Chapter Text
Nineteen days after Midoriya Izuku is kidnapped another tragedy strikes the Hero community of Japan.
Todoroki Enji’s residence is set ablaze. Witness reports say the fire that destroyed the building burned a dark blue almost purple. The source of the fire is undetermined, estimated to have started from the centre of inside the house. Reports also state that only Todoroki Enji’s eldest daughter was present in the house. Her current status is unknown as no remains were found.
Less credible witnesses say they saw the silhouette of someone walking out the blaze and vanishing.
It is unknown if this was the work of the Villain Dabi – a villain with a fire quirk – working in tandem with the remaining League of Villains who escaped post the confrontation in Hosu. Or was it any other villain with a fire quirk taking advantage of the chaos caused by All Might’s retirement from Heroics to further mess with Heroes.
None of it matters to one Todoroki Enji more well known by his hero alias – Endeavour. The only things that he can focus on is that there was no body. Which means Fuyumi might be alive.
She has to be.
There’s no body to bury and for the first time in a long time, Enji feels like he’s chasing ghosts.
The Todoroki family was never really a happy loving family.
Enji knows he’s the one who made it that way.
He’d thought once he’d gotten what he’d wanted his family would understand. They’d accept it. He’d knew what he was doing but justified and rationalised it to himself. Japan’s Number One Hero meant something. A Legacy meant something.
And now he has the title and no family left.
But they could have been one. If Enji hadn’t been blinded by his own ambition. He knows better than anyone, they could’ve been happy. He could’ve had that.
There’s a world, a universe where the Todorokis are a genuinely happy family. A wife he deeply loves. Sons who he adores, and adore him back. A daughter who knows she’s the apple of his eye. One who smiles openly and laughs out loud, instead of wilting and shying away. A daughter who knows her very existence makes him proud.
(When did Fuyumi stop smiling?)
He could’ve had all of that.
Enji’s the one who burned it all down.
And now he’s left dwelling on what ifs and chasing ghosts.
Shouto takes the news hard.
Enji is used to his youngest son openly hating him. Is used to Shouto’s quiet statements about how Enji is the reason everything in Shouto’s life is wrong. But this is different.
The look of hatred in Shouto’s eyes is different. It’s like he faults Enji personally for this. Like Enji is the one who personally set the fire and sought to burn Fuyumi. Which he would never do.
If there’s been one unspoken rule among the many in the Todoroki household, one that perhaps stood above the others, one that was sacrosanct, it was this: Fuyumi was to be kept away from the fire. Fuyumi should never burn.
It was obvious. Enji spent as much time pulling Fuyumi away from the fire, as much as he spent training them.
But they don’t know do they? Shouto doesn’t know. Shouto tells him, tells Enji that Enji’s fire finally actually burned Fuyumi to dust like he’d been doing to her in spirit for years with such venom and hatred it scares Enji.
“You’ve taken my mother,” Shouto spits. “You never let me actually have my brothers. And now you’re the reason my sister is gone. There’s nothing for you here now, so fuck off.”
—
Natsuo won’t answer his calls.
This is not new. Natsuo never answers Enji’s calls, if Enji ever calls him. (And he hasn’t. And that’s a new thing to be guilty over.) Natsuo long distanced himself from Enji and the rest of his family as he grew up. He’d left the first chance he got and never looked back. The only reason Enji knew anything at all about his second son was because Fuyumi was the only sibling Natsuo deigned to be in contact with.
Natsuo’s disdain for Enji was very apparent from a young age. And it was warranted.
Enji singled him out the same way he singled out Fuyumi all because he didn’t have a Quirk.
And Natsuo hated him for it. But even that faded. He looked at Enji as if Enji didn’t matter.
But even that was something.
This distance between him and Natsuo. It stretches yawning and wide, an evergrowing chasm. And Fuyumi is no longer there to be the bridge that connects them.
It aches.
He’d sought Rei out for a perfect Quirk union, but he’d genuinely fallen in love with her during their courtship. She was reserved yes. Her family stricter than normal. Enji knew those kinds of families, he came from one too. But he’d looked forward to every date, tried his level best not be awkward and gruff at every meeting, to make her comfortable. Had to struggle to not internally combust every time she called him out on it, getting braver with each date, and telling him she found it cute. By the time the wedding approached he was more anxious to get it over with and just be her husband than having pre wedding cold feet.
He hadn’t gone into that meeting expecting love, but he’d got it any way. And wasn’t that the most perfect thing?
They could do it.
They’d have the perfect son enough to let both families off their back. A perfectly strong multi quirked successor.
Or maybe, Enji thought in his heart of hearts, wished deeper than his own ingrained biases, that they’d have a daughter. One who looked like Rei, who he could spoil rotten. And her quirk wouldn’t matter. She could be Quirkless, who cared? Enji had enough fire in him to burn anyone in both families who dared to say anything.
She’d be proof. Proof of all the secret wants and desires of a life he’d harboured beyond his ingrained lessons from his parents. Proof that he’d risen above what his parents wanted him to be. That he didn’t need to have the perfect quirked son as a successor, that Rei didn’t need to make up for her failing of being born a woman and need to produce a perfect heir. Proof that they could be fucking happy and fucking free, and in love like normal people, and just raise a child shielded from all of that bullshit.
(Rei had laughed delighted when he’d finally confessed it to her one night. Oh it was a beautiful thing. And they’d dreamed of it together.)
But that didn’t happen, did it? It didn’t happen, he thinks looking at the photo on his office desk of Rei and the kids, Fuyumi smiling bright and gleaming. It didn’t happen because of you.
Rei doesn’t look up when he drops by to give her the news.
Her room is bland and cold. Colder than normal. And there’s none of the flowers in there, the ones that would usually bring a hint of colour to this colourless place.
That’s right, Enji thinks sadly, Fuyumi used to bring her flowers twice a week.
That’s okay because Enji can’t look Rei in the eyes either.
He loved this woman. Still does. But he’s the reason she’s here. He has taken from her. Taken her children, taken her self. And now he’s here to tell her about Fuyumi.
How does he tell her? How? How does he form the words to tell her of his monumental failure yet again. How does he confess that?
They’d dreamed together once. Of building the perfect family, not made of children with powerful quirks, but children who laughed joyous and free. The perfect break from their own childhoods. The perfect fuck you to both their families.
And he’d steadily thrown it all away for a useless chase. And made Rei watch.
It’s Rei who breaks the silence first. “Shouto told me. Fuyumi is gone.”
“Rei…” he starts, chokes on his words.
“Don’t.” It’s sharp. Cutting. There’s strength behind her words but no emotion. Rei’s gaze is cold like frost and biting. “First you took my oldest. Then you did that to my youngest. You almost fed him to something, in the way you couldn’t with Touya. Then you actually fed my remaining son to something. And finally, you’ve fed my daughter to it.”
And now Enji is confused. Rei’s neuroses is not new to him. It’s been there for years, even before they were married. This cloying fear that some strange entities made of fears were real. And that this something other was feeding on them, on their children. He’d learned to placate it, thinking it another scar of her upbringing. Learned to mitigate it well enough that he did it on autopilot even when he was busy terrorising her and his children as a byproduct of chasing that Number One Hero spot.
(And it was terrorising. Enji won’t excuse it away. Not anymore.)
But he still struggles to truly comprehend it.
“Rei,” he tries again, “a villain burned down our house. I didn’t… I would never. Not to Fuyumi.”
“But you did. You did this Enji. It took my son. And now it has my daughter.”
“I’ll find her. I’ll bring her back. I swear.”
“And what? You’ll save Natsuo? Then you’ll bring me back? You’ll bring Shouto back? You’ll raise Touya from the dead. And we’ll all play happy family? Todoroki Enji, Number One Hero, with his perfect wife and perfect children, and legacy youngest child as his heir.”
Rei’s laughter is harsh and mocking.
“It’s too late Enji. All my children are gone. My children were never meant for them, but you fed them to it. My son is destined to fall forever, and my daughter now destined to burn for eternity. You in your stupid chase offered our children to them. Made them perfect to be avatars. Anything to become Number One, right Mister Hero? I’m only happy that Touya died before something took him. God knows what will take Shouto.”
“Rei… please… you…”
“I what? I’m slipping into my delusion again? The only one who’s delusional here is you, Enji. You’ve taken my children from me. From us. There’s nothing left of us.”
“Rei, please.”
“Go away Todoroki Enji. And don’t come back here.”
Her voice sounds like it comes through static. And her room like always is ever so cold.
Rei is gone. Touya is gone. Natsuo long checked out, refused to have anything to do with them. Shouto is as good as gone too.
And now Fuyumi….
‘Remember,’ he tells himself. ‘They found no body. That means she could still be alive.’
Fuyumi could still be alive. She has to be.
Being the Number One Hero isn’t anything Enji thought it’d be.
He’d chased that spot for so long. Craved it. Done unspeakable things just to snatch that position from All Might. If he couldn’t be the Number One Hero, then he’d produce a heir who would be. He’d have a legacy.
Only for it to be handed to him when All Might had retired.
And it’s what he’d wanted right? What he’d spent his whole life chasing?
The weight of what he’d done to achieve this spot had only settled in then.
Enji has destroyed his family for this.
He burned his family to the ground. For this.
Four days after Endeavour’s house goes up in flames, Midoriya Izuku is found unconscious on the grounds of Yueei.
The area around him is charred to blackened earth.
He has no wounds. His previously destroyed arms have been completely healed of all the damage of using his quirk and most of his other injuries and scarring. Only some scars remain on his body. Some old, some new, including a set of small burns.
Further examination shows he’s also missing part of a rib.
When Midoriya Izuku comes too, he has no memory of anything beyond fainting once he got pulled through Kurogiri’s warp quirk to the Villain hideout.