Warnings: discussion of infidelity, reference to adultery, child abuse

Chapter Six - In Opposition

Fuyumi, despite everything that has gone on here so far in this handful of hours, is starting to relax. Everything is very unpredictable, so she can't afford to do so much as drop her guard entirely. But the silence, blessed and beautiful, is unbearable after weeks and weeks of noise and the same time makes her chest hurt more.

She sits down, cautiously, on the sand. The water laps over her feet, making them tingle. It hits home, in the absence of everyone in a meter wide radius, that she really must look disgusting.

Not at all like a good older sister should, poised and confident and prepared for everything to just work out and love her and love everything in return. She… shudders with shame.

Her glasses dig down into her ear lobes but she lets them. She can't risk her vision being compromised more than it is. She cannot risk much of anything right now, much as she wants to just flop down and give way. After all, there's a small police presence nearby. It's too small.

Too small for Father.

It's the perfect size for mother, she knows. She's good at getting her way with words and faces and eyes, yes, guileless eyes that put her in the position of real power.

She knows her mother is just as much a victim, but she knows the truth.

Fuyumi knows what her father has done, had done to him, and stopped none of it. She knows, she knows and it's because of that that she-

A car door shuts in the distance. But there are no nearby parking lots. Fuyumi jerkily gets to her feet. There should only be one car, three at most. All of them should be police. No one ought to know that they're out here. Who is here?

Dread fills her stomach, but Fuyumi sucks in a breath, and begins to walk slowly towards the small parking lot. She hadn't gone far. That would have been the height of stupidity. Whoever it was, all she would have to do is make a lot of noise, buy a little time, and hopefully her siblings would wake up and escape and the policewoman would make it to her before there could be too much damage.

No one knew she had a quirk after all. No one.

Then she sees the figure walk into the light. Fuyumi stops walking and stares at her father.

How? She thinks and comes up empty. The police shouldn't have given it away. They're legally bound-

To obey heroes in times of emergency, her brain helpfully supplies from one of the many manuals she had read to report. Family being taken from you qualifies as an emergency. It was likely labeled as their current setting was unsafe, not that their parents were unsafe.

Oh no.

"Fuyumi." He's looking at her. Father is looking at her. There's no fire, of course. He's never liked using his quirk directly on his children outside of practice. Not at first. Too many memories of it being used on him, most like. She can't say. It was what made his flare up the other day so different. "I suppose you're all here then."

Her mouth is dry. She doesn't breathe.

Endeavor takes it as an answer. "I see. Bring them out here. Your mother has calmed down now. It's time to go back."

It's the same voice. Not the one who had shouted days before, but the one, almost cajoling, that had told her,

Don't say a word, and you'll be free someday.

Which was a lie anyway, and she's old enough to know that now, but to a four-year-old girl who had seen her father's papers it had been the ultimate truth. Had seen the truth because her mother had shoved it in her face, so angry because Fuyumi had been in pain that day from an aching stomach and legs cramped from running. And the bitterness had overflowed and-

"Did you know that your father has a real wife and someday will have a real kid that's not for him?"

-And he had made her promise not to tell even though she'd known no one anyway.

Fuyumi is still standing there. His left eyebrow lifts, a tell of his displeasure. "Did you hear me?"

Fuyumi nods, mouth drier.

"Then go on."

She still doesn't move. In fact, she has never wanted to do anything less in her entire life.

"Are your legs that injured?" He sounds disdainful. "You've taken worse."

It's true. She's brutalized herself before because he's asked her to, because it's made her siblings feel better. But that's not why she's not moving.

Slowly, as if in a dream, Fuyumi lifts her hands up, steps one foot back.

Endeavor looks at her. He almost sighs. "Are you going to fight me like a hero would a villain? With nothing but your body?" He sounds… sad, almost. "You know what I can do to you."

This is also true. Father has… always, treated her differently. Not better, in some ways a part of her is sure he's worse to her, but like there is something in that head of hers that's not anywhere else.

"I know," she whispers. "I know. But… I can't. I can't let you see them. Or take them away. I can't."

"Why?" And there's that extra tone again. That extra, little thing like a spoiled child. "They'll be fine. Your mother has already decided for one more. They'll be perfectly fine."

"You two are not fine!" And it startles both of them really, how loud she says that. How much she means that. "Parents don't do these things and end up as good parents! Parents don't blackmail and beat their children. We're not even children to either of you!"

His teeth sink into his lip, hard. He begins to twitch and shift, moving back like an animal does before it pounces.

"We are things to mold to you!" Fuyumi shouts. She hopes she's loud. She hopes she's heard. She hopes that her anger is loud and clear. "We are things to bargain with, to play with and cajole like dolls to her! You two are both terrible!"

He pauses. "You do not see the ultimate goal."

Fuyumi almost chokes. Instead, she lowers her hands and much like that day in the hospital, gathers up the familiar something from deep in her stomach, her blood, her soul, and pushes outward.

Her body bursts into ice and flame, coiling and winding and engulfing her in its protective embrace.

"I have my own," she whispers. And it's keeping you both away from them."

She takes the widening of the eyes, the momentary flare of pride, and flies across the sand, smashing him in the face.

It feels good.

The pain happens immediately after, but it doesn't matter. Ice and fire dance around her, beyond pain, beyond all natural limits.

This is what heroes do, a sweet voice says in her mind.

Fuyumi grins, and for a moment she feels so proud.

Then she rushes him a second time and the ice and fire meet like the sound of a thunderclap with his own raging flames.

"Beautiful," he says.

And he means it. He really does. It hurts how much he does.

She leaps back, moving with the speed he's never been good at, dancing on the uneven sand. These are things she's learned, from visiting that same place, year after year. He fires, throwing simple balls of flame at her. She gets nicked. Her bandages smoke and she throws ice at herself.

"Trying to get yourself closer to the water," she hears him say. Fuyumi winces. "Further from the house and closer to a source of water. GOod. Resourceful. Useful."

Flame hits her full force and she screams. It hurts. The smell is terrible, worse because it's so close again, she wasn't ready. She plants her feet again and throws. Flame or icicles, she doesn't know.

"The salt water won't help you,"she hears and anger pulses out of her. "It will only make it burn more, you know this."

Fuyumi dodges to the right, hears the splash. Smoke. Her body is smoking. She can't rely on her eyes anymore. She drops to the ground, listens for the second splash of foot to water. He's quite right. Her legs are hurting more.

But.

Fuyumi finds herself smiling again, damnably.

Fire goes down and her body immediately starts to freeze, frost snaking over her fingers on her other hand, much like the first. She throws her arms up and the ice bursts into a wall for the flames to lick at like tongues.

Fuyumi turns to run. She's not sure where, but behind her is likely towards the cottage and even a few minutes of time bought is better than nothing.

Where are the police? Can they even stop him? Can anyone but All Might?

She's going to have to t-

Her thought is cut off by a singular, pointed lance of fire. It cuts in, right into her back.

Fuyumi screams so much it wakes the dead.

There's the sound of a firecracker. Or maybe it's a gunshot.

She's fallen, she is breathing hard. It hurts. It can't move. She can't even lift her arms.

Another crack. This time there's some shouting.

Fuyumi makes herself move anyway. Her arms bunch up on her, hitting the ground and pushing, pushing and turning.

She can hear him on the sand. He is coming. Fuyumi forces herself to twist, tears coiling in her eyes. Trying to raise her arm only leads to absolute agony. She can't do it. Her body is tingling. So… so there's only one thing she can think of.

She struggles. It's choking, cloying. It's starting to hurt to breathe. She pulls up, up up over the sound of voices and him, him him-

Fuyumi spits icicles of blood and then proceeds to collapse.

Everything had happened so so fast.

Shoto had opened his eyes to Hirose shaking him, a finger over his lips. Riki is staring outside, horror in his usually nice features. The others were creeping closer and outside-

Outside his sister was fighting his father. She isn't winning. But she's fighting him. With ice and fire.

She's fighting back.

The whole thing is chaos. He itches to move, to chase her. And he can't. His eye hurts.

Still. He can't help but think:

His sister is so cool.