guard.

SET ME PURPLE HYACINTHS TO BURN

ACT I, SCENE IV

set me purple hyacinths to burn.

Shouto is born when there is the first and last heatwave in January. The next day it snows―the monster grins in a way that makes my blood boil; in a way that makes fear curdle in Touya's blood - in a way that causes Fuyumi to shake (Natsuo hasn't known the monster long enough to distinguish the predatory look on his paternal-unit's face).

His mother calls him her little frostfire -- Fuyu-nee says he's important to Dad, Tou-nii says that Shouto should keep his quirk a secret, should he have one. Natsuo-nii just giggles and plays and Shouto does the same. The girl in the hallway doesn't ever say hello, not like Fuyu-nee or Natsuo-nii or when Tou-nii isn't covered under white. She just stares at him (when he blinks she's gone, he thinks it's a dream - I wish I could tell him how far that was from the truth).

The girl screams when he's six, she screams with the kettle, something about her Aniki-nii, she says he needs to get out, get out! I'll be good, get out! He'll hurt you too, Shouto doesn't know if she's talking about Father or himself. He says you himself that he's going to ask Mama for a glass of water for the little girl, water always makes him feel better when he can't breathe. When bule stains the tiles beneath his head, etched to his hands (he can feel blood on his fingertips).

Sometimes -

It's three-o-two in the morning―the girl is screaming. Or maybe it's him, or the kettle that goes hard in his mind, in his ears. Twisted and gnarled and grasping for air, hot steam pools from his mouth (tip me over and pour me out) and something sticky swells in his eyes, sticks the the ugly blotch peeling away under the bandages. Shouto wonders if this is how Tou-nii must feel - like he's rotting away. Spreading horror burns and fruit-skin away from his soul and onto his flesh. Break his bones with fire and hold them together with frostbite, he's building a funeral pyre―

Shouto doesn't know what a pyre is, or even a funeral (they're not good words though), but Tou-nii says he's only going to learn when Tou-nii gets sad enough to give up - when Fuyu-nee's had enough and breaks (like Mama)―or when Natsuo-nii gets too angry at himself. Or maybe he'll know once Mama is driven far away as her eyes. Tou-nii doesn't know that sometimes he also gets that look, like he's not there, like he's somewhere else. Shouto hopes he's someplace happy.

_

Tou-nii is late on Wednesday.

Tou-nii is never late.

_

Shouto swears he hears the girl cry at Tou-nii's funeral. They have nothing but ashes to shove in an urn. Father leaves Fuyu-nee and Natsuo-nii to grieve, Shouto does not get that privilege. No-

(Then she shrieks and Shouto hears the kettle shrieks with her. He looks at the last picture of Tou-nii and his hand reaches up to his scar. Tou-nii had a black eye last week.)

Tou-nii's picture is clean cut. It's wrong, because Tou-nii has scars and bruises wrapped around him like a second skin, Tou-nii is covered in bandages as if they're clothes. Tou-nii has black under his eyes when he's not crying quietly in the next room.

Tou-nii is clean cut and filled with ash and rubble and saltwater.

_

At the place he was in most of the week, they didn't call him Touya, they didn't call him Tou-nii or Tou-san, they called him Icarus. But Shouto is seven and yes he's small and he's frail; he's supposed to be strong. If he was stronger, strong enough, more than enough, better the best the masterpiece - like Father, Endeavor ― the monster says, than Tou-nii would still be alive. Tou-nii said he had one friend (a boy named Keigo that would make his cheeks go the color of half Shouto's hair).

Shouto doesn't think about how the story of Icarus painted Tou-nii's downfall―wrote a story of the boy who tried to fly and fell, hard and fast. Into the arms of despair.

His teachers say that if he wants, it could be like Schrödingers cat―that if he never looks in the urn, Touya is both dead and alive, twisted to fire but never quite fading. Like a flickering candle.

Shouto wants to bleach his hair, color it with the smell of a fresh canvas. Like Tou-nii.

He supposes that he'll apply the cat theory to his mother - if he never sees her, meets her, speaks with her; she loves him, she hates him all at once. Her eyes are crazed and she's spilling scorching water over his eye, she's holding him lovingly, eyes crinkled with a smiley edge.

Ashes fill his lungs over―burn his tongue on one side and freeze the other. Aching and burning and freezing, dull and sharp, hazy and clear, hot and cold, icy and steam. He's a contradiction mixed into a boy with his mother's body and his fathers eye - he's lucky he didn't have both (he can barely see out of his left eye as it is now that the bandages are off). He's got perfect hair and split ends, round cheeks and heavy muscle and a sharp jaw. He's a liar that can't speak. Bloody knuckles and scareless skin, a heartless head and a brainless chest. Peel back his skin and watch as he comes undone, peach-flesh running and yellow-white wine spills from his eyes and ears (eye and ears). Snarling lips and unsmiling face.

Tou-nii's picture is clean cut, Shouto makes a hole in the ground and plants black roses and violet hyacinths for a proper grave.

(The flowers shrivel and die, the girl cries over them. Hair over uncrying eyes. Hand in frozen hand.)

ACT I, END SCENE