Chapter Text
Out of however many inane holidays exist in this era of Quirks and Heroes, Amnesty Week has to be the stupidest.
All Might doesn’t even have a holiday. Yet. But the twelve buffoons who, two hundred years ago, managed to get themselves sentenced to death row over a crime they didn’t commit (because all of them were too busy either flirting with the detectives or threatening them with grievous bodily harm to actually get their side of the story straight) and then organized a prison riot that ended with one of them declared prison warden and pardoning the remaining eleven dumbasses—those people get to have their own holiday. And it’s a week off school. In September, no less, so the weather isn’t even nice yet, just wet and hot and miserable.
Ridiculous. Utterly ridiculous. Know what else is ridiculous? These fucking stairs.
Shoto stares down at the steps for longer than he’d admit under threat of death. They’re just the front steps to Heights Alliance, but with how his body twinges and aches every time he so much as breathes, they might as well be the Everest.
He doesn’t… need to go up the stairs. There’s a ramp, like, a meter away that would probably be easier on his knees. CRPD compliant, 1:16 slope ratio and all. UA is the most prestigious Hero school in the country.
Still.
It’s a matter of pride, maybe—Shoto’s always had a problem with that. If he takes the ramp, it means that he needs it; because his body, weak and useless and not used to the pain even though it’s been so long, was Endeavor’s to hurt for the week, and Shoto is still that dumb ten-year-old that kept asking for a break because he couldn’t handle a broken humerus. But he’s not. He’s not. And to prove it, he just has to go up the damn stairs.
He’s not even hurt, not anymore. It’s just that Dr Fukushima’s stupid fucking Quirk is about as uncomfortable as the man’s morals, and the more it has to work, the worse the aftermath is. Like a hangover, but you don’t even get to be drunk beforehand. Not that—well, Shoto didn’t really let him work this time. He’ll admit that one’s on him. Between Dr Fukushima, who’s permanently on standby, and the chauffeur who keeps making thinly veiled passes at him every time Shoto gets in the passenger seat, the Todoroki family single-handedly keeps every creep in Japan employed.
So. The stairs. Shoto stares a little harder. It’s getting kind of uncomfortable, just standing there under the scorching midday sun, head hanging low. The duffel in his hand feels like it weighs two times what he does.
It’s the pain or the cowardice.
People rave about his stoicism and inhuman pain tolerance, he’s heard them, but all the talk is just that: talk. Shoto is human, in the broadest sense of the word. He gets scared and needs sleep, and he doesn’t like being in pain. Inside, his classmates are already unpacking their bags and eating lunch, which he knows because they won’t shut up about it in the class group chat. Shoto is from a different world than them, he knows. But also… they’re just inside, through the tall wooden doors.
Shoto sighs. He takes step after aching step up the stairs, knees twinging with every movement. When he reaches the top, it doesn’t even feel like he’s proved anything.
The scanner next to the door beeps and flashes green when Shoto presses his student ID to the reader. Heights Alliance is just as he left it a week ago, and the crisp, slightly scented air that greets him when he steps inside the common room has all the tension leaking from Shoto’s shoulders. Very few things in his life are safe, but the dorms have been his first haven.
“Dude!” someone shouts as Shoto pockets his ID. Half the class is lazing around in the common room, draped over couches, armchairs, and loveseats. Denki waves clumsily from his spot on the rug, too close to the TV. “Shoto! Welcome back!”
Hitoshi snaps something about disturbing the sanctity of midday naps—Izuku is curled up on the couch next to him, sound asleep. Shoto smiles faintly. There are waves and scattered, quiet hellos as he drops his duffel on the floor next to an armchair. He’ll come back for it later. Some news broadcast chatters on about gas prices.
Tadaima, Shoto doesn’t say.
“Is there actually lunch in here or was that a logical ruse,” he asks flatly, instead.
“Stop getting so close to the screen,” Hanta scolds, dragging a whining Denki back by the ear. “You’re ruining your eyes!”
Momo tucks her feet underneath her on the couch and smiles at him. “There’s pizza in the kitchen.”
Bless.
Shoto diverts course. Sure enough, boxes upon boxes of every kind of pizza imaginable litter every flat space available. One Aizawa-sensei litters the kitchen island. Shoto ignores the way his knees are telling him to sit the fuck down and leans over the granite to ransack the pepperoni box.
Aizawa hardly looks up from his coffee cup and the papers he’s browsing through, just nods vaguely at Shoto. He’d sit next to Sensei, but honestly, if he sits down now he won’t get back up again. He’ll settle for resting some of his weight on his elbows on the counter, and crash when he gets to his room later.
Shoto counts calories absently in his head, chewing on his pizza and on the knowledge that Aizawa… well, knows. Knows what? Knows. About Endeavor or about Mom, about the times Shoto drifts in homeroom because all he can focus on is the gnawing of his stomach—about something. Aizawa knows something, and Shoto can’t figure out what it is.
Todoroki, stay behind after class.
Todoroki, if there’s anything you need, don’t hesitate to come to me.
Todoroki, stand down. Are you injured?
Kindly, Shoto needs him to fuck off. Nothing good will come from Aizawa meddling in things that don’t concern him. Besides, Shoto’s not in any danger that he can’t handle himself.
(“You do this to yourself, Shoto.”)
Yes. He can handle himself.
“Good week?” Aizawa says at last, not looking up, and Shoto chokes a little.
“What was that?”
“How was your break?” Sensei rephrases.
That’s almost insulting. Small talk? From Aizawa? Shoto isn’t stupid.
“Fine,” he says, wiping at his mouth with the back of his hand. “Same as it always is.”
Aizawa hums. He shuffles the papers and starts going to town with a red pen. Jesus fucking Christ, is that essay Shoto’s? He hopes not. Sensei scribbles something else down.
“Am I the last one back?”
“Ah, no,” Sensei says. His coffee doesn’t even look like it’s hot anymore. “I’m still waiting on Hagakure and Tokoyami.”
It’s Shoto’s turn to hum noncommittally. He keeps chewing. Reaches over and bleeds warmth into Sensei’s mug when the man’s head is turned. It’s not until Shoto’s closed the pizza box and wandered over to the sink to wash his hands that Aizawa speaks again. Honestly, Shoto should’ve stopped getting startled every time the man opens his mouth by now.
“Are your knees bothering you?”
Why, oh, why does the universe want to see Shoto dead? He turns to face Aizawa and leans back against the sink, arms crossed.
“No.”
Sensei raises an eyebrow. “And are you lying to me?”
Well, yes. The urge to look away is strong, but Shoto resists. He stares at Aizawa’s scarred cheek instead, and hopes the man can’t tell that Shoto isn’t looking him in the eye.
“No,” Shoto sniffs petulantly.
Aizawa gives up on subtlety.
“Everything okay at home?”
“Everything is fine,” Shoto says, and they both know he’s lying.
The thing about Aizawa-sensei is that he’s the first Hero Shoto ever met who deserved the title. Someone who the next generations are lucky to have in their corner. Between Hero work and teaching, he’s got his hands full, and yet Shoto has never seen him slacking in either. He holds their focus in class and pays attention to every single one of them, individually, helps them out with everything they need—academic or personal or combat-wise, or even extracurriculars. He never makes them feel like they’re wasting his time. Aizawa helps because he wants to.
The problem is that he’s good, and Shoto has already seen what Endeavor can do to good people. If Aizawa knew about what goes on behind closed doors in the Todoroki household, he’d try to do something about it, and maybe he’d get somewhat far. A case could be started—for child abuse or neglect, for the purchase of a person, for the Quirk marriage. With Aizawa’s name and connections, something could be done, certainly. Something could be done. Yes.
But not enough.
Whatever power Aizawa holds within the police force or the HPSC, Endeavor has multiplied by ten. No court would convict him. No civilian would believe the accusations. He owns the agency he works at. The power to damage reputations, to force legal action against his enemies, to blacklist people from entire industries—Endeavor has it and is happy to use it.
If Aizawa ruined his career as a Pro and as a teacher in an attempt to help someone who’s beyond it… Shoto would never forgive himself for letting it happen. Aizawa doesn’t deserve it. He can have his suspicions, his theories, but as long as Shoto doesn’t give him anything to work with, he can keep his conscience clean and know that he hasn’t ruined his teacher’s life. Shoto is an expert at lying through his teeth. Endeavor is a forest fire that’s already been set. Who could even begin to douse it?
Even so…
Shoto hesitates. “You don’t need to worry about me.”
It’s the first thing he’s said so far that’s true.
Aizawa puts his pen down and tries to hold his gaze. “Don’t I?”
Shoto does look away this time, out to the common room, where his classmates are melted into couches and rugs. No, Sensei doesn’t need to worry about him. But things have been… That is, ever since Endeavor became Number One, he’s been…
Shoto was not a loved child. Not really. With Mom gone, Touya dead, and Fuyumi not allowed to see him, Shoto’s childhood was just lonely. Natsuo didn’t even like him. But as much as Endeavor didn’t love Shoto, he loved the idea of Shoto. Endeavor loved his legacy, his reputation, his status as a top Hero. He loved the future that Shoto represented.
Shoto was not a loved child, but he was a useful one. And now Shoto is worse than useless. He is dead weight dragging the Number One Hero down. There is one obvious way to solve this.
Would Endeavor kill him? Maybe. Not before, certainly. But now that Shoto serves no purpose, maybe. Someone should probably care about that. Shoto… is so tired of caring about whether he lives or dies.
“You don’t need to worry about me,” he says again, pushing off of the sink and uncrossing his arms.
Aizawa clearly doesn’t believe him; he’s too smart to be lied to like this. But that’s okay.
“Tell me if that changes,” Sensei says, yielding, and picks his red pen back up.
Shoto means to go up to his room, he really does. This conversation has gone on too long and is making him question things that are better off buried in the depths of his brain. Plus, he needs to unpack. But—the TV in the common room is fully visible from the kitchen. When Shoto hears his last name, he can’t help but be intrigued.
He leaves Aizawa behind and wanders over to the common room to stand behind the couch. On the TV, a news anchor is babbling on about—something to do with Endeavor?
“—has left us with many questions and no answers. Can our Number One Hero be trusted, now that we’ve seen his true colors?”
Jesus Christ. What now, did he hit another villain a little too hard? The media does this same song and dance every few weeks. At least the timing is good—Shoto won’t be back to the estate for a while. Endeavor always gets so pissy when he gets criticized publicly like this. Shoto has just been spared from another broken nose.
Izuku stirs on the couch, a mumbled, unintelligible question tumbling out of him, and raises his head, eyes half-lidded. Wild bedhead. Cute, Shoto thinks.
“We’ll let you decide for yourselves. I warn you beforehand,” the news anchor says, “the following video contains sensitive images of graphic violence, and might be disturbing for some viewers.”
“That’s… foreboding,” says Eijiro.
Mina turns to him. “You know what that word means?”
Shoto tilts his head. It’s been a while since Endeavor’s fights have gotten marked as ’disturbing’ by the midday news. ’Worrying’, sure, but ’disturbing’ is a little much. Maybe—
The footage is not of one of Endeavor’s fights.
“Dude, is that literally just your bedroom?” Denki asks, grimacing.
The world ends.
These long breaks are so annoying.
September is dreary, miserable—the sun and rain cling to summer, and the last time it snowed seems like it was a lifetime ago. It’s always jarring, coming home from home. So stupid, too; the way he feels like his room here is emptier than his room at the dorms, even though both of them have the amount of decor you’d expect from a depressed spartan.
Shoto knows he’s gotten softer, and he’s not exactly happy about it—if only because it’s all well and good while he’s at UA, but as soon as he has to go back to Endeavor, a single well-placed punch or insult has him shutting down. It’s only Tuesday today, and Endeavor is due back home any time now. He could stay overseas on his stupid mission forever, for all Shoto cares, but Shoto has never been that lucky. His best bet is trying to finish up all the take-home work they got for the week while he still has a few precious moments of calm, and he’s made decent progress on most of his homework. When Endeavor gets back, Shoto will be too tired, too sore, too on edge to bother with all the art movements from the 19th century, so he might as well get all his shit done now.
He’s gotten so—something. He can’t even think with Endeavor in the house.
Which brings him here. Sitting at his desk, hunched over a Japanese History worksheet with his head leaned on one hand and muttering to himself.
“Oh, come to UA,” he says mutinously. “The homework is just… one metric fuck-ton. And we won’t even—”
The door slamming open cuts off his grumbling. Shoto goes completely still, which is maybe his version of a normal person’s startled shout. But upon seeing who it is, he just huffs and goes back to his homework.
“Christ, Yumi,” he grumbles, scribbling something down. “Ever heard of knocking?”
One second passes without an answer. Two. Shoto’s pencil falters on the page, and he looks up again to see Fuyumi, and she’s—
She’s…
Well.
He doesn’t usually see Fuyumi when she freaks out. She’s good at putting on a strong face for him, and Shoto would tell her that he doesn’t need her to, but he—does. He hadn’t realized until recently just how much of his composure hinges on Fuyumi’s. When the most optimistic member of their fucked up family feels that things have gone to shit, it’s time to get scared.
Like. You know. Now. Because Fuyumi’s at his door, eyes hollow and terrified, sweat beading, uncharacteristically, at her temples, and—
And.
She’s looking at him like that. Like he—
“What the fuck did you do?”
Her voice trembles. A crash comes from downstairs. Oh.
“Is that…?”
“He got home like two seconds ago and he’s trashing the place, screaming about how you think he’s an idiot and—” Another crash. The loud rush of air being replaced with fire. Fuyumi’s eyes are wide, crazed. “What did you do—?”
Homework abandoned, he digs his futon out of his closet and lays it out, ignoring how Fuyumi steps into the room and closes the door behind her. He won’t be in any state to do this when he comes back, and he’d rather not sleep on the floor.
“You have to leave.”
“Shoto, what?”
He throws his phone inside a desk drawer, locks it.
“Go to Natsu’s and lie low, just until this is all over—”
“Why would I—?!”
“Don’t come back until I tell you it’s safe—”
“I’m not leaving—”
Shoto turns to face her.
“Touya’s alive. It’s Dabi. He’s Dabi.”
Silence descends upon them like a swarm of gnats. There’s something to be said, Shoto thinks, about how the Todoroki name hangs over them like a well-placed axe. How even when they don’t want to hurt each other, he still finds himself with a knife in her gut.
Though it comes from her, Fuyumi’s entire body shivers with the rush of cold air that floods the room. Shoto’s own Quirk has to scramble to catch up and adjust. He can see it on her face, the instinctual denial, the frantic thoughts—that he must be lying, or going crazy, that he’s read things wrong or is being deceived.
He can see, also, the moment when she realizes that none of that is true. Shoto is, arguably, the single most sane and grounded person in this family—through no fault of his own. Just because it’s not safe for him to be anything else. He is not stupid enough to fall for that kind of hoax, and he remembers that pair of blazing blue eyes as well as any of them.
And why, ever, would he lie about something like this?
“What?” Fuyumi says faintly.
Shoto wedges the knife deeper.
“I’ve known for about a month now. I didn’t—tell anyone. At all. If Endeavor’s just found out, and found out that I know, then—”
God, Shoto’s such a coward. He doesn’t even want to say it.
“I’m sorry,” he says to her, even though he isn’t, really. He’d do it again. He just wishes it didn’t have to be like this.
After normal training sessions, sometimes she can help him, skilled hands flitting over bandages and salve. Most days, Shoto doesn’t exit the dojo too beaten up. Not anymore. He’ll have some mild burns here and there, bruises, cuts from where skin scraped against ice, but nothing major.
Tonight, though, there is no version of events that doesn’t end with the house gone up in flames. There will be a fight, and it will be ugly, and there won’t be anything Fuyumi can do. When Shoto makes a mistake of this magnitude, he pays in blood.
Fuyumi—knows this. She drags her hands over her face and then hooks her thumbs between her teeth, biting down harshly in a nervous gesture that Shoto finds himself replicating all too often.
“I could stay,” Fuyumi says, twisting her fingers in front of her now, but it’s feeble.
“Fuyumi. I’m not saying it just to be a dick, I’m—I…” He huffs, frustrated. Tired. “You know how he gets. If he bashes your head in on a fucking wall, what am I supposed to do?”
It’s a low blow, and he knows it. He hates to do this, he really does—but Endeavor is going to lose his fucking mind, and Fuyumi can’t be here for that.
Shoto is so selfish. If something happened to Fuyumi…
His door locks from the outside. They step out into the hallway warily, watching their steps and sticking close to the walls. The door shuts with a quiet click, and then he can’t stall any longer.
“Call me as soon as you can,” Fuyumi says lowly.
Tell me it’s fine, Shoto thinks. Tell me everything’s going to be okay, that you’ll take me away and we’ll all be safe.
“I will,” he says. Mom used to say that they would run away someday, all five of them. Shoto can’t remember when he stopped believing her.
“I’ll—I’ll head to Natsu’s, stay the night. And then—”
She stops. Purses her lips. The house is silent.
“Yumi,” Shoto says quietly. “When you said you’d find a place… were you lying so I’d feel better?”
About a week ago, now, maybe more; feels like a lifetime. Despite everything, Fuyumi’s lips twitch into a smile.
“No,” she says. “I haven’t signed, yet, but. It’s a nice little apartment. Closer to UA, so I thought… maybe, if we can swing it…”
He swallows. They won’t be able to. He hopes she knows that. It’s almost cruel, to hold that in front of him like this. He won’t ever be able to reach it. He dismisses the wounded animal howling in his head.
“That’s nice. Maybe.”
Fuyumi steps closer. Shoto, annoyed at the instinctual urge to step back, bites at his lip. He’s unsure what to do with his hands.
“Stay safe,” Fuyumi says. He nods absently, looking away, but she places a hand on his unscarred cheek and makes him face her. “No. No, don’t just nod and then do whatever you want, listen to me, Shoto. Stay safe.”
Something unspeakable passes between them.
“I will,” Shoto says again.
“I love you,” says Fuyumi. She says it like it’s true. He closes his eyes.
“I know.”
He’s taller than Fuyumi by quite a few centimeters, now. She has to tug his head down to press a kiss to his hairline. Her hands linger on his face, though she doesn’t touch the scar.
Then she’s gone.
He hears her footsteps fade away, doesn’t open his eyes to see how she leaves him. Shoto is an expert at that. He counts to twenty and then steels himself. Breathes deep. Walks down the stairs and heads, open-eyed, into his death.