….
High above the sprawling metropolis of Tokyo, the morning sun climbed into full radiance, bathing the skyline in bright, golden light.
Dabi cut through the upper atmosphere with a controlled burst of blue fire.
Below him, the grid of the city was beginning to wake, the panic of the night slowly giving way to civilian traffic and emergency recovery convoys.
His mind was finally fixed on one simple objective: getting back to his house, wrapping his arms around Rumi, and crashing onto bed while Eri and Himiko ate breakfast.
Then, mid flight, a memory surfaced from the depths of his mind.
It wasn't a plotted thought or a calculation concerning the League or the Commission, but a promise, an unspoken vow he had carried since the day he took over this broken body.
A promise made to the dying, discarded soul of–
Toya Todoroki.
It was time to go see their mother.
Rei Todoroki had spent years confined in a hospital ward, drowning in guilt while mourning an empty casket, and he can guess she is aware of the truth.
'…so she must be waiting?'
Dabi let out a sigh into the rushing gale, his tired eyes softening with a strange mix of reluctance and resolve.
He glanced down at the trajectory leading toward the U.A. faculty dorms, then shifted his gaze toward the western outskirts.
"Sorry, my little cuties..." Dabi muttered, a wry smirk touching his lips. "Papa's gonna be a bit late for breakfast."
….
Dabi initially considered using the window, but stopped himself halfway through.
Instead, he simply took the proper route, walked down the hallway, and made his way to his mother's room like a normal person.
Soon, he found himself standing in front of Room 307, staring at the door.
The door was painted blue; some calming shade that a hospital administrator had probably picked out of a catalog titled something like Therapeutic Environments: Color and Healing.
The door was still a door, and whatever waited behind it was still waiting; and no amount of blue paint could change what walking through it meant.
A thought crossed his mind. 'Rindou, violet gentians, autumn bellflowers. Maybe I should have brought her favorite flowers.'
He almost laughed at himself.
He had bought them plenty of times before. But he had never actually given them to her. He would leave them anonymously with the nurse at the front desk, or, once Eri started visiting, send them along with her instead.
The flowers carried a quiet meaning.
'Lonely affection.'
'I love you, even in your sadness.'
By now, the news was everywhere.
Hero Blue Sun is revealed as Todoroki's lost Son.
Has Rei seen the broadcasts? Was she sitting in this room right now, watching the news and staring at photographs of a man, who is actually the son she thought had lost?
He didn't know, and that was the problem.
He knew nothing of what waited on the other side because he never had the courage to walk through it.
'Open the door, damn it!'
He had just defeated the main villain of this world.
Surely, he could open a door.
So he did.
….
Rei was sitting alone by the window, unaware that Natsuo and Fuyumi had already left to visit their father.
Sunlight streamed through the window, catching in her white hair. She wore a pale-blue hospital gown, the same shade as the door, and rested against a pillow, her legs stretched beneath the blanket.
There was something soothing in her posture, the ease of someone who had spent so long in the same room that she had made peace with its dimensions.
Tud–!
The door opened, however, she continued to look outside, making it hard for Dabi to see her face.
He stepped inside, three steps, then four.
His feet carried him across the floor before the part of his mind that wanted to run could overpower the part that had decided to stay.
He lowered himself into the visitor's chair beside the window.
Rei slowly turned her head toward him, as though she had heard the chair move and was only mildly curious about the sound.
Dabi's breath caught…
She was beautiful.
He had known that from photographs and from Toya's childhood memories. But seeing her in person was different.
She said nothing, as she simply looked at him, her gaze moving across his face catching in every detail.
Even after awakening his [Dragon Slayer], somehow, the scars hadn't faded away completely, they were still edges of line if someone looked closely enough.
It was as if his body was refusing to forget what he was.
Rei looked at every one of them.
"He-" Dabi's voice broke on the first syllable.
He swallowed, and tried again. "I mean. Hello."
Twelve years of preparation, and that was what he opened with.
'Hello?'
Like he was introducing himself at a work function.
Rei didn't respond or blink, simply continuing to look at him with a perfectly calm, unreadable expression.
Dabi looked back into her gray eyes, the same shade he remembered in Fuyumi's, and Natsuo's. The Himura trait that had passed to both of them except the eldest and youngest.
"I am alive." he said.
He said it simply, without a preamble or explanation about identities, timelines, or the complicated events that had turned a dead boy into an underground hero.
Just the fact that mattered.
Three seconds passed, but Rei's expression didn't change. Her face remained calm and still, like that of a woman who had spent years keeping her emotions behind glass.
Then tears began running down her cheeks.
They came silently, without sobs, gasps, or even a change in her breathing, as though her body had decided to cry before the rest of her could catch up.
She didn't wipe them away or look anywhere else, simply continuing to stare at him as they traced her cheeks.
Dabi touched his own face and found his fingers wet.
He stared at them in confusion.
When had he started crying? He hadn't felt it happen, yet tears were already running down his cheeks, and he couldn't seem to make them stop.
Rei noticed his confusion and the way he stared at his wet fingers as though they had betrayed him.
Then she made a small, broken sound, neither a laugh nor a sob, but something caught between the two, the sound of someone facing something too terrible and beautiful for words.
"I dreamt about this…" she said.
Her voice was softer than he remembered, worn down by years of medication, isolation, and endless conversations with doctors and nurses who came and went while the same view remained outside her window.
"For twelve years, every day and every night, whenever I closed my eyes, I would see you walking through that door and see your face. Then I would wake up to an empty chair and fresh flowers, but you wouldn't be here."
Her lips curved into the smallest, saddest smile Dabi had ever seen.
"I think I might still be dreaming, and if I am..." She looked at him, her voice barely above a whisper. "I don't want to wake up. I just want to stay here with you, at this moment, for a very long time... maybe forever."
"Mom."
The word slipped from Dabi's mouth before he could think, strange and unfamiliar, like a language he had once spoken fluently but had spent twelve years forgetting–
"This isn't a dream. I promise. I am here, and this is real."
The stillness and calm on her face finally broke, shattering the glass behind which she had kept everything buried.
All at once, everything broke loose as her shoulders began to shake, her breathing came in short, broken hitches, and the silent tears turned into sobs that seemed to tear straight through her chest.
"I am... I..."
She struggled to speak through the tears, the words breaking apart between shaky breaths–
"I am so glad… So glad that you're... that you're a-alive. I am so..."
She couldn't finish, and Dabi was crying too, not with a single dignified tear like in the movies, but with the ugly, gasping, face crumpling sobs he hadn't let himself shed since childhood.
All of it came out at once, and it was ugly and loud and he couldn't see through the tears and he didn't care.
He rose from the chair, crossed the small space between them, sat on the edge of her bed, and pulled her into his arms.
She was smaller than he remembered.
In his childhood memories, she had been his whole world, tall and warm and safe, humming songs he could no longer remember, holding him whenever the fire hurt and promising that everything would be okay.
Now she fit against his chest like she was made of paper, fragile and light, worn down by years of grief and the weight of losing a child she couldn't save.
Her arms slowly came around him, careful and hesitant, as though she feared that holding him too tightly would make him disappear, dissolve into another dream that ended with an empty chair and fresh flowers.
"I am sorry." Dabi's voice was wrecked.
Broken up by sobs that kept coming no matter how hard he tried to breathe through them. "Mom, I am sorry. I should have… I should have come sooner. Years ago, I should have just walked through the stupid door and–"
"Shh."
Her hand found the back of his head, her fingers sliding carefully through his hair the way they had when he was five.
"You're here now." she said, her voice shaking despite the steadiness of her hand. "That's what matters. You're here."
They stayed like that, mother and son, holding each other in the third-floor hospital room as the morning sunlight streamed through the window.
.
….
[To be continued…]
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