cupboards bursting with skeletons

“I’m home,” Shouto calls out softly, stepping past the threshold to the apartment.

Rei appears in the small hallway, dressed in a braided gray sweater and the long wool socks Fuyumi had knitted for her while she had been hospitalized. There’s a small smile on her lips with a matching upward curve of her eyes. “Welcome back,” she says dutifully. “How was school?”

“It was good,” Shouto automatically replies, carefully arranging her shoes and hanging her coat. The monitor across the wall from her reads 10C.

She had picked up dressing for the temperature she couldn’t feel from her mom…probably. The Todoroki estate didn’t have central heating either, and Shouto can remember having a gray sweater as well…

…almost. Almost remember, like so many memories, half there with the context fully out of grasp. Maybe the sweater was Rei’s. She thinks there may have been two of them and Mommy, you’re silly, you’re trying to wear mine! and she knows from the psychology class they took last semester that children only really start to dress independently from age 5, so someone had to have been dressing her, had to have put up with Shouto’s clumsy attempts to fit her arms through long sleeves and show her how buttons work.

Shouto didn’t need sweaters after that happened. She had two weeks worth of training clothes, and the outfits for the occasional public appearance with her father that would appear in her room with the tags still attached and disappear the next day (and she had left those tags on one time, once she had understood the concept of wealth and privilege and just how much 3those zeroes meant when she was much, much older, and Endeavor had burned the ends of her hair in anger as they sat shoulder to shoulder at the round table, and she can remember the familiar sensation of his flames against the back of her neck where his hand had rested, the horrible acrid smoke that always came with it accompanied by the unfortunately familiar burnt sulfur as Shouto stayed still, so still, because no one could know—)

Her mother’s hand cups her face. Shouto can’t feel the cold, and neither can her mother, twin sides of the same coin (but wouldn’t that mean being different, a different front and back, cursed to mirror each other but never see each other —)

The touch is warm, nonetheless. Shouto closes her eyes briefly and reminds herself it’s alright to take comfort in the action. You don’t need to deserve affection, her therapist had said. He hadn’t quite seemed to understand that Shouto had to earn it, had to, because she was the reason it had been lost.

But comfort. She could let herself feel the comfort. Her mother had said as much in the hospital after the War, when Shouto had opened her eyes and immediately met Rei’s gaze from where she was sitting in the visitor’s chair next to her. Her mother had wiped the tears dripping down her face with bandaged hands as Shouto had said I’m sorry and I’m so glad and everyone else, are they—? everyone was okay when I left, are they still—? and her mother had said Oh Shouto, My Shouto, had sat on the bed and cradled her face in two hands, and because Shouto was weak and selfish she had leaned forward and dropped her head on her Mom’s shoulder (and that could have been so bad, what was she thinking? How could she prioritize herself when her mother had continuously risked her life and stepped out of her comfort zone since Shouto had started meeting her?) but Rei hadn’t pushed her away, had murmured soft somethings as she stroked the back of Shouto’s head and Shouto cried harder.

It has been okay, since then. Her mother did it a lot, hand just as soft, just as warm, and sometimes Shouto can feel the tears in the back of her eyes wanting to fall again, just for the chance that her mother might embrace her seeing them (thinking only of herself again), but that self-rebuking reminder only worsens the self-pity.

Shouto steps back, and Rei’s hand drops into the space between them. “The new classes have been good. Everyone is doing well.” She pulls a small container from her crossbody bag. “Izuku really liked it. His mom made something too…she insisted, even though I said she didn’t have to. She says if you share your recipe, she’ll share hers, but I think she’s teasing.”

“I’m glad he liked it,” Rei says, stepping further inside. Shouto follows her past the kitchen to sit at the western table they had bought, shiny hardwood muting her steps. “I’ll call Inko tomorrow…hold on, I’m just going to write it down…”

She goes into the kitchen, and Shouto sits herself at the table. The dorms have something similar, with how many of them there are, and although she’s gotten used to it, it still feels different. But everything about this apartment is different. It’s meant to be different. It’s good to be different, even if Shouto is a reminder of anything but different.

Her mother returns with food. “Mom,” Shouto frowns, sliding off the chair. “I could have helped you.”

“You’ve worked hard, Shou-tan,” her mom says, setting the food in front of her and gently pushing Shouto back into the chair. “Rest. I’ll bring the rest out.”

Shouto sits back down.

Soft shuffling sounds echo from the kitchen, so distant from the lively clanging of the dorm kitchens. It’s cold soba that sits unassuming on the plate in front of her. It always is, the first day she returns to this house. Home?

She takes a bite of the plain noodles. Bakugou had yanked her bowl back the first time she had done that in the dorms, had scowled as Shouto frowned at her empty chopsticks and said don’t look at me with those sad fucking eyes, at least wait for the damn sauce, left Shouto with her legs hanging until he had come back with the second bowl.

You didn’t have to do that, Shouto had said even as she dipped her noodles into the (incredibly rich) broth. It was still really good.

Only you would eat soba plain, Bakugou had rolled his eyes. Shouto had chewed her noodles and thought about waking up at 2 am in horrible pain and dizzying hunger, sneaking into the kitchen to eat leftover soba plain and cold on the wooden floor. Is that bad?

It’s wrong, he had scoffed, and had given her both the soba and the sauce at the same time every time after. Because he had made it for her after too, still, even with her impropriety, because the store bought noodles were offensive, or he couldn’t trust her in the kitchen, or he was sick of her eating her bland protein dinners, but not because he liked making it for her (as he reminded her every time).

Shouto can’t— she can’t remember eating soba with her mother, not really. Fuyumi had said she enjoyed it and so she had made it for Shouto. And Shouto did enjoy it, and didn’t know how to even talk with her sister then, so she had eaten the soba every time.

The taste in her mouth now is incredibly familiar, settling in her stomach with painful nostalgia. She doesn’t cook, so she can’t place what exactly about it is different from the one Fuyumi makes, why this one leaves her heart aching as she looks towards the kitchen for her mother.

On cue, Rei returns with the accompanying broth. She smiles seeing Shouto. “You used to love eating it plain as a child too,” she says, setting the dish besides Shouto and settling in the seat across from her.

“I did?” Shouto says, surprised.

Rei laughs. “The sauce was too bitter for you, I think. And you liked to copy me when I chilled it. One time, you had frozen the entire thing solid, before melting it to show off to me, and then started crying when the noodles were soggy in water. I dried it out on the stove, and you burned them to ash the next time you tried to do the same.” Rei settles her head into her palm, and Shouto can see the fondness in her gaze as she stares off at the table. She takes another bite to bury the abrupt yearning in her gut.

“You loved doing little tricks like that all the time, even if most of the time you broke whatever you had with you,” Rei continues.

I started young, Shouto thinks, and says “…I don’t remember.”

Rei fixes her gaze on Shouto and it’s still there — the fondness, the - the love, and now it’s Shouto who can’t maintain eye contact. “I’m not surprised. You were barely two years old at the time.”

Two years old. So much of the happiness in her life had been consumed by then, before five. She had sucked out her mom’s happiness in the following year before it had all culminated in that day.

Shouto tries to remember — god, she tries, but is she remembering the memory or creating it as she thinks about it? It was a version of her that made her mom smile and not cower in fright, happy and not terrified, and Shouto would become that version for her mom, if she could remember.

“I don’t remember,” she says quietly, again.

Rei stands from the table suddenly, already turning, and so she misses the childish flinch from Shouto at the sudden movement. Shouto hates it, the obvious tell of what her life had been like in every inch of herself. She had never been like that a year ago, before the War ended. While everyone else reveled in the comfort of the new peace, healing with their families, Shouto got worse. Got obvious, and she couldn’t even heal her family to make it worth it.

Rei returns with a photo album in her hands. “There’s pictures,” she says, settling next to Shouto’s left (and Shouto breathes very, very carefully). “I think it’s in this one…”

“Where’d you get that?” She manages to say in a somewhat even tone, and decides against saying I don’t remember for the third time and inviting pity from the person whose life she ruined. The front of the album dates it to two years after she would have been born

Rei smiles next to her. Looks into Shouto’s eyes, and Shouto drops her gaze to her chopsticks, before remembering that she could be looking at the album instead. “I made it a few years ago,” her mother says conversationally. “My therapist at the time thought it would be a good way to reframe my memories. Fuyumi brought me the pictures.”

Shouto does remember a small, sleek, silver camera. Fuyumi always brought it out on her birthday or whenever she dressed Shouto for one of Endeavor’s hero events. She would say smile! as she clicked the photo, with Shouto standing awkwardly in a dress or sitting on a table behind shortcake. Shouto never did know what she did with any of the pictures. At one point, Fuyumi had started taking pictures of Shouto’s injuries before she patched them, sniffling it’s not fair to you, Shouto-chan, and it had given Shouto such, such, hope those months, fantasies of — of something happening lulling her to sleep at night, until nothing happened, and Fuyumi stopped, and Shouto gradually started tending to her injuries alone.

(She never knew what happened to those pictures either.)

Rei starts to flip past the first few pages quickly, but Shouto catches the edge of one of the pages with her index finger. A younger Natsuo proudly holds up a game controller while Touya sits next to him, brow furrowed in focus at whatever game plays on the screen behind the camera.

Shouto stares mesmerized at the picture. She’d only ever seen Touya in his schoolboy uniform picture that graced his altar and then every news channel for the past seven months. He looked even younger in the photo, closer to the hazy look in her memories.

He was in a loose blue flannel shirt here. Shouto owned one just like that. The couch they sit on still sits in the Main House collecting dust. Even the picture frames behind it were the same, without the addition of two more Fuyumi had put up after Natsuo had graduated high school and after Shouto had graduated junior high. Fuyumi was probably just out of frame of this picture, too.

The domesticity was everything Shouto ever wanted. Everything she ruined. Even now, she can barely patch it up for her family properly.

Her finger hovers over Natsuo in the picture. “Natsu-nii’s controller isn’t turned on,” she says abruptly. And it isn’t — there’s no triangle of white light on the back of his like there is on Touya’s. Kirishima had shown her how they worked when they had first moved into the dorms. These new gen controllers they released are so different, he had said. Shouto realizes now that it was to make her feel better about not knowing how it worked. He hadn’t even said it any differently. He still didn’t treat her differently.

Her mom laughs. “Touya used to do that all the time when Natsu insisted on playing too. I don’t think Natsu ever realized.”

Shouto takes her phone out. “Do you think he ever did?”

“You’re going to send him a picture?”

“It’s a very sibling thing to do,” Shouto says, and taps the camera.

You sent an image.

Mom says you never realized.

Natsu-nii

realized what

holy shit is that a baby touyu-nii

did fuyumi gives this to you???

You

It’s a baby you, too.

She gave some pictures to Mom. There’s a photo album.

Look at the controller.

Natsu-nii

damn i was kinda ugly as a kid

touya looks exactly the same lmfao im showing this to him

ofc fuyumi just has these, was she even sentient at this age

WAIT

WTF

You

Why wouldn’t she be sentient?

Natsu-nii

WTF

WTF???

that

that bastard

are you serious

what do you MEAN i never realized

this was a TREND?????

You

To be fair, you were six.

Natsu-nii

I THOUGJT I WAS SO GOOD AT IT TOO

THIS WHOLE TIME

this is the worst betrayal.

You

If you tell Touya-nii that, he’s going to laugh at you.

Natsu-nii

HES BEEN LAUGHING AT ME THIS WHOEL TIME THAT FUCKER IM GOING THERE TMRW I S2G

“I’m glad you two are close now,” Rei says, covering her smile with her hand.

“Natsu-nii did most of the work.”

Her mom shakes her head. “Don’t discredit yourself. He said you reached out first.”

“Fuyumi was the one who made it all happen in the first place,” Shouto shrugs. She traces a younger Fuyumi beaming at the camera. Her smile reaches her eyes here, crinkling the edges. “She never gives herself any credit.”

“No,” her mom agrees softly. “She doesn’t. But it’s not limited, Shou-tan. You can have it too.”

“Do you tell her that too?”

“I tell all my children.”

Not all, Shouto corrects mentally.

“Oh, you two were so cute,” Rei sighs. She angles the album towards Shouto. “It’s not the one I was thinking of, but it’s close enough.”

She’s waving a frozen peach at the camera. A block of ice encases both the fruit and her younger self’s fingers. Touya is sitting on the table next to her, hunched over, apparently melting another peach that Shouto had frozen.

“We’re together,” Shouto says, surprised. “I thought…”

“Not always,” Rei says distantly, flipping through the album again. Rei, Touya, Fuyumi, Natsuo, even her, sometimes, alone more often than not but there. “I used to…in the year or two before…” She takes a deep breath, composing herself. Shouto waits. “Sometimes I’d bring you over to Touya and them…I don’t know if it made it worse. But it made you all so happy. But when you got older…you got more tutors. It was harder.”

“I never knew,” Shouto says.

“Natsuo was young, too,” Rei says. “I’m sorry. I should have tried harder.”

“I made it harder,” Shouto says very quietly, because she doesn’t want her mom to hear and relapse with Shouto’s self-pity, or hear and agree —

—but she still said it aloud because maybe she wanted Rei to hear and tell her otherwise.

Regardless, Rei is quiet for whatever reason.

The little soba she had eaten settles to the bottom of her stomach like a stone. Her appetite has vanished. This is new too, since the War, since she moved into the new house, the ache of hunger being replaced by a different, unnamed ache, and suddenly she can’t take any more — more food from her family, more sympathy, more pity, more of everything she so desperately wished for growing up.

They’ve reached the end of the album. Shouto doesn’t think Rei was looking at it very much towards the end either.

“You’re not hungry?” Rei asks, gesturing to the bowl of soba.

“I’m full,” Shouto lies.

Rei frowns, but doesn’t push her. Maybe she believes Shouto. Why wouldn’t she? It’s not like they know each other very well anymore. Beyond talking about school, and her friends, and about Natsuo and Fuyumi, and about what Rei had done for the day, they didn’t talk about much else. Every topic was carefully safe, and they were quick to veer away from anything more.

And that was probably for the best. The last time she relied on her mom for her emotional well-being, her mother buckled under the stress.

(But she thinks of Inko wrapping Izuku in the tightest hug and sobbing in relief, of Mitsuki swatting Katsuki’s head and the two of them yelling at each other, but so obviously happy, and the carefully maintained distance between Shouto and her mom —

— and is it wrong to want?)

She fiddles with a hangnail. She was the cause. She should be the change.

What do daughters even talk about with their mothers?

“I went shopping with Yaomomo and Ashido the other day,” she tries. “We tried on dresses and I bought one they said looked good on me.” She pulls up the picture Ashido sent in the class group chat, of Shouto in a pale yellow sundress that went to her knees (it wasn’t summer, and Shouto wasn’t really sure why Ashido had snapped the pic, but it made her friends happy, so she didn’t mind).

Rei takes the phone in her hand. “You look beautiful, Shouto,” she smiles. “Will you send it to me?”

“Of course,” she says a little too quickly.

Her mom hands the phone back. “I haven’t worn a dress like that for a while,” she says. “I used to love putting makeup on my friends before we went out shopping.”

Shouto can’t read the look she sends her. “I don’t wear much makeup.” She resists the urge to touch her scar. “It…feels heavy.”

“Oh,” Rei says. “Well — that’s okay. It’s been a while. I probably don’t remember much of how to do it. And styles change so fast these days.”

Shouto doesn’t know the first thing about fashion styles. “Yeah,” she agrees lamely.

The conversation settles. Shouto tries to rack her brain for other girly topics, and she wishes she had Uraraka or Hagakure with her. A girl that knew how to be a girl not — whatever Shouto is.

They’ve tried with her, of course. Putting makeup on her (but avoiding her scar without a word, and what was the point of dressing up a broken doll?), shopping, of course, painting her nails, watching romcom movies—

Well. There was a thought. She could, certainly.

“Valentine’s Day is this week,” she says hesitantly.

“Is it?” Rei looks towards the calendar hanging on the wall. “You’re right. Time’s passed by so quickly.”

They stare at each other.

“Is there someone you like?” Rei asks softly.

“…yes.” The hangnail is a little longer. Endeavor would have ripped it off if he saw her fiddling with it. “He’s in my class. You know him. Bakugou Katsuki.”

Rei’s eyebrows furrow, before recognition sparks in her eyes. “The boy who visited you in the hospital…the one who told me not to let you do anything stupid, and that you did-“

“That’s him,” Shouto interrupts, trying to stave off the inevitable.

“– ‘pretty good out there, for a half and half bastard like yourself’.”

The tip of her cheeks feel warm. “He – he doesn’t mean it like that.”

“I know,” Rei says. Shouto thinks this might be the widest she’s seen her mom smile today. “The way he looked at you. You two were familiar with each other.”

“We’re classmates.”

“But maybe Valentines?”

She’s not quite sure how she feels so hot suddenly, considering that she was created for thermal equilibrium. She sits her cheek in her right hand and tries to covertly cool herself off. “Not yet.”

“But you’re planning it.”

“I don’t know,” Shouto admits.

Her mom looks at her with knowing eyes, which grips her heart in equally painful ways. “What’s making you hesitate?”

Shouto thinks of waking early and drinking her pre-workout shake and watching him come back from an even earlier morning run, slanted red eyes and some remark or the other as he started breakfast and she watched him until she couldn’t delay any longer. The look he gave her when she started making his shake along with hers, and the ever so slight, ever so present smirk that appeared every day afterwards. Facing off against each other in afternoon training and the adrenaline of knowing she could be more heavy-handed with her quirk, seeing the explosions pop in his hands and the same feral look on his face because he could do the same. Stopping at the convenience store after remedial classes and him picking out strawberry milk every time, in addition to groceries for the class, the remark between them forever unsaid. And — comfort, of not having to try, not having to worry about her poor social skills, not masking, just — her.

“I don’t want our friendship to change,” she confesses.

Rei’s hand curls by her side. Shouto thinks of Inko grasping Izuku’s face between two hands, wiping away tears with her thumbs. She resists the urge to trace her scar.

“It will change,” her mom agrees softly.

“Oh,” Shouto says. She’s not sure if she should have told Fuyumi instead and gotten false optimism instead.

“But friendships always change, Shouto. Yours already has, even if it’s been slow enough that you haven’t noticed.” Rei twists a ring around her finger. “I can’t tell you what to do…I married Enji young. But whatever decision you make, it will be the right one.”

“You trust me too much,” Shouto says, trying for levity (except she’s awful at that, and it comes out a little too honest).

“Why wouldn’t I?”

“Because —” Because I don’t. Because anytime anyone has put their trust in me, I failed. Because I failed you. “Because I don’t know what I’m doing.”

Rei laughs, and the air shifts with the sound, and Shouto’s head snaps up, mouth parted. “Who does, Shou-tan?”

There’s a wonderful expression on Rei’s face, and Shouto wonders. “Did…did you ever —?”

“No. I wasn’t interested in any of the boys I went to school with. But one of my best friends was head over heels for a new boy or girl every few months, and we’d make chocolate for her to give her new crush.”

“Bakugou tried to teach me how to,” Shouto says, if teaching included strict directions for Shouto on how to use her fire (“it’s good practice for quirk control,” Bakugou had grumbled, shoving two bowls into her hands). “…I burned it.”

Rei laughs again, and Shouto wishes for a moment she could bottle it up for herself, before dismissing the selfish thought. “It takes some practice.” She glances towards the kitchen, then back towards Shouto. “…I can help you make some, if you’d like.”

“Now?” Shouto says dumbly before she can stop herself. “No, I mean,” she says hastily before the open expression on Rei’s face can slide off, “Yes. I’d love to. Thank you.”

Making chocolate turned out, in fact, to be melting chocolate. That would explain. Well. That she wasn’t supposed to let the chocolate harden because that happened after.

She tells her mom as much, hoping (selfishly) for another laugh. She’s rewarded easily, and Shouto’s whole chest lights up in warmth. “Wouldn’t you just leave it as is, if you wanted hard chocolate?”

“I thought the heat changed it somehow,” Shouto admits, opening up packets of dark chocolate Rei had gotten from the hospital staff after being discharged. “Isn’t that what cooking is?”

Rei is chopping nuts beside her, intermittently checking on the stand mixer next to her with different ingredients. “The heat does change it; it melts it. But it remains the same, just in a different form.”

Shouto gathers the chocolate in her hands, keeping it cool with her right hand, and brings it over to her mom. “We need a sauce pan and bowl, don’t we?”

The nuts are shuffled unceremoniously into a small bowl, and another round of chopping starts. “Ah,” Rei says, not looking at her. “Bakugou-kun probably used the double boiler method. We’ll just be using the saucepan. It’s…better, for this.”

Shouto nods, and turns the dial on the stove. It’s electric, the surface heating up without a lick of flame. Her mom had shown her what to do beforehand, but promised support if Shouto needed it. She drops the chocolate in slowly, and then begins to stir.

“It was nice of the hospital staff to give you gifts,” Shouto says, not taking her eyes off the stove.

“It was, wasn’t it?” She can hear the smile in her mom’s voice. “They gave me the baking pans as well, and the mixer…it was very kind. I told them a long time ago that I wanted to open a bakery when I was younger, and they let me practice in the communal kitchen, sometimes.”

Shouto stops stirring abruptly, and the chocolate begins to stick to the sides of the pan before she remembers to restart. “You wanted to open a bakery?”

”After word got around that I was making Ayase’s — my friend, the one with the many love lives — making Ayase’s chocolate, many of my classmates wanted some too.” Rei says, nonchalantly, as if this wasn’t the first time Shouto had heard of her mother’s dreams. “I ended up with a small catering business. The money helped my family…”

The scent of the dark chocolate is too bitter all of a sudden, and Shouto feels her throat constrict. The tiniest of fractals cover the countertop. “But you had to stop.”

“Well, of course.”

“Because you got married. And had kids.”

Rei meets Shouto’s gaze. “I wanted that.”

“But you wanted a bakery more. And you couldn’t because–” because Touya told me that you only got married because the Himuras needed money and Endeavor was probably far richer than whatever actually made you happy “because you had to have us. Had to take care of us.”

“Shouto,” Rei says, steady. “Whatever Touya told you…isn’t true. It was my decision. And it’s not as if I stopped completely. I still baked all of your birthday cakes, didn’t I? You used to help me–”

– and whatever she says after is lost in white noise because Shouto remembers that her mother did have to stop completely, remembers tugging on her mom’s shirt to ask about it and Rei brushing the bangs out of her face and saying Not today, and she had asked Natsuo about it, peeking across a paper door in the middle of the night, and Touya had told her venomously (and why can she only remember the painful memories of him?) that Mom can’t make them because she’s too busy with you.

“You had to stop because of me.” Shouto croaks. “I did make everything harder.”

And Rei hears this time, undeniably, but Shouto’s thoughts keep running, running, running, and she had known, of course she had know that she ruined her mother’s life, stole ten years from her, but — this, knowing that her mom had dreams, a goal, and Shouto took everything from her—

Rei stills, pausing the mixer. “Shouto, you were a child. A baby. You couldn’t have made it harder.”

“But I did,” Shouto says, and thinks she could understand the well Touya drew his hysteria from, feels it crawling up her throat. “I got more tutors. I took you away from everyone. I took the old man’s attention from Touya. And you both —” Her hand hovers over the saucepan. “You both suffered from it. From me.”

Rei is looking at her with wide eyes, and Shouto’s mouth goes dry. Had she triggered a memory? Reminded her of something it took a decade of therapy to process? “Sorry—” she starts to say.

“Shouto,” Rei interrupts, clasping cold hands over her own, over the unevenly melted chocolate Shouto is ruining. “That wasn’t your fault.”

She pulls her hands out of her mom’s grasp, and avoids eye contact, avoids seeing if there’s pain in her gaze — from her rejection, from reminiscing, from trying to comfort the source of your trauma. “It happened because of me,” Shouto explains. “If I hadn’t been born — you could…you could all — be different. Be happy.”

“Shou-” her mom tries to say, but Shouto leans away.

“And I know that,” Shouto insists, swallowing past the pain in the back of her throat. She has to say this, it’s important to say — she can’t have anyone blaming themself for her mistakes. “I know. And that’s why — that’s why I’m trying to be better.” Trying to be the hero of the family, like her mother so calmly said she was back then (and Rei had said she was surprised Shouto called her mom, as if it wasn’t Shouto that should be thankful to have the chance to do so). “To save everyone from what I caused. I have to,” she finishes quietly.

Silence. There isn’t even a clock in this house to fill the house with oppressive ticking sound. And silence — silence was the absence of an answer. An affirmation of what she said. It was her junior high P.E. teacher seeing bruises across her flank when she changed and saying nothing. It was the letter she picked off her door when Izuku had left, written words because all of their spoken words had talked around it. It was the echoing downpour as she stood outside U.A. with her father and Hawks, and he had promised to do this together and he didn’t, not until Shouto had said something.

And — maybe that’s why the words tumble out of her now. “And I will. I promise I will, and I’m trying, and I know it’s not good enough to make up for any of it, and maybe in the next life everyone can be happy without me, a real family —”

Her mother hugs her.

Her mother hugs her.

Pulls her in, one hand against the back of her neck, the other wrapped around her waist, and Shouto’s chin is propped up by Rei’s shoulder. She doesn’t say anything, just holds Shouto, and even with the silence Shouto’s head is the loudest it’s ever been, and even with her mother’s quirk it’s the warmest she’s ever felt.

When Rei pulls back, there are tears spilling from her eyes. And all the emotional build-up, years of it after being trained and trained and trained to not cry — Shouto sees her mother’s tears and suddenly, she’s crying too.

“I’m sorry,” she chokes out, and tries to pull away. Rei holds her firm.

“No, baby,” her mother says, smoothing over the unruly red split of her hair. “It’s not your fault. None of it ever was.”

“But because I was born—”

Rei cups her left cheek and Shouto falls silent, heavy, hot tears fall down her cheeks. “You didn’t ask to be born. You didn’t ask for your quirk, or the way you look — and I don’t deserve your apologies, not when those are from me.”

“That’s not true!” Shouto interrupts.

“Why not? I chose to have you—”

“But you didn’t!”

“I did,” Rei says firmly, wiping the tears from Shouto’s eyes, her fingers brushing over her scarred eyelid. “And in every universe, in every life, I would choose to have you again. There’s is no life where I am happy without you, Shouto.”

“That’s…”

Rei brings Shouto to the floor, and pulls her into her embrace again. “And I must be one of the happiest ones in this universe, because my Shouto suffered through my choices and still chooses to be kind and smile for me.”

Shouto cries harder.

“Never think that any of this is your fault. Shouto, you’re the best thing that happened to this family.”

She clings to her mom as she sobs, and she’s so selfish for taking comfort when she had ruined Rei’s life, even if — even if her mother says — “How c-can you say that, after everything I’ve done? A-after everything I’ve taken from you?

Rei presses a soft kiss on the left side of her forehead. “You’ve only given me hope, Shou-tan. You saved this family. Never think otherwise, never ever think otherwise.”

Being held like this, against her mother, fists clenched in Rei’s shirt, small circles being rubbed into her back while another hand strokes her hair, feels so familiar that the tears can’t stop, keep flowing as ugly sobs rack Shouto’s frame.

Shouto cries until her breaths become hiccuping gasps, and when she lifts her head and sees the dried tear tracks on her mother’s face, a new wave of hysteria rolls over her and she buries her face in her mom’s neck again as fresh sobs shake her.

Her head is pounding when Shouto finally lets go of her mother’s blouse, sniffing wetly. Her eyes burn, feeling heavy.

Her mother is still there.

(still here)

Fresh tears prick at the corners of Shouto’s eyes, trickling out the side, heavy but not as burning. “Shou-tan,” her mother says tenderly, running her thumb over Shouto’s fingernails.

“I - I don’t—”

“Shh,” Rei soothes. “You’ve been so strong already. We let you think this for so long. I’ve been gone for so long. But,” she gently grasps Shouto’s chin and tilts it upwards, “I’ll never let you go without hearing this again.”

“Mom,” Shouto sniffles.

Rei doesn’t whisper her next words. “I love you. I always have. I always will.”

Shouto starts crying in earnest again, and Rei holds her throughout.

“The chocolate,” Shouto mumbles nasally some time later. She can’t tell the time; the warm white fluorescent lighting feeling as bright as noon sunlight to her. But the stove is off, and there’s no smell of burning, of heat to choke them both with.

Rei laughs softly, and Shouto’s been selfish already, and it’s been okay, so — she listens and warms without guilt. Rei brings a glass of water to Shouto’s hands, lightly prompting her to drink, and then to finish the glass. The headache abates slightly.

“We can try again later.”

”It’s ruined,” Shouto says. And indeed, the chocolate is clumped together, hard and decidedly not smooth and even.

“It’s just seized,” Rei consoles.

Shouto blinks slowly. Her eyes are starting to feel heavy with the urge to sleep. “But…chocolate…doesn’t have a brain?

Her mother’s lip twitches in poorly suppressed mirth. “It just means it’s become lumpy like this. We could fix it, if we wanted to.”

Ruined chocolate should just be called lumpy then, Shouto thinks (or not ruined?) “And if we don’t want to fix it? If we can’t?”

Rei stands and opens a cabinet on the distant side of the kitchen. When she comes back (and Shouto only barely doubted that she would come back) her arms are full of the other gifts and well-wishes from her hospital. Her mom picks one of the cards at random and gestures towards the date. Six years ago, from a woman who had written that she was sad to leave and that she would miss Rei. “Chocolate doesn’t spoil easily,” she says, smiling softly. “We can try again…there’s always tomorrow. We’ll still be here.”

“You almost killed yourself in one of these when you were a dumb baby, you know.”

Shouto looks at Touya curiously. The sun wanes in the sky, still an hour out from sunset. The koi pond they’re sitting by reflects golden hues in the scales of the fish.

“What happened?” she asks.

Touya doesn’t look at her, focusing on the fish beneath their dangling legs instead. She doesn’t mind. It’s enough for her that the two of them can sit here, like this.

“You stumbled into the pond when no one was watching. Mom must’ve been gardening or something, I don’t know. You didn’t even yell. I found you splashing pathetically, half frozen in the water with tears rolling down your face.”

Shouto kicks her legs. The action is freeing. She’d never been allowed to in childhood; her tutors would snap a wooden stick across her shins. “So you saved me.”

Touya scoffs. “You would have killed the fish, and that was the only good thing that godforsaken place had going for it.”

It’s quiet out here, in the countryside, away from Musutafu. Away from the house, from the history there. Their father is away in Fukushima for a charity event, no longer a working hero with what the War had brought out.

Strangely, Shouto thinks he doesn’t mind. It’s almost inconceivable to consider, that her father spends his time out here with Touya, away from the public eye. She can’t reflect on it for too long without it becoming difficult to breathe.

“No one saw?”

“Obviously not. You couldn’t even figure out how to dry yourself. Just sniffled with smoke coming off of you.” There’s a twitch at the edge of his lips as he follows the koi as they float, suspended in the cold water. “I had to pick water weeds out of your hair after I dried you.”

The only thing Endeavor used to tell her about her siblings was how jealous they were of her quirk, how they would be grateful for the training she received, how superior she was to them. The only thing she had ever heard about Touya was that he tried to kill her as a baby, and if she didn’t train diligently, she would turn out to be a failure like him.

These moments are a blessing she doesn’t deserve, to sit across her brother like this and reminisce, to hear things so different to what she knew. It causes an addicting warmth to rise in her chest.

She’s lucky. She’s so lucky. It could have all been so different.

“Should’ve let you drown, honestly.” Touya says, eyeing her.

“I don’t think my body would have been good for the ecosystem,” Shouto says. “Then I would have really killed the fish.”

“Look at you. An environmentalist on top of being the golden prodigy.”

There’s still some resentment behind the words. He’s watching her now, assessing her reaction. She never knows how to respond, can only hope that what she says won’t end in a fight.

“I’ll add the endorsement to my twitter bio.”

There’s no burst of blue flames, in fact, Touya — Touya snorts, rolling his eyes. “That’ll be the most exciting thing on your entire profile. How is it possible for you to be even more boring online?”

“I’m not boring,” Shouto defends. “I tweet about exciting things all the time.”

Touya is already pulling his phone out of his pocket. He was given internet access two months ago (monitored, of course). Fuyumi had made a group chat immediately, which Touya had tried to leave six times before Fuyumi had started a group call to yell at him. He doesn’t text often — mostly reacts 👎 to memes Natsuo sends, 🙄 to questions Shouto asks, and 🫡 to every single one of Fuyumi’s texts, including the one where she told him to stop adding reactions to every single one of her texts.

“I recently had the amazing opportunity to spend two weeks volunteering at JCN,” Touya reads, sarcasm dripping from every word. Shouto thinks he would have been good at being a stage actor, or maybe a newscaster.

…she keeps that thought to herself.

“That is exciting,” Shouto interrupts. “And it’s important. Did you know that 93% of cats who are returned are euthanized? It’s even worse with the recent zoning changes —”

“You literally say exactly that here. I think you need more talking points.”

“You could volunteer with me next time.”

“Pass. I’d rather drown in the koi pond.”

“Not very environmentalist of you,” Shouto mutters.

Touya knocks his shoulder into hers. “Look at that,” he croons. “Baby’s first joke.”

They slip into silence. The sun slips further down in the sky. Shouto needs to leave eventually. She has class tomorrow, and her father will return here in the evening. Their relationship has gotten better, and Shouto has even forgiven him, but —

— but it was still hard, sometimes.

Empty trees shift with a slight breeze. The two of them sit in a single layer of clothing each. Their quirks are even more similar, now.

“Mom sent this for you,” she says, pulling an envelope and a small box out of her bag and handing it over. Touya raises an eyebrow but takes it from her, setting the package to the side, holding the letter in his hands.

He turns it over a few times. There’s only his name written on it, in their mom’s handwriting. It’s not a particularly thick letter, or anything particularly elaborate — Rei had used stationary gifted to her by Shouto. Touya sets it aside and opens the box.

“We made chocolate the other day,” Shouto offers by way of explanation. “Fuyumi helped. I brought you some.”

Touya picks up a chocolate piece between two fingers, but makes no move to eat it. After a few seconds, it melts instantly into his hand.

“Oh,” Shouto says. “I have some hand wipes —”

“Why are you still here?” Touya says, abruptly, coating his hand in ice and melting it off. The chocolate water drips into the pond. “You did your good deed for the month, and you can go home and sleep peacefully now.”

This happens, sometimes. The testing. The unsaid do you actually care? Shouto’s all too familiar with it herself. Pushing people away because letting them in made it your fault when they would hurt you.

(She can never convey just how deeply grateful she is for her friends, for pulling her in. )

She doesn’t move, but doesn’t push in closer either. “I didn’t visit to do a good deed,” Shouto rebuffs softly. “I visited because I wanted to spend time with you.”

“Right,” Touya scoffs. “Because you’re just so good and loving.”

“I’m not trying to be good,” Shouto says, trying not to let frustration leak into her voice. It’s a familiar conversation, and she’s not sure what spurred it, exactly. “I do love you. I come because I love you.”

“You’re fucked up, you know that, right?,” Touya says cruelly. “Just like me. I’ve tried to kill you your whole life, and you’re sitting here saying you love me.”

“You saved me, too,” she says quietly. Touya’s eyes narrow. “I don’t care if it’s fucked up. It won’t change.”

“How sentimental.”

There was nothing Touya hated more than sentiment.

“What did I do wrong?” Shouto says plainly.

“Why do you assume you did something wrong?”

“You’re upset. I made you upset.”

Touya rolls his eyes. “Not everything is about you, little hero.”

“But you’re upset.”

Touya stands up suddenly. The air around them heats up, and the frost over the pond begins to melt. Shouto doesn’t move, watching him carefully. “You seriously don’t get it,” he laughs. “You seriously don’t know.”

He stalks away from where they were sitting. Just when he’s gotten far enough that Shouto almost stands up to follow, he stops. She can see the energy slump from his form, and he turns back.

“You always needed things spelled out for you,” he mutters. “Could never understand hints unless they were said straight out to you. Even then, you’d still hang off of me until I pushed you off.”

Shouto waits.

“You’re the only one who makes such an effort, you know?” Touya says, finally. “If it wasn't for our birthdays just recently, I wouldn’t have even seen Mom. Even Natsuo barely knows what to say to me.”

Shouto doesn’t know what to say to that, either. She still lives at the dorms, only coming home for the weekend, and they’re still settling into their family dynamic at home.

“…I never saw Mom until I went myself,” she says eventually. “Sometimes I think it wasn’t a good idea. We…ended up crying making the chocolate. I think I made her cry. Even though she denied it.”

“Save it for your therapist,” Touya snaps.

“It’s not easy,” Shouto says. She takes a deep breath. It’s not easy to say this either, to be so candid about her feelings. But it was not talking about anything that got their family in this mess in the first place, so she continues. “We’re both learning. I think we might always be.”

“You want me to reach out,” Touya says, mirth underlying his words.

“Mom tried to save you at Gunga too,” Shouto says. “Most of your skin grafts are grown from,” she stops herself from saying what was left, “— from her.”

“This is how we show love in our fucked up family, huh,” Touya says.

“My therapist loves that topic,” Shouto shrugs, and Touya looks at her for a moment before doubling over with a wheeze.

“God,” he chokes out. “This is my life.”

“I’m happy you let me be part of it,” Shouto says.

“Fuck off,” Touya says back, but it’s without the heat of their earlier convo. He picks the chocolate back up. “Surprised you made chocolate and not your shitty noodles.”

“…”

Touya turns so quickly towards her Shouto has to suppress a flinch. “Don’t fucking tell me. Are you serious?”

Touya was always quick on the uptake. “I didn’t say anything,” Shouto says weakly. She’s glad they shifted conversation topics, but. This one?

“You?”

“I don’t know why that’s such a surprise,” Shouto says, definitely not sulking.

“What the fuck,” Touya says, laughing in disbelief. “Wow. Who is it?”

“…is that really important.”

“Yes,” Touya says with emphasis. “Absolutely. As your older brother, I have to know. It’s part of how things work. I have to approve.”

“What happened to our fucked up family dynamic?” Shouto asks.

“This is the only normal part,” Touya dismisses. “Tell me. Or the first thing I’ll tell Mom is that you never talk to me.”

“She’ll know that’s not true,” Shouto says, exasperatedly. Touya gestures give it up.

Shouto sighs. “It’s Bakugou.”

Touya’s silent for all of one second. “Explosion boy? You’re joking. This can’t be real. Shouto, he’s fucking crazy.”

“I just told you his name,” Shouto says. “And I’m crazy too.”

“You’re one of the sanest people I know,” Touya brushes off. “Unbelievable. He looked insane in that fight with AFO. Literally manic.”

Shouto is silent for just a little too long. “Shut the fuck up. You found that hot?”

“We’re friends,” Shouto stresses. “We get along. We have fun.”

“This is my next therapy topic,” Touya mutters.

“It’s really not that serious,” Shouto says.

“No, it really is. Unbelievable.” Touya eats a piece of chocolate, continuing to mutter to himself. “Blasty boy. Toga’s going to lose her mind.”

“Bakugou,” Shouto corrects, and Touya rolls his eyes with exaggeration.

The alarm on her phone rings, thankfully disrupting the moment. “That’s for my train,” Shouto says.

“You’re ru~nning~ a~way,” Touya singsongs.

“I am not.” Shouto stands, brushing dirt off the back of her skirt. Touya watches her lazily, making no move to get up himself. “I’ll tell you how it went the next time I visit.”

“I’m equal parts interested and horrified at finding out,” Touya says, looking up at her.

“You’re being dramatic again.”

“Yeah, yeah.” He waves his hand in the air languidly. “Feel free to never come back too. You won’t be missed.”

She can hold his gaze. There’s no trace of the glee she saw in the forest the first time, no manic glint from the first time he hugged her.

Or — not the first time, actually. A time. And if she’s lucky, if he lets her, it won’t be the last.