….
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.
….
Fuyumi pressed her palms against her eyes as her shoulders were shaking.
"I thought..." Her voice was muffled behind her hands. "I really believed things were starting to get better. Mom's improving, Toya's alive, you're opening up to people… I kept thinking that if I could just bring everyone into the same room, even for an hour, that we could finally start being… whole."
She couldn't finish the thought. The reality was laid out in front of her: spilled food, broken glass, empty chairs.
"Toya was right." Shoto said.
Fuyumi looked up, her eyes swollen and rimmed with a painful red. "Not you too, Shoto. Please... not right now."
"Do you actually believe he deserves forgiveness?" Shoto asked.
Fuyumi didn't answer. The silence stretched between them; almost like a confession.
"But don't worry." Shoto continued, his voice steady. "What you did wasn't pointless."
Fuyumi searched his face. She was looking for pity, platitudes, or the kind of empty reassurance people give when they don't know what else to say.
"Are you just trying to make me feel better?" she asked, wiping her cheek with the back of her hand. "After the night turned into... this?"
"I am being honest." He picked up his chopsticks and set them down again. "It's true that it turned into a mess. But I believe that might be the only way this works right now."
Fuyumi stared at him, confused.
"Everyone in this family has been holding things in." Shoto looked at the empty chairs.
"For years, all of us have kept it buried, and tonight some of it finally surfaced. It might not have come out the way you hoped, but it came out."
He paused. "That means next time - if there is one, there's a little less left to spill over, maybe it doesn't hit as hard, and someone stays for an extra five minutes before they walk away."
He looked at the broken glass on the floor.
"Natsuo... that was the first time I've ever seen him that angry," Shoto said, his tone more thoughtful than reactive. "He finally said everything on his mind without censoring himself. I think that matters more than it seems, even if it doesn't seem like something positive right now."
Fuyumi was quiet for a long time.
"Touya, though," she said, her voice dropping to a whisper. "The things he said... the way he looked at Dad. Like he wanted to erase him."
"Yeah." Shoto didn't sugarcoat it. "He is past anything we can handle right now. I don't know what fixes that. Or if anything ever will."
Fuyumi pressed her lips together and nodded once.
"But you still got him here." Shoto reminded her. "He sat down. He ate what you made. He even thanked me for Eri; that's more than I thought we would ever get, even a few months ago."
Fuyumi's eyes filled up again. She wiped them quickly, almost aggressively, as if she were angry at the tears for falling.
"When did you get like this?" she said, and there was something in her voice that was half a laugh and half a sob. "When did you start being able to say things like that?"
Shoto thought about it.
"I don't know…" he said. "Probably recently."
He stood up and started picking up the broken glass from the floor, piece by piece, placing each one carefully on the table.
"I will help you clean up." he said. "Then we can put away the leftovers. The omelette was really good, Fuyumi."
She watched him for a second; her little brother, crouching on the floor of a ruined dinner party, picking up glass with bandaged hands.
Then, she got down on her knees beside him and started to help.
….
Meanwhile outside the Todoroki house, the air felt heavier, like the night itself hadn't quite settled.
Dabi found Natsuo three blocks down, leaning against a rusted guardrail overlooking a storm drain, his posture rigid, not breaking, just holding together through sheer force.
The streetlights above flickered, a low electrical hum bleeding into the silence.
For a moment, Dabi said nothing.
Truth was, he wasn't entirely sure why he had followed - part of him would have rather go home and play with his sweet little girls.
So he stepped up beside the rail, a few feet away, hands in his pockets, gaze drifting to the slow, dark water below.
"Go away, Toya." Natsuo spat, his voice sounding like it had been dragged over gravel. "I am not in the mood for a lecture on how I ruined Fuyumi's night."
"I wasn't planning on giving one." Dabi replied evenly, his tone a quiet contrast. "And if we're keeping score, I didn't exactly help the situation either."
A brief pause.
"Honestly." he added, glancing sideways. "I think you handled it fine, especially the way you handled that glass was top-tier and very dramatic."
Natsuo whipped his head around, his eyes wide and bloodshot. "Is everything a joke to you? Do you even care? You walk in there like a ghost, drop a bucket of salt on everyone's wounds, and then drift out. You get to be the victim and villain and everything else. What do I get to be?"
He stepped closer, his chest heaving. "I am the one who stayed, Toya! The one who sat at that table for ten years watching Fuyumi try to smile while the house smelled like burnt hair and misery! I didn't get to become some tragedy people talk about, I just got left behind to remember every part of it whether I wanted to or not."
Dabi didn't flinch, he let the words hit him, his expression remaining as flat and unreadable as the water in the drain.
"You think I don't know that?" Dabi asked quietly.
"I think you don't care!" Natsuo roared. "You're so obsessed with making him pay that you're stepping all over us to get to him! You're no better than he is when you do that!"
The air between them suddenly felt thin.
Dabi turned his head slowly, his turquoise eyes catching the dim light.
There was a flicker of something there - not anger, but a hollow, jagged recognition.
"Maybe I am not." Dabi admitted, the honesty was so blunt it made Natsuo stumble over his next breath. "I have spent a long time being a tool, Natsu, and tools don't usually check to see who's standing in the war zone."
He straightened up, finally pulling his hands out of his pockets.
He took a step toward his younger brother, stopping just outside his personal space.
"But you're wrong about one thing." Dabi said, his voice dropping. "I didn't walk away because I don't care about what it's like for you. I did because if I stayed in that room with him for one more minute, I would have burned that entire house down with all of you inside."
Natsuo searched his face, his own anger flickering into a confused, painful uncertainty.
"You think you're the only one who remembers?" Dabi continued. "I remember you hiding behind the sofa whenever he started shouting, and Fuyumi trying to distract us with cards so we wouldn't have to hear what was happening in that training room, and I haven't forgotten a single second of any of it."
He reached out, his hand hovering for a moment before he let it drop onto Natsuo's shoulder.
It wasn't a warm gesture, Dabi's skin was always a bit too hot…
"You're the only one who actually got to grow up with something close to normal, Natsu, or at least as close as anyone in this family ever gets." Dabi said, his voice steady but quieter now. "So don't let my mess or his regret drag you into it."
Natsuo looked down at the hand on his shoulder, then back up at Dabi.
The fury was still there, but the edge had been blunted and he looked exhausted.
"It's all so messy." Natsuo whispered.
"Yeah." Dabi agreed, pulling his hand back. "A disaster, and it's probably going to stay a disaster for a long time."
He turned, starting to walk back toward the direction of the faculty dorms, but paused after a few steps.
"Fuyumi's probably still crying." Dabi said over his shoulder. "If you go back now, you can tell her the omelette was good. She will believe you more than she would believe me."
Natsuo stayed by the rail for a long time, watching Dabi's shadow disappear into the night.
He took a deep breath, the cold air stinging his lungs, and finally turned toward home.
….
.
[To be continued…]
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