Chapter Text
if you feel pain, you're alive. if you feel other people's pain, you're a human being.
— leo tolstoy
Enji stares at the boy, and the boy stares back at him. His eyes are a bright, piercing red, the same color as the blood that stains the training room floor and the bedsheets on the night that Shouto was made. He sees potential in those eyes, the heat of a thousand stars compressed into the body of a too-small child, cradled in the palms of those tiny hands — a promise of something better, a worthwhile investment that will undoubtedly pay off in the end.
He would make a good friend for Shouto, Enji thinks. He knows that his youngest son has been lonely, and also knows that loneliness is most likely the reason for his obstinate behavior. Having an acquaintance on par with his skill level should be enough to keep him in line.
And, even if that doesn’t work…
Shouto has always been an empathetic child — a weakness in the hero field, a roadblock to the path of absolute victory, but Enji is a good hero. He knows how to turn things to his advantage. He’ll allow Shouto to have this relationship, allow the two children to grow close to each other, and then will use that bond to shape Shouto into the perfect successor.
Princes had whipping boys for a reason, after all.
Katsuki has always been angry.
He can’t remember a time when he didn’t have this fury nestled deep in his chest, scalding his throat, stealing the breath from his lungs — he has always been like this, just like he has always lived in this house. He knows that he was born outside of this little bubble of space, and then he was rescued and brought here, but the memories of that are so far gone that they might as well belong to someone else.
He has always lived here — has always lived like this.
His life is full of constants — the anger, the smell of smoke in the air, the pain that has hounded him for as long as he can remember — and he’d be lost without them, which means that he is grateful for them in an odd, sickly kind of way.
But that doesn’t make him any less pissed off.
Right now, the thing making him mad is the stupid bastard in front of him, trying to help him bandage burns that are his own fucking fault in the first place.
“Fuck you,” Katsuki says, and aims a kick at center-mass — Shouto twists neatly out of the way, face pinched in that stupid concerned expression. “Get outta here. I don’t need your help, asshole.”
Shouto’s mouth twists to the side, eyebrows furrowing. “But, Katsuki —”
His voice is pitching into whining territory, and Katsuki shuts him down quick. “Stop looking at me like that, for fuck’s sake! I just said that I don’t need your help!”
Shouto opens his mouth, then closes it. He opens it again and says, “I’ll tell Dad that you’re not listening to me.” He won’t do that, and they both know it, but that threat alone is always enough to make Katsuki’s blood turn to ice. “He said that I have to take care of you, and you’re not letting me do that, so he’ll get mad at us both when he finds out that you’re just walking around with all these injuries.”
“Fuck you.” Katsuki repeats those words with a numb hollowness to his voice. “Don’t try to fucking threaten me —”
“And he said that you should stop cursing, too.”
Katsuki snaps his mouth shut so hard that it makes his teeth click together. He feels trapped between two extremes — that constant anger battling with the cold fear that always overtakes him at the mention of his adoptive father. He casts a glance toward the door like the hero is going to be standing there, but the frame is as empty as the hallway reaching beyond it.
The rest of the house is empty, too. Katsuki and Shouto are the only ones here, which means that Katsuki has no reason to be this fucking scared.
But he is.
He has never been logical, despite how much Endeavor wants him to be. His emotions are as explosive and irrational as the heat that bursts from his palms in bright flares of light. He locks his fingers together and returns to glaring at Shouto, who peers up at him with that infuriatingly placid look on his face.
They’ve gone through this exact scenario too many times to count, and Shouto always wins in the end. Katsuki wants to kill him.
“Fine,” Katsuki mutters. He shoves the sleeve of his jacket up to his elbow and reluctantly offers his arm to the waiting bastard. “Don’t take too long. I’ve got shit to do.”
Shouto gives him a pleased smile — which just makes Katsuki want to punch his teeth in — and then frowns as he studies the burn wrapped around Katsuki’s wrist and forearm, fingers seared into the pale skin. “This looks pretty bad.”
Katsuki clicks his tongue, impatient. “Not too bad.”
He’s telling the truth. He can deal with a little handprint on his arm — no big deal, really — and he knows, like both his adoptive father and brother, that it’s not even going to scar. Katsuki considers that to be one of the main benefits of his Quirk. He feels the full pain of the injuries, but they never leave a mark — a final parting gift from his dead parents, he supposes. He thanks those people he has never known and will never meet every time a bruise fades within a day or a burn mark heals without any complications at all.
Endeavor rarely leaves bleeding cuts on his body, but on the rare occasion that he does, none of those ever scar, either.
Katsuki truly was made for this.
He has that thought all the time, and he knows that everybody else does, too.
Not that he can blame them. He can’t even complain. He has no choice but to be grateful for this life, because it’s not as if he had anywhere else to go. Endeavor saved him — took him into his home, gave him a purpose — and the only thing that Katsuki has to do in return is bite his tongue when Shouto starts to misbehave.
Misbehave.
That’s the word that Endeavor uses whenever Shouto doesn’t want to listen to him, like he’s talking to a little kid — a stupid, snot-nosed brat who refuses to leave the playground or come when called — rather than a teenager with his own logical thoughts.
Not that Shouto is very logical, either. His most recent act of rebellion is refusing to use his fire Quirk, which is the reason why Katsuki has been getting more injuries than usual.
Stupid bastard.
Katsuki yanks his arm away as soon as Shouto finishes wrapping the burn. “This wouldn’t be happening if you would just stop being a little bitch,” he says, and delights in the wounded expression that darts over Shouto’s face for just a split second before being locked down behind that mask of eerie calm.
“I’m not going to use a Quirk that belongs to my father,” Shouto responds. “The only thing he does with it is hurt the people he’s supposed to love.”
“You’re so full of shit, Shouto.”
Shouto hums under his breath and clicks the first-aid kit shut. He straightens up, scratches at the bandage on his face — he’d been too slow when dodging a punch, and had sliced his cheek open during his subsequent crash-landing to the ground — and then nods toward the messily-made bed. “You should get some rest.”
“Don’t tell me what to do,” Katsuki mutters, even as he stands from the desk chair and limps toward the bed. His ankle twinges with pain, but he ignores it because he knows that it’ll go away soon enough. “Get the fuck outta my room. I don’t want to see your stupid face any more than I have to.”
Shouto gives him a barely-there smile that Katsuki only catches out of the corner of his eye. “Dad said that he’ll be home late tonight.”
“Good for him.” Katsuki flops face-down on the mattress. His chest hurts, tightening more with every passing moment, and the only thing he wants is to be alone. He stays like that for several moments, then rolls over, sits up, and cradles his bandaged arm gingerly to his chest. “Don’t act like you know me tomorrow, Shouto. I’m not gonna deal with you stealing all my friends again.”
Shouto looks offended. “I didn’t —”
“Yes, you did!” Katsuki snaps the words out. “I make friends, and then you always butt your stupid head in! Just stay the hell away from me and there won’t be a problem!”
Shouto’s expression falls, and Katsuki feels guilty for just a few seconds. He knows that Shouto has trouble interacting with his peers — something that is more of an innate trait than anything learned, because Katsuki has never had any trouble with being a social butterfly — but he’s not going to deal with the bullshit that has been going on since they were younger, where Katsuki made plenty of friends and then Shouto always managed to infiltrate the group and hang like an unwanted straggler on the fringes of it.
Watching him try to fit in was always embarrassing, humiliating, and — most of all — annoying. Katsuki would much rather not see him at all at school than have to accommodate his stupid nervous tics.
“Everybody already knows that we live together,” Shouto says, and the guilt fizzles out like it had never been there at all. “I mean, we’re brothers —”
“I’m not your fucking brother.” Katsuki spits the words out, hot and angry. “The only reason I’m here is because you’re too much of a little bitch to improve unless you have someone holding your hand.”
Holding his hand, keeping him company, taking the blows in his stead. Katsuki feels like a fucking dog — man’s best friend, there at his master’s beck and call. He has never been able to figure out whether he was owned by Endeavor or Shouto, but he supposes that it doesn’t matter, because the results are still the same.
Shouto shrinks back a little — like that tiny brat he used to be — and then sets his shoulders, matches Katsuki’s glare with one of his own. “You don’t get a choice,” he says, voice so hard that it makes him sound like his father. “I want you to be my brother, so that’s what you are.”
“You’re so fucking arrogant.” Katsuki’s breath catches in his throat, harsh and ragged. “I hate you.”
Shouto gives him a baleful look, then turns on his heel and starts toward the door, the limit of his patience obviously reached a while ago. “That’s fine,” he says, in that same icy tone. He has half a fingerprint burned into the back of his neck, dead-center — the other half nothing but a bruise on his fire side. “But you should be a bit more polite. You don’t have to go to school anymore, Katsuki — it’s not required. I had to convince Dad to cover the cost of an extra tuition and recommendation for you.”
“I’ll beat the fuck outta you if you don’t stop with the self-aggrandizing bullshit —”
“Fuyumi wants to take us both out for dinner tonight,” Shouto interrupts. “She pulled some strings with Dad, said that it would be a good way to boost morale… or something like that.”
His tone makes it clear that a sit-down supper with his older sister would lower his morale more than anything. Katsuki has been privy to the strained relationship between Shouto and the eldest Todoroki children since the moment he stepped foot in this house and was assigned his role as Shouto’s best friend and constant companion. He knows that Natsuo gave up a long time ago — got accepted into a university and moved out the same day that letter came in the mail — and that Fuyumi has made endless attempts to reach out to Shouto in the few moments when she was actually allowed to be near him, and he also knows that Shouto doesn’t give a shit about either of them.
As far as he can tell, the only things in this world that actually piqued Shouto’s interest were his hatred toward his father, that tainted love toward his mother, and this stupid fucking charade that Katsuki has been forced to play for the past nine years.
Katsuki flexes his wrist and keeps a straight face through the bone-deep ache the action causes. “Sounds good,” he says. “Where’s she gonna be taking us?”
Shouto gives him an exasperated look — like he wanted a partner in his petulant bitching — and heaves a long, drawn-out sigh that makes Katsuki smile slightly despite everything. “She’s got it into her head that we like that one restaurant we went to when we were younger — the one with the decent hibachi. Probably the only place that doesn’t half-ass their service in this entire prefecture.”
“Then why are you complaining?”
“I’m not complaining,” Shouto mutters. He leans against the doorframe and crosses his arms, scowling. “I just wanted to get some rest tonight, not waste my life trying to make small-talk and keep Fuyumi happy.”
Katsuki sighs. “She just wants —”
“I know what she wants!” Shouto’s voice comes out loud and harsh, and Katsuki flinches on instinct, terror response always on-edge. His only consolation is that Shouto looks vaguely sheepish for just a moment before he continues speaking in a tight, controlled tone. “She wants to feel like she’s a part of my life — but she’s just not, Katsuki. Never has been. I don’t know why she’s so insistent that this is something she needs, that being one big happy family is the only thing that matters —”
“Shouto.”
“— but it pisses me off,” Shouto continues, barreling over him. “I don’t need her. I’m not sure why she hasn’t just given up on her stupid dream.”
Katsuki frowns, torn between scolding Shouto for being cruel and agreeing with him.
Fuyumi has always seemed to be caught in a state of perpetual naïveté, like all the problems in this family would be resolved with a few smiles or tearful apologies — and maybe that worked with the little kids she taught, but it would never work here. She probably went into that field solely because the problems there never amounted to anything more serious than a scraped knee or schoolyard bully.
But that doesn’t mean that Shouto needs to ignore her.
The only thing that Fuyumi has ever tried to do was her best. Katsuki can’t believe that Shouto is too dense to see that.
After trying — and failing — to find a way to articulate all those thoughts, Katsuki finally falls back on the phrase he always uses when this argument comes up. “Holy fuck, you’re such an asshole.”
“You’re supposed to be on my side.”
“I don’t know why she’s even trying,” Katsuki responds. He should be speaking more carefully, because he’s one of the only people who knows how bad Shouto’s temper truly is, but the words just pour from his mouth. He wants them to hurt — there’s a dark, ugly part of him that wishes he could switch places with Shouto, even for just a few hours. He wants to know what it’s like to be loved in such an unconditional way. “If I was her, I would’ve given up on you a long time ago. The only thing you do is bitch and moan about how no one likes you, and it’s fucking annoying.”
Shouto blinks at him, his face blank and uncomprehending for several moments, and then his expression darkens. “I had no idea that you liked her so much.” His voice is so flat and cold that it feels like it actually drops the temperature by several degrees — Katsuki half-expects to see his breath coming out in a frozen cloud of air. “You can go be all buddy-buddy with her, I don’t care. Just leave me out of it.”
The room is getting colder. Katsuki can feel the sweat cooling in the lines of his palms. “Never said that I liked her.”
“Then stop acting like you do!” Shouto is on the verge of snapping — Katsuki can see it, witnesses first-hand the way his adoptive brother tries to wrangle back that horrible temper. “You’re supposed to be on my side, Katsuki! You’re always supposed to be on my side!”
Katsuki is starting to shiver. He has always been more sensitive to cold than the average person, which made some funny photographs during the winter — him bundled up in coats and scarves and mittens while Shouto stood next to him in nothing but a t-shirt and shorts — but doesn’t feel very amusing right now, trapped in the micro-freezer his bedroom is slowly becoming. “You’re such a whiny little brat,” he says, words coming out shaky. “Stop throwing a fuckin’ tantrum, Shouto. Turn off your Quirk.”
For a moment, he thinks that Shouto might actually go into one of those black-out rages. He watches warily as Shouto squeezes his eyes shut, and only relaxes marginally when his brother groans and knocks a fist against the side of his own head.
“Whatever.” Shouto opens his eyes and stares blankly at the floor. “I don’t care. You can do whatever you want.”
Katsuki rubs his hands together, trying to get the warmth back into them. His fingers prickle with pins-and-needles, and every mirror in his bedroom is fogged over. “Keep your temperamental bullshit away from me,” he says, trying not to show how worried he’d actually been. “And for fuck’s sake, learn how to stop turning every room into an icebox when you get a little mad.”
Shouto scuffs a foot against the floor. “I’m gonna go…”
He doesn’t finish that sentence, just turns and scurries down the hall. His footsteps get quieter and quieter, then disappear completely. His door slams shut.
Katsuki waits for a few moments, and then lays down in bed and pulls the blankets over his bruised and battered body.
It takes a long time for him to stop shivering.
—
Endeavor is waiting when they get home from the restaurant.
Katsuki freezes at the sight of him, and only snaps back to reality when Shouto shoves past him and hurries up to his room, undoubtedly trying to avoid whatever scolding or talking-to his father has planned for him. Fuyumi makes an excuse about forgetting something in the car and quickly disappears back outside, glittery black evening bag still clutched tightly in her hand.
“Katsuki.” Endeavor beckons him over. “I’d like to speak with you, please.”
That last word — please — is what really makes Katsuki tense. He forces his legs to move and walks carefully toward his adoptive father, every step even and measured, expression betraying no hint of the anxiety starting to crawl beneath his skin.
He comes to a stop in front of Endeavor and stands there, silent and waiting.
Endeavor stares down at him for several long, silent moments. His eyes are like two black holes, dark and all-consuming, with a gravity so strong that they could rip a person apart in less than a second.
Finally, he asks, “Did you have a good night?”
The hero’s body always radiates heat — that’s one of Katsuki’s first memories of him, that constant smell of something burning — but it does nothing to stop the icy fear solidifying in Katsuki’s chest.
He keeps his voice level and calm as he speaks.
“Yes, sir.”
“That’s good. I’m happy to hear it.” Endeavor has a permanent scowl — a resting bitch face, that’s what the kids at school would’ve called it — and it only deepens as he continues staring down at Katsuki. His expression is unreadable other than that, his gaze steady and his hands mercifully still at his sides. “You know that classes start tomorrow, correct?”
Katsuki nods. He doesn’t trust his voice not to break this time.
“I’m expecting you to be on your best behavior.”
Katsuki starts to nod again — stops himself halfway through the downward motion. He straightens his back and squares his shoulders. “I’ll do well,” he promises, with as much earnestness as he can muster. He’s finding it hard to feel any genuine emotion other than sheer terror. “There won’t be any trouble, sir. I promise.”
“Don’t pass Shouto in the rankings of anything.” Endeavor always gives the same instructions each year, but this time he adds a new warning. “I won’t hesitate to have you withdrawn from this school, Katsuki. I never intended for you to become a hero.”
Katsuki drops his gaze.
There’s a question hovering on the tip of his tongue — what did you intend for me to do, then? — but he’s wise enough to know not to ask it.
Contemplatively, Endeavor says, “I would’ve had you go into something high-profile. Your mother was a model, and there’s no reason for you to not have followed in her footsteps — except for her untimely demise, of course. Shouto’s behaviour would get even worse if anything happened to you.”
Katsuki doesn’t know a lot about what happened to his parents. He knows that both his mother and his father died at the same kind — in some kind of accident, and he hopes it was quick, that they didn’t suffer — but other than that, he knows absolutely nothing. Endeavor has never offered up the details, and Katsuki has never asked.
That’s an unspoken rule here: never ask questions.
Katsuki is here to do as he’s told — nothing more, nothing less. He keeps his mouth shut and his head down and becomes something less than human.
Endeavor clears his throat, and Katsuki barely manages to hide his flinch in time. “However,” the hero says, in that same contemplative tone, “I think that this will be good for you. That Quirk is more decent than most of your peers, and Shouto will need a talented side-kick once he graduates and becomes a full-fledged hero. That boy finally seems to be thinking logically.”
Shouto’s decision had nothing to do with logic — and absolutely everything to do with him being a clingy motherfucker — but Katsuki doesn’t say that, either. He bites his tongue until the words have no chance of slipping out, and then says in a careful voice, “I’ll do my best, sir.”
Endeavor now sounds vaguely amused. “I won’t accept anything else.”
“I know,” Katsuki says, and he’s telling the truth. Endeavor rarely hurts him for reasons that aren’t related to Shouto, but when he does, it’s nearly always because of a problem at school or bad score on a test. Katsuki sits through every exam with a knot in his stomach and his hands dangerously close to detonating, almost too nervous to even read the questions properly. “I’ll be at the top of my class.”
“Below Shouto,” Endeavor reminds him, giving him a scrutinizing look.
Katsuki resists the urge to step away. He wants to cry, wants to cower in the corner and sob like he did for weeks after he first got here, wants to run through the door and into the night and disappear forever.
Endeavor’s gaze hardens when Katsuki doesn’t respond. He leans down a bit, voice dropping into a warning growl as he says, “You will stay beneath Shouto’s rankings, Katsuki. I’m not going to allow a pity project to overtake my son in any way.” He pauses, lets the words sink in, and then asks, “Do you understand?”
Katsuki barely manages to nod, tears building dangerously behind his eyes.
“There will be consequences if you don’t obey.” Endeavor straightens back up — tall and terrifying. “I’m trying to give you a good future. Don’t make that any harder than it already is.”
Katsuki feels so sick, like that time he went on a rollercoaster when he was younger. He hadn’t wanted to go on the ride, but Shouto wanted to, so Katsuki had been strapped in right beside him. The event had been sponsored by Endeavor’s agency as some public outreach thing, and the reporters had gotten a good picture of Katsuki with tears in his eyes, and Endeavor had scolded him afterward, slapping him hard across the face for daring to look like he didn’t want to be there.
After all I’ve done for you…
That was how the hero always started his tirades.
Because of that, Katsuki has become well-attuned to the smallest details. Every movement is calculated, perfected, expressions practiced in the mirror until they come as easily as breathing. He laughs and grins and dances like a puppet on his strings, too terrified to do anything else.
Endeavor scowls down at him for a few moments more, then shakes his head in what looks like anticipatory disappointment. “I’ll see you in the morning,” he says, the dismissal plain and obvious. “Make sure that Shouto gets enough rest. I know he has a habit of staying up late when he thinks that no one is paying attention.”
Katsuki somehow manages to make his joints unlock. He nearly stumbles on his first step, and then he darts away, breathing hard and wiping furiously at his eyes. He bites his lip to muffle the pathetic sobs that want to escape, the terror refusing to abate — it draws back like a wave from the shore, makes him think that the fear is over, and then it comes crashing back and drowns him again. His feet drum up the stairs in an uneven beat, and he staggers down the hall, turns into his room, and finds Shouto sitting on his bed.
“What are you doing in here?” Katsuki asks, voice hoarse.
Shouto frowns at him. He sounds genuinely curious as he asks, “Why are you crying?”
“I’m not!” Katsuki scrubs at his face with trembling hands. He can’t put the sheer depth of the fear into words — and it would sound ridiculous even if he could. Endeavor hadn’t even touched him. “Just — get out of my room. I need to get my shit ready for school.”
“Can I trade my red notebook for your blue one?”
Katsuki sniffles and shakes his head. “I don’t want your stupid shitty notebook.”
“Hm.” Shouto kicks his heels against the bedframe, swinging his feet like a little kid. “But I want the blue one. Fuyumi gave me all the wrong colors.”
“You picked out your own school supplies, dipshit.”
Katsuki is telling the truth about that, too — Shouto got first dibs on the notebooks, pens, and other supplies that Fuyumi hauled home, and Katsuki just took what was left. He wouldn’t mind having a red notebook, but he would definitely mind having Shouto’s red notebook, specifically.
“Well, I changed my mind. I don’t want the red one.” Shouto blinks owlishly at him. The scar stands out on the left side of his face, like something scribbled on his skin with a permanent marker. “I’ll just take it if you don’t give it to me.”
“Then just take it!” Katsuki snaps — temper boiling over for just a moment, quickly cooling. He buries his head in his hands and mutters, “You’re giving me a fucking headache.”
Shouto sighs and stands up. He rummages through Katsuki’s already-packed bookbag, takes out the blue notebook, and then says with an air of generous grandiosity, “I’ll give you the orange one.”
“Fuck you,” Katsuki responds, knowing that Shouto intentionally took the orange notebook in the first place so he could bestow it upon Katsuki like a grand favor.
Shouto smiles at him — thin-lipped but genuine — and returns to rummaging through Katsuki’s backpack. “But that doesn’t solve the problem of me not wanting the red notebook. I’ll trade that for your green one, alright?”
Katsuki feels suddenly, bone-achingly exhausted. “I don’t care what you do,” he says, and means it whole-heartedly. “Just get the hell outta my room. I need to go to sleep.”
Shouto hums and straightens with his newly acquired notebooks tucked neatly under his arm. He looks at Katsuki, and his gaze is so piercing that it pins Katsuki in place, cuts him to the core. “Are you nervous about tomorrow?”
“What the hell do I have to be nervous about?”
“I don’t know.” Shouto shrugs, deliberately casual. “Meeting all those new people, I guess. Dad said that our class will have some pretty promising students.”
Katsuki almost tells him to shut up and stop projecting, then pauses and actually tries to parse through his own feelings. He isn’t nervous about tomorrow — he’ll make his classmates like him as easily as he always does — but he is scared. He’s always scared, he thinks. Every new situation is just a new way he could fail, a new way he could be hurt.
Shouto is watching him, waiting for an answer.
“I’m a little bit nervous,” Katsuki finally says, forcing some self-deprecation into his voice, like the words are a secret being dragged out of him. “I’ll be fine. There’s really nothing to worry about.”
Shouto seems to relax a little, shoulders untensing almost imperceptibly. His expression shifts to a kind of guarded relief.
Looking at him, Katsuki feels a burst of real love for his adoptive brother. He remembers how emotional Shouto had been when he was younger, how he screamed and cried when Endeavor even took a step toward Katsuki with an intention to harm, how he would do whatever was asked of him so that he wouldn’t have to see someone else get hurt. Nipping at the heels of that love comes an overwhelming wave of pure hatred toward Endeavor for taking advantage of the sweet, empathetic child that Shouto had been.
He hates Endeavor for turning Shouto into this.
“Anyway.” Shouto shifts on his feet, rubs at the back of his neck. “I should go to bed.”
Katsuki steps aside and lets him pass. He waits until Shouto is nearly out the door, then says, “Good night, Shouto.”
Shouto doesn’t look back at him. He raises his hand in a wave and then disappears from view, footsteps completely silent. His door opens, then closes much more gently than it had before.
Katsuki stands there for a long time, then turns off his light and climbs into bed. He stares up at the ceiling, thinking about all the things that could go wrong, all the mistakes that he has made and will make in the future, all the pain he will endure as he walks the tightrope between being good enough to fulfill Endeavor’s expectations and mediocre enough to never catch up to Shouto.
He doesn’t sleep.