….
[A Week Later]
"I am really glad everyone could make it."
Fuyumi clapped her hands together, looking around the table with the kind of determined brightness that only the eldest Todoroki daughter could produce under these circumstances.
"We're all finally here together," she continued, her voice fluttering with a mix of relief and nerves. "I know it hasn't been easy, and schedules are... complicated... but this is really something special."
Three brothers sat around the table, a sight that would have been a statistical impossibility just a few years ago.
Shoto. Natsuo. And–
Dabi.
"I really wish Eri and Rumi could have joined us too." Fuyumi added, pivoting back to the stove to retrieve the final plates. "Then it would've felt like a complete family gathering. Everyone here, all together for onc–"
She caught herself and adjusted. "Well… almost everyone."
Dabi looked at her and the effort she had put into the setting; the food, the effort, and moreover her carefully maintained enthusiasm that was holding back an ocean of anxiety within her.
He sighed through his nose.
How had he ended up here?
Simple; the current gathering is apparently a celebration.
A recovery party for Shoto, organized by Fuyumi.
Dabi could have said no. He'd had the rejection halfway out of his mouth when the invite arrived.
But as he looked at Shoto, now out of the hospital and sitting across from him with that same steady, unreadable stare, the words had died in his throat.
He was here because of what happened in that hospital room.
He heard from Rumi how Shoto had looked his daughter in the eye and told her exactly what she needed to hear when Dabi's own voice had failed him.
Eri had been brighter since that afternoon.
He owed the kid. And if the price of that debt was a semi-awkward dinner with the ghosts of his past, then he'd just have to sit there and swallow the tempura.
And then there was Fuyumi.
He couldn't look at her face and the hope she kept pouring into something that had been broken longer than some of her siblings had been alive, and say no.
He didn't have it in him.
So here he was, regretting it mildly but present.
"Yeah, it's a shame." Dabi said, picking up his chopsticks. "Eri dragged Rumi out shopping, so they're tied up for now."
What exactly they were shopping for; namely, a wardrobe for the tiny, amnesiac blonde currently living on their floor was a conversation he wasn't ready to have with this specific audience.
"Alright, let's start before everything gets cold." Fuyumi sat down and immediately started serving.
She had come prepared; conversation topics loaded, timing intervention, filling every gap before it could become a gap.
He took a bite and it was really good.
She had made the rolled omelette the way their mother used to, and the miso had the same depth to it, and just for a second; the food tasted like a kitchen he hadn't stood in for years.
He relaxed, slightly.
Maybe this would be fine and he would get through one meal with his siblings without–
The front door opened.
Enji Todoroki stepped inside.
The temperature in the room shifted, not physically; Endeavor's flames were out, he was in civilian clothes, he had come as close to non-threatening as a man his size could manage.
But the effect was the same, the air got heavier and every person at the table felt it.
Dabi set down his chopsticks.
"And there it goes." he said as he was already pushing back his chair. "I was actually starting to enjoy this, too."
"Wait!!! Toya." Fuyumi was halfway out of her seat, her hands reaching out as if she could physically catch the departing mood. "Toya, please, just sit. Just for a minute–"
"Enjoy your dinner, Fuyumi." Dabi was standing. His voice wasn't angry. It was flat, which was worse. "I am not interested in wrecking the vibe any more than it already is. You put a lot of work into this, so just... eat. Have a good time."
He looked at Shoto. "And for what you did for Eri at the hospital. Thank you. It mattered."
Shoto held his gaze. "It wasn't anything special."
"It was."
Dabi turned and walked toward the door.
Endeavor was standing in the entryway. He hadn't moved further into the room.
He had read the situation the moment he stepped inside; seeing Dabi getting up and Fuyumi's face, understood that his presence had just detonated the evening.
Dabi walked toward the door in his direction, his path would take him right past Endeavor's shoulder, through the entryway, and out.
Endeavor raised one arm, not aggressively.
Just placed it across the doorframe, blocking the exit.
A barrier? Or a demand to stop?
Dabi looked at the arm, then up at Endeavor's face.
Something behind his eyes flared, for a second, the temperature near his hands actually spiked; then he pulled it back.
He stepped to the side, trying to go around.
"You can stay." Endeavor said, his voice was low. "I will leave."
"Then you shouldn't have come here in the first place." Dabi wasn't even looking at him. "Because all you've managed to do is kill whatever appetite I had left. So, thanks for that."
"Touya..." Fuyumi's voice drifted from the table, thin and trembling. "I was the one who asked Dad to come."
"I know." Dabi still wasn't looking at Endeavor. "That part was obvious, but I didn't expect him to actually have the nerve to show up; to walk through that door like he has any right to stand in the same room as the rest of us–" he stopped himself, exhaling slowly before continuing. "Forget it. I am out."
Endeavor drew a breath, the word already forming. "I am sor–"
"Don't." Dabi's voice dropped to something quiet and hard. "Don't you dare finish that. Not here and not to me."
He turned and looked at Endeavor directly for the first time, his turquoise eyes - the same eyes he had inherited from the man standing in front of him were burning.
"How completely clueless are you?" Dabi looked in utter disbelief. "Do you honestly believe you can just walk in here, say 'sorry,' and have the world right itself? As if that would mean anything just because it's coming out of your mouth?"
Endeavor didn't move. He didn't respond. That silence only gave Dabi the space he needed to dismantle him further.
"Let me make this absolutely clear, since you still haven't figured it out."
He went on, stepping closer, his voice lowering rather than rising.
"You don't get to apologize, not in any way that matters. Because that word isn't yours to use anymore. You don't get the meaning behind it, and you definitely don't get the comfort that comes with it."
Another step, closing the distance until he was nearly in the man's shadow.
"Because the second you say it, you get to tell yourself you've 'taken responsibility.' You get to feel a little bit better because you 'did the right thing.' You don't deserve that comfort, Enji. You don't deserve the relief of being told it's okay."
He leaned in, his eyes never wavering.
"And even if you said it anyway. Even if you got down on your knees and screamed it a thousand times until your throat bled; it wouldn't change the reality.
"None of us are going to give you what you're actually looking for. You want absolution. You want to be cleansed. But that's not something you're ever getting from this family.
"Not from me, not from Natsuo, not from Shoto. Not even from Fuyumi, no matter how much she wants to believe this can be fixed. There is no version of this story where the past gets undone. No amount of showing up to dinners or looking pathetic in doorways can erase the fact that you broke us."
Dabi stopped just inches away, having to tilt his head slightly to maintain the lock on Endeavor's eyes.
"Redemption? Making things right?" A sound came out of Dabi that might have been a laugh if there had been any humor in it. "That's the funniest thing I've ever heard. Don't even dream about it. You live with it. Every single morning, you wake up and you look in the mirror and you see exactly what you destroyed. You carry that weight until your heart stops. That's as close as you're ever going to get to paying for the sins."
Dabi paused, his voice dropping to a whisper that felt like a threat. "And that's only if I manage to keep holding myself back."
The silence that followed was suffocating, a heavy shroud over the room.
"Now move."
Endeavor's arm dropped.
He didn't offer a rebuttal, and his expression was a hollow, haunting thing.
It wasn't anger or even shock; it was the look of a man who had walked into a storm expecting to be struck, knowing that even the sting of lightning was better than the cold.
He had offered an apology knowing it would be spat back at him, because to Enji, even a curse was a tether.
Even being told he was beyond redemption meant someone still acknowledged his existence in their world.
Dabi was almost through the door when a glass hit the floor; the explosion of water and shards across the hardwood forced everyone to turn.
Natsuo was on his feet, his seat was kicked back. His fists were white-knuckled at his sides, and his face was a shade of raw, jagged red.
"Every single one of you..." Natsuo began, his voice low and vibrating.
Fuyumi reached out, her fingers trembling. "Natsu–"
"EVERY ONE!"
The roar cracked the air. Fuyumi flinched as if she'd been struck. Shoto's chopsticks froze mid-air. Even Dabi, with one foot already in the night, paused and looked back.
"Every single one of you," Natsuo repeated, his eyes darting between Dabi, Shoto, Endeavor, and Fuyumi.
His gaze was bloodshot, wild with a decade of suppressed exhaustion. "You all just act however you want, whenever you want. You drift in, drop your bombs, and walk away like nothing sticks. Like nothing lingers. And not a single one of you stops to think about what it's like for me, sitting here, forced to watch this funeral play out over and over again."
He took a breath that hitched in his chest, ragged and painful.
"Fuyumi runs herself into the ground trying to glue the pieces of a family together that died years ago. Shoto sits there like a statue, pretending none of it reaches him. Touya walks in as he wishes, delivers his grand monologue, and walks out without looking back."
He pivoted, his eyes locking onto Endeavor with a piercing, focused hatred. "And him. He stands in the doorway looking pathetic, like regret alone is supposed to mean anything."
Nobody spoke.
"I didn't even want to be here tonight."
His hand swept across the table in a blind, frustrated arc, sending a plate clattering.
"Fine," he snapped, grabbing his jacket. The word was frayed at the edges. "If everyone gets to decide how this goes, then I am done. I am done sitting here pretending I don't get a say in how much this hurts. I'm leaving."
He didn't wait for a response. He stormed past the table, past Fuyumi who was now weeping silently into her hands, and past Shoto, who remained unnervingly still. He shoved past Dabi in the doorway, entering the night without another word.
He didn't slam the door. That was the worst part. He opened it, stepped through, and clicked it shut with care.
Dabi stood in the entryway for a few seconds, he looked at Natsuo's empty chair, the spilled food and the broken glass on the floor.
Without a word, Dabi turned and followed his brother into the dark.
Inside, Endeavor stood paralyzed.
He looked at Fuyumi, sobbing at the table with her face buried in her palms, and then at Shoto, who sat staring at his untouched food with eyes that seemed to be looking at something very far away.
Recognizing the ruin he had brought with him, Endeavor turned and walked out.
The door clicked shut one last time, leaving the youngest and the eldest siblings alone in the wreckage of a dinner that was never meant to be.
….
.
[To be continued…]
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