A/N: Introducing: Dadzawa

"'You're in my way.'"

The words, and the man before him, stopped him in his tracks.

Endeavor stood before him, arms crossed, a triumphant look in his eyes. His blue suit (with its specially commissioned, flame-retardant material) had specific areas where fire was able to pass through, allowing the man to give off the image of someone made of fire.

Shoto stared at him—at the flames around his eyes, his chin, his body—and found that he wasn't intimidated in the slightest. He wasn't even angry. He felt…

"You're not going to say that this time?" Endeavor continued, grinning like it was such a good joke. "You need to control your left side. You're just letting it all out, which is not only dangerous, but wasteful. Still, you have finally abandoned your childish tantrum and become my perfect upgrade! That is something to be praised."

He reached out a hand, giving Shoto a fierce grin that showed all of his teeth. "After you graduate, come work for me, Shoto! I'll lead you down the path of the mighty!"

Shoto looked at the outstretched hand… and felt nothing at all.

"Like I could abandon anything," he murmured, more to himself than the man before him. He brought up his left hand to his face, and stared at it. The world before his eyes focused on that hand, on the veins and flexing tendons, on the lines and wrinkles in the skin. It helped him keep the wavering edges of his vision from sending him floating away at a time when he really couldn't afford it.

(There would be plenty of time, later, to fall apart.)

"The resolve, the promise I've been carrying… they aren't something that can be so easily reversed or broken."

It was true that, while in the arena and faced with the full-force of Midoriya's intent, it had been easy to forget all the reasons he had sworn to never use his left side. But now, in the aftermath (with his right side tingling from overuse, even with help from his left, and his left side beginning to tingle and sting from merely being exposed to air), Shoto found that those reasons were starting to trickle back into his head, bringing with them doubt, fear, and uncertainty.

But back then, in that split-second before the power in his hand—the unstoppable force—had met Midoriya—the immovable object…

"…I forgot about you," Shoto finished the thought aloud. He began walking past Endeavor, leaving the man to his stunned silence with the parting words:

"Whether this is a good thing, an exceptional thing, or a bad thing…"

Shoto looked ahead, his mind beginning to buzz with a multitude of thoughts, the man he left behind already forgotten.

"…I need some time to think about it."

The time between his match with Midoriya and his next match, against Iida, passed by in a flash, as did the match itself.

Shoto, his internal narrative crushed into little pieces he was still too uncertain and confused to be able to piece back together, fell back on well-learned patterns and attacked Iida with his ice—boxed him in, walls of ice in a cone, the boundary at his back giving him no escape. This proved unsuccessful, as Iida simply used his engine quirk to boost himself up and over it.

The first, nearly invisible kick from how fast it moved, came at his head, and Shoto dodged it; but the next one came on its literal heels so fast he was unable to stop it from hitting him on the back and into the ground at full force.

It had been a good attack, Shoto would give him that. Unfortunately, he had been trained with pain as his dearest and closest friend, and even as he choked on it, his mind taking one, two precious seconds to shake off the disorientation, he didn't let that stop him from icing over the engines on the leg closest to him.

A second later, this move paid off. When Iida grabbed him by the back of his shirt and began to pull him into a run, his engines stalled, from the ice blocking his mufflers, well away from his goal.

"Since I was using only ranged attacks, you forgot that I could pull little tricks like this too, didn't you?" Shoto gasped, his breathing still uneven. Ice shot up Iida's legs, then upwards and onwards, to envelope his torso.

He pulled himself falteringly to his feet, admitting to the fully-frozen Iida that his attempts to be wary of Iida's special move hadn't been quite as successful as he had anticipated, despite his best efforts.

Midnight announced his win, then; the crowd went wild, and Shoto stared down at his left hand as he caught his breath, his thoughts chasing after each other in a dizzy, confusing circle.

Shoto studied his left hand, eyes tracing each line and indentation, counting the calluses, scars and burn marks.

How long had it been since he had forgotten? He had spent so long repressing every hint of memory, every glimmer of thought related to that time, that he couldn't recall when he'd last consciously chosen to think about it.

(His dreams had never been kind enough to let him forget, but that was different; dreams were the places where horror stories were born, and his mind had never needed actual substance in order to imagine up terrible constructions to torture him with.)

It was as if, at that moment, when he had consciously decided to discard the part of him that had hurt his mother so terribly, he had chosen to hide grief with hate; and in doing so, he had nearly succeeded in erasing his mother's existence from within him entirely.

Perhaps a part of him had hoped to remove only the parts of his mother that had hurt him (and not merely the physical pain, but the emotional one, from knowing how much his mere existence was hurting her); Shoto stared down at his hand, snapshots of his mother flitting through his mind, and knew that in the process, he had managed to cut her away completely.

The revelation hurt, but Shoto refused to shy away from it.

Mother, I….

The thought was never given time to finish.

With a loud, uncompromising bang, the door slammed open. A bright-red sole, attached to a black boot, slowly lowered, revealing the perpetually scowling face of Bakugo Katsuki.

Shoto couldn't even bring himself to be surprised. Of course Bakugo would do something like that—in his mind, surely, knocking was for other people.

"Huh?" came the low exclamation, which quickly turned to an incensed, "why the fuck are you here, this is waiting room thre—wait, no it isn't, this is two? What the fuck, that's so confusing."

Shoto looked at him, acknowledging and dismissing his presence between blinks, then looked back at his hand.

This was, apparently, the wrong move, as the sound of stomping feet immediately headed in his direction.

"I may have got the fucking room wrong, but what's with that damn attitude? We're playing each other next, you fucker!"

He wasn't wrong, but Shoto wasn't sure how that was relevant, so he didn't bother looking up—

"Hey, hey, hey, where the fuck are you looking at, you half-and-half bastard!"

—until a hand rudely inserted itself in his personal space and let off a series of explosions. Shoto leaned his face away, feeling tired, but something about the words the boy had used roused his interest.

"That was what Midoriya said," Shoto mused, the memory coming to him in a flash of realization. He turned his head, giving Bakugo the attention he was demanding to receive.

"That guy, he came at me with all the subtlety of a bullet train and crashed through all the problems I've been carrying. You guys were childhood friends, weren't you? Has he always been that way, getting involved in matters that don't concern him, out of a simple, honest desire to help?"

The thought of those two as friends was still mind-boggling, but Shoto thought that for someone like Midoriya—with that earnestness, that incredible desire to help—even being friends with Bakugo wasn't too impossible to rule out.

Bakugo didn't seem to agree.

"That fucking nerd—"

With a bang, the table in front of him went flying. Shoto's eyebrows rose in mild irritation, because he had been resting his hands there, and that kind of violence was really just, incredibly unnecessary. It wasn't even time for the match yet, and Shoto had actually been busy with other things, thank you.

"—Who cares about him!"

Red eyes glared down at him, something more complicated than pure fury in them, demanding Shoto's full attention.

"I don't give a fuck about what going on with you, or your shitty family problems—"

The words made his eyes narrow, but he wasn't given time to think on it, as Bakugo leaned forward and finished with a menacing hiss:

"—I don't give a flying fuck! Just use your fucking flames on me too! I'll crush them and you both into the damn ground."

He turned away then, finally, and headed to the door.

Shoto looked after him as he passed through the door and his stomping footsteps echoed down the hall, once again contemplative and uncertain.

(That indecision would follow him into his match with Bakugo, where he was presented with the perfect opportunity to use his fire… and instead of releasing his quirk—again letting unstoppable force meet immovable object, to see which one would come out on top—had let his hand, and his quirk, drop, allowing the approaching force to come roaring at him with nothing to meet it but the confused jumble of his thoughts.

And the world faded to black.)

Ice. Fire.

Shoto stood, his back straight, as the stage for the award-giving ceremony rose slowly out of the ground with a quiet rumble—one that did nothing to cover the sounds of an absolutely infuriated Bakugo, who had been chained to a quickly created concrete wall, in an effort to keep him from continuously leaping at Shoto and demanding a rematch.

Shoto had opened his eyes to reality shortly after Recovery Girl walked away from his bed, feeling better from the results of her quirk, but infinitely more exhausted than he could remember feeling in a long, long time. He had known, then, that he had lost; but the loss didn't sting in quite the way it should have.

Fire, ice. Fire and ice.

The platform jostled slightly as it clicked into place, and Shoto silently stood under the focused attention of the entire world, his eyes unseeing.

Midnight announced who would be handing out the medals, and the crowd went wild as the larger-than-life silhouette of the Symbol of Peace rose above the stadium walls and flew down to the front of the platform.

He vaguely heard Midnight apologizing to All Might (something about talking over him), and watched with little interested as All Might began the presentation with Crow Boy, who had been given bronze in the unexpected absence of Iida.

(The news bothered him, somehow, as they seemed uncharacteristic of their earnest Representative, and Shoto idly noted it down as something to investigate, later.)

Fire. Ice.

Two parts of himself, opposites in all the ways that mattered; he had hoped to keep them that way, separate from both himself and each other, for the rest of his life. If that were to change, if he were to try to bring those parts together... what would become of this confused mess of a person, made up of broken and twisted pieces all cobbled haphazardly together?

If both sides were brought together to form a 'whole', what would become of Todoroki Shoto? If the two parts were connected… would his current existence cease to be?

He tried to put this into words when All Might came to give him his medal, placing the heavy silver sphere around his neck.

"I wanted to become a hero like you," he admitted, the words nearly twisting on his tongue. The medal felt heavy against his chest, and Shoto had the distant thought that this is what Atlas must have felt, with the weight of the world on his shoulders.

There was someone else, who had carried a heavy weight all of these years. It wouldn't do for him to be the only to let this weight go.

"There's something I have to do," he told All Might, meeting his eyes to show him the strength of his resolve.

Then All Might was hugging him.

Shoto's first instinct was to turn his body to stone. Large, looming presences (with their massive bodies, and hands that could dish out pain in endless doses) had taught him to be wary of contact—had taught him how he would feel that contact for a long, long time afterward, and to go to extreme lengths to make it disappear.

But after one, two more seconds of contact, the warmth of both the large body half-engulfing him and the words rumbling in his ear relaxed his body by fractions, until he was able to return the hug in full. All Might hugged him, and Shoto felt a shuddering, shriveled part of him melt like Spring frost as he reveled in the all-encompassing warmth.

(A small, tiny part of him leaned into the contact, and ached—deeply, painfully.

That part of him was small and tiny, with burns and bruises painting a grotesque portrait on his body, and tears streaming down his face as he asked a herculean figure, again and again, why, why, why?

But that part of him always had, and always would be, crying for something it couldn't have; so Shoto shut it down harshly, and did his best to enjoy what little he had been allowed, for as long as he could.)

Thus, UA's famous Sports festival came to an end—after a very interesting, and rather uncomfortable, few minutes where All Might had to essentially shove the medal into the viciously protesting Bakugo's mouth. Shoto and his classmates soon found themselves hustled and bustled back into their classroom, to end the day with a note from their homeroom teacher.

"Ostukare," their still-bandaged, incredibly done-looking teacher intoned blandly. "So there's no school for the next two days. If you show up here anyway, you'll have no one but yourself to blame… and you'll also look like a total idiot, so don't forget that."

Shoto could admire that sort of doesn't-give-a-shit attitude, especially when he could entirely relate to where it was coming from; if he had to teach this class five days out of the week, he would no doubt have just as few fucks to give by the end of it.

"The pro-heroes will try to catch you as you leave, no doubt, but pay them no mind, other than to turn them down firmly… but politely, Bakugo; no need to shoot yourself in the foot, or bite the hand that will potentially feed you. We'll consolidate everything—the offers and internship details—on our end, and announce the results when you get back. Look forward to that, and rest well."

"Yes, sir!"

"Then get out of here. Also, Todoroki? Stay behind, I need a word with you."

Startled, Shoto met Aizawa-sensei's eyes, and nodded slowly.

That couldn't be good.

He slowly gathered his things, marveling at the way the movement was nearly painless (what he would give to have a healing quirk like Recovery Girl's to use on himself…), and reluctantly headed to the front of the room.

Everyone was hurrying to leave, the usual excitement of a long weekend tempered by unanimous exhaustion, and the room emptied quickly.

Shoto met Midoriya's eyes in passing, and for perhaps the first time since they'd met, nodded his head in acknowledgment. Midoriya looked startled at first, but then a look of delight spread across his face, and he grinned, awkwardly waving a bandaged hand as his friends rushed him out the door.

It was hard to imagine how such a simple gesture could elicit such a contented response, but Shoto noted it down for future reference, regardless. Perhaps this 'friendship' business wasn't as difficult a thing as he had always imagined it would be.

As the last of the students trickled out the door, Shoto hitched his bag over his shoulder and walked to the front of Aizawa-sensei's dark, exhausted, and eager to get… whatever this was, over with.

"You wanted something, Sensei?" he asked tiredly. Talking to adults had never been a comfortable experience for Shoto, but he was tired enough that he was a lot less nervous than he normally would have been.

"Yes," Aizawa-sensei said, voice equally as tired, if not more so. His eyes were still painfully bloodshot, much more than they had been before USJ, and Shoto imagined they must still cause him considerable pain.

"You used your left side today. You've never used it before in school, outside of the tests on the first day, and during battle training with All Might."

It wasn't a question, which gave Shoto no indication of how to proceed.

Giving Sensei a blank look, Shoto's heavy, heavy tongue (and the weight of the world on his shoulders he couldn't wait to let go of) made him uncharacteristically honest when he admitted: "I have no idea what you want from me, Aizawa-sensei, and I don't think I can figure it out. Can you please just tell me what you want me to say, so I can go home?"

The way Sensei's tired eyes blinked at him rapidly told Shoto he had managed to surprise him. Normally, that might have given him a sort of pleasure, as their teacher had such an unflappable air about him, the idea that he could manage such human emotions as surprise seemed nearly ridiculous to imagine.

Today? Today, Shoto waited out the following silence with patience borne of tiredness, giving no thought for anything but what his teacher wanted him to say, so Shoto could say it, fumble his way back to his house, and collapse on his bed to sleep the next two days away.

"Todoroki," Aizawa-sensei said finally, something off about his voice that Shoto couldn't place, "what, in your mind, is the purpose of a teacher?"

Shoto's mind, already growing hazy from fatigue, went completely blank.

What in the world did that mean? Purpose? Teachers?

"…To teach?" Shoto hazarded a guess. Aizawa-sensei shook his head slowly, and Shoto quietly despaired. Bed seemed suddenly a much farther, unattainable thing than it had a few scant minutes ago.

"You're not wrong, but I'm not looking for the obvious answer, kid. Put a bit more thought into it than that."

Not the obvious answer?

All he wanted to do was find a flat surface to lay his head down on, but Shoto ruthlessly pushed away the fog in his thoughts, because his teacher—an adult—had asked him a question, and Shoto had been taught to respect his elders above all else.

He looked out the window, desperate for inspiration. Outside on the grounds, students milled about, most of them heading towards the gates and home. Some of them grouped together, clearly intending to linger, their general excitement and animation visible through waving hands and the distant sound of raised voices.

One particular group (with an individual who kept releasing the occasional burst of bright light and concussive force, giving Shoto a pretty decent guess as to its origin) seemed to be getting a little out of hand; as Shoto watched, someone—a hero, but not one Shoto recognized from the faculty—came over and shooed them away, the hands on their hips the very picture of sternness as they stayed to watch until they had been obeyed.

"…Boundaries and rules are important," Shoto said, slowly, the words flowing to the front of his mind from some distant memory, distorted by time and deliberate negligence but still legible enough to be of use. His tiredness helped lower his usual filters and cautious self-control, and with his mind half on what was occurring outside, Shoto gave little thought to what was actually leaving his mouth. "As children, we are born without an innate sense of self-discipline and control, and when we stray from the correct path or fail to live up to our potential, it falls to the adults—the ones who have learned, and who now know better—to instill that discipline and control."

Invisible ash coated his tongue, and before his eyes, a fire burned, searingly hot and painfully bright. His left side throbbed, and he grabbed at what he could with his right hand, squeezing tight.

"Teachers exist to discover our flaws and to mark the many ways we fall short," Shoto murmured, fingers tracing individual ribs and pressing, squeezing, trying to push the feeling back inside.

Each slow blink of his eyes painted a different picture, of the times in his life where he had been the one to fall short, and had been pulled up, inch by excruciating inch, to meet his goal—whether he had felt capable of doing so or not. The images seared themselves into place as a continuous canvas of pain, blended messily together with the lessons he had learned from (and because of) that pain to make a distorted, unsightly masterpiece.

"They watch, and they remember; and when we are least expecting it, they are then there to beat that knowledge back into us, in whatever shape or form they find necessary, to make it stick."

Distracted by the direction his thoughts had taken, it took Shoto a few minutes to realize that Aizawa-sensei had yet to respond.

He turned away from the window, reluctantly pulling his wandering thoughts back to the present, and began to say, "Sensei—"

The look in Aizawa-sensei's eyes stopped him cold.

It is said that eyes are the windows to the soul, but Shoto had always thought that they were more like a window into your innermost thoughts and emotions; and right now, in Sensei's blood-shot, tired eyes, Shoto saw the full, unrelenting weight of his sharp and focused regard, and felt it shoot through him like a shot of adrenaline.

In Sensei's eyes, Shoto saw a timer begin to tick down on how much longer he would be able to keep his secrets, the ones he desperately needed to keep, to himself.

And Shoto, in a way that he would later stay up half the night regretting, panicked.

"I have to go," he blurted out, eyes wide and breathing picking up against his will. Aizawa-sensei opened his mouth, the bandages around his eyebrows pulling together, but Shoto quickly continued:

"My father will be sending the car around soon, and he doesn't like to wait. Can we please continue this some other time?"

He waited, lungs growing tighter in his chest with each second that passed with Sensei staying silent, staring at him as if he could burrow under his chest and discover his secret with the force of his gaze alone.

Finally, finally, Sensei closed his eyes and said, "Fine, then; get out of here. We'll continue this when we get back."

Shoto nearly wilted in place from relief. He nodded rapidly, giving a hurried, "Have a good evening," before quickly turning on his heel.

Before he could slide the tall door closed, the sound of his name stopped him in his tracks.

"But Todoroki? Don't think I'm letting this go, just because I'm willing to wait. Be here after school on Tuesday, and don't even think of trying to skip."

The ominous words followed him out the door, to the gates (where the car was indeed waiting, to Shoto's surprise), and all the way back to his house, and only lost the weight of their promise as his body relaxed in sleep.

In his dreams, there was fire, as there always was; and glittering dark eyes, silently watching him burn.