Cementoss's unsuccessful attempt to contain the damage—into the air.

Shoto encased himself in ice, long enough to protect himself from the winds and the concrete both, before dropping most of it, knowing he had stayed inside the boundary but needing to know how Midoriya had fared.

Present Mic was complaining about not being able to see, which served to remind Shoto that he had an audience but was otherwise totally unhelpful, if relatable.

As a few remaining billows helped clear the steam, Shoto got a clear view of—

"Mi.. Midoriya is out of bounds!" Midnight announced, stuttering in her shock.

Shoto stared, too exhausted and stunned for words. The entire left side of his uniform had burned away, exposing his skin to the mildly-unpleasant feeling of the ice still at his back.

Midoriya had lost. Shoto had—

"Todoroki advances to the third round!"

—won.