Chapter Text
Dabi doesn't die the way he should.
As a child, he hadn't dreamt of dying at all. Filled with naive adoration of his dad, he fantasised of a beautiful distant future where he'd surpass All Might just like his father wanted. He'd set that stupid blondie on fire with his awesome quirk and leave him in the dust! Then dad would pat him on the head and say, "Good job, Touya!" and then his mum would also do that and make him soba and then after that he wasn't really sure what would happen. He didn't know anything outside of his parents or heroes.
Well, apparently he was going to die.
Whatever, that dumb doctor didn't know what he was talking about. Dying was what the weird girly flowers did in the garden when autumn came around and all he knew was that it made his mum cut them away. He wasn't going to die or wilt away like those stupid brown things. He was going to be a hero forever.
Then Shouto was born and Dad stopped looking at him.
' Dad doesn't want me. He doesn't train me anymore. Why? Why was I born? If only mum gave me a strong body like Shouto, then he'd look at me. I hate this stupid body. I hate it. I hate everyone. Why does no one get it?'
Dying was his pathetic flimsy body as he burned alive on Sekoto Peak, a puppet to a power greater than him. Touya died completely alone.
Waking from his coma three years later, dying is the pitiful shrine in his honour. A thick layer of dust had settled over his room like a ghost. The sounds of wood slamming against skin and adolescent wails of pain in the dojo reassured him of what he already knew. That his death hadn't changed one damn thing. So he prays at his shrine and buries Touya deep inside his heart, setting his dreams of heroism alight.
Dabi would make sure his father would never tear his eyes away from him again.
Dying was all Dabi could think about in those filthy back alleys, high off of Giran's cheap painkillers. Each time he burned someone alive for a job, he took a sick little pleasure that every single abominable crime was a mark that Endeavor would never be able to scrub away from his legacy. As he rubbed shoulders with rapists and murderers, fantasies of exposing his father's sordid past to the world and clawing his career apart with his disgusting scarred hands nurtured the raging fire inside him. Dragging Endeavor into the deepest depths of hell where no masterpiece could ever rip his dad from reach again was all he lived for, all he killed for and when that was done? They'd die hand in hand, fist to fist, heart to heart.
A final beautiful blaze of glory where the names Touya and Endeavor would be forever tied together as it was always meant to be.
The perfect death.
But instead he passes away to the rhythmic beep-beep-beep of his heart monitor and flat lines to the thoughts of 'what could have been '.
…
But staying dead had always been a bit too hard for Touya, hadn't it?
When his body boiled under the whims of his hate , he marched ahead while his flesh melted apart- rot permeating the air. When he'd turned into a walking pyre, his mother's ice had screeched awake from inside him hysterically. When he'd been burnt to a crisp in the aftermath, he stayed alive just long enough for his father– no, his family to give him a second chance.
So he never makes it to hell.
Instead, he hears the sound of distant birds and Touya blinks back to earth, stunned.
'Who the fuck made it so bright in here?' Is his first waking thought as the sun almost blinds him. His second waking thought as he realises he can actually feel things is 'Oh shit, I actually died'. The hot sand that hugs his backside is scorching to his icy skin, the salt of the ocean clings to his tongue when he takes a breath (and wasn't that a weird feeling after eight years of being stuffed in a medical pod?). All Touya could remember before this was… well… dying. Not that it'd been very memorable.
Endeavor had dropped by that day. His father had stayed true to his promise of visiting everyday, making a foreign ache pulse in his chest (Probably the medical grade drugs they were pumping into him every second).
He'd been telling him about how Shouto was faring as a top pro hero, how Yumi had even started seeing someone from work (his father's bizarrely awkward face at this would've made him bust a staple laughing). His mother had taken over after that, telling him fondly about how Natsu's son had finally taken his first steps when she was babysitting him and she'd burst into tears at the sight.
His parents happily told him about everything going on in the outside world, new heroes that had debuted, the latest movies and how there had even been talks of the surviving League members being able to file for parole ("Though I doubt they'll ever be granted. Foreign activists have picked up that lizard's book in a frenzy; it exploded overseas after some American nutjob published a translation. Takami's been busy doing damage control." His father had remarked).
A few hours after their visit, he closed his eyes for the very last time. Anticlimactic for a villain like him, he knows.
"What a disappointing way to go out." He muttered as he stared up at the Okinawan-like blue sky. "Natsu never got around to bringing his kid over in the end, huh?"
Hell was… weirdly nice. Maybe it was childish of him but he'd always imagine brimstone and fire, screams of villains (and a few heroes) around him and actually anything that wasn't a vacation spot. He'd even entertained the thoughts of the victims he'd killed mercilessly in life torturing him or at least dropping him their two cents on his way down. Like "Hey, why'd you burn me alive asshole?"... something along those lines.
Not that he could remember their faces, his permanent fucking brain damage had taken care of that.
Then something dawned on him. Well. It was more like something grumbled from inside him.
'Wait. If this is hell… why the fuck am I starving? '
....
His stomach grumbled at him again.
Was it too late to go back to being a vegetable?