#it was pretty much always predicted that touya would be much harder to reach than toga

[tamakiamajikistentacles]

Two Ghosts (part 1) {Dabi}

A/N: Please be sure to reblog, comment, review, and like if you enjoy! Feedback is what keeps me motivated! Click to read Part 2 and Part 3

Dabi missed the bar. It wasn’t the best placed he had ever stayed (top five for sure, though), but it was nicer than the shithole they had been forced into using as a hideout since All for One had been imprisoned. At the bar, their rooms were more spread out and the walls were thicker, so he didn’t have to hear Twice alternating between whispered babbling and sudden outbursts in the middle of the night.

His living conditions were never the greatest, but he longed for the day he wouldn’t have to worry about any outsiders underfoot. He wanted his own space desperately, almost to the point where he might say he wanted a home. Which, okay, maybe he did, but not just to satisfy his own selfish desires.

“Are you happy?” he asked into the stillness of the room.

The thin sheets rustled as she turned over, eyes still closed. “No, I’m tired, Dabi.”

He huffed out a laugh as her hand laid on his chest, the pressure comforting against the textures of his skin. Her smart mouth had always been one of her best assets, in more ways than one in his opinion.

“That’s not what I meant, Kazane.”

She sighed as she felt him shift backwards to sit up a bit, her hand dropping from his chest and his head falling back against the cold brick of the wall. Her eyes opened lazily to see him peering into the darkness, a pensive look on his face.

“What is it?” she asked, propping herself up on an elbow to watch his expression.

“Are you happy?” he asked again in a low voice. “Are you happy that we joined this cause? Are you happy that we have this room to ourselves, but we hear everything from outside of it? Are you happy here? Are you happy here with me, Raila?”

Golden eyes widened at the use of her real name. She hadn’t heard it in so long, the syllables sounding foreign when strung together by the lips of the man she’d stood by since he was a boy. He’d said it before many times, but that felt like a lifetime ago.

She sat up higher, pressing a light kiss to the apple of his cheek where the skin was still warm and unblemished.

“I’m happy so long as I’m with you, Touya,” she murmured.

His teeth clenched and he shivered, pinpricks of regret needling his skin at bringing up their true given names because he was not and could never be Touya Todoroki. Few things connected him to that name—that life—anymore. Some he could avoid, like the snowy white roots of his hair that were never visible for very long once caught during his meticulous inspection, and his flames burned such a bright, blinding blue now that he’d strengthened his quirk far beyond the potential predicted in his childhood.

But there were things not so easily hidden, too, such as the distinctive turquoise shade of his eyes that were given to him by the man he had longed to punish for his misdeeds, and matched half of the small boy he had nearly died trying and failing to protect.

The last piece that connected him to that life was ever-present, and the one thing he would never hide away or try to abandon: her.

He felt sick hearing the rush of flames and the constant impact of his youngest brother’s small body against the wooden walls of his father’s training room. No matter how he tried to block the noise of the “training sessions,” he couldn’t ignore them.

Shoto had just turned five not that long ago and he prayed that when his kindergarten class began that the teachers would see the bruises or the burns and file a report. Their father needed punished, and if his own family couldn’t expose him, someone had to. Try as he might, no one had ever believed him when he described the abuse in their… home? Could their living situation really be called a home with? His mother tried to bring love and light into the darkness of the place they all inhabited. How ironic, he mused, that the parent with an ice quirk could bring the warmth of love when their father’s flames burned bright but held a stone-cold distance.

Guilt had consumed him from a young age at the thought of his own shortcomings being the reason three other children had needed to endure Endeavor’s training exercises from the age of four years old until the next sibling came along. Watching a tiny Fuyumi pass out the first time she was forced to push the limit of her ice quirk was heart-wrenching, and four years later when Natsuo had been struck across the face for his own inability to produce flames, Touya had vomited. But maybe the most disturbing moment he had endured was only half a year earlier when Shoto’s quirk had presented itself to be an equal inheritance of both ice and fire.

Endeavor had smiled in wide-eyed excitement when red and orange flames had burned from Shoto’s left hand at his annoyance with an old action figure of Touya’s, the plastic melting into a puddle on their wooden floor. His excitement grew further when not even a full day later, ice shards erupted from the child’s right hand after Natsuo had knocked him over on the way to the dinner table, coating the floor unevenly and causing the older boy to skid into the kitchen counter.

Touya himself was wide-eyed too, though his own surprise was twisted painfully at the realization that though it had taken four tries, Endeavor finally had his perfect child to groom.

“He trains him harder than he ever did me,” he admitted to Raila quietly one evening, booming shouts and impossibly soft cries heard from the hallway leading to the training room. His mother had gone into the room some time ago, and he wasn’t sure if the cries were from her or from Shoto.

“I’m sorry,” she replied, lacing their fingers together on his knee. “None of you deserved his mistreatment, let alone at such a young age like Shoto. I don’t know how to change it, though. His status…”

“I know,” he murmured, raising his free hand to move the orangey-pink hair from in front of her face. “It’s delicate while we’re still young, but once I’m of age… maybe they’ll listen. For now, though, I can only try and protect them however I can.”

She hummed as his hand dropped from her hair, her own rising up to meet his fiery red spikes and shift the strands. “You need to touch-up your hair. The white is peeking through again.”

“Tomorrow work for you?” he asked, leaning into her touch.

“So needy,” she teased, but they both knew it would be a red-stained massacre if he tried to do it on his own again.

The next day, after she had finished helping him make sure the white roots were thoroughly saturated with red dye, was when the course of events that would change both their lives and the lives of those around them were set into motion.

Shoto was sobbing, pleading through broken breaths to not have to train anymore for the day, flecks of vomit clinging to his trembling lips.

His father only stared down at him unimpressed and slowly losing his patience for the spectacle his youngest was making out of himself. His perfect creation was meant for so much more than this.

“Get up, Shoto.”

Another round of hysterics bubbled up from the small boy as he shook his head in the simplest act of defiance his tired body could muster.

“I said get up!”

Choked cries echoing louder still, Endeavor took a step forward only to pause as the door to the training room flew open. Instead of his wife, he saw his eldest charge into the room while the girlfriend he kept stood outside the doorway with a clenched jaw, fists balled tight from where her arms were crossed.

Touya came to kneel next to his brother, a light touch on his back enough to send him into his arms, body still wracked with tremors from the very idea of continuing his training, but now also for what may happen with two more Endeavor-clashing personalities added to the moment.

“S’okay, Sho,” Touya murmured, “you’re alright now.”

“This is no place for you,” Endeavor sneered. His eyes shifted to the doorway and he added, “Either of you.”

Placing a comforting hand on the back of Shoto’s head, Touya glared up at their father. “No, this is exactly where I need to be right now. We need to have a conversation.”

He looked down on his oldest son as he held the youngest, the two bookends for the lineage he had crafted over the span of almost two decades before him as if to show what he thought were the improvements from the first model to the last.

“Shoto, I want you to go with Raila, okay? Her and Fuyumi are going to sit with you for a bit and then it’s a bath and bedtime.”

Soft baby cheeks flushed from tears pulled back from his chest, and Touya’s heart broke at the wide-eyed expression of panic on his brother’s face.

“Don’t worry, I’ll see you at bedtime,” he assured, nudging the boy towards his girlfriend. “Go with Raila.”

Shoto sniffled quietly only once as he moved towards the doorway, afraid that if he looked back his father would be reaching out for him to drag him back to train. He focused on Raila and her pretty golden eyes that reminded him of his mother, warm and inviting and promising safety within her arms.

When he reached her, she smiled softly down at him and carded one hand through his hair, happy when he closed his eyes and sagged in relief. But before she took him to his sister’s room, she glanced up at Touya, hesitant to leave when she could be a witness to something drastic—which of the two that would commit a drastic act, she couldn’t be sure.

“Take him, Peach.”

Raila nodded, bottom lip still between her teeth as she led Shoto down the hallway towards Fuyumi’s room, quiet promises to make the paper cranes they would be creating fly.

Within the training room, Touya stood tall as he rounded on his father. Heat was pooled in his chest and it wasn’t out of fear or from his quirk but out of anger, his veins thrumming with the need for confrontation against the man in front of him.

“He’s five years old and you’re training him as if he’s a second year in a hero course! You never trained me that hard and my flames burned hotter than Shoto’s!”

“I never pushed you because it was obvious that you were a failure, and that even approaching the limits of your quirk would destroy your body,” Endeavor sneered. “You inherited your mother’s weak constitution; you were bred with the hope of regulation for your flames, not to be consumed by them!”

“If I could be given another chance at training, now that I’m older and stronger—”

Endeavor laughed maniacally, silencing his argument. “Another chance? Do you have a death wish? You would burn yourself alive within minutes if you were to try and tame your fire. Your flames may burn hotter, you may have my eyes, and you may try and fool the world with that ridiculous hair dye, but the truth is that you are a failure, the first in a line of three. You were all created in hopes of surpassing me, of surpassing All Might, but only Shoto has the potential under my tutelage to fulfill the life I’ve set forth.”

Touya grit his teeth and raised his chin defiantly. “If I can prove my control over my fire and show you that I’m worth another chance, would you train me again? Train me instead of Shoto?”

“Why should I take a chance on you when you’ve already failed?” his father replied, expression bored. “I have a guaranteed legacy in Shoto with his powers. Working with you would be a waste of time to me and a delay in Shoto’s training.”

“Look at me,” he said, gesturing his arms out from his sides, “I’m every bit your legacy when someone sees me without my quirk; with it, everyone would be able to see me as your successor and the public would just eat it up. Popularity is part of the game, after all. Train me and develop my skills even more to make up for the rest.”

“Your mind was never what made you a failure,” Endeavor conceded after a long silence. “As well-thought as your plan is, it wouldn’t work. Your body cannot handle your quirk, and to push yourself further than what you can handle is foolish. You would burn yourself alive and then what would it have all been for? Would you really want to leave behind everyone just to try and prove a point to me because you were passed over? That girlfriend of yours means less to you than rebelling against me?”

“Don’t you even mention her!” he spat, his fists clenched as he took a step forward. “I’m doing this to protect the people I love, the people you’re supposed to love! I can tame my fire whether you believe it or not, and once I do, I expect your toughest training regimen.”

“You ridiculous child! Where is your sense of self-preservation? You would truly rather die for someone who doesn’t need to be protected than live your life?”

“Do you accept my proposition or not?” Touya ground out from clenched teeth.

Endeavor crossed his arms and regarded him. “You have one week to prepare yourself to impress me. I will make my decision then.”

He supposed that of all the responses he expected that one was certainly one of the better ones. He had his chance and he wouldn’t waste it.

How he would impress his father he wasn’t quite sure, but he had one week to figure it out and a girlfriend who would support him. Even if she would worry.

Later that night after making sure Shoto was taken care of, her exact words were, in fact, “Touya, I’m just worried that you’re going to hurt yourself to try and gain his favor only for him to reject you on principle alone.”

“If I impress him, he’ll have no choice but to accept me for training again. Whether in addition to Shoto or to replace him he’s not going to be worked as hard, I’m hoping.”

She knew her reservations were valid but she couldn’t deny his desire to protect his brother even more than he already did. It was the unsure nature of his quirk that gave her pause, but his determination to work through it was enough to have her faith staying course.

“Do you know what you want to do for this assessment or whatever?”

Touya ran a hand through his hair. Having had time to think it over he had one idea that he was fairly certain would gain him favor. “I figure since he knows my main problem is control and that my body doesn’t exactly work well with my quirk, I want to try mimicking the way he has his fire on his hero suit and how he keeps his facial flames lit. Imitation to flatter him a little since he was screaming about his legacy and I played into it.”

“When do you plan to practice?”

“I can skip tomorrow and once Shoto’s at school and mom’s in the other wing I can work on it. The housekeeper isn’t in so no one has a reason to come to my room.”

“His class starts at eight, right?” she asked, continuing once he gave a confused nod, “Great, then I’ll be here by quarter ‘til.”

He squeezed her hand with their intertwined fingers. “You don’t need to come if it’s going to worry you, Peach. And I know you don’t like skipping.”

“I’ll worry less seeing what happens with my own two eyes. The anxiety comes from the unknown because my mind makes up every awful scenario imaginable. You’re more important to me than anything, and I’ll make up whatever work I need to if it means being here with you.”

How could he possibly argue?

He was just as weak to her hopeful gaze the next morning when she stepped across the threshold, the compound empty save for the two of them until his mother returned from Shoto’s school.

Raila chewed her bottom lip nervously as they walked the familiar halls to Touya’s room. She was cautiously optimistic about the beginning of his self-imposed training regimen. Confidence in his abilities wasn’t lacking but she worried that he would push himself too far too fast.

He could see the hesitance in the furrow of her brows and any apprehension he had for this training attempt was replaced with the desire to calm her.

His hands on her hips were gentle and it made her think of how different he was from his father—loving touches and genuinely sweet words such a far cry from the example set for him. It was a partial reason she was worried, afraid that Endeavor would push him to be something he wasn’t, someone he wasn’t. But she knew him better, knew his heart was much too loving to be lost to the soldier-like mentality his father sought out.

“I can do this,” he murmured into her neck, a soft kiss following his words. “You’ll be the first one to see it; you’re the only one who believes I can do it so it’s only fair you see it first.”

She smiled weakly as her hand combed through his hair. “Just go slow, yeah? Work up to it and break when you need to. You can do this if you’re smart about it.”

Touya grinned, raising his head to kiss her. Holding her close to him and feeling her lips against his made him feel like he could do anything as long as she stood by him.

Breaking the kiss, he moved one hand to the back of her neck, pecking her lips three times in rapid succession. “Gonna make you proud.”

Raila then watched nervously as he backed away from her to stand in the center of his bedroom, his chest rising and falling from deep, focused breaths.

“Okay,” he whispered, and the first flames began to appear on the backs of his wrists. They were tiny and red, flickering like birthday candles as he held them steadily in place atop his skin. Slowly, when he didn’t feel the sting of a burn, he coaxed the flames to spread up his arms.

He could feel the heat, but it wasn’t painful. He could almost call it pleasant; it was one of his only experiences with heat that hadn’t resulted in disaster. There was never a time that he had started slow and worked up to more intense usage of his quirk.

As the trail of fire crested at his shoulders it began to cross down his chest in an X shape, curving around his slim hips to complete the pattern across his back. Once he was satisfied with his torso, he allowed flames to ignite from his ankles and cover the tops of his bare feet, careful not to stretch the fire so low as to catch on the wooden floor.

Watching intently from her seat on the edge of his bed, Raila held her breath when she realized that the third and final piece of the pseudo-costume was next: the facial flames. She knew he didn’t worry with his arms or chest or even his feet, but his face was a different story. Not vain by any means, he couldn’t bear to be confronted with constantly visible burns on his face as signs of failure to his father.

“It’s okay, Peach,” he murmured, turquoise eyes set with determination. She nodded encouragingly, not trusting her voice to stay steady.

A spark of red appeared on his chin, the tiny point spreading up his jaw and covering a large portion of his cheeks as it neared his ears. Two more flickered to life on his upper lip and curled out slightly. Finally, beginning just below his lower lash line, flames ignited and moved to shield the skin around his eyes as if they were a mask.

The fire danced across his skin and fireproof training clothes merrily, holding its shape as the moments ticked by.

Touya stared down at his body in awe, fascinated by his quirk’s ability. This wasn’t how he had expected training to go but it was a welcome surprise to be able to control the fire he had feared and suffered at the hands of for so long.

Spinning this way and that, he marveled at the sway of the flames and their endurance as he moved.

“Raila!” he exclaimed in excitement, looking up to see her eyes shining. “Look! Look, I’m—I’ve done it!”

She felt her chest constrict with equal parts pride and worry. “And you’re not feeling any sort of burn? You’re… you’re really… you’re doing it!”

His childlike laugh bounced off the walls as he posed in every heroic way he could think of, from the signature poses struck by All Might to those of Best Jeanist, and even the simple ones of Endeavor. In Raila’s eyes, he looked every bit the hero he was striving to prove himself worthy of becoming.

He wasn’t as tall and certainly much smaller in build than his father, but Touya hadn’t been lying when he told Endeavor that he could be his legacy. His dyed red hair and striking eye color accented by the flames on his face made for a stunning resemblance; the only noticeable difference was the fire’s color.

“I can go hotter,” he said as if hearing her thoughts.

“Maybe let it go for a minute first,” she suggested.

He shook his head. “No, it’s okay. I feel fine. If it gets to be too much I’ll stop.”

“Touya, don’t push yourself too quickly,” she said, eyes narrowed. “Learn your limits and test them properly. You can work up to the hotter temperature.”

Without a word the flames at his wrists sparked orange and spread up his arms, taking the same path as when he began only faster. The warmth of the fire could be felt from across the room, and she pursed her lips at the increased heat.

A cocky smirk formed beneath the now orange facial flames. “I told you, Peach, I’m good.”

She fixed him with a hard stare and he stood strong for a solid minute before withering under her gaze, his quirk retreating back until the last licks of fire disappeared from the backs of his wrists with only a wisp of smoke ever indicating they were there.

He took a deep breath. “I said I was fine.”

“I never said you weren’t,” she retorted. “I just want you to stop and take a second before you’re not fine.”

Touya smiled. “Always worryin’ about me.”

“Someone has to,” she said with a playful roll of her eyes.

He shook his head with a chuckle, rubbing his wrists and inspecting the skin of his forearms. From where she sat she couldn’t see any damage which eased some of the tension she was carrying.

“I’m going hotter this time,” he said, looking up. “Then I’ll be right at his level.”

“Just… work up to it and be careful.”

When he stepped back into the center of the room he immediately ignited his wrists and the flames began trailing up his arms. Not even a moment later the brilliant red of the fire was blazing and he looked satisfied at the progress with how easily he could control his fire with such little practice.

She felt dizzy seeing the flames turn to a warm yellow, worried when he put out a burst of heat to burn the flames even hotter all at once. His brows furrowed almost immediately and thin lines of heat began to dance in front of both of them and she suddenly wondered if he had meant to do it. She started to stand, to go to him, when his hand shot out towards her.

“Don’t,” he panted. “Stay there while I get this under control.”

Raila stood up fully but stayed next to his bed. Panic was bubbling in her chest as beads of sweat trailed down each of their faces and off-white smoke began to pour off of his body, the flames growing larger.

“Touya,” she said, mouth dry. Her legs felt like lead as she took a step toward him, knees shaking. She was scared, her breath coming more ragged as she watched the flames burn brighter, a sickly yellow-green hue coloring her boyfriend’s already pale face.

“You have to stay back!” he said in a near-shout, his own panic starting to show in his eyes as he tried desperately to pull back the flames, to tame his fire and keep her safe.

Her knees buckled and she stumbled, her thoughts and vision swimming. As her eyelids fluttered, she could make out the brightness of flames in all directions and the heat on her face was almost unbearable.

Smoke stung at her eyes in the milliseconds they were open and the blood rushed in her ears. Touya shouted her name as she tried to take another shaky step forward. Finally, her legs gave out and her vision went black, the last thing she remembered being a searing pain in her shoulder.

She woke up in an ambulance with an oxygen mask over her nose and mouth, the subtle rocking agitating the pounding in her skull and making her keep her eyes closed tightly. Her left shoulder felt wet, her shirt sticking to skin and the fabric underneath her. All around she could hear muddled voices.

“Touya,” she whispered hoarsely, sure that those around her could tell her something, anything about him.

“Don’t try and talk, we don’t know the full extent of damage from the smoke inhalation,” a female voice said from her right. “We’re taking you to the hospital.”

His name was on the tip of her tongue as she lost consciousness once again.

It wasn’t until she was lying in a hospital bed, a steadily beeping heart monitor in her ear, that she opened her eyes. In stark contrast to the chaos of the compound, the room was calm.

“Raila?”

Mindful of the oxygen in her nose, she turned to her mother who sat at her bedside. She looked exhausted though that could be expected. Surely half a day’s work and a call that her daughter was hospitalized was more than enough to burn her energy.

“Raila, honey,” she whispered, leaning forward in her chair to clasp their hands. “You had me so worried. Your father isn’t much better. I had to send him home.”

She parted her dry lips to reply but was immediately shushed.

“I have to call in a nurse, the doctor needs to take a look at you now that you’re awake. You… they need to check you over again and make sure you’re alright since you fainted from all the smoke. You inhaled so much... Dammit, Raila what were you thinking?”

“Mom,” she croaked, squeezing her hand to make her stop. “Mom... Touya?”

Her mother’s face pinched together as if in pain. “Right now you need to focus on yo—”

“Mom,” she said again despite the ache in her throat, “Touya.”

She sighed, letting go of her hand to press her face into her palms. A light shake of her head made her think she was crying at first, but when she looked up her eyes only held contempt.

“I don’t know what we were thinking letting you spend as much time with him as much as we did. Just look at you—in the damn hospital with a shoulder burned to a crisp that’s going to be a scar for the rest of your life and possible long-term damage to your lungs. That boy practically burned his house to the ground, nothing left but the studs of that room.”

Raila furrowed her brows, the pain in her head growing as she tried to process what her mother was saying.

“I know you cared about him, honey, but it sounds to me like what Enji warned was true: he was in possession of a dangerous quirk and unstable emotions. I don’t want to… I can’t say I’m glad but maybe it’s for the best that this happened.”

She fixated on one word: was.

“There won’t be a funeral but I’ll rest easier knowing he can’t hurt you more than he already has.”

Even slightly disoriented Raila understood. She hated the words coming out of her mother’s mouth but she hated the reality of the situation more.

Touya was gone. He was gone and she had nothing left of him but memories, a scarred shoulder, and the scent of his burning flesh clinging to her hair.

It was a concept she couldn’t understand regardless of how many people offered their condolences, the absence of a proper ceremony making it so she heard it at every turn. Family, friends, teachers, anyone who knew of her and Touya’s relationship felt the need to pity her. She couldn’t stand it. Between the pitying looks and rumors that were said in hushed tones in the back of classrooms, school had been hell.

She missed Rei and Fuyumi and Shoto, even the annoying at times Natsuo. His family had to know her pain but they couldn’t share it together; she would’ve been foolish to think Endeavor would allow it. He had accepted her as his oldest son’s partner because of their quirk compatibility and the potential for the beginnings of another powerful generation, but that future was obsolete in his eyes now.

Raila was essentially blacklisted from contacting the Todoroki family after that day, all her attempts to reach out stopped in their tracks.  The most she knew where from the halls of her school where whispers of Rei Todoroki being taken from the compound and put in the psychiatric ward of the same hospital she had been taken to after the fire were abundant. It had been said that she had hurt one of the other children and even before she had overheard her father lowly telling her mother one night, she knew it had been Shoto.

She hoped his burn was doing better than her own. Three weeks on from that day she was still dressing the burn often, the weeping skin and creeping scars along the edges being pulled painfully by gauze bandages. A strange part of her coveted it, having been the last physical contact she had with Touya. Her parents looked at the injury with disgust, forever reminding her that they believed dating him to be a horrible decision and her presence at the Todoroki’s that day even worse.

Late at night is when she chose to treat the wound so she didn’t need to hear their disappointment; she didn’t care to listen any more. So in the darkness is when she would sit cross-legged on her bed, the left strap of her tank top hanging loose below her arm as she dabbed medication on the raw skin.

On one of these nights she sat winding the gauze around her shoulder, wincing absently as her mind wandered. She was so devoid of focus that she didn’t hear the hesitant taps against the window that grew more insistent as the minutes dragged on. Finally, a loud slap against the glass startled her out of her thoughts as she finished the bandages. She stood cautiously and approached the drawn curtains of her window.

Pulling the fabric slightly to the side, golden eyes met turquoise, and her jaw dropped. Flinging the curtain open and raising the window she reached out to touch the unblemished skin of his cheek, unwilling to entertain the idea of him being real and alive and breathing until she could feel it for herself.

“Hi, Peach.”

“Touya,” she whispered, wide-eyed and desperate. “Come in here, c’mon.”

He lifted himself up and slipped through the window, coming to stand at his full height in the middle of her bedroom in a baggy shirt and pants. Purpled burns trailed down his arms to his wrists and across what she could see of his chest; up his neck and the lower half of his face were the same, his bottom lip barely distinguishable from the rest of his face. The skin beneath his eyes was the same healed over purple as well as his ears, but Raila would be damned if there ever came a day when she wouldn’t recognize Touya.

“You’re alive,” she said, voice wavering as she gently cupped his marred jaw, tears threatening to spill over. “They told me you were gone… Please, just—just tell me this isn’t a dream.”

One hand came to circle her wrist lightly, moving it to his chest where she could feel the steady beat. “You look too pretty for this to be a dream.”

She let out a watery scoff. “Where the hell have you been?”

His smirk fell. “Peach…”

“No, don’t ‘Peach’ me, Touya. I deserve to know where you’ve been for the better part of a month after being told you were fucking dead!” she snapped, hands leaving him to cross over her chest.

“When… after I tried to catch you,”—he paused, his eyes transfixed on her freshly wrapped shoulder—"the whole room was engulfed but you were far enough away from the flames. Every time they started to spread near you I tried to manipulate it away but I knew we had to get out. I was numb by then and the flames on me were basically put out, but I couldn’t touch you without hurting you more. I heard the first responders coming and… and I made the decision to let Touya die.”

“You were… just going to leave me?” she asked in a trembling voice.

“I thought if I wasn’t around as a constant reminder as a failure, Endeavor wouldn’t push Shoto as hard,” he said quietly. “I’m sorry.”

“Then you make it up to me,” she said. “You take me with you to wherever you’ve been staying and to see whoever helped you heal your burns so quickly.”

“Raila, I’m supposed to be dead and gone.”

She turned to her closet and pulled out a large duffle bag and a smaller knapsack. “Then I’ll be gone too.”

He watched her begin to throw clothes into the duffle bag and a few select items into the knapsack. A few other tiny essentials were thrown into the duffle and it was only when she pulled out a jacket and her wallet that he snapped out of his silence.

“It’s not fair to you to live the rest of your life on the run,” he argued. “I came to… just to see you one last time before I left the city, but you looked so upset, I couldn’t—"

She waved a hand dismissively as she slipped on her shoes and began looking over what she’d packed to ensure nothing was forgotten. “Touya it’s fine, honestly, these past few weeks have been awful but now that I know you’re alive I’m good! Everything is fine because you’re alive and—"

“Think this through!” he snapped lowly, fists balled at his sides. “Think about what this means, Raila!”

She stopped her packing of the duffle bag, struck by the desperate and pained tone of his voice. He had never scolded her like that before and while she wasn’t afraid of him, she was hesitant as she turned to face him.

“If… if we go away together, there’s no going back,” he breathed out. “Touya Todoroki and Raila Yamazaki both have to die. We can’t ever go back.”

She shakily took his hands. “Being without you feels like dying as it is, so Raila can be dead and gone if it means I stay with you. Whatever name you go by, I’ll stay by your side.”

“You understand what you’re giving up, right?” he asked desperately, hands squeezing hers weakly. “Your parents, our friends, school… and-and we won’t be able to live the life we dreamed of. There’s no way we can be married and—dammit!”

He dropped her hands, raising his own to cup her jaw and run his thumbs along the apples of her cheeks, his head tipping forward to rest his forehead gently against hers. Both of their eyes fell closed as they shared shuddering breaths between them.

“Even when we were younger you always wanted kids, and if we go, we can’t… we can’t raise a kid on the run. If you come with me then you have to give up that dream. I wouldn’t… I won’t hold it against you if you want to stay.”

“Raila wanted kids and Raila wanted to get married,” she murmured, “but she’s dead. I only want you.”

A sad smile overtook his features. “Touya really cared about Raila, you know. He wanted to marry her and raise a family with her properly, not like the way he grew up. But he’s dead too, just like her.”

“I love you. Whatever name you choose, whatever life you live, I love you,” she whispered.

“And I love you,” he returned. “No matter what happens, I love you too.”

Dabi felt her hand trace along his jaw, forever in wonder at how she never avoided the dark burns when she touched him, how she never once ignored the damaged skin when her loving touches made contact. Despite the dead nerves, he always felt her sincerity. He hoped that his own emotion could be felt when his own fingertips would brush her burn.

“Shouldn’t be bringing up ghosts of the past, love,” she murmured. “They belong in the past for a reason; they had to die so we could live.”

“But are we really living?”

“We are,” she said firmly. “We’re living free from Endeavor’s influence and living for the day we expose him for the false God that he is. Number one hero—it makes me fucking sick every time someone says it.”

He threaded a hand through the dark purple hair that framed her face, pulling her into a hard kiss. She responded immediately, her arms looping around his neck as his free hand found her waist, holding her body closer to his as they sank back down into the sheets. Pressed against one another in the dark, not a single chilled thought of the past was able to haunt them.

A/N: Please be sure to reblog, comment, review, and like if you enjoy! Feedback is what keeps me motivated! Click to read Part 2 and Part 3