guard.

I'LL GET AWAY, I DON'T CARE HOW

ACT I, SCENE III

i'll get away, i don't care how.

Natsuo Todoroki is born when his sister is four and he is told his brother is the same. His sister is kind, white teeth, white hair, blue-blue eyes, damped snowfall skin. He is not.

He's something more sharp. A glacier.

Rough hands, square chest, square fingers, sharp molars, scrunched nose, icy irises. He is born on the coldest day in summer, so that is what they call him―Summers' Child: Natsuo. He is the only one of his siblings to have his mother's eyes and his father's temper. He is a child; chipped teeth line his bloody gums, he burns himself and breathes out humid air and icy fog. Natsuo drops the temperature so that's his brother doesn't combust when he is seven. (He developed his quirk last, like his mother did. Fuyu-nii and Tou-nii both got there quirks within a week of each other - neither will say who got it first.)

Natsuo is a simple boy. He likes winter days when snow scatters about―where his brother doesn't burn as bad, where his sister can make hot meals and Father is out more. The crime rate picks up during winter, people are far more desperate when they are cold and hungry and dying―

His brother has a soft but forgettable face. Plain, soft curves that cover in bruises and (burns) red blotches.

He'll regret not knowing how to patch up his brother faster. Regret not pissing off the creature more. Regret not paying attention more to the cold spots, not paying attention to the way―sometimes things moved on there own, or how sometimes they felt safe even when the monster was right there. Natsuo will regret it when he sees purple married skin in a familiar pattern. One that haunts him.

"Hey, Tou-nii?"

"Yeah?"

"I love you."

Natsuo is seven. He's seven and his brother is moving away away away. Far, really far, because their baby brother has grabbed Father's attention and he doesn't have time train (hit, hurt, burn) Touya. He's - Tou-nii, snowfall hair and blue-like Fuyu-nii's ice eyes - moving in with government trainers, where they'll teach him how to be number one.

He's sad to go, but he gets to come home every Wednesday, he promises to never be late. That night Natsuo dreams of black hair and black eyes and prescription pills ― and the shaking hands that hold them. It's foreboding, these dreams have a distorted meaning, they trample about in the caverns of his mind. They taste like blood and smoke and seafoam.

In his dreams it's always cold. Freezing―glaciers swim in his blood and his quirk cannot stop it. Shivers climb up his spine and he wants to curl up and never see the sun again. He's seven and he's scared and he's―up.

(He forgets about the dreams when he wakes, but sometimes there are cold spots, and sometimes there are moments when the house is cozy, and he can hear Tou-nii playing in the garden. He can hear Mom making something and humming even though they're gone.)

_

Sometimes, there is someone who isn't there in the hallway. It's a little girl, she's as old as him, she's as small as Shou-otōto. He looks at her when he's coloring sometimes - before Mom―

He used to show Fuyu-nee his drawings, tell her that if the little girl saw them, she'd want to play. Fuyi-nee tells him he ought to quit dreaming － there is no girl other than her in this house. Natsuo doesn't show them to her―he shows them to Tou-nii (before he left), though. Tou-nii doesn't look at him, he just ruffles his white hair with the look in his eyes that Mom has - had (she's not here). The girl - he calls her nee-chan, because she's always there like Fumi-nee, but she doesn't have a name - just floats. Sometimes she stares at Natsuo―wide eyes (they're some morphed color he can't really make out), muddled with uncalled tears and hopeless thoughts.

She looks normal most of the time, when he does catch glimpses of her. Dark hair snakes down her back and she's pale as a sheet of paper, her nails are chipped and grimy (like she clawed out of hell). Sometimes - sometimes she isn't though. Sometimes, Natsuo hears crying one-two-three rooms down. Sometimes he hears a little girl calling out to her Aniki; sobbing. Telling him that he doesn't need to get her medicine, that he doesn't need to come home early - she'll get hurt instead, just please Aniki, please don't go, please please please- and then she-the-ghost stops and daybreak smashes through the veils of night. He knows though (there is a ghost here. Stalking past, shadows clinging to loose skin and sunken eyes) - that sometimes nee-chan screams, that she twists up until her ribs splay pink and her nose is bent and cracked―until it looks like she's been starved, she looks at him and when she walks cold spots follow. Dread hangs in the air and she looks, stares, watches as he tiptoes with muddled eyes.

When he was seven she looked at him when he snuck out of his room and shrieked that he's coming, he's coming, Aniki, he's coming you have to run. I promise I'll be better you have to―Natsuo his in a cabinet when father walked by.

He woke up the next morning and thought it was a dream - it had to have been.

(His sister was right, he ought to stop dreaming, that there have only ever been Father and Mom, Tou-nii and Fuyu-nee, Natsuo and Shou-otōto. There is nobody else. Nobody, not a soul. There is no screaming that happens half-past the witching hour, there is no little girl wandering the halls. Father treats them well and Mom is sick, Tou-nii got into a quirk accident when he set himself on fire, and Shou-otōto is going to be a hero.)

Natsuo Todoroki is thirteen when he attends his first funeral, he's thirteen when he hears the same girl screaming down the hall with muddled eyes and clawing hands, ripping through Father's throat ineffectively― he's still alive! He's still alive - he's not gone! It was Endeavor, it was Endeavor! He did it, he hurt Touya, he hurt Touya! He sent him off and he did it!

Fuyu-nee is crying silently. Shou-otōto doesn't say a word, he just looks silently. Nee-chan continues to scream in the background.

Mom wasn't allowed to the funeral.

END SCENE