Summary:

After "rescuing" a little girl from a situation of her own doing, Dabi nurtures the brother-sister relationship blooming between them in pursuit of his own needs. Things become complicated as he finds himself developing feelings of attachment for her — feelings that culminate intensely when he is driven to rescue her from something significantly more harrowing.

In the years that follow, he guides her into her teenage years as only an emotionally-troubled older brother can: with deep affection and poorly restrained cruelty. But things start to change just before she enters high school.

Now unspeakably attracted to her, Dabi's dark desire is edged by both the nature of their relationship and his own depravity. While he resolves to shield her from his fast-growing and awful appetites, it's a resolve he finds crumbling when she makes a decision that leaves him reeling, furious and betrayed.

Undone by his anger, Dabi changes course. He has done so much to keep her safe, but now he's going to make damn sure that there is nothing and no one left to protect her from her terrible older brother —

Nothing and no one to stop him from claiming his sweet little sister all for himself, whether she likes it or not.


AN, cross-posted from AO3:

Hey, so here's an ineloquent warning and some mild spoilers because of it right up front:

The basic plot of the story is that, when he's 16 and out being a homeless, angsty teenager, Dabi finds and sort of adopts an errant little girl, and she becomes a sort of replacement kid sister for him.

The first part of the story covers the early years as they grow up together, years he spends looking after her. It starts out fluffy, kinda, but I write Dabi as being both very selfish and manipulative even very early on. It's absolutely not meant to be a healthy relationship!

The meat of the story, however, is meant to take place during and follow the current BNHA setting/timeline, so Dabi's 23-24, and his "sister" is 15-16. While already very possessive long before that, Dabi starts catching legitimate "romantic" feelings for her when she's around 14+. By the time she's 15-16, it's reaching a very dangerous fever pitch for him (but really, mostly for her), and becomes a lot more sexual in nature, too.

Obviously, that makes things a lot worse.

Please keep in mind this story deals with a very toxic manipulative/possessive relationship, pseudo-incest (wuh-oh, Dabi ends up with a real bad incest kink he's particularly keen to play out with the unfortunate object of his affections), unintentional and later very intentional grooming, an eight year age difference, and like… a whole host of other gross things! It's not healthy or good! It's very messy! Eventually there will be really fucked up smut of pretty dubious consent - though that will only make it onto AO3 and be kept pretty vague here. But yeah, things are hard when you're in love with your adoptive older brother but he's a really bad person who's more than a little scary. He also might be trying to kill your friends. Whoops!

Anyway, it is mostly canon-compliant too, so expect the later chapters to reflect that, but like… in new and awful ways.

Also: trying to update once a week! Sorry the chapters are a million years long, but also not really. ): I'm a slut for emotional angst.


001 / princess in a tall tree-tower.

August; 16 years.

The park, Touya finds, with no small amount of relief, is empty. Darting from the dangerously obvious walking path that branches off from the entrance, he weaves his way through several thick tangles of trees before slipping down a sharply sloping embankment towards the river. The sun is a ghost behind the apartment complex, looming just across the ravine, all red and gold embers settling down beneath a blanket of fast-darkening blue.

He's thankful for the late afternoon shadows that leach into the man-made valley, for the violet that edges the sky, for the rushing sound of water that muffles the sharp patter of his pelting footsteps. Skittering beneath a pedestrian bridge that spans the river from the park to the residential district beyond, he settles into that double-darkness, back to the wall, body gone still.

Above him and behind him, a ways back in the park proper, there is some commotion. It's muffled by the noise of the water, but he can make out a bit if he really strains: the scuffle of shoes, the murmur of voices. Two, three – maybe four?

They aren't heroes, though. He's certain of that. Nobodies, he thinks, eyes narrowing bitterly. Nobody of consequence. The one to raise the alarm had been an old man, a child's stick-figure parody of a person, more bones than meat. The years had clearly left him sick and sour, and the man's needling, accusing eyes had found Touya the moment he'd skulked into the pharmacy and never left.

Touya knew it was stupid to try anything with the way the man had trailed after him, slow and pointed, haunting him down every aisle. But Touya was quick, and he was desperate.

More importantly, he was angry.

In the end, the old man hadn't even seen Touya steal anything. But the way his heavily wrinkled eyes lingered on Touya's bulging pockets, with a triumphant, haughty judgment — well, it had been all the warning Touya needed to beat a hasty retreat from the pharmacy.

Behind him, the old man's squawking voice had served as both an alarm and as kindling for the hot, searing hatred roiling up inside of Touya.

"Thief!" The old man's voice cracked with the effort of his shrieking, his voice chasing Touya into the empty street. "Thief!"

Stealing had been hard, in the beginning. Not hard as in difficult, because Touya found that stealing was a surprisingly easy thing to manage. Even when he'd walked into every store with preemptive and anxious guilt written all over his face, Touya found most people wouldn't spare him even a passing glance. From there it was all just practice: browse, loiter, and swipe a few things off a shelf – and then rinse and repeat as needed. It was the same with everything, really. Bandages, burn cream, cans of spam, single serving packages of boiled eggs.

No, that had all been easy.

The real struggle had proven to be an affliction of the mind.

In the first month, Touya had been sick with guilt. Stealing, as far as Touya had understood it, was inexcusable. Stealing was only something villains did. Stealing was the stale bread and rancid butter of the men and women his father — and the hero society Touya had only so recently admired — worked tirelessly to put away. Morality had always been a black and white thing, a strict, decisive line one could never cross, something drilled into him ad nauseam. Good and bad. Us and them.

And now, it was Touya's bread and butter, both literally and figuratively. Now it wasn't us anymore. Now, he was part of the other.

Never before had Touya stopped to consider what might motivate a villain to steal — but in those first months, starving, aching, and exhausted, he came to understand how desperation might be one of them.

It was a realization Touya found he didn't really care for. It was more dirt on the once pristine visage of hero society, like someone peeling back a gossamer, gleaming curtain to reveal the writhing, sordid rot within, and oh, how he fucking ached with the weight of it — with the weight of it, and everything else, and everything else —

But that was months ago — months ago! — and Touya feels as if he has aged more in those few months than he has in his entire life. There's no more guilt, now. Now, there's only the vague sense that there was something there before that hurt – something that was once there, now lost, and gone. Something empty.

Just one more festering scar.

And that, like everything else inside of him, is ash and dust in the wake of that starving, furious fire within him.

So Touya hadn't bothered to wait to see who else had taken up the old man's call to arms as he spilled like a shadow into the narrow, suburban street. It didn't matter how many decided to play at bravery; he knew their attempts would be inconsequential. He'd make sure of it.

And here, now, beneath the bridge, his blue eyes simmering in the shade, palms prickling with knife-point heat, Touya knows they will regret finding him.

He will make them regret it.

But as the seconds bleed out into minutes, and the clatter of footsteps scatter and drift like leaves on the wind, no one comes. No figures crest the embankment. No one — not even that self-righteous old man — follows him out into the dark.

Another thing to be thankful for, he thinks – and yet he finds it isn't really gratitude he feels.

That fire in him is just so, so hungry for something to burn – something that isn't himself.

A warm wind rustles his hair, and there is no longer any sound over the white-noise of the river and the constant chorus of summer cicadas. He waits another minute, and then another minute more, eyes fixed on the concrete slope leading up and out of the ravine.

When still no one appears, he heaves a sigh.

Relief?

Maybe a little.

(Mostly disappointment.)

He takes the climb up far more slowly than he did the descent, but not because it's difficult; Touya is wiry and tall now, all sinew and too-lean muscle. It's only been a few months since he'd woken up in this unfamiliar body – less the fragile boy he remembered in the mirror and more a gangly young man – but he finds he's adapted quickly. He's faster now, and more dexterous.

More cunning, too. He's had to be, and he's nothing if not a quick learner.

The park is still empty when he clears the steep embankment. A concrete path circles the fragment of misplaced wilderness, meandering round-a-bout back to one of only two exits into the suburban sprawl, but Touya returns the way he came: through the trees.

The center of the park is thick with them, their density broken only by the occasional lonely outcropping of playground equipment. Those plastic-and-steel skeletons cut imposing figures in the quickening twilight, their stark gray forms like alien silhouettes set against the glow of the streetlights just beyond the park walls.

He pauses at a set of swings, hands tangling in the chains. The rattle of them is nostalgic in a way that burns hot behind his teeth, and he swallows – hard – to clear the sudden feeling of razors that bubble up like vomit in the back of his throat.

It's stupid, really, he thinks – and he's angry with himself. Touya had never really been one for parks – never been much for anything besides – well…

(Natsuo had liked them, though. Fuyumi, too.)

Touya's jaw aches. No, no, no. The swing is empty. The park is empty. The streets beyond are empty.

His heart, he tells himself, is empty.

Empty.

He thinks hard about that word. Thinks it, again and again, spelling it out, whispering it to himself like a mantra until it fills up his mind with blessed nothingness – until the seat of the swing is emptied out of his brother and sister's ghosts.

Just an empty swing in an emptier park.

And then he fills it himself, impulsively, and the metal chains squeal under his weight as he sits. Touya can't remember the last time he's sat on a swing – surely it was years ago? He remembers looking down at his feet, at how his toes had only just dusted the dirt, and only when he'd really stretched. He remembers wishing he was taller, that he was bigger, that he could push himself better. He'd been alone then. Sad. Angry.

(Used to it.)

Now his feet reach easy, planted flat and steady. The wind that threads its way through his hair presses like hands against his back, but it cannot push him.

Everything is different now, and yet he is still alone. Less sad. More angry.

Still used to it. And gods, how he fucking hates it.

Touya closes his eyes. In the distance, he hears a car several streets away. And then he hears nothing but the cicadas and the babbling of the river behind him.

Nothing. Nothing. Nothing.

And then: the soft and unmistakable sound of someone crying.

Eyes open and narrowed now, Touya sweeps his gaze across the park. Empty, still, he finds – no one moves along the path or through the trees. There are no shadowy figures climbing the slides, or loping back over the bridge behind him. Nothing.

But he hears it, nevertheless: little hiccuping sobs just loud enough to be heard over the cicadas.

Where?

Up.

And there, some few meters away, caught up high in the branches of a tall and imposing old oak tree, he locates the source of that quiet weeping. A small, dark shape –

Touya squints a little harder, and –

A small and distinctly human shape, blending in with the trees.

"Hey, you." His voice is loud enough to be heard, but still decidedly quiet. He doesn't move from the swing. "What're you doing?"

The blubbering stops abruptly, choked short and ragged by a quick, shaky intake of breath.

"Who – " A girl, then. Her voice warbles, uncertain, still heavy with the promise of tears. Touya thinks she sounds young. "Who is – who are you?"

"No one you'd know."

"I – " She starts, and then stops immediately, as if trying to process this unexpected answer. A few seconds pass in snuffly silence, and then, from the tree: "Well, I – Onii-san – please… I'm – I'm stuck!"

"Mmm – yeah." Touya tilts his head as he makes a show of considering her, careful not to let the cat-like smile that tugs at the corner of his lips muddy the serious cast to his voice. "It does look that way, doesn't it?"

He knows what she wants; she's easy to read, no guile to her at all. She's frightened, and not of him – she's frightened of being stuck, of being alone out here in the twilight. She wants his help. She wants him to save her.

She wants him to be a hero.

(She's a little late for that.)

And maybe a few months ago – or rather, a few years ago, he reminds himself – he might have jumped at the chance to be one, to step into that role, to tug on that gossamer coat and hide his rot and pretend to be something he's not.

Strong, fierce, and brave, like his father –

For a moment, his smirk falters, splintering at the edges – more of a grimace, now. Something hateful blooms in his chest, unfurling sick and hot inside his lungs. He breathes it out through his nose in a snort, and shakes his head slightly, as if to clear it away. It's a futile gesture. His knuckles gripping the chains of the swing have gone bone white with tension, and he closes his eyes for a moment to will that anger from his body.

No, no – he isn't that boy anymore. And really, was he ever actually that boy? Had he not worn that boy's skin like a costume because it was what was expected of him? Had he not dressed himself in ill-fitting morality in some desperate attempt to meet his father's expectations?

Once, he'd been willing to try, but now Touya has no intention of being a hero. Touya has every intention of leaving her here. He doesn't want to help. He doesn't want to save her. And as he repeats those affirmations to himself inwardly, that bleak empty-nothing he's been working so hard to fill himself up with churns and roils with a fast-mounting and unabashed glee at the thought of abandoning her here, snotty and tearful and alone.

Poor, idiot girl. No one here to save her.

The words are coals simmering on his tongue, filling his mouth. He inhales a deep breath of air to feed that heat, venom and sick-sweet smoke, watching her with blazing eyes – and then, he exhales, all fire: "Why should I –"

"Please," she says, softly. She hasn't noticed the fire in him. She hasn't heard the viciousness in his voice, her small legs swinging gingerly on her branch-perch prison. Her plea is expectant and trusting, more hope than despair.

Fragile.

Needy. "Please – onii-san, please… can you please, please, please help me get down?"

Touya thinks of the old man and the others he'd brought with him, hunting a gaunt, desperate boy through the park. The fuck had been so full of that smug sense of righteousness.

Touya is bitter. He's always been bitter. "Why didn't you ask the others?"

A sniffle. A pause. "They – they seemed really angry. I didn't – they… they scared me."

"And I don't?"

There isn't a moment's hesitation before she answers. "No!"

Touya grits his teeth and shivers in the hot summer wind. It is the first time since he can remember leaving that fever-dream hospital that someone has spoken to him as a person, and she is like a cool drink of water he almost chokes on.

It's as if he has forgotten how to swallow.

And just like that, that hateful fire climbing up from his belly to lick at the insides of his teeth sputters and falters –

And, for the time being, goes out.

Silently he rises from the swing and makes his way to her tall tower-tree. Like the swing, he cannot remember the last time he has climbed one, but it proves easy enough with his new, long limbs. Even with his aching, burn-covered fingers, Touya makes good time. From branch to branch, he slips farther up into the whispering embrace of leaves until he hauls himself – with a grace that surprises even himself – up and onto the little girl's branch beside her.

"Hey," he says, again, gazing down into her upturned face.

And she is young. Touya guesses that she is at least half his age. Even in the low light, her chubby cheeks gleam wetly, eyes glassy with uncertain tears.

"Hi." It's a whisper, one he can only hear by virtue of being so close to her. And then, with feeling: "Thank you."

"Haven't done anything, yet," he says, swinging his legs off the side of the branch, letting them dangle the same way hers do. His are significantly longer, and he's keen to the way she studies them with open fascination. "Let's not go getting ahead of ourselves."

"But – you're gonna, aren't you?" She looks up from his legs and back up at his face, blinking owlishly. The motion sends a few fat tears trailing down the curve of her cheeks. "Or else… else why'd you go and – "

He wants to tease her — to pick at her. He wants to push on her like he might a bruise. He's confused to find the desire is both mean-spirited and strangely… fond.

Where the hell is that coming from?

Instead, he sets his teeth, willing the impulse away. "Yeah, yeah — don't freak out. I'll get you down in a sec."

"Really?" She's so hopeful, and it lodges under his skin like a splinter. "You promise?"

"Yeah," he says, and the word comes out a sigh of resignation. "Promise."

The leaves of the tree are a rustling murmur in the wind, almost conspiratorial. It catches at her hair, light even in the twilight, and she tucks it behind her ear, heaving her own sigh in a childishly dramatic huff.

He gets the feeling she's trying to mirror his own nonchalance, and it almost makes him smile.

Almost.

"What're you doing up in a tree you can't get down from, anyway?" Touya turns to face her, back to the trunk of the tree, legs straddling either side of the thick branch. She watches him move with the undisguised admiration children often reserve for teenagers, marveling openly at the deftness and fearlessness with which he maneuvers on the branch.

It is, again, the first time in months he can remember anyone really looking at him with anything other than disgust or pity.

"I was trying to hide from a — from a… friend?'' She says the word friend like she's trying it on for size, yet her mouth puckers sourly around it.

"Oh yeah? A friend, huh?"

"Yeah, but…" She leans towards Touya as far as she can comfortably manage, her eyes darting from him to the distant ground with obvious discomfort. When she regains her bearings and looks back up at him, her voice is considerably hushed, as if confessing some great slander: "But he was being really mean to me."

"Hmmm." Touya makes a show of rubbing his wounded jaw with his fingers, mimicking the seriousness of her confession. He doesn't miss the way her eyes linger on the burns on the back of his hand. "So he went and chased you up a tree, huh? Got you good and stuck here?"

"Yeah…"

"Prolly likes you then."

She shakes her head, nose crinkling in obvious confusion. "Well, I mean, I hope he likes me! Y'know, 'cause we're friends, I thought —"

Touya shakes his head right back at her. "Don't mean it like he likes you like a friend, kid. I mean it sounds like he likes you-likes you."

That sour pursed-lip face look is back, and he almost laughs. "Ewwww — no, no! That's gross! And anyway, it's dumb! Why would he be mean t'me if he likes me?"

"It's dumb 'cause boys're dumb." Touya shrugs sagely, leaning his head back and watching her out of the bottoms of his half-lidded eyes. "I don't make the rules — boys being mean, chasing girls up trees. Even if we don't like it, we gotta live by it all the same."

She eyes him with a weighty seriousness before asking, "Did you?"

"Did I what?"

"Did you — were you mean to the girls you liked?"

Touya looks past her, his gaze indistinct. Had he? He can't even remember any girls from elementary or middle school — can't remember any friends, even fleeting. He'd been so focused on —

"Nah." He fixes his gaze back on her, on the present. "I wasn't."

"So you're not dumb and you broke the rules!" Her mouth broadens into a wide, easy smile, electric in her revelation. It's oddly contagious, but it's been so long since Touya has actually smiled earnestly that even the prospect of it makes him kind of nauseous.

(So he pushes the urge down.)

"Dunno if I'd be jumping to that conclusion, really, but I ain't about to argue with you. But speaking of jumping…" He indicates the ground with a tilt of his head. "You wanted to get down, yeah?"

Her eyes follow the gesture briefly before darting back up to his, anxiety chasing the smile from her face. "Yeah… but I don't wanna jump!"

"Yeah, I'd definitely advise against that unless you got some kinda quirk that's gonna keep your little legs from snapping like the twigs they are." Touya twists along the branch until he's got his back to the girl, rising to balance on the balls of his feet, hands fixed to the trunk. "I can't carry you down and climb, so you're gonna have to get on my back."

She gulps audibly, and there's no disguising the fear in her voice. "But — but what if I fall?"

"Then you'd fall, and that'd be really fucking messy, so my advice is: don't." He shrugs, looking back over his shoulder at her. "But you're not gonna fall, 'cause you're gonna get up and hold on real tight, aren't you?"

Obediently, she inches her bottom along the tree branch towards him until she's close enough to reach out a hand and touch his back. Her fingers are light and fluttering as they creep up his dirty, oversized shirt before finding solid purchase against his bony shoulder. Her other hand follows suit shortly after, clinging onto his other shoulder as she twists a bit on the branch to get a better grip.

"C'mon, little princess. Don't you wanna escape your tower? You can do it."

She inhales very sharply and uses his shoulders as leverage to pull herself up into a standing position, trembling on her unsteady legs. Her arms snake around his neck, and her breath huffs in his ear, warm as the summer wind. "I did it!" It's a quiet exclamation, and she sounds almost bewildered by her own observation.

"You did it. Good. I'm gonna stand, okay?" He can feel her nod, her cheek rubbing against his neck. "And when I do, keep your arms 'round my shoulders, and get your legs 'round me, too, so you're on good-and-tight."

"Okay," she whispers, repeating his words like a prayer: "I'll hold on good-and-tight."

Touya stands slowly so as not to lose his balance. He's surprised by how light she is; he barely registers the tug of her body as he feels her feet lift from the branch, her little legs tangling almost immediately around his abdomen.

"Good," he says, patting one of her legs. "Good and tight. Gonna start climbing down now; you should close your eyes, so you don't freak yourself out even more."

"Already did," she murmurs, and for one brief moment he marvels at how easily she trusts him. And then, even more softly: "Thank you so, so, so much."

Touya has never had a real opportunity to be heroic, he realizes. Not until this moment. It's ironic that it should be this, that it should be now, now that he's long since given up any intention of being good or kind or righteous – ironic it should be something so small, here, in the summer sunset shade. In his mind, years before, he'd always imagined it like he'd seen on TV: his father, a dark and imposing silhouette against a roaring pillar of flame, surrounded by broken glass and even more broken bodies. And then, the bright light of flash bulbs, and the cheery if intimidated smiles of reporters, and always his father, gruff and unhappy and so fucking cold despite the flames that licked up the sides of his face.

The only heat against Touya's cheek now is the vaguely warm fan of her breath.

The climb down the tree is a journey he takes a lot more seriously than he did the ascent, both because he doesn't want to drop her and — to his surprise — because he doesn't want to scare her. The press of her body as she clings to his back is the first touch he's known for… what?

Years?

So many things, once old, now new again, and there are razors in his throat again, too. "Hey," he says, and his voice is hoarse around the word. "Tell me – how old are you?"

"Eight." It's a quick, proud announcement. (Shouto's age. He tries not to think about it.)

And then, as he expects, she asks: "What about you?"

Touya thinks. Counts. Remembers. "Sixteen," he says, finally.

"Ohhhhh," she breathes it out, reverential despite her obvious discomfort over the climb. "So big, Onii-chan!"

"Bigger than a small fry like you, anyway."

There's a giggle in his ear. Playful. "Not true!"

Touya clears his throat. "I most definitely am bigger than you."

Another giggle — less and less fearful. "No, that's not what I meant! I meant I'm notta small fry!"

Slipping from branch to branch with quickening speed, Touya marvels at the way he can feel the tension easing from her. "Eyes still closed?"

"Yep! It's not that scary if I don't look!"

She sounds so… happy, Touya thinks. Even if she's not laughing now, the laughter is in her voice, bubbling up, sweet and effervescent. He remembers her only moments ago, cheeks smeared with tears.

Has he done this?

"Hey," he says, suddenly, struck with a realization that only just borders on real concern. "Where's your parents, kid? Shouldn't they be out looking for you? It's pretty damn late."

And just like that, he can feel her deflate.

"Dad is — um… well." A pause. There's an audible strain in her voice now. "Dad isn't… he isn't around right now. And Mama's gotta work late. She goes to second-work a little after I get home from school."

"You kidding me?" There's no hiding the judgment creeping into his voice. "They leave you by yourself?"

"She has to –" The little girl is defensive now, and even without looking at her he can feel it in the rigidity of her body language, in the sudden movement of what he guesses is an exaggerated shrug. "It's… uhm… it's weird." She draws the word 'weird' out in a similarly exaggerated fashion, held long and playful. Faux-silly, he thinks. The humor doesn't quite hit the way it should.

"Hero work?" He asks, neatly casual, his tone and demeanor far more practiced in its deceit than hers.

To his surprise, the girl makes a noise that registers to him as undisguised disgust. "No," she says, and he finds himself caught off guard by the absolute finality of it. It's as if she has shut the door entirely on that conversation and firmly thrown the lock with a decisiveness that belies her age.

As Touya's toes reach solid ground, he finds he cannot resist knocking, anyway. "Touchy subject, huh?"

The girl's fingers ball into fists in the fabric of his dirty shirt. He expects her to lie; it's what he would do.

Instead, she is entirely honest. "Yeah."

(A chain, now, across the door. A deadbolt.)

Touya decides to spare her despite how much he wants to push.

"Well," he says, backing a few paces away from the tree. "Guess we're clear, then."

The girl's legs untangle slowly from his waist one at a time, dangling along his own like a puppet's limp limbs. Touya sinks to a crouch to help her find her own footing, and it's only when she's got her feet firmly on the floor that he feels her hooked grip around his neck loosen.

Her fingers in the fabric of his shirt are the last to go.

When she peels herself off his back, he's immediately aware of how much cooler he is, even in the warm August heat – even with his own intense body heat. The loss of her touch is a palpable thing, and for a moment he feels a bit delirious without it.

Empty.

Empty.

"Thank you," she whispers from behind him.

He stands and turns to face her, to get as good a look at her as he can in the hazy yellow lamplight of the park. She barely reaches the height of his chest, skinny and sexless in the way of children her age save for the girlish length of her wavy sun-on-snow hair and her coral pink dress. Her small face is upturned to meet his gaze openly, eyes wide and framed with thick, damp lashes.

It's hard to see what color they are in the near-dark.

"Yeah," Touya says, pushing his hands into his pockets and feeling inexplicably awkward and almost defensive. He tells himself that lingering ache in his throat is from having to speak so much after months of near total disuse, even if he's not sure he believes it. "Not a big deal."

She doesn't say anything. Instead, she pulls her gaze from his, openly absorbing him now – the same way he has been observing her – with all the unabashed curiosity of a kid no longer paralyzed by fear. Her eyes roam his scarred face and trace the length of his bare, fire-blistered arms.

This, too, is something new. He's used to adults regarding him with quick-stolen glances – with faces contorted in revulsion, or pity, or distrust. He imagines them thinking, "Poor thing," or "Someone else will take care of it," or "What has he done to deserve that?"

If, of course, they spare him any thought at all.

This little girl, though, clearly has many thoughts to spare. "Does it hurt a lot?"

She sounds both awed and horrified, and he can guess that she's wondering how he moves at all now that she's gotten a closer look at the burns. Despite himself, Touya smiles down at her. "Sometimes. Kinda. Not as much as it used to."

"Sometimes?" She's bewildered, but quick-thinking as she pieces it together. "Is it – is it something that happens a lot? The… messed up spots, I mean?"

He holds out his hand palm down and makes a fist. The bubbled skin over the back of his wrist slides around unnaturally, separating from his flesh some with the movement. She seems transfixed by it, horror crossing her features. He suspects she's never seen a burn so bad before. "Yeah, it does. They're burns. Side effect of my quirk."

"Oh," she breathes out the word, long and slow, like she's been holding it in. Her eyes flicker back up to his face, and he thinks they might be violet, but he's not quite sure.

A brief silence stretches between them, and then, in barely a whisper, she asks: "Your quirk hurts you?"

"Fire does that, yeah." Touya intends to sound flippant. Instead, he sounds tired, even to himself.

"Oh," she says again, and her eyes are so wide, and the silence is gone, and the words are tumbling out of her so quickly now, as if she cannot hope to control them. "Oh, oh! Mine is like that too! Not like fire – it's not fire, it's not, but still, oh, mine can hurt me too! It can hurt a lot!"

Touya watches her face contort between emotions. Excitement, glee – a brief flicker of concern. Maybe terror? And back to excitement again.

He's careful to keep his own expression unreadable save for the slow ascent of his eyebrows. "Doesn't look like it hurts," he says, finally, doubt prickling sharply into his tone despite his best efforts otherwise. There are no scars puckering her skin. There are no old blood stains on her dress.

He expects her not to notice, but she seems to pick up on his feelings immediately, mouth opening and closing lamely, briefly mute. Touya thinks he must have hurt her feelings, but when her wide, unblinking eyes pull away from his, the gesture isn't one of sadness.

No, he thinks – she looks…?

What?

Guilty? Anxious?

Touya stiffens. "What're you hiding?"

She twists her hands together in the skirt of her dress, staring at the ground, and whispers, "I… I'm not supposed to tell people 'bout my quirk."

"Oh, yeah?" Touya pushes his hands back into his pockets, feeling the bandages there as he weighs his options. There's no doubt in his mind that he could guilt her into telling him without any real fuss; it's apparent to him that she's aching to tell him already, even if she's been cautioned against it.

It's not something he feels he needs to know, of course. And perhaps earlier in the day he might have been more inclined towards the spiteful approach, at playing at disinterest to rob her of a chance she clearly wants to take.

It's not like he needs to know, he reasons. It's not like it matters. He will never see this girl again.

But yet, despite all that, Touya finds that he is terribly curious.

Just curious, he assures himself. Just curious. Certainly not fucking lonely.

She looks up at him again, slowly. "Yeah," she repeats. He knows she wants him to ask. He knows she needs him to ask.

The cicadas fill the silence that stretches between them with their hazy, droning chorus. Dabi holds her gaze, eyes electric blue in the shroud of early night. And then, slowly, he sinks back down to the balls of his feet, leveling himself at her height. "You can tell me," he says, soft and solemn as a prayer. "I ain't gonna tell anyone."

He doesn't tell her he has no one to tell. It sounds better that way. He wants her to feel like he's doing her a favor. He wants her to feel like he's trustworthy.

The bloom of her smile is immediate, and even in the dark he can see it catch light in her shining eyes. "Promise?"

"Promise."

"Okay," she whispers again, taking a deep breath, and he is reminded of the way air feeds into fire, stoking it bigger, making it hotter. Her eyes now are so bright. "Okay," she repeats. "Okay! Can I – can I just show you?"

Touya shrugs. He knows he should probably ask for clarification.

But he doesn't. "Sure."

She reaches out with one small hand. There is hardly a half meter's space between them, but her movement is halting and her fingers seem to hesitate before she finally touches his cheek, right along the sharp ridge of flame-puckered flesh that traces its way garishly from the corner of his mouth all the way up to his ear.

When he'd woken up in that hospital all those distant months ago, the scarred face that had greeted him in the mirror had sickened him. The scars had traced a harrowing line of demarcation through the middle of his jaw and down his chin, but at least that had been all they were.

Just scars.

Now, though, he knows he looks different. Mangled. Worse. The ridge of flesh that has bubbled up from the searing heat he struggles to learn to control has cracked open those scars and made fresh wounds anew – wounds mirrored all across the rest of his body in jagged, frantic patterns up his arms and across his chest and down his legs.

It's a wonder she can stand to look at him, he thinks. Most people can't.

"Tell me if it hurts," she says, suddenly, and so soft.

Touya frowns a bit. "I already said it didn't really – "

But he realizes that isn't what she meant when a soft, golden light flickers to light in her fingertips.

And then, the light isn't just in her hand – but inside him as well.

At first, he can feel it more than he sees it. It's warm, but in a way that's gentle, in a way that makes him ache for how impossibly good it feels. It starts in his face, a sun-on-a-cold-day heat beneath his skin, filling him up, heady and so sweet before it seems to spill and pour all through him.

The glow in her hands brightens, and sheer, unbridled relief runs the length of his spine, tracing nerve and vein down, and down, and down. And in moments, he can feel it – feel it blooming in the tips of his own slackening fingers – feel that weightless, painless bliss in even the soles of his feet.

Touya lifts his own hands in undisguised wonder. They glow with that same golden light that shimmers in the girl's own fingers, now trembling against his skin as she cups his cheek – but it's a detail he only just barely absorbs.

No, the thing that holds his attention are his burns.

He's reminded of time lapse videos of flowers in bloom, of small green buds quivering in a field before unfurling into gentle, colorful displays of spring-time revelry, petals proud and bright. It's like that, he thinks, but reversed.

The gnarled ridges of the blackened, raw wounds that line the backs of his hands seem to be receding even as he watches. The bubbles of red and shiny skin that had separated from his flesh deflate, growing smaller and smaller until – he blinks. And then they're gone.

Just scars.

(Like he'd had in the hospital.)

He touches his other cheek, the one absent her hand, and feels – nothing. No pitted, gutted holes. No stiff, rippling peaks. No stinging pain.

Nothing.

"I can't do – can't make the scars – " Her voice is a knife through the reverie, sharp and panting. Touya realizes he hasn't been looking at her, and when his eyes find her face, it's streaked with tears again, her mouth open and wet and gasping.

"Shit," he hisses, and it's all he can do to catch her before her small legs give out from under her. Her hands grasp weakly at his shirt as she angles her head away, vomiting violently into the grass at their feet.

Something like instinct has him gathering a messy, clumsy fistful of her hair to pull it away from her face as she continues to empty the contents of her stomach. She shudders with the violence of it, and even when there's nothing left inside of her, she continues to retch empty into the open air.

Touya tells himself it's instinct again when he pulls her closer, tucking her head under his chin. "Shhhh," he whispers, thrown as much by the lack of burns across his hands as he is by his own muted tenderness. "You're gonna be alright."

He realizes he doesn't know if she will be – realizes that almost upsets him. He doesn't know anything about this girl – doesn't even know her name. "You're gonna be okay," he says, and says it again, and again, and again, quiet and steady.

She will be okay, he thinks. She has to be.

And slowly, slowly – slowly – her body begins to relax.

For a while, Touya just holds her. For a while, she just lets him, silent but for an occasional shuddering sniffle, otherwise unmoving, fingers vice-tight in his shirt.

And he doesn't know what to say. (Thank you?)

He doesn't know what to think. (Thank you.)

"Hey," he says, and the word is sticky and thick in his throat. "Tell me your name."

It's a while before she finally answers, before she finally looks up at him with her wet, flushed face. She's obviously in pain – cripplingly so if the way she leans heavily against him is any indication – but there's an unmistakable note of pride in her voice when she whispers the answer:

"Suzume."