A Song to Come Home to

Chapter Seventeen

Dabi closes his eyes, a smile creeps along his lips and he exhales. He takes a step forward, letting his mind map out the area around him. Here, Dabi is in his element and he has no fear of getting snagged or caught. Here, he is at peace and he can feel each languid beat of his heart that pumps boiling hot blood right down to the tips of his fingers and toes. Each step he takes is soft and muted against the ashen ground; he can almost imagine the ash billowing and mushrooming out and upwards, flooming to life just a fraction of a second after each footfall. If he concentrates, Dabi can taste the chalky and bitter taste of the ash and soot upon his dried, burned and chapped lips. His tongue flicks out in an attempt to dampen his lips and Dabi fully gets a taste of the ash that instantly dries his mouth. It feels alive, still thrumming with the energy of the aftereffect of his fire and from the life that his fire had stolen.

Equivalent exchange is something that constantly lurks within the creavesses of his mind and it never lets him forget, that, with power and the need to satiate it will always come hand in hand, like two twins conjoined at the hip. As long as power has existed, the very thing that grants power became its weakness in one fell swoop. They coexist peacefully enough, much like the sun and moon. Winter and spring. Yin and yang. Simply put, one just cannot exist without the other and Dabi's quirk is not exempt from that law. To have his fire come to life, it needs kindling in return... and in Dabi's line of work, that kindling often comes in forms of human lives.

Dabi still refuses to open his eyes, still transfixed on the gentle imagery that his mind had made for him. Instead of the hot flakes of ash that swirls around him and stains his skin and blankets his hair a light grey, Dabi simply tricks himself into believing that he's off in his own little world of a snow globe. Faintly, he remembers that his mother had used to collect them when he was a child. Back then, he had been awed at the individually unique and picturesque landscape of the snowglobes. On some days, he would reach up and gently shake one of them and watch as the glittery snow fly about, swirling around and painting a pretty picture that he fondly remembers even as an adult.

Pushing past his simple and very sparse happy childhood memories, Dabi delves deeper. He drowns out everything around him until it fades to a distant hum and even then, that tapers off. Dabi is finally in total silence and he inhales, letting the ice cold air fill his lungs. In his mind's eye, when he exhales, he can see steam escape from between his lips as it hisses upon being reintroduced to the cold that he had stolen it from.

Everything is tranquil and he had put himself into a lull where nothing can touch him, nothing can scare him and nothing can threaten him. Where many would think that walking around with their eyes closed is a disaster waiting to happen, Dabi simply doesn't share that sentiment. He can feel each suture that digs and burrows into his skin and he can feel each strand of dyed hair gently dance against the night breeze. There's no impending threat around him save for himself.

His own lull threatens to buckle underneath the crashing tides and whirlpools of so many emotions and thoughts, each one is significantly darker than the last. What had started as his refuge, quickly becomes his prison and Dabi struggles for another breath. Each intake of air feels as if it brings a thousand pounds with it; there's the looming fear that the weight of the freezing air around him will crush his fragile trachea and collapse his lungs. Dabi's once relaxed hands curl into tight fists to hide their trembling.

At his side, Dabi's left hand twitches. He can feel the roiling of his fire that claws through his veins and itches just underneath his skin, begging to be released. He had been so used to the quirk inhibitors that he had been forced to adapt to the freezing cold from the absence of the fire, the very thing that he had loathed for so long. Dabi would even go as far to say that he wholly embraced the cold indifference that took place of his searing and furious fire that would always lie just underneath his skin, waiting to burst forth from the seams of his skin.