I did not realize this chapter was this long.
Anyway, enjoy <3
Yuki
Present
I talked to my mom this morning. Ame knocked on my door, but I didn't answer. I didn't know what to say to him. I could barely talk to anyone. After seeing him react at the table that way to everything, I wasn't sure what to think.
Ame puts people ahead of himself. That isn't new. It's practically a law of nature. But it was different that morning. He was worried about mom sure, but the first thing his mind went to wasn't about who would be in danger and who would need protection. He didn't ask if mom was okay after telling us all that. He didn't even ask about what happened to me or dad or Kaido. Mom told us about her past and her quirk. And all that was on Ame's mind was how powerful that quirk could be.
He's changed. The little boy I used to play with in the backyard and watch movies with is barely there anymore. Now, he's taller, stronger. He's thinking more like a strategist and a fighter. I look at him and I don't feel like I'm talking to the kid who sat at Sato's drumset, skinny, anxious, nerdy, weird, and just... my brother.
I didn't want to talk to him. I didn't know how. I made the mistake of talking to mom instead. She sat at the table by herself, waiting for dad to tell her it was time to go. A blankness took to the shape of her face. She was very still, very passive. All the warmth and tenderness I knew of her dissipated beneath a slowly forming sheet of defense.
I sat across from her and let the silence sit between us for a while.
"That man in the Slums. Tenko," I said. She didn't meet my gaze, just kept staring at the wooden top, sliding her hand across it like she was looking for a scratch. "You're related."
"He's my brother." She didn't hesitate to tell me. Because she knew that I'd seen him. It seemed so convenient that this was what she left out of her confession.
"He sent Atomic to protect me," I said, pushing. "He knew who I was."
"Atomic knew who you were," she said like she was correcting a mistake on a math worksheet.
"What happened to Tenko after you killed your family?" I asked it as casually as she was being. The deadness in her eyes lifted for all of a moment before falling back over the color. Like a wave pulling from the tide and washing back in.
"I was saved," she said. Enji and Aizawa come to mind. " He wasn't. All for One turned him into a villain."
"The symbol of fear," I said, reciting it from memory like from a textbook. It's there, that one line amongst the rest of the words those crime syndicates threw into the silo. Somehow it retains its own area in my mind along with the shower of bullets and the sinking feeling. I didn't think I'd ever know what that was like till that night. To be so utterly helpless, to know you're going to die like that.
"They want to create a new symbol with Atomic but it won't obey anyone else, right?" I asked. Mom didn't answer. She cringed at the word obey. I pushed. "Does dad know?"
"Your dad and I fought Tenko in the war," she says. "Your dad and I are the ones protecting him now."
"You never told us about him."
"We agreed when you were little that it was too risky. That it wouldn't be fair to the two of you if you knew you had an uncle that had done so many terrible things."
"If he's done so many terrible things, then why protect him?"
"Would you protect Ame?" she asked. This time she looked me in the face, as if she were ready to cry. "If your brother, someone you think of as a brother, had killed people, would you still protect him?" Mom stood up after a while.
