Haze

Alternative summary: Out of all the Todoroki children, Natsuo Todoroki is the best at keeping secrets. Not the eldest that erased his existence for over a decade while making an entirely new name for himself. Not even the only sister of the house that masked her emotions then abandoned her childhood as she took on the "Mother" mantle. And certainly not the youngest, who spoke little and lied even less. The title belonged to Todoroki Natsuo, the middle, who listens but never tells, is loud but never noisy.

A/N: General Tags and Trigger Warnings are in the pic above cause I do not want to type each one out on here again. Stay safe guys because this is pretty heavy.

You remember the tension, the animosity quietly brewing in these halls from the moment you are born. It is rare at the time, but you are sharp enough to peer through the cracks. Your Mother holds you with a glassy gaze and prays for contradicting things. Your Father barely even spares you a glance. Touya burns and talks with an ambition rooted in his head. Fuyumi chats with plastered smiles and hugs you tight like she is afraid of letting you go.

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It is worse when your "quirk" manifests in wispy fog. Your Mother looks at you and sees someone else through the haze of your creation while your Father doesn't see you at all, or just doesn't bother to. Touya is a dying spirit you barely can catch sight of, Fuyumi is a fearful rabbit under even the least of pressure and Shoto is something too far out of your reach the second of his birth. You strive to love them with varying degrees of failure.

(The cries of Touya haunt you forever, his tears burn on your skin like acid and you let his anger fester inside you like poison. They make you cruel and bitter and everything you don't want to be, but you love Touya more than yourself).

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The maids and servants are white noises at best and lifeless puppets at worst. Only your family matters in the house because if anything else even attempts to stir up the order, He will get rid of them, as He always does. You have long since learned not to put faith. (Their existences here are meaningless, much like your own).

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As you grow by the years, your body turning taller and larger, you realize how utterly small your other siblings are, especially little Shoto and big brother Touya. You tower over them easily, despite your age gaps with your older siblings being 4 - 5 years. Once you have noticed it, it becomes apparent, an obvious fact displayed before you like some sort of mockery. It pools you with dread, anger, and guilt, makes your stomach churn and you try not to hurl with every glimpse of their presence. You feel privileged, favored albeit being anything but in reality. It is a vile, taunting irony, an awful joke of fate.

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You despise it, your body, your huge appetite, your rapid growth, the fact that Fuyumi cherishes you, that Touya loves you, that Shoto admires you. You feel undeserving of their attention and affection. So you shift it to them instead, redirect those acts of love towards who actually needs it. It is your role, because you are too weak to rebel against your Father, too immature, too young to be an older figure to anyone other than Shoto, who you rarely are able to interact with, much less tend to.

| ♪ |

Your Mother is more delicate by the days, like small ice cubes underneath the summer sun, until she falls victim to the thin ice that is supposed to be her sanity. She shatters with the bottled-up strain and leaves the family with broken shards.