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All of this was his fault. Causality had also fallen upon those who only stood by without acting, though the instigating event had usually been nobody else but Endeavor himself. Guilt was all he could feel as he sat in front of his family, covered in injuries, as they all shared their grief in the realization that one of their family still remained amongst the living.
Hindsight was a hell of a bitch that could hold grudges for a lifetime.
The rest of the family shared their regrets over their share of the guilt. Not even Fuyumi was infallible for how little she actually interfered with her family's affairs.
This would be a journey to recovery that would test their resolve to its limits. All they knew was that Touya was alive under the alias of Dabi. When or where he could show up next was a complete mystery for the family. There were those who only hoped that the oldest Todoroki sibling had the potential to realize his wrongdoings and turn himself in. Only one member of the family knew of the truth the others were being kept in the dark about. It was only her privilege to be given more of the truth regarding what had happened with her son that fateful night.
Several Years Ago
Desperately trying to put out the flames engulfing Touya, Haru endured the heat in order to save the child from death. It took a few minutes of him using his jacket and his hands to smother the flames; what remained in his arms looked so horribly disfigured that it already looked like a corpse.
Charred skin with exposed muscle visible to the naked eye as the burnt bits of flesh crumbled away. Thin, short breaths were the only indicator that this was a still living human being.
"Touya! Oh my god, I'm so sorry! I should have come sooner! I'm sorry!"
He almost fumbled the phone call with how desperately Nakamura had been trying to call for a medivac. The physical state of the boy left him only hanging on by some sort of miracle. Trying to be gentle with Touya felt like pissing in the wind with the knowledge that the boy was in indescribable torment. If one tiny burn could hurt so badly, one could only imagine having their body charbroiled till the skin started to crumble off like charcoal.
In a complete delirium, Touya could barely see through the eyelids that were nearly sealed shut from the heat. Looking up at the one person who never gave up on him, who actually stood up for him; it felt odd to see them with such a pained expression.
There were tears in the man's eyes. So much physical pain rendered the sensations of his extensive burns into a temporary dull ache. What hurt even more was the ache in his chest as he saw someone he cared for cry so heavily. What could have driven such a kind and resolute person such as this into tears?
"... N…"
"Don't move, Touya! Help's almost here! Just hang on!"
The wish went ignored as a blackened hand with some of the bones exposed sluggishly lifted itself to Haru's face. Taking the hand in his own, Nakamura assisted the boy the rest of the way and held the disfigured hand against his face. Blood and soot marked the flesh and hair there as Haru could only manage to cry helplessly in the circumstances. Here was someone he failed to save; all because he was too angry to focus on who truly needed his help.
"I-I'm so Soorrrryyyyy! Oh, god! I'm Sorry! I'm so Sorry! Aaaaaaaaaahhhhh!"
This isn't how he wanted to see this man. If he could only say something. It hurt too much to even keep his eyes slightly opened, much less speak. Being a hero didn't feel so important to the boy as he laid in Nakamura's arms. What he wanted most in the world was to help this man dry his tears.
He could feel how lonely he was. For once in Touya's short life, he wanted to help someone who he felt he understood.
Present Time
Rei and the family spoke with the father of their family and promised to one another that they would all take things one step at a time. Though things looked bleak for the time being; that didn't mean that they shouldn't at least try to mend things over.
She left with her children in tow and reached the hospital lobby when a familiar face had also been leaving with someone. Both Rei and Haru locked eyes for a few moments while he had been walking with a green haired woman who had been wiping up her tears. Inko then noticed the tension between the two and realized immediately that this must have been Rei. Just by looking at the woman, she could definitely tell what Nakamura saw in her.
After some pleasantries were shared, Haru and Rei started walking around in private outside of the hospital while Inko spoke with the Todoroki children. Even Shoto found it incredibly easy to speak with the woman that his mentor was romantically involved with.
"... So…"
"... So…"
This whole situation made it hard for Rei to come up with something to break the ice. Getting a call from Haru's cell, she struggled for quite some time after hearing the news that her oldest son was indeed alive. He elaborated that the young man would come to meet her when Touya felt it appropriate enough to see his mother in person. Only the condition that he asked for was that she not disclose that he contacted her regarding the matter. A police report would have officers at her home to disclose the news, so pretending that the police were her source of information was all he asked Rei to do.
Now that she had access to the truth of her son's survival, she found herself completely mute over the idea of asking the most poignant question on her mind. Any parent would want to know more about a child they thought was dead who, in actuality, survived.
Words were failing her. Things were scrambling themselves in her head to the point that it became garbled gibberish. Like she couldn't stomach knowing where her failure placed her son in life.
"... He was in my care for two years."
Sensing her apprehension, Nakamura spoke first.
Listening to Haru was all she could do as she fell silent. Hearing what happened to her boy after the traumatizing event put into perspective how much Nakamura had done for this family from the shadows.
Several Years Ago
Monitors surrounded the bandaged patient on the bed; tracking all critical conditions such as heart rate, blood pressure, blood pH levels, etc. Tucked away in one of Japan's most prestigious hospitals was a nameless patient that had only one regular visitor who came to see them. For two years, the visitor always made it a point to come in at least once a week. He never allowed visits to span further apart than six days from one another at any given time of the patient's stay.
Sometimes he would just talk to the unidentified person who spent just over two years with some of the best care available in the nation. Other times, he would just sit there in silence while looking at them with a look of genuine melancholy on his face. Whoever he was, this person meant a great deal to them for how much it was costing to fix the patient's physical condition to this point.
Not even many of the hospital staff knew who it was that had been admitted to their care. All the nurses and non critical staff were told that it was on a need to know basis regarding the patient's identity, considering the malformation they were all working to remedy for years now.
Another visit with the visitor sitting in solemn silence left the room only occupied with the sounds of beeping hospital equipment. The entire room was made available only for this one person, and somehow the hospital honored the request to do so.
Twenty minutes passed since he arrived when he felt the need to go get some coffee from the cafeteria. He left his jacket on the familiar chair as he let the still unresponsive patient know about where he was headed off to.
"Sorry, kiddo. I'm gonna go for some coffee. I'll be right back."
Walking out of the room, Haru took one last look over his shoulder at Touya; still unresponsive after six months since his skin grafts were successfully applied. Only time had the answer when the young man would wake up again.
About eight minutes passed after Nakamura left the comatose Touya alone to grab some coffee from the canteen. The monitors were suddenly beeping at a different rate than usual, now starting to pick up the pace at a very gradual speed.
"... Mnh…"
This alerted the hospital staff to report to the disturbance caused by the irregularity in usual biometric readings. What they saw actually looked like a positive development as even one of the head physicians on duty started the task of getting Touya off the machines that were no longer required for a conscious patient.
"Take your time, sir. You're safe. You were in an accident and are in the hospital. Don't worry, you were able to recover from the incident."
Words of affirmation were given by the medical staff to help ease Touya out of his delirium. Mental fog that felt like swimming through concrete made it extremely difficult for the comatose young man to find his way back to the land of the living.
Surfacing here and there, even the light hurt his eyes as the doctors were trying to make sure that Touya was stable enough to emerge from his long slumber. A sensory overload made things far more unbearable than they needed to be. Just twelve seconds ago; Touya had been cremated alive by his own flames in the middle of the wilderness with no perceivable hope of rescue. Many more unfortunate circumstances from his home life then made his next reaction more of an inevitability than anything else.
"Don't worry, your dad will be back shortly."
That one statement sent Touya into a frenzy. Nakamura was far from being considered the boy's father on paper. Sounds from Touya resisting the medical staff clued in the nurses that this was a teenage boy who suffered such injuries. They assumed that the one who remained by this boy's bedside for over two years was the person's father. A natural conclusion that came out of more misinformation.
Panic set in for Touya as the image of Endeavor dragging him back to the empty hell that he had been forced to endure his entire life triggered a response that was nothing short of absolute paranoia.
From out of nowhere; Blue fire started to erupt out of the patient.
He needed to leave. Now.
Elsewhere
Hospital staff were alerted to an incident in the building that had many staff injured. This news stretched as far as the cafeteria, where Nakamura had been returning from with his cup of slightly above average coffee.
Hearing the reports and panic alerted him to the location where the incident took place. It was none other than the room where he had been four and three seconds ago.
His coffee hit the tile as Haru raced to get to the hospital room where Touya had been during his recovery. All Nakamura saw were the remains of what Touya left in the wake of his escape.
Medical professionals were already trying to help their fellow practitioners while Haru scanned desperately for evidence of where Touya could have gone. His mind raced ahead of itself out of the sheer panic that threatened to overtake him. The streaks of black exiting the window were all he could perceive before he too leapt out of the fourth story window in pursuit of the escaped patient. Those who tried to stop him were unable to stop the man as he already knew what he needed to do to fix the mess he had instigated.
The nurse who first stuck their head out of the window on that rainy day only saw one person run down the street after the patient who escaped. They couldn't understand how it was that the man who ran after the escaped patient had even been able to get as far as they did when they should have been nothing more than a stain on the ground.
To be a visitor, the person who registered to be the patient's relative registered themselves to be quirkless. In light of the development, nobody learned of the event past the single individual who had visual evidence who confirmed it to be true.
Rain kept pelting down all around both the one still running and the one running after them. Touya didn't understand why he ran from the one pursuing him. Instinct drove him to keep running.
It was the heaviest that the rain had been for the past several years. Water droplets the size of marbles were coming down heavy on those unfortunate enough to be outside in that specific region of the country. Pelting down on those who were seeking shelter; one child seeking shelter from the one pursuing them frantically looked for a spot that would hide them from whoever was chasing them.
Touya found a cluster of trash cans down an alley just to his left. He barely managed to vault over the bins as whoever was chasing him finally came to a stop right as Touya tucked up into a tight ball in order to evade his pursuer. After waiting in his hiding spot for some time; he deeply regretted his decision when he heard the voice of who it actually was who had been chasing after the young teen.
"Touya! Touya, please! Where are you?!"
Hearing Haru call out to the boy made it almost overwhelming for the teen with the sudden realization that he misunderstood the nurse who told him that the boy's father was the one waiting for him.
Endeavor hadn't been the one who visited Touya; it was the one other person who he never wanted to hurt.
"Please! I-I'm sorry!"
Those words twisted a deep seated pain within Touya. He could hear the man's voice crack with the sadness of losing the boy yet again.
"Please! I want to help you! Just… Just, please! Come back, Touya!"
He wanted to get up and call out to Nakamura. All of this was due to the boy's knee jerk reaction of running out into the rain. Before Touya could move, a gripping fear kept him where he hid from Haru. Hearing the man's voice sound so lost and broken caused him to recall what he saw just before going comatose. The shame of bringing his one true mentor to tears locked him in place. He didn't want to cause anymore pain to the one person he valued more than anybody else in his life.
"... TOUYA!"
All he could do was wait until Haru left the boy alone in the rain. As much as Touya wanted to blame the rain; his eyes were trailing tears that even the downpour couldn't disguise.
If only Touya hadn't run. Had he possessed the inner strength to confront his shame and inadequacies, perhaps he wouldn't have abandoned the last person in the world who truly wanted to help him. Weighed down by his guilt, Touya trudged through the rain and walked several kilometers alone to return to the last place he wanted to be.
There was one last thing he needed to see. To confirm whether or not he should remain as he was.
To see whether or not hurting his mentor was worth the pain of coming back to his old life.
Elsewhere
Returning to the family estate revealed nothing of surprise to the boy. Touya heard the abuse his younger brother had been subjected to for the past few years play itself out in the distance as he wandered through his old home while trailing rainwater. Nothing had changed since his death. Not a damn thing.
There was a shrine erected in another room of the house with his photo sitting dead center inside of said shrine. This is all he had left within the Todoroki household.
His place in this family was nothing more than a memory.
A strange sense of relief came over Touya. Seeing himself being acknowledged as dead lifted his once heavy spirit and renewed whatever twisted remains of his old self remained. Clapping both hands together, he offered a prayer to the once cheerful boy in the photograph that sat inside of the shrine. A sincere prayer had been offered to the passing of Touya.
All that remained was Dabi.
Present Time
Rei fell deathly silent at the story that Nakamura shared with her. The fact he shared the story that corroborated with the wet trail she mysteriously found that day inside of the family home only cemented what she wanted to deny that rainy day. Her son returned from the dead, only to just walk away from it all without looking back. She would have embraced the shame of failing to protect her son if that meant he was still alive. It just hurt a bit to realize her son had become who he was during those difficult years of his life.
Nakamura lit a cigarette and took a deep drag while hunched over after finishing his retelling of both his and Touya's accounts of what happened the day the eldest Todoroki child decided to run from his past.
"... Where is he?"
"Safe. He's somewhere safe."
Being short with her now only told the woman that Haru couldn't speak on the matter due to another reason beyond just his own.
"Can I see him?"
"..."
Pausing to pick his words out carefully, the answer left Rei a bit wanting with how little information it offered to the mother.
"... Only when he's ready to do so."
This all felt so frustrating, yet she knew how little of a right she had for complaining. Her son was alive and safe; after wasting all those days and nights praying for Touya's life day after day. What she wanted more than anything right now was to see her son in person and embrace the child she gave birth to.
Sensing Rei's turmoil, Haru put his left hand on the woman's shaking ones as she tried to contain her emotions under a cracking mask of emotionlessness. Both hands remained still as Haru gently took the woman's left hand into his own and squoze the much daintier digits in his rougher palms. His skin felt rough against her own; like the ridges of rich oak against the delicate grains of white ash. Even the heat coming off of his palms sent involuntary shivers up Rei's arms. Compared to her cool flesh, it was like he had a body that ran like a radiator.
They remained like this for a while, just enjoying the company they found in one another.
"Don't worry. He'll see you, once he's ready."
It barely felt like a consolation to hear that now. Feeling the touch of a man who loved her dearly helped to calm the storm that she didn't want to fight anymore. Her hand wrapped itself into Nakamura's as they sat in relative silence with each other.