Suicidal Todoroki x Bakugou | Scars of Petals

7 | Heart of a Hero

This story is not intended to promote or encourage actions/behaviors such as suicide, self-harm, abuse, violence, substance abuse, or eating disorders.

Shoto Todoroki
- Month 2, Week 1 -

A beat. A blistering beat of hard, elastic taffy smacking a solid surface ricochets through my head from the visceral cries of my heart. Deafening me with a beautifully burning barrage of belligerent, audible apprehension, my chest feels as though it will certainly explode if another bullet of liquid sound perforates it. Despite what I feel, the bullets that fulminate around my mind are ceaseless—but I've yet to fall.

"...I'm going to save you," I mutter with steadfast conviction dampened by paralyzing fear.

Quivering in place as frigid tears gloss over my eyes, I stare directly into Endeavor's enlarged, inscrutable pupils of onyx with a resolute glare. Sweltering doggedness rolls across my body like viscous lava while my soured expression oscillates between one of suppressed bereavement and anguish, and my current one of irate, vindictive desperation.

"Don't you see...what the hell you're doing to yourself?" With shaking steps mired down by the enmity of apprehension, I encroach on the space demarcating me from Endeavor until I've shattered the invisible barrier by gripping the front of his shirt with my hands. "I know you feel remorse after each time you drink." My capricious eyes lock onto his, and through my hissing, splenetic tears can I discern the forlorn stare he wears. "I know you had a reason to k-keep drinking that night." As my grip on his shirt tightens, the tears burning my eyes finally flood down my face in two slow streams of silver. "S-So, tell me, Flame Hero E-Endeavor..." His periodically blurring form starts to lower as he kneels down.

My debilitated legs buckle beneath me, but I remain above the floor from my grasp on Endeavor's shirt as he whispers, "Shoto—"

"...do you or do you not hate yourself?" Had the tears slipping down my cheeks remained stationed behind the dams of my eyes, I ponder whether or not the manifest tear in Endeavor's composure would be so salient.

The filthy hands of his once commanded to force himself inside of me now brush away my tears as those saline gemstones adorning my cheeks continue to tumble towards my chin. Endeavor completely kneels down to the floor, hesitantly grasping my shoulders to prevent my body from collapsing. As I lift my head to glimpse into his eyes again, the tears I've already been jaded with refuse to perish; the sardonic streaks of clear crystal merely hasten their collective descent.

I will never forget what you've done to us. I will never truly let it go. The pain I experienced is still perpetually dinned into my mind. The scars you gave me will never fade. Regardless of how I look at you, it never feels right to say that you are my father. What you stole from me—my virginity—is something I can never retrieve. It hurt. It hurts. The pain will never properly heal and recede. Simply remembering hurts so damn much. Even so...

"I can't hope to ever apologize for what I've done," he murmurs with his dolorous voice tinged by slowly burning, fervent flames of rue. "My heinous actions are unforgivable. I despise what I've done, Sho— "

Varnish not your answer. "A-Answer...the goddamn question," I hiss with words steeped in acrimonious venom as my breath jerks in my throat.

Endeavor's fingers curl tightly into the fabric of my shirt. "'What am I to you?' Shoto Todoroki, you are my son, and you are invaluable to me, despite what I am guilty of. 'I'm going to save you.' I'm no father, and certainly no proper Hero. Words will never suffice to say how ashamed I am of my actions, myself, and that you would put everything aside for even just a moment...to save me. 'Prove that without words.' To the question you currently want me to answer, my answer is: I do, Shoto."