Chapter Text
Natsuo is four years old when he gets his quirk; he is four years old when Shouto is born. These events, interestingly enough, are one and the same.
He’s awake. He wakes up. The world is a blur of colors and light; the words on the page of the book he’s reading swim before his eyes.
“Natsu? Are you all right?” Fuyumi asks, from the chair beside him; he breathes, and it’s his first time breathing, and he passes out while he’s still screaming.
“Shouto.” his mother says, and he’s not Shouto; but he is, isn’t he?
The next few days are ones of chaos and confusion. Natsuo looks into his own eyes; those that are grey, and those that are grey and blue.
“Hello.” he says, hearing his own voice with two sets of ears. He reaches out with a small hand to touch a larger one.
“Oh, he likes you! Lucky.” Touya says, sitting beside him. He sees Touya from two angles; one is a lot clearer.
“Tou.” Natsuo says. He cannot properly move his mouth.
“Did he just say Tou?” Touya asks, pushing Natsuo aside to look into his other, smaller eyes. “Did you, Shouto?
“I’m Shouto.” Natsuo says. Maybe…maybe that’s his quirk! But if that’s true, where’s Shouto? Is there even a Shouto at all?
“Don’t be silly.” Touya laughs. Natsuo pokes him in the face.
“Look, he poked me!” Touya cries. Natsuo, and the part of himself he will hereafter refer to as Shouto to avoid confusion, both sigh.
***
Life continues, and Natsuo soon gets used to being in two places at once, even though Shouto still isn’t very developed. But neither is he, not really.
“Go play with Shouto.” Touya says.
“I want to play with you, though.” Natsuo complains. He can’t play with Shouto, he is Shouto.
“You never talk to him.” Touya says.
“He’s a baby! And neither do you!” Natsuo points out.
“Yeah, cause I’m training.” Touya says, quite proudly. He’d turned his fire slightly blue the other day— a heat Enji had never managed to reach.
“What do you think Shouto’s quirk will be?” Natsuo asks. Will Shouto even have a quirk, if he was the creation of Natsuo’s own?
“Why do you care? You don’t have one.” Touya says. Natsuo frowns.
“I do. We just don’t know what it is.” he says; but he knows what it is.
“Probably something lame.” Touya huffs.
***
“You don’t belong with them, Shouto. You’re better than they could ever be—stop fighting me! You have to train, to reach your quirk’s full potential.” Enji roars. Shouto pushes himself off the floor; Natsuo’s pacing back and forth a few rooms over, and the rhythm of the footsteps steadies him slightly.
“My quirk? Is that all it’s about?” Shouto asks; he is four years old but he is eight years old and Enji praises how smart he is for his age.
“It is what makes you incredible. It is what places you above your siblings.” Enji says, as he’s said many times before.
“We don’t even know what Natsuo’s quirk is, just that he has one.” Shouto says, but he knows what his quirk is, he’s pressing his hands into the dojo floor at the same time as Natsuo presses computer keys, the loud clicking only Shouto can hear echoing through his mind. He’s playing Minecraft with Touya; it’s hard to concentrate, though.
“If it was anything useful, we would have known already. He is nothing compared to you. You are better than I am, even, Shouto. Look at me.” Enji says. Shouto does. He hits a creeper with a sword and imagines it’s his father.
“Stop resisting my training. You could be so much more than you are, and you aren’t trying hard enough.” Enji says. Fuyumi says Natsuo might be an empath, because he seems to always feel Shouto’s pain. He cries when his brother does. An empath quirk? He wishes he had one, he wishes he actually had a second brother. Or maybe that he had no quirk, no Shouto at all.
“You don’t even— you don’t even know!” Shouto screams; Enji doesn’t know what his real quirk can truly do. To what potential could one stretch the existence of Todoroki Shouto? If Natsuo could help it, Enji would never find out.
Natsuo and Touya are best friends; Touya looks at him with love. Touya despises Shouto’s very existence; he looks at Shouto with hatred.
Enji looks at Shouto with— something.
He doesn’t look at Natsuo at all.
“It’s Shouto’s fault I’m not getting trained anymore, it’s his fault Father won’t help me, him and his stupid perfect quirk!” Touya yells, throwing a book across the room. It hits the wall with a loud crash.
“Touya—“ Natsuo starts.
“I won’t be second place to him! I won’t!” his brother screams.
“You don’t even know Shouto.” Natsuo says. Fuyumi hadn’t figured it out either; but she looked at them, sometimes, and Natsuo knew she wondered.
“Neither do you!” Touya says; Natsuo stands up, and holds his hand.
“I know you, Touya. Please. Your fire is hurting you— please, you can’t use it as much, as strong as you do!” Natsuo says, and Touya glares at him.
“You can’t say anything, on my quirk. You don’t have one, you’re lucky, you have no chance so you have no reason to fight. You don’t know what it’s like— it’s mine, I have to use it, I have to show Father just how powerful I can be.” Touya says.
And Natsuo doesn’t know how to tell Touya that he understands. That the feeling of flame flickering up his arm, of ice coating whatever he touches, it’s beautiful; but Enji is destroying whatever love he has had for Shouto’s body’s quirk. It’s a weapon, it’s what’ll beat All Might, it’s superior to everyone else. He’s Enji’s creation; but he isn’t, no, Shouto is an extension, an iteration, of Natsuo’s existence.
Shouto falls to the floor once more, and Natsuo’s character is killed by an enderman. In both cases, smoke rises.
Natsuo doesn’t experience the pain he feels in the Shouto body in his original one; but he feels his other self feeling it, and holds his own arm where Shouto is bruised. It gives the illusion of helping.
“What are you doing?” Touya asks. He hurts, it hurts; the body named Shouto had a quirk called Half-Hot HalfCold, but Natsuo was a different type of half and half, living two lives with two names but both of him are one and the same.
“I don’t know.” Natsuo says; they hadn’t been allowed to see Shouto since his quirk came in, and Shouto is told every day he’s perfect while Natsuo isn’t told anything at all.
“I don’t know.” he says, because the only useful part of him is his quirk, powerful enough to go by a different name; he isn’t anything, as Natsuo. But Shouto isn’t anything either; all Enji wants him for is his quirk, never once seeing that the quirk actually belongs to the son he won’t look at.
And now Touya’s been tossed aside, too, for someone who isn’t even real.
***
Touya burns himself down, and Sekoto Peak with it; Natsuo is beside himself with sadness. Literally.
“Touya…” Fuyumi says. Touya had tried to kill Shouto, one day, Natsuo remembers, but he’d take Touya’s anger towards his other self over no Touya, if he could. Fuyumi’s hugging him both, and he’s crying.
Usually, Natsuo saves his emotions for being Shouto. It’s easy to yell at his Father when pushing two sets worth of anger at him; Fuyumi usually tries to ignore what’s happening, but here, her face is flushed with anger.
“Why didn’t you go!” she screams; for Touya had wanted his father to meet him on Sekoto. Enji doesn’t answer.
“Why… why didn’t you go?” Fuyumi cries. Enji leaves the room, and Fuyumi is sobbing into Natsuo’s lap.
“Why didn’t he go…” she says, holding his hand, Shouto’s hand, two of his hands, so tightly it seems she will never let go.
“Promise me you won’t— you won’t— you’re my brothers, Touya was our brother, I can’t lose either of you!”
Fuyumi has only one brother.
***
Natsuo leaves for university at the age of eighteen. He can get out, he can escape, but he’ll never be free; not with Shouto still there. But he’ll take what he can, because there’s only so much the body named Natsuo can do. He’s useless, really, Shouto’s the important one; so he’ll help as many people as he can in a different way. Medical school. He’ll be a hero as Shouto, it’s inevitable; but there was some awful irony that the younger version of himself had such potential, such promise, such power. He has a scar on his face; Rei had said he resembled Enji, but the Shouto body doesn’t, not really. But Natsuo does; Natsuo looks exactly like his father. Natsuo’s hair is white with a bit of red, and he’s dyed the red out but he still knows it’s there, and Shouto is half and half, Natsuo’s other half. His better half, the half he’ll never be, the half he’ll always need. Because there is no such person as Todoroki Shouto, and as Fuyumi asks Natsuo why he’s leaving, he wants to tell her that he’s still there for her. That he’s staying. He’s considered telling her before. Considered it on the days that Enji wasn’t home, and Natsuo would stare at the ceiling and wonder how to explain why he never bothered, despite how much she’s tried, to have a relationship with his little brother. He doesn’t have a little brother. He and himself as Shouto are…different, slightly, due to being brought up differently; developing brains change things, and of course he’s much younger as Shouto. As Shouto, he has so much more of a life, so much more ahead of him; although, that could be argued. Natsuo enters his university dorm, and holds Fuyumi’s arm as he walks up the stairs. She’s not here with him, but she’s at home with him, and maybe things will turn out all right.
***
He’s going to have to go to school again. As Shouto, this time, and he’ll be going to nowhere else than UA itself.
“I’m so excited for you, Shouto!” Fuyumi says, and he gives her a soft smile. He’s… afraid of emoting, most of the time, as Shouto, out of a hidden fear someone will notice his reactions are the same as his “brother’s.” So Shouto has a blank face and an even tone. Being Shouto…it’s not an act, not really, but he’s not himself either. His mind, his body, his experiences, they’re all different. He’s changed, and he keeps these changes apparent, because he doesn’t know what he’d do if his father ever found out. He’s a teenager, and he’s an adult, and it makes emotions clash inside of him.
“I’m sure you'll make friends." Fuyumi reassures him. He makes a non-committal noise; he's made friends at university. He knows how it goes. Here, though, all the UA kids will be a bunch of teenagers; and while he is a teenager, he is also quite decidedly not.
"Thanks, Fuyumi." he says. His older sister; she wants the family to be a family again. But they never were one, and she's holding them all up like a glass statue that's cracked through. Natsuo wonders, sometimes, if he should come back, and help, but he's already there, isn't he? And if he can't get himself as Shouto out, he knows he can't get Fuyumi out. He left, but he’s stayed. What would Fuyumi say if she knew she’d never lost her brother? Sometimes he wonders what would happen if the vessel named Shouto dies. Some days, he wants to kill it. Because as human, as living, as Shouto is, in the end it's an it, not a him. Natsuo's extension, iteration, other self. Shouto brushes hair out of his face, and looks in the mirror, at the scar that stains him; he's hit by a sense of both this is him and this isn't me. Who is he? It's an odd sort of life, living two of them. The scar twinges, and he feels his fingers on his face miles and miles away, pressing the spot.
"Shouto-- if anything happens, just know I'll be here for you, all right?" Fuyumi says.
"Thank you." Natsuo answers. He remembers when Fuyumi last told him this; when he was out the door to college. She's still holding onto the past, Natsuo thinks. Fuyumi is carrying so much, carrying her dream, and she wants them to help her carry it, but he wants her to let go. He's said as such, as himself; but not as Shouto, never as Shouto. He doesn't want to break what little is left of Fuyumi's illusion. Doesn't want her to know the true extent of what has happened in the training rooms-- though she knows, somewhat-- doesn't want her to realize that "Shouto" has no forgiveness for their father. And it made sense, after all; Shouto is, for lack of a better term, a fictional character. He's got no forgiveness to give.
Fuyumi hugs him, and he finds himself crying, even through the facade that Shouto is. Shouto's a way for him not to be himself; an imprisonment as much as it is a freedom.
"Know that no matter what, I'll love you." Fuyumi says.
"I love you too." Natsuo says, and he means it, emotion breaking through Shouto's tone. Will she still love him when she finds he's a fake? When she finds all he is is built carefully to protect a fragile double life, to survive the horrors of the house that even leaving doesn't get him away from? Will she still love him when she learns he isn't there, that he's never been there, that she doesn't have a second brother? All he is, is his quirk. He hates thinking about it, but Enji is right.
"Shouto...why are you crying?" Fuyumi asks, and he's leaving again, so all he can do is cry more. He can't tell her. He can't. What would he even say?
Natsuo presses his face to a mirror miles away; tears streak down his face. Fuyumi calls once every few months; they talk, but she doesn't know him, not the real him. She tells him about Shouto, things he already knows, and Natsuo doesn't have the heart to tell her she's watching over a clone. But… she's helping him too, isn't she? Every day he hears her words.
But they aren't meant for him.