Aesthete

Chapter 7.

When I said that, his eyes dimmed slightly as he frowned.

"What's wrong, Todoroki?" I asked, tugging on his sleeve to bring him back from whatever grueling thought he seemed to be playing out.

He blinked, offering a small and apologetic smile. "Your quirk is like mine, I have two sides to it, but I only use my ice."

"Why? If you don't mind me asking," I added. I really was curious for his reasoning behind that, if he used his other side (which I was almost positive it was fire, I figured out early on that he was the son of pro-hero Endeavor) he would be too powerful for anyone to compete with.

"My other side is a curse. It came from my horrible father."

I froze. Oh God, he just opened up to me. What do I say?

I was upset, I always knew I had a reason for finding Endeavor distasteful. His aura radiated a hate and starvation for power that never sat right with me as I watched him on television.

I thought for a moment, I too had a dark past with my biological father. Before my mother divorced him, their relationship had already fallen off a steep cliff, landing on the jagged rocks of a pointless shore.

The jagged rocks were his abusive ways, he would beat me often, taking out the frustration of his crumbling marriage onto me. To this day I never truly hated him though, I knew he had a fragile mental state and he wasn't always such a hurtful person.

Still, I couldn't ignore the onslaught of slaps, punches, and kicks that came from morning till late afternoon for two years. When I turned four, my mother walked in on him giving me a solid blow to the cheek. Deciding that it was the final straw for her, she took her three toddlers and moved to a city three hundred miles away.

Shaking off the memories, I turned to Todoroki and began.

"Hey, I don't know what kind of relationship you have with your father but just because something came from him doesn't mean it's bad. Shouldn't you be living proof of that? You're not a bad person, Todoroki, and you came from him so you shouldn't be hard on yourself or your quirk."

His eyes grew large, lips pressed into a thin line.

He was my last fight of the day, so I stayed behind with him while my other classmates filed out the gym, heading to their homes.

I don't know why I felt the need to carry on, but I did.

"You know, my dad wasn't all that nice to me before my mother divorced him. He hit me often, and he was always disgusted by being around me. What bothers me is that my family tells me I look just like him. I hated that, but I figured that just because I'm his daughter doesn't mean I have to turn out the way he did. I won't repeat a cycle of abuse or negativity."

I made sure he saw my gaze when I said my last sentence.

"You won't let that happen either, I know it, even if you use a quirk that came from him."

I hoped it was the right thing to say, something just nagged at me to get those words out, to lessen the cold countenance he always had on.

He stopped walking with the mats in his arms, turning to look at me.

"You mean what you say, Reyna?"

"I don't lie," was my response, as I felt scrutinized under his heavy stare.

"Thank you." He turned to place the mats on the shelves, leaving me to release a breath I had been holding.

"You're a kind person," He said, before saying goodbye and walking off.