bellow the fire into my deadened lungs
chapter 6: let's straighten it out
(summary) | dabihawks, todoroki family, aizawa, all might
------------------------
DAY 2 — TUESDAY
1 Year, 11 Months Ago
-------------------------
Shouta’s eyes haven’t left Todoroki Enji’s interrogation window for half an hour.
“Something about this all feels… too easy.”
With the No-Show effect on, the man whose name burns the tip of Shouta’s tongue exhibits no signs of being so thoroughly watched. Shouta wonders if Endeavor has some kind of invisible teleportation aspect to his quirk because every time Shouta tries to merely utter the disgraceful hero’s name, there’s a fire in his chest that rages up his throat and incinerates the chance.
Todoroki Enji sits on his cell cot with an eerie stillness. Shouta wonders if the man has become near catatonic. There’s a strange expression on Endeavor’s flameless face, one that Shouta doesn’t think he’s seen on the man for the entire decade they’ve known each other.
— It’s relief.
It’s the smallest smile Shouta thinks he’s ever seen, and he has to look in the mirror every day. It’s thick auburn eyebrows relaxed enough for Shouta to realize that Todoroki Enji actually has the same deep-set eyelids as his eldest son.
Todoroki Enji is the most peaceful inmate Shouta has ever witnessed trapped in a metal box, and for all the rational reasons he cannot find, it’s horrifying.
“To be fair, Aizawa-sensei, nothing about this whole situation can be labeled as ‘easy’.”
The cup of horrible coffee Yagi made Shouta at the start of their watch-shift has gone cold.
“We spent all of Sunday strategizing how we’re going to handle… him,” Shouta points at Todoroki Enji’s unmoving form, “just for the man to have given himself up like that,” and snaps the fingers of his pointing hand. “Why?”
Yagi sighs and opens his palm. “Guilt, perhaps?”
Shouta doesn’t believe in that suggestion, “Endeavor has been living with his guilt for years, quite successfully. Something changed.”
They both stare at the man in question, the man they both thought they knew so much better than they actually did.
From the corner of his eye, Shouta can see Yagi’s frail neck tilt. He wonders what kind of analysis the fallen symbol’s mind computes.
A few moments later, Yagi shares his hypothesis: “… Hope.”
Shouta feels his face scrunch up as he turns to Yagi and asks, “Is something like that really so inspiring?”
Yagi’s smile is thin — as smiles are when sagged with the slow decay of fast illness — but, somehow, when turned toward him, Shouta still finds it as boundless as All Might’s unwavering grin.
“It’s quite a powerful thing, Aizawa-sensei. Some may say it makes the world go round.”
--------------------
PRESENT DAY
--------------------
“Uh, hi?”
A smooth laugh rings into the bright air of the cemetery. It is the same laugh that has haunted Keigo’s memories for close to two years now, the same smoky sound that Keigo has only ever been able to access with the aided pinch of a needle and snap of a rubber band. It is the same exact frequency that every single one of Keigo’s counselors has taught him to be okay with never hearing again.
‘Touya is alive.’ How on Earth is Keigo supposed to allow himself to believe this?
“Not gonna lie, Birdy,” the man — Touya — raises his four-fingered hand to rub nervously at the nape of his ink-laced neck, pushing back the waves of thick white hair that curl around it, “I knew you’d be… in shock, but, damn. I dunno, thought comin’ back from th’dead again would at least warrant a — oof!”
Keigo slams into Touya and holds him tightly in something that can only be described as a violent hug.
High-pitched croons almost drown out Touya’s pained grunt, and they don’t stop escaping Keigo’s throat until Touya brings his previously raised arm around Keigo’s shoulders to return the fierce embrace.
“‘M here, Kei." Two-toned lips that are not nearly as contrasted as before, but nonetheless uniquely dichromatic, warmly brush Keigo’s cold temple. The rough drag of Touya’s bottom lip against his skin fills the gaps of the hole in Keigo’s heart he’d tried so hard to fill on his own.
“How?” Keigo tearlessly cries into a solid and real chest. “How’re you h–here?”
Touya’s other arm joins to loop around Keigo’s shoulders and lock him in place. The haunting cold Keigo has carried around for the past two years finally, finally, begins to thaw.
“I’ll explain everythin’, just not here,” Touya whispers thickly.
Keigo breathes a deep inhale, eager to lay false phantoms to rest and — he stills.
Touya smells different.
The ghosts harboring Keigo’s five senses have been paying their dues for the past two years in smoke — of bonfire skin and kilned metal, tobacco clouds under October moons, and the settling ash of an inevitably bellowed inferno.
The man in Keigo’s arms carries the scent of summer oceans.
Keigo’s taloned grip on the man’s waist goes lax, and he pulls back, enhancing his Bird’s Eye View to flit over a face he does not remember — pale forehead but almost equally pale under-eyes, glinting bottom lip but dull chin, unevenly colored cheeks but seamlessly smooth.
The mournful spirits cackle in Keigo’s ear as they point out the loophole in the eviction notice of beautifully blue eyes flickering with disheartened understanding: one cannot raise the dead just as much as one cannot rewind time. The longing of a heart left in the cold does not thaw at the mere shadow of the fireplace that once-upon-a-time kept it warm.
He lets go and steps back.
Keigo knew Dabi, he knew Todoroki Touya, but he does not know this man — he does not know Himura Touya.
The distance between them cannot be more than two feet, but it feels exactly like two years.
“Where then?” Keigo manages to croak out with the returning ache in his chest.
Just where is this man supposed to explain away the worst two years of Keigo’s life?
The man — ‘Touya, he’s still Touya, even if he’s not my Touya’ — swings back his now-empty arms and clenches his fists. “Right, uh,” he looks so nervous again, like a child who’s about to admit they broke their mother’s favorite vase, “Yumi ‘n I — we got a place,” and he thumbs uselessly over his shoulder. “I can take you to it now; she’s comin’ later. Or, I mean, if you’re busy, I can just give you the address ‘n you can swing by… whenever.”
‘He’s got a place,’ like it’s a common occurrence for the dead to step out of their eternal graves, flash forward their lost time, and opt back into the land of the living with a mortgage and not the devastated hearts of their grieving fools in sight.
There’s something different with how Touya speaks now, like he’s developed an accent. Anyone else wouldn’t have noticed, Keigo is sure, but his feathers never miss a change in pitch.
“Yeah, no, we can go now.” Keigo has so many questions and absolutely no — important — plans.
His feathers pick up his dropped phone and hand it over to Touya to call a cab. When Touya’s slender fingers curl over Keigo’s phone, Keigo stuffs his yearning hands into the pockets of his pants.
The taxi ride is painfully quiet.
CLICK TO READ FULL CHAPTER ON AO3