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There’s been a ringing in Touya’s ears ever since he was born. He doesn’t know where it comes from. Maybe the unsteadiness in his head. Maybe the fire boiling his blood that his father had oh-so-gracefully bestowed upon him. Before, he hadn’t known a title like ‘father’ could be so easily forgotten, but it didn’t seem hard for Endeavour. It’d taken only a day for him to turn his back on Touya, after all.
(“Look at me! ” he’d screamed, fire blossoming up his arm without his consent. “I am your son, Endeavour!”)
Perhaps it wasn’t really the fire that hallmarked him as Endeavour’s son; it was the rage that he’d spat those words with. Later, when his head is cleared by that same anger, he’d rebuke the words entirely. He was Rei’s son. Not Endeavour’s. Never Endeavour’s.
And soon, that fact proved itself.
He doesn’t know when it started. It was like a whisper in his bones, and calling in his mind, beckoning him toward the splintering sides of himself. He could feel it deep inside, a sickness born right into his genes. It made him snap, sometimes (“ You don’t know anything! ” he’d yelled at his sister once. It made her cry). It kept him up at night, lungs cramping from the sobs, sparks lighting up his fingertips even in sadness. As Touya got older, as he was shunned again and again in favour of the ‘perfect child’, as his mother started to lose that gentle look in her eye– he could feel it growing right alongside him. A void that would steal his mind if it could. A voice that whispered to him “don’t you just want to let it all burn?”
And as the hatred settled into his spine, spreading like a virus to every inch of him, and found that he did.
It was his mother that gave him this brokenness. It was his father that gave him the anger to use it.
(It was his father who cracked him, who shattered him from the inside out so that the brokeness could get in. It was his mother who never made it better. It was his brother that never thought to look at him until Touya couldn’t take it anymore)
But it was Natsuo who’d tried. Natsuo, who had stayed with him, had cried with him, had begged him to stop hurting himself. It was Natsuo who’d said, “We can just go, he doesn’t care– we could leave together and we’ll fix everything!”
If there’s one thing Dabi regrets from before Touya died, it was never taking his brother up on his offer.
But Touya is dead. Touya was a scared little boy who didn’t know how to help his own damn self. Who couldn’t stop running after something he’d never get even when he ended up dead because of it. Who didn’t know how to embrace the splintered feeling in his head. Touya had burned because of it, and that’s something Dabi doesn’t regret.
(“I didn’t mean to!” Touya had sobbed after he’d woken up in that godforsaken hospital. “I didn’t mean to, I’m sorry, take me home, I want to go home!”)
(But didn’t you? a voice always whispered back)
The voice, Dabi finds, is more often right than not.
Touya had always been weak. Dabi is not, and will never be.
Touya was afraid of the brokenness that haunted his head, always trying to ignore it, to not let it get to him. Dabi laughs in the face of that stupidity– didn’t he see ? Didn’t Touya understand that that is where his power comes from? The chaos is where the beauty is. The chaos is where it feels good. Touya was too shortsighted, too scared, too much of a naive child to understand how the world works. Those who hold back will never achieve anything, isn’t that what Father had said? And how right he turned out to be; Dabi would have never been able to get this far without the shadows in his footsteps.
Touya thought it was all about his father’s love. Dabi knows it’s the exact opposite.
Dabi stares at the lifeless scars overtaking his arms, one hand drifting up to feel the same thing on his face, the skin stretched tight around his mouth. The taste of ash sits permanently on his tongue, a constant reminder of the boy he’d ended to get here. Life is all about burning, really– it just depends on how you choose to do so.
And Dabi?
Dabi is going to burn, and he’s going to take the people who should’ve loved him down with him. A supernova, built by a singular person with blood on his hands and a score to settle.
He smiles at the thought.
The past never dies, after all.
(Dabi can feel his skin tearing, the staples splintering and ripping away but he doesn’t care because he hasn’t felt this good in years. He prances along the top of Machia, laughs bubbling out of him, high, ecstatic sounds. Below, Endeavour– his father– is staring up at him with a stricken expression. Dabi wishes he could take the features off his face and frame them so he can remember that expression forever. Satisfaction, dark and enthralling and everything he wanted, runs in his veins like liquid fire.
Endeavour still hasn’t moved, utterly frozen. Dabi is laughing still, head spinning, and oh, it feels good.
Shouto is yelling next to their father, one hand latching onto his shoulder to shake him. Shouto’s expression is a wild thing, desperate and haunted and unsure and does Dabi revere it.
Soon, Shouto blasts up next to him, tackling him down on Machia. Dabi grins as wide as he can, staples popping, and shoots him into the air, taunting words escaping him without him even needing to think. Shouto follows, red fire scorching the air around them. It’s easily overtaken by Dabi’s own blue– Shouto is nothing next to him.
Dabi sends himself at Shouto, every inch of his body ablaze, and wraps his arms around him with a laugh. “Looks like you’re having a hard time, poor thing,” he snarls. Endeavour’s golden boy, and this is all he is– oh, the irony.
“You too, bastard,” Shouto grunts back, lurching a little in Dabi’s grip. All of a sudden, he’s aware of how much Shouto is shaking– trembling all the way down to his fingertips. He’s… scared. Dabi is scaring him.
(Touya was a scared little boy who didn’t know how to help his own damn self)
The sentiment disappears as quickly as it had come. He leans back a little to get a last look at Shouto, still grinning and he’s waited so long for this moment. But it’s then that black-green whips strike between them, pulling them apart. There’s a curious shine in Shouto’s eyes, a glassy look that makes him look like a broken doll. His skin is blistering and red as he falls, one arm outstretched like he’s still trying to hold on to Dabi. A tear escapes down his cheek, finally far enough away that it doesn’t evaporate.
There’s a little boy screaming in Dabi’s head, banging at the walls with burning hands.
“I didn’t mean to, I didn’t mean to, I didn’t mean to!” he screams, over and over, sobbing so hard he can’t breathe.
And the voice comes back, slipping in through the fractures in Dabi’s mind, the cracks that go all the way down to his soul and back again as Shouto hits the ground below him:
But didn’t you?)