"Why do you feel the need to talk to us like this!? We're still your family after all! We're your children!" shouts Fuyumi.
"Which is why I expect you to act in the ways I tell you to act!" bellows Endeavour
"What. Because that worked so well in the past, didn't it!" screams Natsuo.
"You dare speak to me about the past, boy!?"
Shoto pushes past his big sister and dives into the only room in house that gave him some kind of sanctuary, he covers his ears and shuts his eyes, hoping it would all go away. But Shoto isn't that lucky.
"Well, maybe you need reminding you fraud." Natsuo says.
Shoto hears the footsteps of his father step even closer towards the angry voice of his brother.
"Speak."
"Touya's dead and mom killed herself! All because of you! YOU! YOU! YOU!" Natsuo screams.
Shoto hears a thud, followed by a coughing sound and a sort of crash as he assumes Natsuo slumps to the floor.
"DON'T YOU DARE LAY THEIR DEATHS ON MY SHOULDERS, BOY."
Shoto hears muffled sobbing as the enormous footsteps stomp away out of what he could vaguely hear, but what replaces it is the tender voice of his sister as he un cups his ears.
"Natsuo, are you okay..?" sniffs Fuyumi
"I hate it here. I hate everything about it. I hate him. I hate him so much Fuyumi." groans Natsuo.
"I know... I know..."
"Where's... Where's Shoto? Is he okay?" asks his brother. Prompting a sigh from Fuyumi.
"He went where he always goes."
Shoto couldn't help but walk away further from the door, he didn't want to be near any of this. Any of them. As horrid as it seems, in the eyes of his sister he saw his mother's sorrow and in the eyes of his brother he saw both his father's rage and his eldest brother's passion. He opens a cabinet and kneels in front of it, placing his hands together. He starts to talk in a quiet voice, a gentle voice, something that had tragically become second nature to the youngest Todoroki.
"I... I don't know what to do. Everyday of my life is this hell. Fuyumi wants us all to get along, Natsuo wants some accountability from father, and father... well, he's just as much of a monster now as he was then. And speaking of; that thing was back again last night, I heard it stomping around by my window." Shoto whispers with tears in his eyes as he looks at the centre piece of the cabinet. The photo of his brother, his lost brother. Touya. "Big brother. I... I really wish you were here right now. I'm so scared. I wish I had your strength, or your bravery. But right now, I have nothing but fear." he murmurs as he bows before the cabinet tears running down both sides of his face. The half untouched by his hellish life, and the half that was, but both were touched by the anguish he felt daily. He hears footsteps behind him, they were gentler this time.
"Fuyumi... please leave me alone. I don't want to talk right now."
"Not a day goes by, where I'm not stricken by the same sadness, Shoto." gently said the voice he least wanted to hear in the whole wide world.
"Please leave me alone. I don't want-"
"It's time for training. You'll be recommended and secure UA education sure, but you still need to be the best." instructs his father. Shoto clasps his hands together in frustration, squeezing them tight.
"What's wrong with just existing?" asks the half and half young man.
"Coasting through life? Existing? Shoto you insult me. I thought I raised you better than that."
Shoto can't even bring himself to respond to that. His upbringing was awful, isolation from his siblings, his father screaming at his mother near persistently, then being raised solely by the man he hated most in the world. He feels his massive hand lay itself on his back.
"Come, son. We have work to do." he iterates. Shoto was exhausted, exhausted of his life, his home life, his quirk. All of it. He was even too exhausted to fight back anymore.
"Okay, I'm coming." he says in a monotonous voice as he gets up and follows his father out of his sanctuary and into the familiar grief of the training field.
Shoto runs through the same training drill he's done a million times. Using his ice precisely and surgically to shatter through the targets on his left and right, his body is cold but he doesn't care, he pushes on. He hated to admit it, but it was a really good way of letting off his stress, but then of course his father had to go and open his mouth.
"Your fire Shoto, use it." the number two hero commands.
"I'm doing just fine with my ice." Shoto states as he brushes the ice off forming on his body as he scans the area, seeing the ransacked targets. Endeavour's flames pick up hearing Shoto's rejection of his fire, he walks towards his son.
"You're the perfect weapon Shoto. Half fire and half ice. You imbue the strongest parts of your family's lineage. Yet you don't utilise it."
Shoto looks at his father with tears in his eyes.
'No I don't. I'm made up of two halves, one half that was subjugated to you and your anger; the half of me that cries out everyday to just pack up and fucking leave and get as far away as I can from you. Then the half that you forced on me, on mom, on all of us; the half of me that is so angry at the world I just want to throw my quirk at you as hard as I fucking can. I hate you! I hate you so fucking much! I hope you leave one day and don't come back!' Shoto would love more than anything to scream this at his father, to have the energy again to say something like this. But. He's exhausted. So he snaps back to reality, the hellish reality with Endeavour at it's centre as the tears roll down his face.
"I'll- I'll do better next time." says Shoto. Prompting Endeavour to nod and turn away.
"See that you do Shoto. If you put your mind to it, you'll eclipse All Might in a matter of months. This was all for you after all.
Those words cut through Shoto like his ice through those targets. 'All for you', Touya's death, Mom's suicide. Another timely reminder that it wasn't Endeavour's fault, it could never be his fault. It was him. All of it was for him, just so he could be the next invincible hero and do what his father couldn't. Shoto hated himself most for that. He sighs as he waits for his fatehr to leave, then he sneaks out and goes to the one place on earth that makes him feel connected to this world. Seketo Peak.
Shoto walks amongst the flame scarred trees and sits himself down on the rock that happened to sit smack bang in the middle of the forest. The trees around him, still telling of previous Todoroki's who came up here to perfect their art. It was odd, considering the place was synonymous with his brother and mother's deaths, but he felt a sense of calm wash over him every time he decided to vist. Like he belonged there. Shoto can't help but talk aloud, incase anyone happened to be listening.
"He won't change. He'll never change, he's the same he's always been. I hate him so much. I'm so sorry you both died for the sake of power, my power... I- I wish I could join you both. But then it would make your deaths pointless... I can't hope to live in peace and I can't even die. What the fuck's the solution to any of this." Shoto speaks.
There's a small crunch of twigs behind him as he finishes talking, he turns with his frozen hand ready to fire jagged frozen force at the source of the noise. But there's nothing there watching him, Shoto gently climbs down off of the rock and slowly walks toward where he thought the noise came from, he then walks past where he heard it and in the direction of where whatever caused it could've gone for about a minute or so... But there's nothing there. All there is with Shoto on Seketo Peak is a gentle breeze... and a faint smell of something burned.
Made by truen