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Kidnap Endeavor's kid, Dabi had said. We can use him for information, Dabi had said. Well they have the kid, no information, and now Kurogiri is buying peanut butter and white bread because that's all the kid agrees to eat.
Kidnapping him was stupidly easy. He doesn't have any friends - at least, none who walk him home from school - so it was a simple matter of Mr. Compress swooping in, turning him into a little bead whatever, and taking him back to the bar. You'd think Endeavor's kid would have some security on him, but old man Endeavor was never big on hiring other people to protect him, so maybe the same applies to his kid.
Then there was the whole "tie the kid up, put special quirk restraints on him, wait for him to wake up" business. Toga had suggested torturing him for information - where does Tomura keep finding all of these crazy children? - but Dabi had insisted that they all treat him like a guest. Well, insisted might be the wrong word. "Threatened to burn them all to crisps" is more accurate.
Then the boy woke up, and Tomura made a teeny weeny, very simple request.
"Tell us Endeavor's weakness and you're free to go," he had said, and the boy just blinked at him.
"Where am I?"
"I'm asking the questions here. It doesn't matter where you are. Tell us Endeavor's weakness and you can leave."
Do they really need to know Endeavor's weakness? Not especially. Tomura assumes that it's something to do with water, and he's probably right, but now they have a kid in their base who will probably be reported missing soon enough, and he might as well use him.
"How would I know his weakness? I never work with him on the field." He rattled his hand chains a little, pursing his lips. "Are you going to kill me?" He doesn't even look scared. Did we kidnap a robot by mistake?
"Maybe," Tomura had said, at the same time that Dabi said, "No." They exchanged a frustrated look. Dabi's very clearly said I won't hesitate, bitch.
"Probably not," Tomura settled on. "Just give us the information we need, and you can go."
The boy didn't look as panicked as he should have. He didn't even look uncomfortable in his restraints. "And if I don't comply?" Todoroki asked, staring Tomura dead in the eye. He somehow looks both dangerous and bored, even though he's the one in chains.
"Then you can't leave," he replied, a little annoyed at this point. "We can do this all day." He didn't mention that it was movie night, and that it would be nice to be done by eight so that they could order takeout. He didn't want to show weakness.
"In that case, I wish to stay." The boy turned to Magne, suddenly back to charming middle schooler mode. "Am I able to have a peanut butter sandwich? Father never lets me eat unhealthy food."
So now Kurogiri is on a shopping mission, Magne and Spinner are talking to the boy, and Tomura regrets being born. He doesn't like kids, especially obnoxious brats who won't give him their father's secret weaknesses. Toga's fine because she's useful, but he doubts he can use this brat as anything other than a hostage, and then Dabi would have his head.
Nothing is going right. All Tomura wants right now is the kid to be gone and replaced with an ice cream sundae. Stress makes him crave sweets.
Kurogiri returns with the ingredients, and Dabi makes the kid a fucking peanut butter sandwich.
"It would be difficult to eat like this," Todoroki says, turning to Tomura. "Can you take my chains off for just a moment?"
"No way in hell," Tomura says before Dabi can say anything. "You're not sneaky, kid. If you want, Spinner will feed it to you."
"Why do I have to be the one to do it?"
"Because you didn't do the dishes last night. Now feed the kid, and watch your fingers. He looks like a biter."
"I am not," the kid pipes up.
"That's what they all say," Tomura replies, and turns away from him. "Dabi, you're in charge of him since you're so weirdly attached. If he's still here by eight, you're missing the movie to watch him."
"Sure," Dabi says, unbothered. "Twice only ever chooses Disney movies anyway."
"That's not true! So what, fucker, they're great."
Halfway through the movie, Dabi sticks his head through the doorway.
"He wants to know if he can watch too," he says. "He's never seen a Disney movie before."
"So what?" Tomura says, eyes glued to the screen. "Who gives a shit? He's a hostage."
"He never saw a Disney movie?" Magne gasps. "What kind of a childhood did he have? Poor baby. Dabi, bring him in."
"Even I watched them when I was little," Toga chimes in, sucking on a blood pouch. "Disney and grisly horror flicks."
"That explains a lot about you," Mr. Compress says. "But I agree, if the boy is properly restrained, he should be allowed to watch with us. We're the League of Villains, not the League of Savages."
"He didn't bite me, so I'm fine with him," Spinner says. He's not even really watching, the traitor, just playing something on his phone.
Tomura isn't sure if he's hearing everyone clearly. "So you think that we should entertain the hostage? After he gave us no information at all and then made us feed him? Are we a youth shelter?"
"Chill, Shiggy," Dabi says. "It's just a movie. I'll just bring his chair here, it's no big deal."
It's official: Tomura needs to find a new league to do evil with. He can't meet any of these traitors' eyes. "Fine. Bring him. Who gives a shit? After that, let's adopt a basket full of cats from a kill shelter and then help old ladies cross the street."
"Ooh, kitties!" Toga says, although her definition of ooh kitties! probably involves a lot more blood than normal.
"I like cats! Not as much as dogs," Twice adds, and Spinner mentions that he's allergic to cat hair, but if they got those special hairless cats then he'd totally be down. In the meantime, Dabi drags the kid's chair in with Magne's help, and puts him right next to Tomura's spot at the corner of the couch.
"Just to be clear, kid," he mutters, looking over at his stupid middle school face, "you're not in the League or anything. You're a hostage." Even if everyone else is convinced otherwise, Tomura won't let the kid just sit back and relax while risking all of their lives.
"I understand," Todoroki says, perfectly neutral. He then turns to Toga and whispers, "Why is the girl on a boat? Where is she going?" and suddenly the whole lot of them is trying to explain the plot of Moana to him at once.
A day passes, and Tomura gets no new information from the hostage. He does get information about the hostage, however, not that he ever asked for it. The other members of the League seem enamored by the boy.
"Shigaraki, did you know he never tried chocolate before?" Spinner says to him one day, while they're playing some sort of fighting game. "You should've seen his face when he tried it, it was hilarious."
"Great, who cares," Tomura replies, punching more aggressively in the game.
"Apparently his favorite food is cold soba," Kurogiri mentions when he's in the kitchen. "I obtained a package of soba noodles from the store, he seems to enjoy eating them, although it is difficult with the restraints."
"It doesn't matter what his favorite food is, he'll eat what we give him," Tomura snaps, distintegrating his cup of water by mistake. Then he has to take five minutes to wipe up the mess, and he's in an even worse mood than before.
"Shouto wants to know if he can sleep on the ground, since it's hard for him to sleep sitting up," Dabi says, and that's when Tomura snaps.
"Why are you calling him Shouto? Since when do you call him Shouto? You can either call him the hostage or the brat or Todoroki if you're feeling nice, but not Shouto. He's not your friend."
"Damn, man, calm down," Dabi says, putting his hands up. "He doesn't like being called Todoroki because it reminds him of his dad. Be respectful."
"Are you respectful of all of the people you burn?" Tomura grumbles, and Dabi lights the edge of his hoodie on fire in response, which he douses with a scowl. So I'm the only sane one in here. Fine. I can live with that. If they want to be soft to the kid, so be it.
A week passes, and the kid is officially missing on the news. Endeavor looks pissed as hell, but he always looks pissed, so it's not that big of a deal.
"This would all be so easy if you'd just tell us the weakness," he groans, craning his head to look at the restrained boy, who Dabi placed on a kitchen chair "because it's more comfortable."
"I already told you, if he has a weakness, I do not know it," Todoroki replies. "Also, I'm quite comfortable here. I think I would prefer to stay."
"Bullshit." He gestures to the screen, where Endeavor's now shouting directly at the camera. "Don't you want to go home to daddy dearest? He'll kill a hundred reporters to find you."
"If he finds me, I'm also going to be in trouble. He will kill you guys immediately, but I will be punished for days for being weak." He pauses, grimaces. "I have an itch on my head."
"Good." Tomura isn't going to sink to the level of head-scratcher in his own fucking base. The kid's probably lying about what Endeavor would do to him, anyway. Just trying to make him soft like the rest of them so he can make a break for it when his back is turned.
"It's itchy." He's now banging his head against the back of the chair, probably trying to scratch it himself. "If you won't scratch it, can you bring Dabi or Magne, please? They always help me when my head itches."
Tomura is not about to go fetch Dabi so he can scratch the brat's head. He stands up, looping his pinky fingers through the special half-gloves that let him touch things without destroying them. "Alright, brat, I'll scratch your head. But if you tell anyone here about it, I let Toga suck you dry."
The brat still doesn't look scared. "Thank you." And yeah, Shigaraki Tomura proceeds to scratch a 12 year old's head. The 12 year old son of the number two hero, one of his worst enemies. Whatever his life has come to at the age of 18, he doesn't like it.
"Did Todoroki talk to any of you guys about Endeavor?" he asks one day, after the brat falls asleep. The rest of the League exchanges a look, which instantly makes him wary. "What? What did he say?"
"He talks about his training, but it sounds rather excessive to me," Mr. Compress says uneasily. "He wakes up at five every morning, trains until he has to go to school, then trains again until ten at night when he gets home."
"He's not allowed to see any of his siblings, either," Magne adds, and Dabi physically smokes from his hands. "And he doesn't know where his mother is, but he can't see her at all."
"And he slaps him!" Toga exclaims. "Just for not doing well in training."
"How did you hear all of this?" Tomura has to know. "Did you interrogate him without telling me?"
"We just hung around him a bunch and he told us," Spinner says. "I think he's comfortable around us now and that's why he's talking more."
"He's not supposed to be comfortable," he hisses. "Since when do we care about his fucking comfort?"
"We're keeping him, right? Like idiots," Twice says. "So we have to take care of him. Fuck his dad. Let's kill Endeavor."
"I second that," Dabi says, putting his hand on Twice's shoulder. "If we're going to watch him, then we should be better family than Endeavor, anyway. Pick your battles, Shiggy."
At no point does anyone seem to remember why they kidnapped this kid in the first place. Hell, they don't even sound like villains at this point. But Tomura isn't about to start advocating for child abuse, especially since everyone else in the League now thinks of this kid as theirs.
"Alright, you can all be chummy with him," he concedes. "But I'm not gonna start spoiling him like the rest of you. Keep him away from me."
"Sure, whatever," Dabi says. "Does that mean we can take off his restraints?"
"Fuck no. Don't even try it."
As is alarmingly becoming the norm, nobody listens to him.
Tomura catches Todoroki eating soba on the couch with Spinner and Dabi, watching them play video games, no restraints in sight.
"How do you make him do the special move?" he asks, and Dabi hands him the controller, showing him the right buttons to push. Spinner even goes easy on him, which he never does for anyone, not even Toga.
"It's his first time, Shigaraki," he explains later to a very irate Tomura. "All he does all day at home is train and eat and sleep. As soon as he starts getting good, though, I won't hold back."
"Mmhm," Tomura says, wondering when this became his life. "When he freezes you into a cube of ice and burns Dabi to death, I'll laugh at both of your corpses."
Twice continues to show him different Disney movies, which apparently Todoroki enjoys.
"He likes Mulan just like me! What a copycat," he relays to Tomura. "He doesn't sing along to any of the songs, but I heard him humming during lunch, how annoying."
"Great," Tomura says, infinite patience wearing thin.
Even Toga, under the guidance of Magne - nothing good ever comes from leaving a minor with Toga - grows to love him as her own plaything.
"Look, Shiggy, he lets me do his hair!" she says, pointing to her handiwork of assorted pins and clips. Todoroki doesn't look angry about any of it, but maybe a little uncomfortable.
"Leave the kid alone, Toga," he says, because he knows the brat won't speak up for himself. He barely speaks up at all, looking to Dabi or Magne when he wants to say something to the group of them. Like, alright, Magne is fine, but Dabi? That just feels like a personal insult. And the flaming shithead eats it right up!
"Aw, but Shiggy, look how cute he looks!" Toga pouts, but sighs and starts taking the hair pins out at his stare. "You never let me have any fun."
"If you want fun, go kill some birds or something," Tomura says, sending her off. He then turns to the kid, who, besides for the fact that his hair is standing up everywhere, looks basically alright. Alright meaning his face has no emotions, per usual. "You good, Todoroki?"
"Mmm. Yes," the kid says, touching his hair. "It didn't hurt. My sister used to put hair pins on me when we were younger. It reminded me of that."
Well what the fuck am I supposed to do with that information? "Uh, okay."
Tomura turns to leave, and the kid says, "Thank you," in a soft voice.
Fuck him for warming my heart. "No problem," he replies, and walks out of the room faster. No need to spend any more time around the little gremlin and his emotion manipulation.
Todoroki finally gets his own bed, a mattress on the floor of the living room. Tomura was originally very against this, for the rational reason that he could definitely make a run for it in the middle of the night if he wanted to. They're basically giving him complete autonomy to do what he wishes.
"Be realistic, Shigaraki," Mr. Compress says. "Do you really believe that he is still trying to run away? To my knowledge, he never wanted to run away in the first place."
"I guess." All of this talk about the kid gives Tomura a headache. "Whatever, put him in the living room. We don't have any extra space."
So Todoroki sleeps alone,and he doesn't try to run away or murder any of them while he sleeps. He does talk in his sleep, however, which is something Tomura finds out while getting a glass of water in the middle of the night.
"Touya," the boy mumbles, hugging a pillow to his chest. "C'mere." Something about the dream must be upsetting him, because the pillow looks about half frozen already. If he stays asleep, he might encase the whole base in ice.
Tomura thinks about waking someone else up to deal with it, but decides fuck it, he's not scared of a sleepy 12 year old. He nudges him awake with his foot, waiting for him to open his eyes.
"What were you dreaming about, kid?" he asks, sitting on the arm of the couch. Todoroki blinks at him, rubbing his eye. "Who's Touya?"
"I was dreaming about Touya leaving again," he says quietly. "You don't call him Touya, though. You call him Dabi, and he said I should call him that too."
Tomura almost falls from his seat. "Dabi's your brother?" He is going to get so much shit in the morning.
"Don't be mad at him," the kid says, and rolls over on his mattress. "He didn't want to leave. Father made him."
Tomura's priorities right now are:
1. Make sure the building doesn't burn down/freeze over
2. Get out of this very uncomfortable conversation.
"Do you wanna sleep in Dabi's room, then?" he asks. "Since you're brothers and all. Maybe you won't have nightmares then."
"It wasn't a nightmare," Todoroki says, a touch defensively. He is a 12 year old, after all. "But yes, if he lets me."
"Sure he will," Tomura says, and starts dragging his mattress to the room over. "Make sure not to wake him up. I want to surprise him in the morning."
"You won't kick him out too, will you? Now that you know who he is?" With all of the connections between Todoroki and Dabi, Tomura had almost forgotten that that makes Dabi Endeavor's fucking son.
"Nah," he decides. "I'll let him stay. I'm just sticking him on dish duty forever for not telling any of us this."
"Okay." For the first time in about three weeks, he sees what could be a hint of a smile on Todoroki's face. "Thank you."
"Shut up, I didn't do anything," Tomura says sourly, and leaves him to fall back asleep. Then he pauses in the doorway, and whispers, "Did Endeavor really do all that shit to you? Make you train all day and beat you up if you didn't do well."
Todoroki grimaces. "Yes. I try not to think about it, now that I am not around him anymore."
Time for an inspirational bonding moment. "Parents sometimes suck," he says slowly. He doesn't remember his at all, but if he concentrates hard enough, he can remember burning hatred towards them, for whatever reason. "Doesn't mean you suck. Fuck Endeavor."
"Mmm," Todoroki agrees, and lays back down on his mattress. "Good night, Shiggy."
The moment is ruined. "Who told you to call me that?!"
"That's what Touya calls you," Todoroki blinks innocently. "I thought it was your name."
"Jesus fuck, I'll kill him. It's Shigaraki."
"Whassat?"
Now Dabi's stirring, and three is a crowd, so Tomura storms out, calling, "There's your brother, Touya. He's rooming with you now. Night." He needs a better league. He needs new friends.
Shouto continues to settle into League life. Dabi's determined not to make a villain out of him, since "there are enough murderers in the family already," but he does help him practice his quirk sometimes in the alley nearby. Shouto, originally so hesitant to use his left side, warmed up to it when Dabi pointed out that they match.
"I still want to help people, but I don't want to be a hero like Father," he says resolutely. "I think I will try to be a vigilante."
"You have time to decide, Shouto," Kurogiri says. "For now, you just sit back, relax, and defeat Spinner at his own video games."
"I already told you, it was a fluke!" Spinner insists, and Shouto half-smiles. They're building up to a real one, and they're getting pretty close.
Things don't really change after the big reveal of Dabi being Touya, although things make more sense now, like why he was so attached to Shouto almost immediately after they got him, and why they kidnapped him in the first place.
"I was planning on going back for him as soon as Endeavor stopped being a problem," he explains, waving to Shouto, who's currently reading on the couch with Kurogiri. "Then I joined the League and thought, eh, why not just get him now?"
"You could've been honest, you know," Tomura grumbles. "We would'be gotten him anyway."
"We're villains. The moral lines are always shifting." He has a point, but Tomura will never admit it. Bad for his ego.
"You still used me," he says accusingly. "You used me to get your brother away from Endeavor."
"You have a soft heart, Shiggy," Dabi admits. "I used that. And what's one more League member to you?"
"Nothing, I guess." He turns away from the arguable adorable scene, grimacing a little. "But if you try and bring in any more brats, I swear I will disintegrate you in your sleep. This isn't a home for wayward kids."
"Yeah, right, sure." Dabi doesn't look afraid of him at all. That must be where the brat gets it from. "I'm making chili for dinner."
"Make sure not to make it too spicy, the kid doesn't eat spicy things," Tomura says. Dabi smirks, walking out of the room. The you've gone soft, boss is implied, and Tomura can't refute it for once.
I might be going soft after all. But the thought doesn't bother him too much.