Azure eyes close.

The pain threatens to swallow him whole―eating away at his flesh until it decays.

Smoke billows from his arms, cracking away into the air like scorched firewood and crumpled dreams; whisked away into the night sky. Drifting like plastic at sea. Like the ash fluttering off his skin and tears that can no longer spill from his eyes.

Forgetting all but how to hurt, he has drempt away his fears and chuckled at the face of death without so much as twitching. A cynical sneer falls over his lips as he watches the moon hang overhead, he wonders if it burns under the suns lazy glare.

It's almost like a painting, the city is ruled by creatures that are nothing more than humans―it's odd to him that they are no longer seen as such, they are something akin to gods in the eyes of the people. Ruling over the small world above them, letting the ants beneath them drown in despair, helpless.

Showing them that sending their children on a suicide mission, grooming to see with wide eyes and missing teeth to walk into death with open eyes―it's valiant. They are nothing more than puppets to the men and women in suits behind closed doors. He knows it better than everyone―one of their puppets, one of the best, set him aflame with his own fire.

Now.

Now.

He is burning from the inside out, and he only manages to laugh at his own misfortunes.

If nothing else, he is the ashes of burnt skin and his fathers eyes. If nothing more he is bitter and angry. If nothing more, he is sardonic and bitter. If nothing more, he is his mother's son and his fathers child.

If nothing, he is―

If nothing more, he is a walking corpse, a dead man that stands tiptoeing over broken cement and dirty pavement, his heart long still and brain long gone, nothing but hatred and spite keeping him from a hole six-feet-underground.

(Are you proud of me, Father?)

_

There is a demon creeping on the ends of his vision. All red hair and esurient blue eyes and a fire that curls around it's face. It stabs his gut, chilling his spine straight, because he knows it's there. Always watching, waiting, listening. He can almost see the sneer, lifting too far on one side enough to see a too-sharp canine―heat, hellfire, rolling off it in waves.

It reaches out, to burn, blister, scar him.

But when he turns around, it's gone. Like a distant memory or a dream. Hazy with a fogged mind and restlessness.

Natsuo gets off the train to be met with the wretched odor of urine and smoke. It sticks to his mouth and tongue and he hates it. But not as much as he hates Endeavor, so he ignores the feeling of fear and bile clawing up his throat. His nose scrunches up, his eyes sink into his head. (Caved in with bruises―black and blue stains.)

Just follow the street signs, Natsuo, just follow the street signs.

His thoughts tinker and run around his head, dotted terrors of when he'd made his father a little too angry. When he stepped a little too far and then―

(First, second, soon there's a third―he'll be the fourth, he'll be a child like the first and driven to break like the second, and it'll be because of his dear ol' dad like the fourth―like all of them.)

―he has to walk for a while anyway, but he's memorized the address. Izuku told him to never bring a phone or to wear expensive-ish clothes. (Most of the people here wear rags, so take a hoodie at best and a pair of ratty jeans.) That's what Izuku said. He took a threadbare hoodie and a pair of fraying jeans with white knees and ripped cuffs from times too terrible for him to purposely remember.

Of crying older brothers shattering at the seams―dying in the foames of their own mania in a body that cannot withstand the pyre that it was birthed for, of a mother who was too kind for her goodwill, of shaking, bubbling, blistering arms; of little brothers who he cannot speak to.

The address leads him to a bar. He knocks on the door. An eerily familiar pair of hideous red sneakers peer out of the door, the eyes that follow mimic the color. If only to add insult to injury, Tomura's eyes didn't look all that bad. Not as bad as the shoes at least, it's a pity that Izuku has the same awful taste in footwear, red is a nasty color, he knows why Mom never wore it.

(Fire burning everywhere, black bruises and shaking hands. Touya cried as much as Mom did back when he had lungs and a mouth.)

"What the fuck took you so long?"

"I had to sneak out, didn't wanna get burnt again." It almost fades into the air.

Tomura winces. "Yeah yeah. C'mon in, Weather Boy."

The door opens, creaking. Hinges unsteady and falling apart. Natsuo doesn't mind. He grins and salutes at Tomura, his eyes twinkle when they open. He wonders vaguely if this is what having a family feels like.

"'Sup, Tomu, Chako?"

"Natsu."

The bar is warm. This time, Natsuo doesn't mind.

_

She's dying. At least she thinks she is. Her throat is closed and her whole body hurts―she's gone. Fingers stock still as she paints the walls with her eyes, a splatter of glowing red, it looks peaceful, she thinks―or she would if her sight wasn't gone, too.

(It probably doesn't, but she'd like to believe it does―she's seen what it really looks like, a terrible splatter of square organs sloshed around like a signature on paper, but the pen-tip broke, and the ink leaked out too much, the dot is too big. It's wrong.)

Disappearing into the white dots that stare at her through pictures on the wall (the one that bought her the photograph called them stars and wouldn't stop talking about them). She trips over the hem of her dress and the sterile smell of the room―her arm feels like it's going to be pulled out of its socket. Blankets pile over her, drowning her in a faux-warmth no longer. She wants to hold her breathe and never let her lungs sing again.

She wants the cage in her chest to crush the little thing within it. To kill―she wants to disappear and never come back again. To slip and fall into the midnight-black of the sky at night. She counts the cuts on her fingers, steady, steady, steady. Her feet fumble over the smooth almost-marble floor.

Then her pointer twitches. The song in her chest turns to a screeching. She wants to cover her ears but her hands are strapped down and there's a knife in her stomach, needles prickle at her arms. Biting her tongue to stop the tears.

(Red, red, red. It's everywhere, staining the walls and it's all your fault, you tried to run away, now their dead, you made them disappear. Your fault, your fault, your fault.)

She closes her eyes and holds her breath. Counting the seconds and minutes and thoughts, all until she's grasping for air to fill her lungs. They aren't there anymore.

Something like a salvation curls within her when she stops―and yet she is cursed to move again. Her insides spill out red, like everyone else, and yet she is somehow an acursed thing. Destroying everything she touches, she is so scared.

And yet she's a monster. They break her apart until she doesn't know how many times she's died, bleeding out to the ground, falling until her limbs snap apart; the words cut deep into her bones have made her ribs weak. Heart breaking in her mouth, but he just puts her back together and then she drowns in her tears. Choking on her breath until it dies out. (She doesn't want to be put back together, she wants to stay broken and blank, nothing more than a red stain on a wall.)

Papa used to be so happy about her horn―he said that he had one when he was little, but he'd learned to make it go away so that people weren't dis-crim-in-a-tory, she wishes he could teach her. But she made him disappear.

(That's why the man does it, taking off his gloves and reaching out until she's not there for him to reach out to. All of her is red on the sterile-white wall.)

Her breathe is gone like when he holds her―so she must be dying. (Or is she already dead?)

Red eyes open, Eri wants to scream.

_

I stan that Natsuo's nickname is Weather Boy, because when Shigaraki asked "How'd you get those scars?"

He went: "Wouldn't you like to know, Weather Boy."

I also made his quirk like, fog breath.
He has colder breath than others, and his emotions cause it to spike―sometimes, like, if he tries really hard he can make it steam, but he prefers cold, so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

--𝓳𝓾𝔀𝓾𝓭𝓮