Stay with me at dawn, hide me away at dusk

+1 Touya

Dabi didn't really want to go visit his grave again. After his previous encounters, he was worried that the next person to show up would be Endeavour, in all his flaming glory, holding a chared lily to represent exactly what he had done to his son. 

Or maybe it would be the police department, come to arrest him for illegally selling drugs to an underage teen. Natsuo had never been able to keep his mouth shut, and Dabi wondered what his Mother would think when the blabbermouth outed him.

Maybe he would be greeted by a gaggle of heroes rioting for an epic smackdown, because Shouto had grown to become someone who would rely on others for support. He was secretly happy that his kid brother was able to confide in people, perhaps therapy could save him where Touya could not be saved.

Dabi was worried (downright terrified) that his family would show up and try to convince him to come home. Rei holding out her hand, Fuyumi crying silent tears, Shouto standing apathetic, Natsuo staring in utter confusion. But Dabi knew that as soon as his fingers connected with the outstretched offer, he would be pulled back into his Father's influence, the heavy shadow that fell across his broken family.

He couldn't go back to them, back to the sharp edges of those shattered shards, and it hurt.

But hurt was simply a part of him, the pain that made him a villain and the pain that washed away all other feelings, sensation emotions - the pain that took away his fleeting humanity and crumbled his hopes and dreams. 

And returning would only open wounds and tear at burned-out nerves until scar tissue could feel again the fragments of his family breaking through patchwork skin. So he wouldn't go back, look back, he'd move forward in his new life and let go of the threads that connected him to past, cutting ties with gleaming scalpels, swatting at any fingers that dared to try and redo the knots.

No matter who stood by his grave this time, they would not pull Dabi back into the nightmare that was Touya.

...

It turns out there is one thing that can turn him back into the nightmare that is Touya.

Dabi stands silently beside the crumbling headstone of a nameless corpse as the ghost of his former self place a withered hyacinth on the marble that covered unturned earth. The dead flower radiated an eery purple, the colour of regret and the glow of the underworld.

The flower cast a violet tint over white marble, veins of black softening to match the other shades texture, until both faded into lavender under the pulsing glow.   

Touya looked down on the grave in a  mixture of sadness and apathy. Dabi watched, making no move to intersect the silent mourning of a since-gone child. If the villain was being honest with himself (which he wasn't) he would've turned to leave as soon as the apparition was sighted,  but he was held down by an invisible force that might've been guilt, or maybe longing for a childhood that was left in the dust on a forgotten pathway.

Either way, he stared as his ghost stood in the quiet of the night, making no move, or sound, as he cried invisible tears.

Dabi wondered if he should be crying too. Maybe he was supposed to comfort the ghost. As a villain, sighting dead people was an everyday occurrence, but none of them ever came back to haunt, so Dabi was slightly inexperienced. 

But he had come here to pay his respect, so pay his respects he will. Walking up to the grave, he stopped beside it, eyes training on both the ghost-boy and spirit-flower, keeping the otherworldly in a widened vision that was blurred from years of staring into too-bright flames.

Lucky for Dabi, the young apparition made no move to speak to his blackened core, choosing to simply stare ahead and proceed to remind the villain of his former innocence and not-so former misdeeds. A perfect scolding in the shape of his sweetest dreams and worst nightmares. A statue that pretended to live, breathing in the same air but exhaling a different song.

Touya blinked and wavered, bringing Dabi's attention back to the graveyard.

The violet flower's glow was beginning to fade, Dabi realised, as the purple hue that surrounded it began to flicker and throb like a glow worm being strangled.

Could glow worms even be strangled?

Dabi decided he didn't need to know, and went back to focusing on the flower and its dying counterpart. Touya trembled like a candle in the breeze, fading in and out of focus in time to the hyacinth. And as he fluttered around Dabi's vision, the redhead finally smiled, sad but accepting, and something inside the villain broke as his juvenile doppelganger acknowledged the burned and crippled person he had become.

Crying wasn't an option, and his grin was far from warm, tugging at staples causing sutures to bleed, so Dabi just stared as his ghost-friend-past-apparition-reminder-of-the-shattered-dreams and stood in silence by the empty grave.

The silence was far from happy, nowhere near melancholy, devoid of solemn air or forgiveness. The silence was an understanding that passed between two lost souls and bound them into one again, sewing together seams and stapling together scared hearts. The silence was empty and full and everything Touya and Dabi never could and never would be.

The silence was home, and Touya's flame went out, leaving behind the purple flower of rebirth and the husk of a man.

...

And so, my small little book of sadness and Todoroki-ness has ended, terribad and killing the soul, but it's unedited, what did you expect? Thank you for reading, do continue with your life because that's important.

I don't really remember how to end a book, so I will simply say:

' - Love from, Silver'

Like in a birthday card.