….
Back at U.A., Class 1-A was suiting up in their hero costumes for the first time.
The battle trial episode.
There wasn't much for Dabi to do here. Even Aizawa wasn't attending, despite the class technically being his responsibility.
So what was Dabi right now - an assistant teacher?
He decided to treat it as an opportunity to take the day off.
All Might could handle nineteen kids throwing punches around a building for an afternoon.
The three of them were walking down a shopping street in Musutafu - Dabi on one side, Rumi on the other, and Eri between them, gripping both their hands and using the leverage to swing herself forward every few steps.
Each swing lifted her feet off the ground for about half a second, and each time she did it she giggled like it was the funniest thing that had ever happened to her.
"Papa."
"Hm."
"Why are we walking instead of taking a bus?"
Dabi didn't answer immediately, he adjusted his grip on her hand as she launched into another swing.
"It's good for your health." he said.
Rumi laughed, loud enough that a couple walking past them turned to look.
She bent down and scooped Eri up with one arm, settling the girl against her hip like she weighed nothing.
"Don't lie to kids, Patchwork."
"I am not lying. Walking is good for—"
"Your papa gets motion sickness." Rumi said to Eri, ignoring him completely. "On buses, in cars, in trains. That's the real reason he runs everywhere. It's not because he is cool or dedicated or whatever story he is telling you. He just gets nauseous."
Eri's mouth formed a small, perfect O.
She looked at Dabi with an expression that was equal parts fascination and concern, like she had just learned something fundamental about the universe.
"And there goes my image." Dabi said. He rubbed the back of his neck with his free hand. "The perfect, strong, dependable father. Gone. Just like that."
He said it like a joke and mostly it was...
But somewhere underneath - in a place he didn't look at too often, the word 'perfect' snagged on something.
He knew what an imperfect father looked like in painful detail, the kind you carried in your skin, literally, and spent your entire adult life trying not to repeat.
He wanted to be different, badly enough that even a dumb joke about bus sickness could hit a little harder than it should.
Eri squirmed in Rumi's arms. She twisted around, reached both hands toward Dabi, fingers opening and closing.
"Papa. Papa, take me."
It wasn't a request but a demand - something only a small child can make without any self-consciousness, arms already outstretched with the complete expectation that she would be caught.
Dabi took her.
She settled against his chest immediately, one hand grabbing a fistful of his jacket, and looked up at him from about six inches away.
"But papa is still the best." she said.
"Yeah?"
"The best in the world." She paused, thinking, her face scrunched up like this required serious calculation. "No. In the universe." Another pause. "And even bigger than—"
"Bigger than the universe?"
"Even bigger."
Dabi laughed, not the dry exhale he did at work or the flat sound he made when Bakugo said something stupid in class.
A real one, starting somewhere in his chest.
Rumi watched this from two steps behind. Her expression cycled through several things in quick succession before settling on something she probably would have called annoyance if anyone asked.
"Then what about me?" she said.
Eri turned her head, still pressed against Dabi's chest. "You are the best too, Mama."
"That doesn't work." Rumi caught up to them in one long stride, falling back into step at Dabi's side. "There can only be one best. That's what the word means."
Eri looked troubled by this. She glanced between the two of them, Dabi's face, then Rumi's, then back, clearly trying to solve a problem that didn't have a solution she was happy with.
"You're both the best." she said firmly, like that settled it.
"That's not how–"
"Rumi." Dabi glanced at her over Eri's head. "Let her have it."
Rumi turned her face away. "Fine."
Eri, who had already moved on from the conversation entirely, pointed at a shop window across the street.
Something pink and sparkly had caught her attention. "Papa, look. Can we go there?"
The shop turned out to sell children's clothes, which was half the reason they were out today anyway.
Eri needed new dresses, she had been growing fast, the way kids do when they're finally eating regularly and sleeping in a warm place, and half her wardrobe from three months ago didn't fit anymore.
Dabi had noticed last week when her sleeves stopped reaching her wrists.
Rumi actually had work today but she skipped it with a "I am also joining in."
Inside the shop, Eri disappeared into the racks with a focus and intensity she didn't apply to anything else in her life.
She emerged every few minutes holding something up, a yellow dress with small flowers on it, a red cardigan three sizes too big, a pair of shoes with little wings on the ankles.
"Those are cute." Rumi said about the shoes.
"Yep… a bit too cute actually." Dabi said.
Eri held the shoe box against her chest on the way to the next shop like it contained something precious and breakable.
Her other hand was back in Dabi's, swinging again, and she was humming something tuneless and repetitive that she had probably heard on TV.
The toy store was next.
This one was Eri's idea - she had spotted it from half a block away with the unerring radar children have for places that sell things they want.
Dabi had said 'We will see', which Eri had correctly interpreted as 'yes', and Rumi had said nothing, which Eri had also correctly interpreted as 'yes'.
It was a small place.
Cramped aisles, too much stock, the kind of store that had been there for twenty years and never updated the layout. Eri wandered through it slowly, touching things, picking them up and putting them back with a care and deliberateness that made Dabi's chest do something he didn't have a name for.
She had spent most of her life not being allowed to want things. The fact that she could walk through a store and touch what she wanted and know that nobody was going to hurt her for it - that was still new.
She returned holding a stuffed cat, white, floppy-eared, nearly the size of her torso, and lifted it toward him without saying a word, simply watching him as she held it out.
"You want that one?" She nodded.
He bought it.
Outside, Eri walked between them again with the cat tucked under one arm, the shoe box swinging in a bag from Rumi's hand, and the sun coming through a gap in the buildings to land on the three of them in a way that nobody noticed because they weren't thinking about it.
"Hungry?" Rumi said.
"Yeah." Dabi said.
"I was asking Eri."
Eri nodded seriously. "Hungry."
"Then let's eat."
They kept walking. Eri's humming picked up again - same melody, looping back on itself every few bars like she kept forgetting where it was supposed to go.
"Papa."
"Hm?"
"Who was the lady we visited at the hospital this morning?"
Dabi didn't answer right away. His stride stayed the same but his hand tightened around Eri's, just slightly, for a second, before it relaxed again.
"Someone really close." he said.
"Is she sick?"
"Yeah."
"Oh." Eri thought about this for a few steps, her free hand squeezing the stuffed rabbit against her side. "I hope she gets better quickly. She looked really nice." She tilted her head up at Dabi. "Kind of like Papa, actually."
She was just talking.
Saying whatever came into her head - with no filters or awareness of what the words meant or where they landed.
She didn't know who the woman in the hospital bed was, what the name Todoroki meant to her father, or why he had chosen white flowers and that specific brand of mikan oranges for the fruit basket.
Dabi shook his head slightly.
Rumi stayed quiet too…
The woman they had visited was Rei Todoroki - Dabi's mother.
She had been in that hospital for years.
A long-term psychiatric ward, clean and quiet and staffed by people who were careful with her. The room had flowers in it when they had arrived that morning - not fresh, a few days old, petals starting to curl at the edges.
Dabi's, from his last visit.
Because this wasn't the first time.
He had been going for a while now.
Dropping by every few weeks, sometimes more often, always the same routine.
Flowers and fruit left with the nurse at the front desk. A few words - "for the patient in room 312, please" - and then he would leave.
He never went inside the room.
Across all those visits and trips across the city, bringing carefully chosen flowers and the fruit he remembered she liked from a childhood that now felt like it belonged to someone else, he had never once walked through her door and let her see his face.
It wasn't that he didn't want to, it would have been simpler if he didn't, easier to stop caring and tell himself she belonged to a life he had already left behind.
He just couldn't do it, to stand in front of her and reveal himself when he didn't even know if he was still her son anymore after taking over this body.
So he left things with the nurse, and he left.
But today was different.
Eri had been with him, and when they had arrived at the hospital Dabi had done his usual thing - handed the flowers and the bag of fruit to the nurse, and turned to leave.
Eri had looked up at him and said. "Can I give them to her?"
Just like that. With zero context and no understanding of what she was asking. She simply wanted to hand the nice lady some flowers because it felt like a fun thing to do.
And Dabi had stood there in that hallway for about five seconds, not moving, before he said. "Okay."
So Eri had gone in.
Small and careful, carrying flowers that were almost as tall as she was, and she had walked up to the bed and held them out, and Rei had looked down at this tiny girl with white hair and red eyes and a smile that had no history behind it, and she had taken the flowers, and thanked her, and Eri had said you're welcome, and that was it.
Dabi had watched from the hallway, through the narrow gap in the door, without stepping inside.
Rumi had been standing next to him, not saying a word.
"But why didn't you go see her too?" Eri asked now, on the street, in the sun, with her rabbit and her new shoes and no idea what she was pulling at.
Dabi opened his mouth. "Wel—"
"Eri." Rumi said, cutting him off. She shifted the shopping bags to her other hand and looked down at the girl still swinging between them. "Your papa is actually a scaredy cat."
Dabi turned to look at her. "Hey. That's….you are making my image even worse."
"What image? The one where you can't ride a bus?"
"That was already bad enough without adding—"
"Papa is scared?" Eri looked up at him with wide eyes, not mocking but genuinely trying to understand how someone who fought villains and set things on fire could be scared of a lady lying in a hospital bed.
"Yeah, I am." Dabi replied.
"Did you do something wrong, Papa?"
"I did."
"Then it's easy." she said matter-of-factly. "Just say sorry and the nice lady will forgive you."
"Will she?"
"Yesss. Nobody can hate Papa."
"Aww… thank you, cute cheeks." Dabi said, leaning down to give her a kiss.
"Can you two please stop with the father–daughter chat?" Rumi complained. "You're leaving me out."
"Alright, sweet cheeks." Dabi said, pulling her into a side hug.
"…that alone won't be enough."
.
….
[To be continued…]
[A/N: Its a half filler chapter. Hope you guys don't mind. But yeh, it will probably be the last one too.]
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