#the dabi identity has become so intrinsic to him even outside of the plane of villainy

[haine-kleine]

don't mind my self indulgence but uhh Touya being healed with the combination of rapidly evolving technology, healing quirks and Endeavor's funding to the point it's like the fire on Sekoto never happened. he looks in the mirror and doesn't recognize the person that looks back at him. the burns were such an intrinsic part of him, even before he became Dabi, even before he woke up sixteen years old with stitches all over his face, back when he was a child and trained his fire with the parts of his body that he he could easily hide under his clothes.

it's nothing like when he woke up from the coma and looked in the mirror for the first time, seeing something his mind struggled to comprehend as himself, the too-old boy with desperation in his eyes and a garish smile cut directly into his face belonging in his worst nightmare that has come true. accepting it back then was easy, the wretched feeling of brokenness following his every footstep since he was four years old. the outside matching his insides was a relief, in a twisted way, as much as it hurt to imagine his family looking at him and not recognizing Touya, as sorrowful as it was to live through that fantasy.

this- just feels wrong. he doesn't see himself in this new, unfamiliar face. what he sees is rather a mosaic of his family's features: his mother's soft white hair, his father's eyes, Fuyumi's eyelashes and Natsuo's stubborn eyebrows. the combination of so familiar but foreign features combined into a mask that was plastered on his own ruined face.

he hated that forlorn looking boy's picture sitting on his altar and he hated thinking that that's how his family remembered him. it's the very same boy's older face that he sees in the mirror.

Touya was never this pitiful, desolate boy. he was always burning, even when the others couldn't see it. being stuck with this hurts worse than being faced with the consequences of his reckless self-abandoning training.

and worst of all, he knows that if he ever starts using his quirk, the cremation process will start all over again.