Chapter Text
The house felt empty.
Logically, they all knew that Rei wasn’t dead, simply in the hospital. ( Shouto used to tell his classmates this fact when they made fun of him for not having a mom - but it was never simply Rei being in the hospital. It was their mom being a shell of herself, it was her crying when she thought her children couldn’t hear her, it was her sitting on the edge of the big family bathtub with a bottle of pills. It was Shouto’s burning face, and so, so much more.)
She was still alive, somewhere. A place they weren’t allowed to visit. But the house was empty, it was cold, colder than it had been with her inside of it. Enji didn’t bother being home for a long time after she had left. He had trained Shouto after the boy had come back home from the hospital, but slept, ate, and worked in his office, down at his hero agency. Fuyumi had the sneaking suspicion that Enji mourned for their mom, mourned for what she could have been, for what he destroyed. There was serenity in believing this, hope for a family that could be whole, where they cared about each other. Enji didn’ t confirm her ideas, at least not verbally, and she would never dare to ask him such a thing. Not after what had happened to Touya.
Natsuo hadn’t cared about Fuyumi’s theories. When she tried to confide in him, he had simply rolled his eyes and pulled his blanket over his head. He never bothered to talk to her for some time now, anyway. His eyes were constantly swollen and red, his cheeks blotched. He stopped speaking for months on end, except for when he laid twitching in his bed at night, crying out for his mom , the woman that couldn’t hear him. For a while, he clung onto his dad, as if he could replace the cool hand of his mom on his feverish head with his fiery, calloused fingers or soothe him when the boys in his class teased him for being quirkless. Not when he was the source of most of Natsuo’s anguish. But Natsuo saw this as his chance, an opportunity to gain his father's love and respect. Shouto was disfigured ,and Touya was gone, and Fuyumi was a girl, so why couldn’t his father train him? Why couldn’t he put his effort into Natsuo, couldn’t see his potential? His father never bothered to talk to his second oldest son for him to find out the answer.
Though she could see that her father tried to cope with his wife leaving, she couldn’t forgive him for pushing Natsuo away, who only ever wanted his father’s attention, who only ever wanted to be loved. So she took her mother’s role, cut up fruit for him when he laid in his bed for hours on end without eating, helped him with the math problems he couldn’t solve, and cleaned up the vomit next to his bed when he spilled his guts after another nightmare.
Rei’s room hadn’t been cleaned for months.
Fuyumi slept on the dust covered duvet of her parents martial bed, smelling her mother’s pillow that had long lost its scent of vanilla that surrounded Rei. The curtains were drawn, blocking out any outside noise or light, darkness reflecting the vacant hole in her chest and in her life. She missed the talks with her mother, she hated how she couldn’t tell her about the black haired girl with the green eyes in her class that had held her hand during recess, how she couldn’t read out her essay’s she had gotten A’s on to anyone anymore (though she hadn’t gotten an A during the last few weeks), how she couldn’t braid her mom’s silky, white hair anymore. She shivered but couldn’t bring herself to hide under the covers, too afraid she’d disturb the silence and tranquility of her surroundings. Goosebumps covered her skin and naked arms. From outside the room she heard a loud crash. She didn’t move. Her face was buried in the memories of her mom.
Rei hadn’t visited Shouto in the hospital, when the itching, raw skin around his eye was healing. She hadn’t slept next to his bed like she had when his tonsil had to be removed. They didn’t play scribble and drew no pictures. It was silent, safe for the beeping he sometimes heard from other rooms, and the shuffling of sickly, pale children with far away eyes roaming around the halls. Would he become like them? Did their mommy’s also leave them in the hospital? He knew it was his fault that his mom had hurt him. His and his father’s, who never bothered to show up at the hospital. He couldn’t blame his mom for doing what she did, not when he looked so much like him, when he burned just as hot and just as dangerous. Still, it stung. He avoided mirrors for a long time after the incident.
When he came back home, there was no grand party, no one screaming.” Welcome home, Shouto!”. No banner, no hugs. His father’s driver had simply dropped him off at the estate and left him there. Curiously, he made his way through the house, wondering why it was so silent, why his mother wasn’t cooking in the kitchen even though it was lunch time. His tiny feet dragged up the stairs. She must be in her room. She would get tired often during the day, laying on the sheets, unblinking, unmoving, until something or someone snapped her out of it. It was fine, Fuyumi had told him once, it was exhausting having to care for four children, and their mom deserved some time for herself. Still, he missed her dearly when she got like that, and he got scared. It was like she wasn’t even there. His steps echoed in the hallway when he made his way down to his mom’s room, when he tripped and fell onto the hard, unforgiving wood floor. Tears welled up in his good eye, the other one still hidden under a white bandage that wrapped around his head. The doors around him stayed closed as he heaved himself up, his small arms trembling, while he pushed his legs in an upright position and stumbled over to the door, pushing it open with new vigor. There she was, her white hair spilled across her pillow, curled up in a small ball. Shouto ran to her, jumped on the bed and tried to give her a hug, when his mom turned around. Fuyumi’s blank face contorted into confusion, as did Shouto’s at the sight of his sister’s face.
“Fuyumi?”, he squeaked, “where is Mom?”. She stared at him for a second, sighing, before answering. That day, Shouto found out that he was able to drench a bandage in his own tears, out of an eye that he didn’t know could even cry anymore.
And the house was empty. The hallways were dark, without the laughter of the three children that inhabited the building, without the shouting of their father or the silent sobs of their mother. Her pictures smiled down on whoever dared to leave their room for food or to use the restroom, breaking the hibernation of a mourning family that cried for a woman still living. Rei was gone, but her ghost was stuck in the place she never dared to call home. Her vanilla shampoo stood next to the bathtub, where Fuyumi used it to wash her brothers hair, so that she could hug them and pretend it was her mom. Shouto found her hair in obscure places, long strands of white in cupboards and once on top of the fridge. He never threw them away. Natsuo still watered the ivy plant his mom had loved so much. He needed to take care of the only real living being in a house consisting of ghosts living in the past.
They always talked about her, in hushed whispers, as if to not disturb the man behind their tears and anxieties. After what had happened to Touya when he had confronted their father about mom ,they didn’t dare to speak another word about her to him. And they never, not even with one another, spoke about Touya. If Rei was a ghost, he was an empty space, not even a shadow, a creak of wood during the night that made them wonder if it had ever really been there. In the beginning, Fuyumi visited Touya’s shrine several times a day to make sure he had been real, that she didn’t simply imagine him. Shouto was too young to know who their brother was, Enji kept Touyas existence under wraps, and Natsuo didn’t talk at all.
So, all she had left was a single picture of a small boy with red hair next to a burning candle with vanilla scent.