Suicidal Todoroki x Midoriya | What it Means to Love

2 | What Does a World Full of Color Look Like?

Shoto Todoroki

When I stood upon the bridge that appeared to scratch the halcyon sky from anyone looking up from the dark abyss below, I understood the impulse consuming my body like flames spreading across tinder. Before I could finalize my decision, I reflected back on my life to find a glowing shard somewhere—anywhere—in my achromatic world to lend me the strength to resist the bitter call of a sweet, smiling death. I convinced myself I would and simply stared out at the setting sun arching like a radiant crescent blade across the flaming yellow horizon. My skin became warm to the touch of the sunlight spilling out from the arc of blinding orange along the distant clouds.

My memories flooded back to me in strong, torrential rivers. Booming thunder spilled out over the precipitous surfaces of the rivers, jostling their malleable surfaces. At last, a pictorial streak of loud lightning split through my head with a crack, the fleeting light illuminating the sharp features of the sullen rivers.

I can hear my mother talking on the phone about me. A kettle is whistling on the stove, emitting a thin jet of white steam.

Eventually, I overhear my mother proclaiming that someone is making her go insane and that she can't stand the sight of my left half. She stares at me with unfettered fury in her eyes before dropping her phone and snatching the kettle off the stove. I look up at her in concern and trepidation, beginning to comprehend her intentions. My body tells me to move, but I'm paralyzed as she approaches me with the kettle of boiling water. Her facial expression distorts into a wry, thousand-yard stare as she shoves me onto the floor and pins me down with a single shaking hand. Her seething breath brushes my neck as I scream bloody murder at the boiling water being poured down the left side of my face.

I remembered the times when I would sob hysterically into my mother's chest after being abused by my father.

"Get up, Shoto," my father commands me.

I'm on the floor in a bloody heap. My right ankle is sprained and I know a few of my ribs are broken. My knuckles are brimming with scarlet red droplets forming over the smears of sanguine red streaking across them.

"I-I can't," I whine, physically unable to stand. "Dad, I can't! I'm sorry! P-Please don't hurt me." I press my palms against the ground and attempt to straighten them out, but they buckle under my weight and I smack the floor with a thud.

My father slowly begins to walk towards me. "Get up. You're a disgrace to Todoroki name," he spits, finally reaching me, who's unable to pick myself up off the floor. "Pathetic." He wraps his large hand around my small wrist and yanks me up off the floor, only to hold me against the wall and punch me in the stomach after that.

I then retch up the contents of my stomach, as well as an excessive amount of blood onto the floor. My father releases his grip on my hand, and I crash down onto the floor after having my spine rattle rigorously against the wall while sliding down.

My mother soon runs in to find me hacking up blood in an acidic pool of mixed bodily fluids.

"Shoto!" she shrieks, scooping me up into her arms and holding me tight into her warm embrace. "You can't do this to our—my—son!" She strokes my hair gently with her deft fingers as I weep like a leaking faucet.

I remembered all of my training sessions with my father and how many times I ended up in the hospital.

I remembered when I forgot how to feel and the world turned from gray with a hint of color, to completely gray, white and black.

"You say you want to be a hero someday, but you will never be one, Shoto," my father hisses at me like a snake. "I've never been more disappointed in anyone but you. You destroyed your own mother and sent her to live her life in the hospital. You were the one who tore this family apart. You were simply a mistake. You never should have been born, Shoto." His blazing eyes stare through the shell of my body and into the inert embers of what once used to be flame. Now there is nothing but hollow ice.