火と氷とわたしたちを結びつける約束(of fire, ice, and the promises that bind us)

Dust to Dust (the devils' after both of us)

Touya has never liked her. Even before they'd activated their quirk.

Fuyumi was...nice, she supposed, and Natsuo didn't care. But Touya actively disliked  her.

Which Seika has never quite understood because she doesn't think that she's done anything to earn his ire in particular. But...Touya is family. And Touya is useful. He shows her what not to be.

(Seika is just three years old when she first sees her Father hit Touya for stammering. Right in front of the rest of the family.

Father is powerful.

She does not want to be hit too.

Carefully, she remembers what set him off. She never, ever stammers, words crisp and sharp like knives. It takes practice, her mouth too young to shape her speech. Still night after night, her mirror and her brother both hear her practice.)

Touya still stutters, even now She doesn't understand why he hasn't corrected it yet.

Father smiles at her. At the bicoloured hair on her head. Touya whispers something nasty to Natsuo. She squeezes Shouto's hand and pretends not to hear.

Touya scowls. Touya stutters. She doesn't understand why he hasn't corrected it yet.

Father smiles at her.

Touya scowls.

Seika will not be Touya.

(Seika will not be thrown away.)

***

Father is gone for work that day, and Seika enters the training rooms to find Touya in them. She had come to retrieve a book she'd left behind, but she found something more interesting.

Touya is bandaged and covered in burns, from the nape of his neck to his pale waste.

"What d'you want kid?" He snarls, all jagged edges and anger.  She doesn't understand how he can be so simple. She frowns back.

"Nothing from you?"  She answers, reaching for her book. And then she looks at Touya. Really looks at him. And he looks back.

"...he doesn't love you, you know."

"Of course I know," she says cooly, and for the first time ever, Touya smiles at her. It is cruel. The air grows warm and his fist bursts with blue before he hits the punching back she'd been growing far too acquainted with.

The blue burns hotter then her red. She watches with hunger.

(and Seika see's what Father cannot. Seika see's potential.)

Touya cracked his neck and threw another punch. "He's going to throw one of you away too, you know? Once either you or Shouto aren't useful anymore. Not when he's got his masterpiece."

Liar.

"I won't let him," she hisses at him, brows furrowed in a way that looks surprisingly threatening on a child's face.

(She looks like Father.)

She walks out to leave. But before she does, she stares at Touya's burns. And while he isn't Hers, he still belongs to her, in a sense. And she can't have her things get damaged.

"Burn cream is--"

"In the drawer by the window, I know," he interrupts, and scrutinizes her. It feels like looking at a mirror. She hates it. She is not him. Will never be him, "I know...."

"Stop trying so hard," she advises her elder brother with all the wisdom of a sage, "It won't work."

Because she and Shouto are here now. He is useless.

"Shut up," he bites back. She grins.

The next time she see's Touya, it's as nothing but ash and a jawbone after a "training accident."

(Seika is not convinced. It makes so little sense. The media does not report his death, and the family holds no funeral.)

She looks at Father...no...Endevour and she fears.

Will he do this to her? To her sweet, precious Shouto?

Endevour terrifies her.

***

(Dabi rises from Touya's ashes, like a phoenix.

He never does forget that conversation with his littlest sister.)

***

Mother takes the family to visit Touya's grave. There is no corpse inside. 

Seika doesn't cry because she didn't know him all that well. Shouto doesn't either. Natsuo and Fuyumi are a right mess.

And Natsuo glares at them as though the death had been their fault. Seika hides her Shouto from his punishing gaze.

Mother cries and Seika thinks something in her broke.

Mother is never the same again.