╔═.✾. ═══════════════════════╗
the wasted years, the wasted youth
and the day has come where i have died
only to find i've come alive
╚═══════════════════════.✾. ═╝
"So," Dr. Sato begins the appointment (can you call it that if it's mandatory?), cheery as ever, "Have you given the journal any thought?"
Touya glares at the man, eyes threatening to shut themselves and force him back into another bout of restless sleep. "No," he answers. "Do I look like a twelve-year-old girl to you?" He blinks hard.
In response, Sato gives a tight-lipped smile, one that doesn't meet his eyes at all. "You seem a bit more agitated than usual." Touya rolls his eyes. "Why do you think that is?"
With a sigh, he tips his head back to stare up at the paneled ceiling. "Well, I've got no clue," he says slowly, exaggeratedly. "The quality of life here is just stellar."
Something gets quickly scribbled down on a clipboard. If he had to guess, Touya's putting his money on it being his attitude—he'd been told a while ago that his mood seemed to be improving. So much for that. "Did you sleep well last night?" Asks the shrink.
Touya's lips twitch into a sneer. The answer is obvious, but he's still got the nagging feeling that Sato's been watching him on the security tapes. That, or someone in security is filling him in on what to probe him with. He considers sarcastically asking if Sato's been stalking him, but he doesn't have the energy to joke around. "No," he says instead, "Slept like shit."
"Was it difficult to fall asleep, or to stay asleep?"
He blinks tiredly again. "Staying asleep."
Sato hums. "Any reason why? If it's a physical issue, like too much noise or the room is too hot, we can fix that. Otherwise...."
Touya scoffs, then swallows thickly, looking down at his lap. "I had a bad dream," he says in a mocking tone, though it's not the joke he hopes to play it off as. He did have a nightmare last night. It's nothing new for him, honestly; he'd been dreaming it pretty often since little Touya's death. Burning alive, alone in the woods, with that dry, hot, suffocating air. The pain of frying from the inside out. The fear that he'd never prove himself to that bastard Endeavor—a stupid fear, but it had been the thing on his mind all the same. He'd felt pure terror that night, and it haunts him even now, as much as he loathes (and refuses) to admit it.
"Really?" Dr. Sato asks, eyes widening slightly. "Would you like to talk about it?"
"No." He doesn't even have to think about that response.
The man laughs quietly, visibly disappointed. Not that Touya cares. "I expected as much.... Ah—Your youngest brother visited, yes? How was that?"
Touya stares off at the wall on his right. "Was fine," he answers, eye twitching. He can feel the stapled skin going taut as he grins. "Little shit told me to move on. Sounded like some shit you'd say."
Sato inhales deeply. "Well, yes, that is generally the goal," he explains, "To get you into a place where you're not always angry. Of course, that doesn't always mean you'll be one hundred-percent happy all the time, but we want to make you stable enough to return to—"
"Yeah, cut the crap, doc. Did ya tell him to say that shit, or not? He your puppet, too?"
Touya hates the way Sato looks at him, skin crawling all over. He hates that look of pity, the kind he'd wanted to see during his big reveal, back when he was Dabi. The grin borders on painful, face twitching and faltering. And is it a trick of his mind, or does it feel like something wet has trickled down his cheekbone?
"I did not, Touya," Sato says firmly. "No one is hurting you or your brother anymore."
He grabs at his hair, right at the scalp, and tugs as hard as he can. Why won't it hurt? "You expect me to believe that? Why the hell else would he forgive that bastard? Huh?"
Sato's eyes are sad. It's not real, Touya thinks, words like venom. He doesn't care about you. This asshole just wants the paycheck, the bragging rights of fixing you. "Fuck you." His chest hurts.
"I am sorry if I gave you that impression."
The huff that leaves Touya's lips is nearly smoke. It would have been fire, if it weren't for this horrible fucking place containing his stupid quirk.
"Your siblings, your mother—All of us want to help you, so that you can return to society—to go home with them."
Right. "Return to society." The very same society that turned him into a monster, that locked him up and told him that it was his job to get better, to fit their mold. He's jumping with joy at the thought of returning to the world that allowed Endeavor to run unchecked, allowed him and the rest of the League—the PLF, whatever—to be royally fucked over at every turn. And "home"—Funny. A very appealing offer, he thinks. "Y'pinkie promise?" He coos. His chest hurts.
"You have my word."
It hurts. He clenches his jaw. "Right, well, I'm not forgiving that asshole anytime soon."
Sato waves his hand in the air dismissively, shocking Touya out of the tension that he'd put so much effort into creating. "I wouldn't either," he says. "Never was a big fan of him—That... doesn't matter. My point is—No one expects you to forgive him. Moving on doesn't always mean forgiving and forgetting, even if it seems like your siblings have."
The session reaches its end, and Touya stands up first, sharply inhaling with the motion. "Yeah, yeah," he mutters quickly, not liking the pit that's formed in his gut. "See ya next time, or whatever." He swipes the journal off the table and stumbles back to his cell for the rest of the evening.
┌──────── · · · · ➷
Despite his best efforts, Touya does find himself glaring at that stupid journal, sitting there on the desk across from his lumpy bed. He's laying on his side, elbow propping his head up and his legs bent to prevent him from dangling off the mattress. He hums under his breath, a song he's long-since forgotten the lyrics or title to; there's no electronics in this place, apart from the cheap televisions in the common areas, and those only play pre-approved movies that are no younger than a decade old.
For a brief, stupid little moment, he considers writing in it, just to give him something to do other than think. Then he laughs and rolls over to face the ceiling, a hand resting on his lower stomach.
Touya thinks about you. A lot. He doesn't want to. It means he's soft. So, he thinks about his family instead, no matter how badly they piss him off.
Vaguely, he remembers when they brought Natsuo home. Fuyumi had been so excited for a baby brother, but Touya had felt helpless. He'd grown to love the little squish of a baby, of course, but his heart, his hopes, his dreams—they'd all shattered at the sight of him. Touya had been the first child, the fist attempt, and the first failure. Fuyumi had been born almost immediately after him, but they waited so long to have Natsuo. He'd been young, only around four years old, but he'd known why Natsuo had been born—the same reason Touya had been.
He'd been a failure, too, if the full head of white hair was anything to go by. Rei's quirk was useless, in the eyes of Endeavor. Touya had thought, for a while, that one day he could be stronger, could reach a point where his flames did not hurt him. One day, his father would acknowledge him, if only he kept trying. But Natsuo's birth had told him all he needed to know: his body was weak, Endeavor thought he was weak, and they were both going to be discarded.
Like he said, Touya did grow to love Natsuo. He'd continued training his quirk only in the presence of his siblings, since his mother would never let him go off on his own. It'd been to the dismay of all but Natsuo, who admired his big brother greatly. He'd helped Touya clean and hide his burns from their father, bribed their sister into secrecy. They'd played games together—with you and Fuyumi, too, of course, but he's trying to get his mind off of you, damn it—in the yard, shared a bed on nights where neither of them could sleep.
He does suppose that Fuyumi had been a failure, too, but she'd never really understood that. She hadn't been promised something she was never going to get, hadn't felt the agony of watching some half-and-half brat inherit it and usurp his birthrights upon—well, birth. Fuyumi aligned herself with their parents from the beginning, told him his quirk was too dangerous to train. A traitor, in his eyes.
He'd tried to be stronger, tried to please Endeavor before he could demand more children of his mother. If he could be good, if he could be perfect, then everyone would be happy. If he weren't born so useless, so imperfect, he might have been able to fix his family. He could hardly bear the tired look in his mother's eyes, the way her face was always splotchy from crying in the other room. His siblings could run about and pretend everything was fine, that they were happy kids with a happy family. But Touya was the oldest. It was his job to fix the problems. But he'd failed to do that, just like he'd failed upon birth.
And then... Shouto had come home.
He'd known it was coming, of course—babies don't just appear out of nowhere, and he wasn't stupid enough to think that his mother had simply gotten fat—but it stung all the same. Just a week short of turning eight, and Touya knew that Shouto had ended his life.
Touya despised him at first sight. His giant head was protected by a fluffy layer of hair, split perfectly down the middle. At that age, Touya's hair had been half-white, too, but nothing like Shouto's. It was messy, discolored strands on both sides. He'd spent a lot of time staring in the mirror after that, considering finding a pair of scissors to start chopping away at all the white—as if that would suddenly make Endeavor acknowledge him. He might have done it, too, if you hadn't once told him that you'd liked his hair, as unkempt as it was.
He'd tried to kill him once. He'd been out training at that shitty park all morning—with you, of course, watching in both wonder and worry as you tried to calm him down. It'd worked, for a while, so long as you were by his side. As soon as he'd returned home and Endeavor scolded him, demanded he stop training, it had all come rushing back to him—a wildfire of rage swirling deep in his bones, a hatred that bubbled in his stomach. If you won't look at me, he'd thought, glaring over his father's shoulder at a bundle of stoic joy. He'd lunged, arm aflame. Then I'll get rid of him. I'll make you see me. No matter what it takes.
Touya hates Endeavor. Really, truly, hates his guts. Combing through his memories makes him sick to his stomach. It pisses him off, to think about how badly he'd wanted daddy's attention, how desperate he was for approval and attention from that giant piece of shit. He knows he had no choice in the matter—a boy's bound to admire his father, no matter how absent and abusive he is. But man, does it make him feel fucking stupid now.
Especially since... well, he wasn't conscious for it, but he hears that something weird had happened with his quirk, during the war.
Anyways, Touya's aware that attacking Shouto had been a mistake. He was a baby. Even when he was older, when they fought in the war, it'd still been misplaced anger. Killing Shouto wouldn't bring him the attention he craved. It wouldn't change the way his body reacted to his quirk, wouldn't change the type of person that their father is. It wouldn't have made him feel better, either. Dabi had hated the brat, but he was still Touya. Touya loved his little brother, no matter how much Dabi covered it up.
He'd told you about that first attempted murder the next time he saw you. He'd pouted and cried the whole time, back pressed against an ice cold tree as he sniffled. You'd rubbed his shoulder soothingly. Touya, selfishly, had turned you into his personal therapist, a shoulder to cry on at an age that was far too young. You should have been frolicking in fields with the other little girls at school, giggling and laughing about cartoons and coloring books. Instead, you were picking up the pieces of a shattered little boy with a gloomy little face.
"You tried to burn Shouto?" You'd asked, head tilted to the side, like you couldn't even comprehend the idea of it.
He'd nodded, face wound up in a sour expression. "Shouldn't have," he mumbled, wiping his running nose with the back of his hand. "S'not his fault. Still love 'im. I was just mad at Dad's all...."
"I know," you'd said quietly, shifting on your knees as you sat beside him. "You're a good person, Touya. You won't do it again."
You always were naive, weren't you?
┌──────── · · · · ➷
Touya has the nightmare again that night. Dabi rarely dreamt. Touya, though, has recurring nightmares. Quite ironic—the one who was meant to keep the past alive was not haunted by it, leaving all the emotional bullshit to fall on poor little Touya Todoroki. Will he always be that petrified thirteen-year-old boy, alone in the burning woods?
It feels more like remnants of the night he died, haunting him the way he'd sworn to haunt Endeavor. The pain—he can't feel pain like that anymore, not unless he's dreaming, unless it's mental. Those fried nerves were the only thing that kept him alive all those years. Endeavor had created a spark with Touya, one that grew and grew, until he burned to death, scared and alone. Until that fire became a burning, seething, raging hatred, a desire to make Endeavor feel his pain—to know what it was like to have his organs cook and his tear ducts sizzle out and die, to have his adolescence stolen and to watch his poor baby brother take the brunt of the abuse that he, in some sick, beyond fucked-up way, wanted so, so badly. He wanted Endeavor to hurt.
It's scary, being a kid alone in the woods at night. Even if he'd gone there more times than he could count. Even if it was a park in a rich neighborhood. It was scary, like each shadow that his own flames created could have jumped out at him. Then, while he burned and burned, he'd been terrified to die—terrified that he'd die without proving to his father that he was strong, that he could be the good little soldier he'd wanted him to be before Shouto came around. Even now, he wakes up in a panic, the smell of phantom burnt flesh overwhelming his senses, and he worries he's not accomplished that.
He'd anticipated dying, back during the war—he'd fucking welcomed it, blasting himself headfirst into battle. When he'd fought Shouto, when he'd fought Endeavor—hell, he'd half-expected to wake up one day already ablaze, already burning to death before he could make his father look at him. He'd been terrified of a death that he knew he'd have to welcome gladly if he wanted to stoke the flame that he had started. But, now that he's alive...
Well, Touya doesn't know what the fuck to do with himself.
He sits on the edge of his shitty prison bed, hunched over with his hands in his face. Staples press against un-charred flesh in the few places that had been restored by doctors. The cold was nice, he had to admit. He also had to admit that he did like one thing about this hellhole: with the quirk-cancelling shit they locked onto him, he couldn't wake up to the sound of his own flesh sizzling like bacon in the morning. His left hand grips his own cheeks tightly, fingers digging into skin until he feels a pressure that he knows means he's hurting. He lifts his head, taking a glance toward the high window on the far end of his cell.
Moonlight filters through, the moon shining directly on his forehead. He lurches forward, collapsing to the floor. He retches, emptying the contents of his stomach for a few minutes, before a guard finally comes to take him to the infirmary. "Must've ate somethin' bad," he tells the doctor, body trembling. "Food here's shit."
He doesn't say a lot of things. Thinking about Endeavor makes me sick. The fact that my mother might still love him makes me want to cry. My siblings forgiving him kills me. I've only ever been able to trust one person, and I can't fuckin' see her 'cause I'm locked in this shitty prison and I wish I was fucking dead. How the fuck do I visualize my future after a decade of planning to die?
He doesn't say anything, just lets the guard drag him back to bed, hoping to have a dreamless slumber, this time.
┌──────── · · · · ➷
Natsuo visits a week or so later. He comes in with that dopey smile of his, the one he's grown into now that he's an adult. He'd grown into everything, really, now that he was nearly six feet tall. Lucky bastard, Touya thinks, grunting to greet him. Didn't end up like me, and he's fuckin' tall.
"Hey," his little brother greets, rubbing the back of his neck. "How ya been, Touya?"
"Same as always," he mutters in response. "How's college?" He doesn't really care. His answer now won't be much different than his answer from a month ago. His grades are good, he likes his professors, he's making lots of friends in spite of the everything that should have gotten in the way of it—"everything," meaning Touya.
"I only visit once a month, and all you wanna talk about is school?" Natsuo asks, still smiling.
Touya blinks slowly. "Right. Well, what else do you have goin' on? You ask your girl to marry you or what?"
Natsuo's face flushes red, and Touya smirks to himself, quietly satisfied. "N-No," he mumbles, pouting slightly, and Touya rolls his eyes. "I actually wanted to talk to you about (Y/N)."
His chest tightens. He tries not to sound too eager when he asks, "What about her?" He keeps his gaze on his feet, swinging against the floor, rather than his brother's expectant gaze.
"Your therapist mentioned her to me." Touya scoffs. "Said you seemed happier when you were talking about her." He rolls his eyes.
"You 'nd Sato talk often?" He raises a brow, clenching his jaw.
Natsuo sighs. "No, I saw him on my way here," he explains calmly.
Touya glares at the wall. Again, he doesn't say any of the things he wants to say. He can't force the words past his dry, burnt lips, as if they're stapled shut. But Natsuo knows him better than almost anyone, so he asks, "Has she visited you?"
His brows furrow. "S'only immediate family, Nats," he says curtly. His younger brother makes a face that he knows means he's thinking. He sighs, as if the conversation is the biggest drag in the world. "How is she, then?"
Natsuo blinks. "She's... well, she's fine." Touya's eye twitches, something that his brother doesn't miss. "It's... complicated...! She hasn't been the same since you died, y'know? And then, when that video happened—"
"I get it," Touya cuts him off, trying to maintain that cool, aloofness that's kept him afloat all this time. If it ain't broke, don't fix it. They sit in silence for a while.
"She was there, you know," Natsuo says suddenly.
He tries not to let his head snap up to attention. "What d'you mean?
"(Y/N) went to visit Dad in the hospital, after you—you know," he explains, eyes scanning Touya as if to analyze every shift in emotion, every twitch and tick he makes. "She really let him have it." Touya's nose scrunches up as Natsuo laughs. "I've never seen her that mad—Hell, I don't think I'd ever heard her curse before that. It was like she hated his guts, worse than any of us."
An image of you floods his mind—sweet little twelve-year-old you, holding his hand while walking home from school. Giggling after he made a joke at recess, getting him a blue raspberry slushee along with your cherry one from the convenience store down the street. Precious you, making tiny braids in his wild hair and pressing a kiss to his bandaged burns. Deadpanned, he responds with, "You're joking."
"I'm not! I don't know what she said, 'cause she was basically done by the time we got there, but man. Dad was crying, you would've loved it." Touya chuckles, and there's a warm feeling swirling in his stomach, mixing dangerously with the nauseating rage. Natsuo sighs. "No wonder you were in love with her."
Touya purses his lips, averts his gaze to the boring gray tiles on the floor.
"Oh, man, no way," Natsuo says, eyes widening as he stands up and presses his hands against the table. "You're still in love with her? Did you tell her? 'Cause I'm pretty sure she's still in love with you, too, even though you were dead for a while. You know, she—"
Nope. Not happening. He groans, throwing his head back. "M'not taking romantic advice from the pussy who still hasn't asked his girl to marry him. Speaking of—"
That's all it takes to get his brother off his back. It's too easy, honestly. His brother leaves soon after, and he's back to being left alone in his cell, staring down at that damn journal. His stupid little brother just had to bring you up, huh? Not that he's really complaining; you're one of the few people he can think about without wanting to punch a hole through his wall. Still, he feels a twinge of discomfort every time he remembers something positive from his childhood, which unfortunately includes you, more often than not.
You'd grieved over him. His death had hurt you. He'd known that for a while, having seen how many of his things you'd kept in your room, how many pictures of him littered your apartments over the years. Still, hearing someone else say it, knowing that he wasn't just deluding himself or selfishly clinging onto his memory of you, Touya felt... sick. He'd been a villain, a mass murderer, an arsonist, an evil piece of shit—but somehow, accidentally faking his death and making you sad, of all things, was what made him feel remorse.
Though, in his defense, Touya had tried to go home when he finally awoke. He'd wanted to see his family again, wanted to apologize for going missing, the stupid thirteen—or, rather, sixteen-year-old that he was.
His home hadn't changed at all, in those three years. It was still a cold building full of cold people. There'd been a shrine for him added towards the back of the house, shoved out of eyesight as if to push it to the backs of his family's minds. Long-unused incense sat before a photo of a gloomy child that Touya could hardly recognize anymore. It didn't look like anyone had visited him in a while. Down the hall, he could hear the sounds of his youngest sibling throwing up, Endeavor yelling at him to continue training. Now an outsider, Touya had begun to wonder if the number two hero was as good a father as he'd remembered (he wasn't, he never was good to begin with, and he never would be good; Touya was just a naive, stubborn little dipshit). Fuyumi and Natsuo were in one of the studies, silently working on homework.
Touya had been forgotten. In the moment he realized this, he thought of you. His legs started moving before his brain could tell them to.
He'd been out cold for three whole fucking years. Three years that passed in the blink of an eye while everyone else trudged on, as if he'd never existed in the first place. His mind had raced as he stumbled down familiar streets on clumsy legs, legs that hadn't been used and legs that had grown without him knowing. Did those years pass by that quickly for you, too? Did his death affect you at all? Or did you simply move on after a while, finish up junior high and move on without him? Did you make a bunch of high school friends to fill the void he left, find some stupid boyfriend to replace him in your life (not that he'd ever acted on his embarrassing little crush on you, and not that you'd ever agreed to be his girlfriend—not really, anyways)? Did you replace him, too? Like that bastard Endeavor did? Did you move on, like his traitor siblings did?
Fuck, should he even bother finding you? Could he even handle the sight of you with someone else? After seeing his family hadn't changed, that his death meant nothing, Touya thought he was going to light on fire again. Death might have been too kind for him.
Slouched over against a telephone poll and panting like a bitch in heat, he looked up from his feet at the exact moment that your front door swung open. He'd ducked behind the object on instinct and peaked around. You were facing the wrong way, unknowingly building an ungodly amount of tension in his chest, heart pounding away. Even when he'd been burning alive from the inside out, Touya's pretty sure he'd never been so terrified. That bastard All For One had told him that he was numb, that he'd never feel anything again, but your mere existence was enough to bring back the ache in his chest, to send a shiver down his spine and dry out his mouth. He'd considered, briefly, that he should have just turned around and walked off, pretended he never saw you and let you live a life undisturbed by the failure that is Touya Todoroki. Just as his foot began to twist on the pavement, shifting his weight so that he might have been able to force himself to turn and leave, you finally faced forward.
He's pretty sure he stopped breathing the moment his cold eyes landed on your pretty little face. He replays the moment in his mind in slow motion even now—your features hadn't changed in those three years, not really, but you carried yourself with far more confidence than you had back when you'd first hit puberty. To this day, you still haven't really changed (though, he's been locked up for a while now; for all he knows, you could have shaved your head bald and gotten a tattoo on your scalp. Not that you couldn't pull that off, because you definitely could). You've always been so damn pretty. He wonders what it'd be like to cup your cheeks in his hands—your perfect cheeks in his ugly ass, calloused-over, burnt hands... what a joke—and just look into those big ass eyes of yours. He wonders if you'd still look at him the way you did on the playground, when he'd proclaimed his dreams of being a hero (A sick fuckin' joke, he muses).
All too soon, you'd wrapped a scarf around your face, leaving him with little to admire now that you were so bundled up. You turned the opposite way from him, walking with something clutched tightly in your little hands—little. If you'd grown in the past three years, he couldn't tell. As he trailed behind you, he'd truly realized for the first time how much taller he'd gotten in the coma. If he were closer, he might have been a whole head taller than you—finally (he'd always been insecure about being closer in height to you than his younger brother, the tall little bastard that Natsuo was—and is).
It was this day that he'd found that first letter, the one wishing him a happy birthday. You were the only one who never abandoned him, the only one who didn't just move on, or whatever the fuck his family and therapist were always trying to push on him. You didn't brush his life off like lint from a sweater. You visited his grave, you kissed your finger and then pressed it to his picture before leaving the house, you loved him unconditionally. And, if what Natsuo said is to be believed, you still do.
So, why is his stomach tied in knots? Why does he feel like he would be crying, if he could?
┌──────── · · · · ➷
"Is there anything you're looking forward to when you get released?" Sato asks at the next appointment.
"When." He blinks. He pictures your face, then shakes his head. "Food, I guess," he mutters, yawning. "Everything in here tastes like shit. Too much fish."
"Is there a certain career you'd be interested in?" His therapist asks eagerly, probably excited to be getting even mildly-descriptive answers from Touya. "That way, we can get you in a program to prepare you."
He hasn't had a dream job since he was thirteen. He tries not to dream anymore. Dreaming got him dead. And, like he said earlier, he's not a twelve-year-old girl. He's not scribbling in his diary about being a marine biologist, or whatever the fuck little kids wanna be when they grow up. He takes a deep breath and stares a hole through the ceiling.
He used to dream about being a grown-up with you. He would've gone to UA like Endeavor had, would've worked as his sidekick until he was experienced enough to open his own agency. If he was lucky, he'd have gotten the balls to ask you out at some point in high school. The two of you would have moved in together into a nice apartment. He'd ask you to marry him after a few years, not wanting his little brother to get engaged before him, and he'd probably end up with a handful of brats somewhere along the way.
Touya exhales slowly. I don't get to dream anymore. "Nope," he drawls, biting the inside of his cheek until it bleeds, an instinct from when he was young and could cry. "No idea, doc."
┌──────── · · · · ➷
Touya kept a close eye on you for a while. Once he'd become Dabi, once he found a direction to drift in under Stain's ideology, he'd gotten too busy to follow you around like he once could. Still, he'd swing by whenever possible, watching you through your window (even though you rarely did anything more than homework or watching TV) and strolling past his grave to see if you'd left him any new letters.
He'd break into the lost and found if he was gone for long. The groundskeepers tended to do a biweekly sweep to pick up the shit left on graves—it sounds worse than it is, really. There'd be too much rotting food if they didn't.
What did you think when you returned to his grave and saw your letters disappearing? Did you ever have blind hope that he was alive and well, too afraid to come home? Did the idea of that hurt worse than his death? Did it ever discourage you, knowing that your letters were probably getting tossed in the garbage (they weren't; Touya collected every single one, even if it was crumpled up at the bottom of a smelly trashcan)?
He found a letter one night, sitting atop his grave, alone in the darkness.
Hey, Touya. It's been... a week, for sure. I know it's not an anniversary or anything, but I've just been thinking about you a lot lately. I don't know what it is. Sometimes it's like I can see your eyes in a crowd, like you're watching over me or something. I keep thinking I'm gonna wake up one day and go downstairs to see your face on the news. I always thought you'd be on the news for something heroic, you know?
He'd thought that, too, so long ago now. He'd thought he'd be on the news for saving people's lives, not taking them. But life isn't kind, and he's not allowed to dream.
It was so scary, seeing you as a missing person in a wildfire. I wanted to help look for you with your dad and everyone else, but my parents wouldn't let me. I still don't know if that was for the best. I don't know how I would've reacted if I was the one who found your remains—I barely kept it together as it was. ...Well, if you consider crying myself to sleep every night for a year "keeping it together." And maybe it was two years, not one. And maybe I still cry myself to sleep most nights. Whoops.
God, I miss you, Touya. I miss you so much and all the time. Everyone always says it'll get better, that I'll get over it soon enough, but I don't think I ever will. I know Dr. Suzuki is a therapist and went to school for that kinda thing and I'm sure she knows plenty of stuff, but I don't think she gets it. I don't think she understands what you mean to me. Meant, I guess—I always forget you're not here anymore.
He'd huffed, throat closing up the way it usually does when he thinks about you. On impulse, his hands nearly twitched into a fist, nearly crumbled the letter up. He forced them to still themselves, taking a deep breath.
It was my first day of senior high today and let me tell you, you're not missing out. It sucked! It was terrible. I thought finishing junior high by myself was awful but I really underestimated the universe, I guess. I wish you were here all the time. Today more than ever, though. I had to sit by myself at lunch—
He briefly considered burning down the school and the homes of all your classmates—what dumbasses were at your school that they weren't begging you to eat with them?
—and all I could think about was how you always shared your lunch with me. Even though you only ever packed snacks and bento boxes from the convenience store on the way, and I'd end up being the one sharing with you.
You'd be at UA if you were still here. They start a week early. Did you know that, Touya? Or were you too young to even look into it? Would your dad have even let you apply? Not that you would've let him stop you, I guess. I always admired that about you. You never let anything get in the way of your dreams. Sometimes I dream that you come to my window in the middle of the night, and we just run away together. I'd be happy anywhere, if you were there.
That's all, I guess. I miss you. You're still my hero. I love you.
♡ (Y/N) ♡
He'd hurt you, and somehow that hurt worse than his family forgetting about him. Somehow it pissed him off worse than knowing that he could never fix his family, that even dying wasn't enough to stop Endeavor from hurting his mother and siblings. In all your years together, Touya didn't think he'd ever really seen you cry, apart from a few stray tears when you scraped your knee, or when something sad happened on the latest episode of your favorite show.
You were so full of joy, so unaffected by and unaware of the cruel world surrounding your peaceful little bubble, and he just went and fucked all of it up. His death popped the bubble. He showed you how the world could be cruel, when all he'd wanted to do was make it a better one for you.
Touya Todoroki was nothing but a mistake. A rotten little boy who grew to be a horrible man, a ghost who brought nothing but pain to those around him. He deserves to rot in this cell. He doesn't deserve this stupid rehabilitation shit, doesn't deserve this second chance at life—or is it his third? He can't keep track, but it doesn't matter anyways. He doesn't deserve any chance at redemption. He's way past that now.
Alone, he wakes in the night. He throws up again, sweat on his temple, and leaves the infirmary with little more than a glass of water and a cracker. He deserves the bile that burns his throat. He deserves to sleep on an empty, upset stomach. He deserves to be alone.
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marina - teen idle
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