Word Count: 6,715

Aizawa stared long at hard at the eldest Todoroki brother, tied up and glaring back from the corner. "You know, Touya," the older man slowly began, "You wouldn't be in this position had you found us first."

"I suppose," Touya loftily replied, shifting slightly in his constraints. "But I hadn't found you first, now had I?"

"Fair enough," Aizawa agreed. "I can't pretend I know why you're here—"

"Really? Because to me it seems you knew I ran away."

"—but what little I do know of Shoto's familial relationships makes me wonder how hard you really would have tried to find us." Aizawa's voice gaining force as he talked over Touya, his indifferent stare hardening into a leer for a moment. Only when Touya blinked and averted his gaze, Aizawa continued. "You ought to be put to death for treason."

Again, the younger man was silent and still.

Aizawa let out a quiet sigh. He felt a little bad almost, telling the kid everything so bluntly, but then again, he had never believed in sugarcoating. Luckily, there was one more thing on his side. "But ultimately, your fate does not rest in my hands." He was not in charge.

Touya raised his head with an eyebrow half cocked, looking almost as if he was trying to pass his hope off as merely curious apathy.

"What happens to you is up to Shoto or Hawks's discretion." Aizawa crossed his arms, held in the urge to yawn, and shifted his weight as he got ready to leave. "I think your chances are all right." He turned around and started walking, but he could have sworn he heard Touya say something, so he turned around and said, "What was that?"

Touya blinked twice, then shifted his sights away once more. "Nothing."

Yeah, whatever. He'd take that.

Haku had improved a lot since the first day of boot camp, and Shoto was pleased by that. However, it was making for a much tougher fight than he had anticipated, even if it was just practice.

Shoto grit his teeth as he ducked to avoid one of Haku's kicks, leaning dangerously forward as he practically jumped back up, and jabbed at the boy, only to be met with nothing but air: Haku had ducked.

He didn't even have time to blink, it was so quickly followed up with an attack. Shoto instinctively blocked it with right arm, but by then Haku's knee was headed straight toward him, so he had to push his arm away and jump back to dodge it.

Shoto had an instant to breathe as Haku regained his balance, so he took a deep gulp of air and immediately plunged back into the battle. He brought his hand down hard and fast upon Haku, and he nearly got that perfect duel-ending hit in on the base of his neck. However, Haku threw his own arm up to block it at the last second (and their eyes met for but an instant). Not to be deterred, Shoto swung at him again, but he was blocked yet again.

Haku's bangs fell in front of his eyes, but Shoto could still sense the fire burning in the boy's soul, nearly distracted by it as Haku lunged, forcing Shoto to dig his toes to hold his ground. The latter let out a strong, controlled breath, blowing Haku's hair away and forcing him to blink. In the second he had to inhale, Shoto gained on the boy, but that was lost in an instant when a strong hit to the gut knocked all the wind out of him.

The next thing he knew, he was lying on the grass, choking as he struggled to breathe. But, even if that hadn't left him incapacitated, his shoulders were pinned to the ground, his hip and gut left immobile from a heavy weight, and his legs trapped in a tangle. Haku's face was just centimeters from his own, and Shoto could feel his hot, steady breath brush delicately against his nose and cheeks.

Catching his breath felt just as he remembered it— a vacuum of nothing seemingly lasting for eons before everything rushed back all at once. The first breath he took again had been once been one of Haku's, the sweet, stolen oxygen giving his lungs life again. It hurt to let some of it go, but it ebbed as he swallowed still more and more, enough to fill even his hollow chest. His breathing slowed, slowed, slowed, as he inhaled and exhaled, inhaled and exhaled, falling in sync with Haku.

Maybe there had been something flashing in Haku's grey, catlike eyes as Shoto's blurry, blackened vision began to clear; maybe he had hallucinated it. Bangs veiled both their faces, so it was hard to tell either way. Shoto blew the hair away, and his eyes met Haku's.

The pressure eased on his shoulders as slowly, slowly Haku sat back and released him. Blood rushed back into his arms, making them prickle and allowing him to stir. He brushed the hair out of his eyes for good, detangling his legs from (as he now lately realized) Haku's as the latter got off him awkwardly, almost embarrassedly. Shoto sat up, still keenly aware of his breathing, and found himself face-to-face with Haku's helping hand.

It took a moment to process the offer, but Shoto tentatively took it. "Thanks," he muttered quietly, though not out of ingratitude: his vocal cords were coarse and sore and his breath was full of gaps. Anything more than a whisper was near impossible. He brushed himself off as he stood, but instead of continuing to madly try to figure out what the hell happened to him, he said to Haku with all the sincerity he could convey, "The way you beat me was impressive."

Haku flushed red and seemed to duck away. "Thank you."

Shoto opened his mouth to say something, anything more just to keep the moment from turning awkward, but before he could, a solid, familiar hand clapped his shoulder.

"Shoto."

Immediately, the boy in question pivoted around, instinctively frightened even though he knew better, it was just old Aizawa, he had nothing to worry about. For a second, he had to swallow his instincts and slip on a neutral mask once more. Aizawa's expression, on the other hand, never wavered.

"Oh, did I scare you? Apologies," he grunted, and he removed his hand. "Your brother has a lot to say, and absolutely none of it is directed towards me. I'm assuming you would like to spend some quality time with him though, no? You should go do that."

Oh brother. His brother. Whom he hadn't yet had the opportunity to talk to. Shoto tersely nodded in response to Aizawa, and even briefly turned his head to signal his goodbyes to Haku, but the other boy had already slipped away.

Oh.

Okay.

That was fine too, he supposed.

(The air seemed just a little colder, a little less gratifying now.)

"Is there something the matter?" Aizawa asked, his indifference so much less than perfect.

Shoto shook his head. "It's nothing," he mumbled, and to him it really was. It didn't matter that much, really. "I'll just get something to drink first."

To wise old Aizawa-sensei, it didn't seem quite such, but all he did was raise an eyebrow at him anyway. "All right then," he said, sounding as if he knew of something going on.

Shoto chose to ignore it, and he dashed off to the nearest well, where Hawks happened to be zoning out. He drew a bucket, and Hawks came back just before he could dip his hands into the water.

"Oh, I wouldn't drink out of there if I were you," the older man commented, turning around to point at the bucket.

Shoto stared at him. "Why not?" he asked.

"It's got cholera," Hawks easily answered, crossing his leg.

"Oh," was all Shoto could say, and the older man laughed.

"Just kidding," he said, almost sang, not even trying to hide his snorts.

"Oh!" Shoto said again, and naïve as he was, cupped his hands and took a drink right then.

"It's actually full of piss," Hawks absently clarified, propping his chin up on his elbow, and Shoto choked as he frantically tried to spit the stuff out anywhere that wasn't back in the well. Alarmed, Hawks jumped up and patted his back to help clear his lungs. "I'm kidding, I'm kidding!"

"HAWKS, WHAT THE FUCK," Shoto spat, trying yet again to regain his breath (only this time was more painful), but the older man just sheepishly shrugged.

"I didn't think you'd believe me," he said. "I hear piss is pretty salty, you know."

Shoto glared at him, wiping away the dribble with the back of his hand before flicking it at the man. If looks could kill, he'd be a murderer. (Not that all the soldiers he'd killed in battle didn't count as people that were murdered but that was different.)

Without a word, he stalked off to the tent holding his brother.

After the conversation he just overheard, Dabi knew both Hawks and Shoto were just outside his tent, but he honestly had not been expecting to see Shoto first. He thought he'd speak to an adult like Hawks (though maybe Shoto was the adultier of the two, if Hawks was the same as he remembered) before getting to see his baby brother, but apparently not.

Of course, it didn't really matter, but there was something about looking up and feeling all his dry sarcasm shrivel on his tongue when he saw his wide-eyed little brother standing there instead that was, well… something. (Dabi had never been the best with describing feelings and emotions. That had always been more of Fuyumi's gig.)

"Touya," Shoto said, plainly and simply. It was framed neither as a question nor as a statement, but rather, in some strange purgatory between the two that left one wondering what it really meant.

Dabi clicked his tongue in mild distaste. "I don't much like that name," he loftily replied. "Too sentimental. Call me Dabi now."

Shoto's expression shifted subtly into something a little more muddled. "Dabi," he said, as if testing the flavor of the name on his tongue. "All right, I guess."

It was hard for Dabi not to smile to himself as Shoto settled down in front of him. It wasn't that he disliked his given name that much, but it had all the wrong memories attached to it to make him comfortable using it anymore. "So," he said as nonchalantly as possible, "Old dad is dead, huh?"

"Yup," Shoto half-muttered.

Now Dabi could crack a grin. "Thank fuck and good riddance."

Yeah, he had been the one to burn the old man's immediate part of the battlefield to ash and bones, and he had been taught to do a good job when destroying the enemy, but damn did it feel good to hear some external validation. For all he knew, maybe he'd been misinformed as to the bastard's location and accidentally cremated hundreds of simple, rankless soldiers. That had been rather bothering him in the far depths of his conscience (though does the death of one terrible man justify it regardless?).

Shoto sat silent for longer than Dabi had anticipated, and the latter feared there had been some crazy redemption arc that went on at home while he was away and their father wasn't such a bitch anymore. But rather than responding to Dabi's comment, Shoto instead said, "Do you think those burn marks are gonna go away after a while?"

Dabi relaxed and allowed himself to settle for a bit. "Eh, maybe," he said, and he would have crossed his arms had he not been restrained. "I don't mind them either way. If anything, it'll keep the girls off my heels, I hope."

"Why'd they scar you anyway?"

"I asked them to."

Shoto blinked at him, and Dabi didn't blame him. Not just because he was the child most deeply affected by their father's affinity for the flame, but also because it sounded like a damn stupid thing to do anyway.

"What can I say?" Dabi shrugged. "I had to break away and earn the title cremator somehow. No better place to start than by allowing the 'enemy' to burn my own self." He paused to let his brother digest all that for a second before deciding to prod at the boy himself. "I'm guessing that scar of yours hasn't won you any brownie points?"

"No. No, it hasn't," Shoto flatly answered.

Dabi pretended he didn't notice Shoto's lack of interest. "You haven't told your soldiers about some brave escapade that you earned it on? That's just tragic, bro."

"I don't lie to my men."

Dabi opened his mouth to ask why when— ah. Right.

Not everyone was like their father.

('Course, the man probably hadn't lied about major things, but it sounded like something he'd do. At least, to Dabi it seemed so.)

"Well," the elder said with fake mildness that just barely masked snippiness, "If not here, then maybe back home it'll help. I'm telling you, little bro, it could look really cool if you wanted it to. Besides, one of us has got to get married after this war if we're going to keep the family line going because we both know Natsu ain't getting any."

Shoto looked confused for the first second of him talking, but when it clicked in his mind, he choked on seemingly nothing and shifted away, his face slowly beginning to flush.

Gotcha. Dabi grinned, leaning in. "Oh? Someone caught your eye?"

"No," Shoto replied, a little hasty.

"You're not looking at me." Dabi blinked owlishly, though he supposed he looked more like a cat with his smile.

"That doesn't mean anything."

Dabi cocked his head, feeling more like an older brother again. "But you always shift away like that when you're embarrassed," he half-crooned. "C'mon, now, you can tell me! I'm your brother! You know I care about—ack!"

In that moment, Shoto's temper popped, and Dabi had to fend off an irritated slap. Dabi snorted with delight as his brother got at least one hit in (he didn't have much in the way of self-defense all tied up, after all), and the younger Todoroki glared at him.

"You always were such a cute kid," Dabi said fondly, ducking yet another hit.

"Stop that," Shoto snapped as his brother wriggled away.

"No!" It was too much fun just to mess with his youngest brother again, to rile him up just a bit. Dabi narrowly dodged his brother for the third time, but he just couldn't get away quite fast enough, and when Shoto swiped again, he nicked a bit of the tender, still-healing flesh of Dabi's cheek. The latter drew in a sharp breath, startled at the pain, and Shoto immediately froze.

Dabi clicked his tongue a couple times, carefully readjusting his posture as Shoto slowly withdrew, and he stuck his tongue out to catch a thin drip of blood that seeped out from the delicate seam. He swiped his tongue up to clean his cheek, and he tried his best to ignore both the metallic aftertaste and the wide-eyed stare of shock coming from his brother.

A long while passed in silence, with Shoto slowly calming down and Dabi looking stubbornly away, until at last, it was broken.

"Why'd you choose the name Dabi anyway?"

Dabi allowed himself to settle into a slouch. "Oh," he said, with the barest ghost of amusement pulling at his face. "I don't know, really."

Liar, liar, tongue caught fire.

"It's short and catchy," Dabi idly explained, sounding almost whimsically musing.

Fire, fire, all around.

"Catchy?" Shoto asked, visibly puzzled.

Kill them all without a sound.

"Yeah, I guess." Dabi shrugged best he could. "It also rather fits what I'd been planning to do. Which is, y'know."

With one last look, eyes gone blurred, see the shape of one now burned.

"Give Dad a proper send-off. He always said he wanted to be cremated after he was gone."

Smoky haze block out the day, regretful mourns choke now away.

When he finished, Dabi looked up at Shoto again, feeling a little pleased and letting it show. His little brother stared at him with an unreadable expression, the cogs and gears of his mind undoubtedly turning, but eventually closing his eyes and accepting Dabi's explanation. Their father had always been a source of hate and resentment for the two of them especially, so he wasn't all that disturbed by his brother's reaction.

"So, Sho-sho—" Dabi said after a spell, and his brother sent him an irritated look.

"Don't call me that," he snipped, but Dabi ignored him.

"—Not gonna kill me?" he finished.

His little brother shifted around until he could sit cross-legged. "No," he finally decided.

"Why not? I have committed treason, after all," Dabi challenged, not even sure himself why he was pushing it.

Shoto shrugged. "This is war," he said. "There aren't so many consequences."

Dabi was itching to smile at that point, but he wasn't sure his fragile skin could take the stress. His brother was a good kid, even if he said weird stuff that may or may not be beyond his years at times.

One down, one to go.

It was evening when the little halfling commander came out of his brother's tent.

Hawks stretched and yawned, glad at last that the kid was finished with his visit. Why, the sun had turned into a semicircle on the horizon, it was so late now. He wanted a turn to chat with the guy. The old man said he'd get one later, and apparently, it was later now.

Hawks trotted over to the tent and poked his head inside. "You're still tied up?"

Touya gave him a deadpan glare. "Hi to you too, Hawks."

Hawks pushed his way inside and plopped down in front of the burnt man. "I can't believe your brother didn't let you out," he said, cocking his head at Touya. "He seemed like a good kid."

"Ehhh," the other man replied, tilting his head back and forth in a "it depends" kind of way. "It's okay. He's always been a bit of a shy one when it came to the rules. He's never sure when to break them. Sho-sho is a good kid, though. Yeah. A good kid."

Hawks straightened out his gaze and began picking at his fingernails. "Anyway, should I help you out of this?" he asked, pretending to miss the way Touya rolled his eyes.

"Oh, no, no, no, it's fine, trust me," Touya said, his words dripping with sarcasm. "I'll just hop around with my arms pinned behind my back, just as soon as I can figure out how to stand up again— yes, you should help me, you overgrown pigeon! My arms are killing me."

Hawks dropped his mask of indifference with a grin, quite delighted to discover Touya's personality for himself. "Well, I'm sorry. I just thought you might like to try to get out on your own. Figured you'd like the challenge."

"Yeah, well," Touya grunted as he shifted away from Hawks. "I'm pretty sure you can see I'd burn my arms off with these ropes."

Hawks absently tossed his knife up and down for a second, then leaned in to inspect Touya's arms. Lo and behold, about half the skin was still a fresh and shiny baby pink, as if a massive sheet of scabs had prematurely cleaved off just recently.

"Hmm, well, that doesn't look too bad to me," Hawks replied, mirroring Touya's tone. He deftly cut the ropes binding the other man's wrists, just shy of grazing the delicate skin. "I think you could have done it if you tried."

"Thanks, I didn't need my forearms either."

Hawks simply hummed and freed Touya's ankles. The latter nodded in grudging thanks as Hawks sheathed his knife again.

"Anyway," Touya said, changing the subject. "Don't you think it would be cool to just shove some gunpowder in your mouth and light it on fire?"

"You'd die," Hawks answered without missing a beat.

Touya grinned, rubbing his wrists. "Yeah, but it would be one hell of a way to go out, don't you think? It'd have a lot of flair to it."

Hawks crossed his arms, amused by his peer. "I suppose, if you think the gods of the afterlife are going to send someone without a head anywhere other than hell."

"You really think I'm going anywhere but there? Hilarious," Touya snorted in reply. He saw cross-legged and cross-armed facing Hawks, an eyebrow raised. "Did you think I was restrained for the hell of it?"

"Well, maybe I thought you enjoyed it," Hawks quipped, folding his arms across his chest with a grin. "I haven't met you in ten years; how would I know how you've grown since then?"

Touya stared at Hawks for a minute before shaking his head in disgust. "It's stuffy being in a tent all day. Let me out."

"With pleasure," Hawks said. He cracked his knuckles as he stood up, then offered a hand to Touya as the latter stretched. For a moment, Touya just looked at it, but eventually, he pushed it away and got up on his own. Hawks shrugged it off.

The moon was low in the sky when they were out, and the night breeze was refreshing after the suffocating stillness of the tent.

Hawks put his elbows up and cradled his head in his hands as he stared up at the stars. Next to him, Touya crossed his arms yet again and tried to find what Hawks was looking at.

"You knew my dad, right?" Touya said at last.

Ah. Here it goes. "Yeah, I trained under him a while. He seemed like an okay guy. Hella short temper and hella high standards, but outside of military work, he was almost tolerable maybe half the time," Hawks answered truthfully. He sent Touya a sidelong glance and found the other man staring out at space with hardened eyes and chewing his lip as if mulling something over. "I'm not saying it was good that you killed him the way you did. That was pretty fucked up from what I hear. But I can't say he didn't have it coming if he really had treated you and your siblings the way he did me. I at least kind of asked for it."

"But you are saying it's good that I killed him, then."

"No," Hawks immediately clarified. "I'm not assigning moral weight to anything you've done recently. I'm not assigning moral weight to anything. I'm just saying, your dad wasn't the best person out there from what I could see."

Touya halfheartedly snorted. "Well, neither am I."

"Neither are you," Hawks agreed, dropping his arms back down to his side. "Let's go back inside."

"No, I want to look around for a while," Touya said, letting his gaze fall from the sky and wander the earth. "I want to become familiar with the faces of the place so I don't get mixed up when going up against Kurogiri."

"Kurogiri?"

"The third of the Hun commanders," Touya explained. "He hangs over Shigaraki's shoulder like some kind of ghost, so you'll kill two birds with one stone if you get to them first."

"Who were the other two commanders?" Hawks asked, genuinely curious. It hadn't occurred to him that Touya would have information on the people running the enemy show.

"There was Kurogiri, myself, and a girl named Toga," Touya said, counting off each one on his fingers. "Don't ask how Toga and I got to be commanders if we were just joining. I don't know either."

"All right," Hawks said, nodding as he looked away. "Wouldn't you get in trouble if they found out you were leaking all these enemy secrets?"

Touya laughed, dry like a desert wind. "There aren't so many consequences in war," he replied. "Besides, they don't have to know."

"Fair," Hawks agreed, then began to saunter away. "Let's go, Touya."

"Wait," Touya said, but Hawks hardly slowed down.

"I thought you said you wanted to take a look around," he called.

"My name is Dabi now."

Now Hawks stopped.

He pivoted around, his elbows once again up to support his lazy head, and stared at the eldest Todoroki son. He studied the latter's stone serious expression for a moment, waiting for him to break, to laugh and say, "I'm just kidding, why would I want to be called that? Only a villain would name themselves something like cremation."

But it never happened. The other man remain as serious as ever, gazing unflinchingly back at Hawks. Waiting, waiting for his request to be honored.

It was hard for Hawks not to laugh as he said, "All right then, Dabi. If that's what you want." He just had that habit, to laugh in spite of everything, in the face of everyone. It got him in trouble a lot when he was younger and even got him looks sometimes these days, but now, as in right now, it was okay because Dabi just smirked right back at him.

Normally, Hawks liked to be a chatterbox, purposefully negligent of his company's mood in favor of being able to say whatever he wanted. But normally, he only had conversational partners during the day. Nighttime was a different story. Nighttime was a time for his soldiers to recover, to process the events of the day (or shut them out), to compartmentalize if they wanted (or import the events into their identity), to discuss their feelings with friends (in whatever definition of 'feelings' they chose). Normally, Hawks liked to ignore what everyone else was doing, but this wasn't something he liked to touch. His soldiers appreciated the time; it was good for morale.

So tonight, abnormally, he and Dabi took a walk amongst the men left awake and saying nary a word. Dabi got to observe the soldiers, and Hawks got to observe Dabi. It worked out pretty perfectly.

When they reached one particular campfire, they stopped from afar. Shoto was approaching the five soldiers clustered around the fire together, and both men knew better than to influence whatever was about to happen. They weren't doing this to socialize, after all.

Whatever Shoto said first was too quiet to catch, but everything else was audible if they tried.

"Oh! The dog tags!" the redhead cried, leaping to his feet. He picked up a bag of something and handed it off to Shoto. His embarrassment blended with sobriety, which allowed him to look Shoto in the eye as he nodded very seriously. He presumably explained something— he was too quiet to hear— and Shoto nodded, his expression unreadable.

He then turned to one soldier in particular, a black-haired one who sat up remarkably straight. They exchanged a few words, after which the black-haired soldier stood up to continue the conversation once Shoto began to leave.

"Hey!" Shoto's second-in-command Captain Bakugou snapped after him, his words quite clear despite the distance. "Don't forget to go the fuck to sleep at some point! I don't want to deal with shitty sleep-deprived—"

The redhead immediately stood up, grabbing hold of Bakugou's arm to keep him from going after Shoto and the soldier. "Hey!" he said, along with some other things that weren't said so loudly.

Eventually, Bakugou sat back down, a sour expression clearly etched onto his face, but he didn't seem to actually care what Shoto was up to with that other soldier.

"That was strange," Dabi commented, and Hawks paid him a look. "There was something weird about that other soldier, the one who followed Sho-sho. You could see it too, right?"

"He looked delicate, yeah," Hawks agreed. "Sat up really straight."

"Yeah, yeah!" Dabi said, crossing his arms and squinting into the darkness. "I wonder what they're going to do."

At this, Hawks joined Dabi in staring into the dark after the young commander and his soldier. "Wash the dog tags, if I'm not mistaken. Aizawa mentioned it was something he did with another soldier when they found the remains of Endeavor's army. Didn't tell me which soldier, but it's the same one each time."

"Is it now?" Dabi grinned. "I'm gonna have to make fun of him for that later. And that other kid, what's up with him? Like, he leaves his friends to do what? Get prune skins, slivers, and touch blood?" He glanced at Hawks, mischief gleaming in his eyes. "I think something's going on there. My little brother and— oh man, I'm gonna have to make fun of him for this later."

Hawks raised an eyebrow, his fucks level hovering just between zero and one. (Which was admittedly not at all unusual.) "Do whatever you want later, but let them clean in peace at least."

"Yeah, all right." Dabi stretched and yawned. "Wasn't planning on it anyway. I'm gonna crash."

"Cool," Hawks said, and that was that.

At some point after the fire began to die, bitch-captain Bakugou left to get a proper night's rest. Which made sense to Kyouka, since he had been bitching about Todoroki staying up all night to clean dog tags not long before. Maybe Kirishima's calming lecture had lulled him to sleep or whatever. The reason didn't matter that much to Kyouka. All that was left now was just herself, Kirishima, and Denki. None of them had said a word since Bakugou left.

Denki yawned, as did Kyouka moments later, but she didn't want to get up. The last dying embers of the fire still glowed with good warmth, which helped with the cooling nights. And Denki was a comforting presence, good to cuddle with when she became too sleepy to have impulse control.

Across from them, Kirishima stared into the fire, seemingly wide awake. Briefly, Kyouka wondered what kept him so, but it was hard to formulate thoughts so late at night.

Denki yawned again and rested his head upon hers, and suddenly, Kyouka froze.

It wasn't so hard to think clearly anymore, not when she was shocked awake by a heart attack. But he didn't move and she couldn't move, and now she was stuck in a situation that she didn't actually mind, except for the fact that she was awake.

Kirishima glanced up at them but said nothing about their position.

Already, her shoulder was starting to hurt, supporting the dead weight of Denki's head, and still, neither herself nor Kirishima had exchanged a word since Bakugou left. Heck, they didn't talk much in general despite being in a friend group together.

Kirishima seemed to notice this at the same time as she did. He tossed the stick he was fiddling with into the last dying embers, walked over to her, and, with an uncharacteristically serious face, said, "We should put him to bed. It's late."

"Put out the fire first," she reminded him. "Can't have camp burning down. Who would collect our dog tags then?"

If Kirishima felt anything from Kyouka's comment, he didn't show it. "Knowing Denki, he'd sleep through it," he said, and Kyouka had to suppress a snicker.

She pushed the blond away just enough so that she could at least kind of pick him up as Kirishima kicked dirt over the embers and stomped out whatever stubbornly remained afterward. Kirishima then opened his arms to take Denki from her, and she obliged. Not because she wasn't strong enough to carry someone his weight, no; she had deadlifted more during boot camp. It was just that he was half a head taller than her, and it would have been cumbersome to half-drag Denki back to his tent, especially if they were trying to let him sleep.

The trek back to their quarters was again wordless. Both were too focused on navigating the dark to say anything, lest they magically wake their friend who frankly slept like the dead.

A lantern was lit once they tucked Denki in, however, for both Kyouka and Kirishima knew the other were far from sleepy. For a moment, they simply sat cross-legged in the tent with Denki between them, adjusting to the idea of their now-inevitable late-night manly, manly bonding time. Their only qualm was that neither of them knew what to talk about or how to start talking about anything with each other.

It was Kirishima who spoke first, which made sense considering his fondness for such late-night talks.

"There's a girl waiting for me back home," he said, which genuinely caught Kyouka off guard. She looked at him quizzically, but he was staring at the lantern, at the floor, with unwaveringly unreadable eyes. "Her name is Mina, and she's brave and bright and she stands out, not just with her personality, but with her looks as well. Kind of hard to miss pink hair, you know."

He sounded detached, as if he had no real investment in this girl. He seemed to be merely regurgitating information about her, and Kyouka couldn't help but wonder what he was getting at.

"She lived next door to me for all our lives, and when we were younger, we'd meet at our property borders and play. I'd teach her to read, and she'd teach me to take risks, though neither of our lessons ever stuck well in each other's minds." The corners of his lips turned up a bit. "We were friends, just friends. We still are— nothing more, nothing less— but that's not what Grandma wants."

"She wants you to get married," Kyouka said, the words slipping out before she could stop them, and Kirishima looked at her.

He nodded.

"Can't say no to Grandma, huh," Kyouka commented.

Kirishima shook his head. "It's hard, yeah. I want to be nice to Grandma, but she makes it kind of hard when she keeps pushing me to do stuff before I'm ready," he said with a sigh. "I don't even think it's a good idea for me to marry Mina. Aside from some other things, our personalities just aren't compatible in that way. She scares me sometimes. I'm pretty sure we'd just both end up miserable."

"Concubines," Kyouka said, but Kiri shook his head again.

"No thanks."

Kyouka could see the problem he was describing. She had several cousins who knew their husbands before they got married, but they hadn't spent enough time together to realize that despite their matching horoscopes, something else, something more tangible just didn't line up between them: their personalities. Often, at holidays, she would overhear those cousins vent amongst themselves about their woes as a wife less liked than the concubines. Kiri was a nice guy to not want to make this girl live like that. They both deserved better than that.

"I don't suppose this is the same grandma who had your ancestral tablet made before you left for war just so that they wouldn't have to wait even a day to have your funeral?" she asked.

Kirishima grimaced. "The one and only," he replied, and Kyouka let out a low whistle.

"I know I said this before, but your grandma is a dick, Kiri."

"I guess, but I don't think things would have turned out like this if she wasn't."

"Elaborate."

"She wanted my cousin to go to war instead of me," he answered without missing a beat. "If she were nicer, I'd have been too scared of disappointing her wishes to insist on coming for myself. And then, when I got here, I decided to go by the name we shared, our last name, to push myself to live up to her standards." He hummed. "I wonder if she's surprised I'm still alive."

Kyouka grew bored of fiddling with the hem of her tunic, so she reached out and began gently combing her fingers through Denki's matted hair. "I can't say I can relate," she admitted. "I am the cousin sent to war in place of the firstborn, and I don't have anything waiting for me back home except for chores. But you know, I kind of envy you." Her fingers stopped on a knot she couldn't easily detangle, and she pretended she couldn't feel Kirishima's surprised stare on her. "My life is just made up of ripples in a pond. I'm not saying that's bad, but going off to war has been the most exciting thing to happen to me all my life, and that's just fucking depressing. At least you have domestic drama to keep you occupied; me? Best I get are the crows. When I go back, that's all I'll have again. You'll all be gone again, and I'll be left for the birds."

Whoops, that got more emotional than intended, she thought immediately after. Embarrassed, she bit her lip and focused again on Denki.

They sat there in silence for all of a minute, the only sounds accompanying them those of Denki's snoring and the wild outdoors. And then, subtly, as if he half hoped she wouldn't hear him, but at the same time just above the concert of crickets outside, Kirishima said, "He likes you, you know."

Kyouka sat there, stunned, but trying not to let it show. She forced herself to look up at Kirishima. What? He does? she thought.

But I'm lying to them.

Her jaw parted slightly, for she could feel confessions rising up in her throat, but in their fight to come out, nothing happened.

How can he like someone he doesn't know?

Now a lump blocked her voice.

Kirishima flicked his eyes up in her direction for all of a second, but if he saw even a fraction of what was whirling through her mind, he didn't react to it. Instead, he stood up, picked up the lantern to guide him back to his tent. Kyouka stared helplessly at him. Did he really mean to leave here here now, all alone with Denki and her thoughts? (Though, with a reveal like that, they might as well be the same.)

It was pretty cold in the tents at night, but it was warm until Kirishima left with the lantern, and all of a sudden, Kyouka was left sitting in the dark and freezing all over. In just a second, she was left feeling hollow and weightless and cold.

And terrified.

Absolutely terrified.

For now, after her long acceptance of the unrequited, her world was flipped upside down, and the possibilities of it scared her. Kiri wouldn't lie to her. Kiri wouldn't lie.

She just didn't know what to do with these feelings of hers anymore except block them out and push them down.

So she did.

Author's Note xv. ack i'm so sorry this took so long. ;-;; i can't even hide and say "oh this chapter was like passing a kidney stone that's how hard it was to get out" NO i wrote it in like tWO DAYS i just have ZERO time management skills! i could literally leave school after lunch and go home if i wanted i just. prefer to go to teachers' classrooms and do their menial labor or my calc hw instead. i can now alphabetize like 36 papers in like ten minutes or less so that has to be worth something, right?

all i can say is that at least it's not a struggle to get rec letters lmao.

*does that purple animal crossing cat dance* i'm still kinda shook at how long this took and also wow that tdmm segment. i read a post on tumblr a while back that the most intimate part of a kiss is the sharing of breath SO YEAH THAT HAPPENED. and also haha jirou. mmmm. that's gonna be fun payoff later. dabi's also a ball to write tbh. don't really wanna meta too much bc like i said last chapter, i do like it when you guys try to come up with stuff! yeee *finger guns*

thank you for reading; i hope next chapter doesn't take so long but yeah! follow/fave if you're new, drop a review if that's what you're into, and as always, have a greaaaat daaaayyy~~~

p.s. to my first year chem teacher when he gets here: if you don't number off your students i'm not gonna keep alphabetizing for you