Aster sits in a chair made of downy and rotten chicken feet. There are broken falcon wings creaking out of the back of the chair. He leans forward, elbows propped on a glass table, checkered black where it isn't clear. Aster clicks a piece, he doesn't know if it goes there, and the shadow-shaped thing across from him smirks like a warped reflection. When he tries to squint, the shadow-shaped thing turns to vapor; he thinks it might be something awful.

The thing grins at him. "Checkmate." it says. He looks at his pieces as they get swallowed by the dark blots, as the color starts to take over the glass. His nails bleed into his skin. The thing laughs like a lunatic, hitching up and down like a voice on helium.

He's gasping for air before he knows it, the ink spilling down his throat, so he burns, burns so that the dark in his mouth might burn out too. The thing walks over to him, he lights up like a star, like a sun gone raw. Aster wants to run, but he can't move can't breathe can't think; he can't can't can't 一

The thing laughs. Whispering in his ear.

"Oh falling angel, don't you know? The stars are prettiest when they're burning."

And then 一

"Niisan niisan get up! Niisan一" Aster snaps his eyes wide open. Breathe coming out quick and hard. Toshi is standing over him, frantic, arms blistered. Who did that, he wonders. Who did that he's going to kill them who dad that to his Toshi一

He sparks his hand, and Toshi flinches and一oh. It was him. Aster hurt Toshi. "Niisan's okay." he says. "Niisan is okay ototo. Niisan is okay." he wraps a wing around Toshi. "Niisan is okay Toshi-san. Niisan is okay."

Aster decides that this is where he dies. This is where he stops being a monster. He's not the thing he was before, he's not that little boy crying out to people who never showed up. He's Toshi's big brother, and that's all he'll ever be. And he's okay with that, really.

"Hush-a-bye, hush-a-bye baby boy," he whispers. "my good boy."

"I'm sorry I'm sorry Niichan don't leave."

Aster grips Toshi closer, holding him so hard he's afraid his fingers will break the bone, "Not gonna leave." He's never going to leave, Toshi is his and he's Toshi's and he'll do anything to keep Toshi safe. "Keito-nii's here, I'm here."

"Don't leave me, don't don't don't."

"Not gonna leave, never gonna leave, don't wanna, yer mine, and I'm yers and we're going to be with each other for a long time. Until we're both ready to go, or until yer ready to go, okay?"

"Okay." Toshi mumbles into his arms, he can feel it in his feathers, rumbling into his stomach and he's so full of love he thinks it might burn, "Okay." He's holding on tight to Toshi, Asters' little brother is the only thing keeping him tethered to the earth right now. He doesn't want to float away again.

"You can go back to sleep if you wan'. I'm stayin', okay?"

Toshi looks at him, eyes wide and so young he wonders what he would look like if his parents stayed, if Tomura-kun got a chance at being himself, if Toshi would have a better life. Aster wonders if his parents had anyone they loved as much as Keito loves Toshi.

"Okay Kei-nii. Forever, right?"

And then-

"Yeah," he whispers, cool and dark, a promise, an oath. "forever and ever and ever."

Aster dies at thirteen, and Keito is made from the remains.

_

It's too cold outside. It's going to snow soon, and Toshi might get hypothermia or something. He'll die in the cold when Keito could have saved him. There's a hole in his chest that misses someone, "C'mon! It's just one more round!"

"I have to go, Tomura-kun." His lungs hurt at the thought of it but he can never remember. All those fancy books he steals from the library say it's a trauma response but Keito's never been to war. You can't be traumatized without an incident and there is no incident.

"But why?"

(He's like a baby, Keito thinks.)

"I need the money." he says, all lies and missing teeth. He's worried and Tomura-kun had a bed and Kurogiri-san to make sure he doesn't freeze up. Toshi doesn't get that. "You know that Tomura-kun."

Tomura-kun whines after him but he does that everytime Keito leaves and he's going to be back tomorrow anyhow. He's running to Giran to drop off the last load and then he's going to pick up Toshi. He's going to check if Toshi's got hypothermia because they don't have central heating and winter is a bitching and a half, according to Giran.

He counts his steps. Four five six. He's got sugar pills and trigger shots in his backpack, he's got knives under his shirt and talons for fingernails. Seven eight nine. Blood got soaked in his hair but nobody'll say anything about it in this place, they've all got their hands dirty with something. Karma doesn't exist for people like them. Like him. Ten eleven twelve.

Drugged in blood and blood. Starved to the bone, half melted all the time, he's got burns tracing all his veins like a bad tattoo he paid too much for. Red aching its way to his throat. He's really careful not to set his head on fire.

Keito doesn't have the body for this, the medication, the support, the constitution for it. He can't sacrifice time he doesn't have. Toshi can't die, Keito won't let him, but Tomura-kun doesn't get that, he wants to kill everything for the sake of it. Keito just wants enough money so he can eat real food at the end of the week instead of dead birds and rats. He supposes that's why Tomura-kun doesn't get it - he's never had to worry about dying like Keito has.

_

And so the problem starts here:

Tomura is under whoever the fuck Toshi is in a priority list made by Keito-kun.

Tomura doesn't fucking like that. He would do something about it if Keito-kun didn't make it real clear if Toshi dies he goes with him, like a fucking loser. Tomura doesn't see the big deal in Toshi's death because the kid must be like, six or seven and annoying like when you break a controller (not that Keito-kun would get that because he's never held a controller, they should play video games the next time Keito-kun comes over). He doesn't really understand Keito-kun but that's why they get along, Keito-kun doesn't understand him either, so its⎯

Equal, or something. They're both turducken mysteries and things are gonna stay like that because even if they tell each other a secret another one fills the gap. Tomura would like to know Keito-kun better but he's always doing work. It's weird, because kids aren't supposed to work on anything but themself. Sensei says that he's supposed to get stronger and better at being angry at heroes, and Tomura is plenty angry at heroes, so he plays video games and when the lights go out because heroes have fights and the electricity is trash because of it, Sensei says that everything is the heroes fault, the heroes corrupted sensei's little brother and killed him.

Sure, Keito-kun isn't that great, staring off at the wall, tracking something that he only sees with his eyes and hearing sounds with his super hearing because he's got an animal quirk or whatever. Stupid Keito-kun, stupid Toshi, and stupid Kurogiri for making him talk with Keito-kun to begin with. He would've just dusted him if he'd known. It's stupid of himself, Tomura knows. It's too late, and he already knows Keito-kun too much to ever dust him, no matter how often he thinks about it.

Not that it means anything.

Tomura thinks about killing everything he knows, turning the whole bar to ash. He won't, though. He won't. Who would he play video games with if Keito is dead?

_

Selling Trigger is a new normal. Keito still sells other things on Boss' orders, but it's mostly with the Yakuza. Keito doesn't know what's been going on, mostly, but today's different for one reason: Boss gave him a gun. Keito doesn't know why, Boss doesn't tell him, only looks at him. Keito doesn't like that - the way he's being looked at, it makes him feel like his skin was put on wrong today and that he's wrong, except you can't put your skin on wrong. Keito ignores it.

"Ask, ah what's that fuckers name -" Boss-Giran stomps his foot and breathes in his different that normal cigarette. It smells weird. " Jurochi for shooting lessons, fucker knows how to aim good enough to shoot a bullseye high on shrooms."

Keito scrunches his face into an approximation of who?

"The drunk?" Boss asks.

"Deidoro-san?" Keito asks, slow. That's the only drunk he knows on the Hassiaki's side. "He has long hair and his breath stinks." A woosh floats overhead, loud but Giran doesn't hear - Keito wonders how long it would take to get to Dubai; he could go with Hitoshi and they could sell Japanese food. Keito wonders if they have Japanese food in Dubai, or in Vietnam or or or or-

Boss snaps and grins wildly, the cigarette hanging in his yellow teeth ashes off at the ends, "Yeah, him."

"He almost burnt down the building - I didn't like the smoke, it made my throat itchy - ah, sashimi makes my throat itchy too, I don't like it and fish are ewey anyway they make me feel shumushy and, and, and uh," Keito starts. "My little brother likes sashimi but only with sesame oil and it's expensive -" They don't have a lot of money, but Giran knows that - that's why Keito's his best worker. He needs the money and he's young and he can't afford to say no.

"Anyway," Boss looks annoyed, Keito looks at his shoes and a giggle mocks him, the Boss is laughing at him; "you're being stupid," he says. "You need to sell two million yen worth of Tigger in three months, weekly payments, it's a big job."

Keito closes his hands so hard his nails bite through the skin. "How much?"

His voice cracks and Giran cracks up. "Five hundred thousand minimum- you probably won't need to do a big job for a long time. "

And the thing with Keito is that he loves his brother, he loves Toshi so much he'd burn himself all over again for Toshi to smile, he's bleeding and he's going to laugh the whole time because Toshi can't know how bloody his hands are keeping a roof over the house and food on the plate. Toshi can't know how expensive uniforms are or how much Keito is preparing for when he finally gets to his prestigious Nabu Middle School - because the entrance exam is four thousand yen and the uniform is a hundred thousand yen.

They can't afford that, not if they want to eat for the year, so Keito is starting now.

Because Toshi can't know that Keito is legally irredeemable and nobody can catch him. Toshi won't forgive himself and Keito will die before Toshi thinks himself unforgivable when he's only nine. (Or was he ten? He's nine, isn't he?)

Shhhhh, he'll know.. The man next to him says, and Keito guesses he's right. He nods at the man but he's already gone.

_

There's something disgustingly familiar about hunger. This pit in his stomach has made a home, he's a black hole, bugs, birds, and mice, and bark when he's haze hungry, to make up his diet. Hunger doesn't reach him, most days. Like it knows nothing will come down, Keito's more likely to throw up than he is to eat anything that isn't hundred-yen roadkill or trash that seemed mostly edible (one time he found half a sandwich in a garbage near the library on the nice part of town and he ate the whole thing while Toshi was at school, it was the best thing he's ever had).

Keito tries to ignore it when it hits, hunger claws at his throat and he swallows it. Toshi can't know his sixteen-year old big brother is infallible, it would kill him.

He's holding bell peppers, rice, and a bar of soap. The rice and peppers were paid for but he didn't have enough for the soap so he just.. Stuck it in his backpack and nobody called him out for it.

Keito isn't a bad person, he knows. He helps people cross the street, he stops rapists and pedos and walks his little brother to school whenever he can.

But just because he isn't bad doesn't mean he's good because Keito isn't a good person. He isn't, he knows that, it keeps him up, knowing he destroys everything he touches, he's breaking his brother and Tomura-kun just from proximity but he can't help it; the primal part of him that makes him kill birds and eat meat raw likes to keep things.

The good new is that he did, in fact sell all the Trigger, or, well, he's on his last round right now, he has one more left to sell and there's a goddamn hero chasing him and Keito cannot get caught with Trigger, not when it's this illegal, he'll get put away for ten years minimum and worse: Toshi's gonna know.

So, the answer of course: he's running. He's been running through a district toward some pull of home really fucking fast. The hero from the radio that Toshi puts on is behind him, screaming, making Keito trip up on the way.

He falls (he's going to die-). The hero catches up to him, falls over him, looks him in the eye. "You're a kid," he says. "Little listener, why are you doing this?"

Keito knows he looks dirty and poor and it makes him feel ugly, he bares his sharp teeth and his stomach growls. He's hungry, he always is.

Something like Ito's expression falls into the hero's and he gets up. "Kid, I-" there's a call behind him, have you caught him, Mic? and the hero looks at Keito, "trigger is two thousand a piece right?"

"Four thousand," Keito corrects. He tries to kick the hero but the guy doesn't flinch, instead he drops four thousand yen on the ground.

"Give me the Trigger and get out." he orders, Keito scrambles for the money and hands the hero his last batch of Trigger and he scurries off. He doesn't stop running until he's in the Yakuza-nice part of town, where nobody lives so it isn't too bad. He hunches his backpack over his shoulder and hurries to the meeting point for the money to be split, he skimps the extra two-thousand yen into his pockets.

He needs it more than them, he reasons.

A man with blonde hair stands next to Deidoro-san. He looks very calm, but that just means he's mean, like Boss and Boss's boss who only talks through the Television now.

Keito chirps out a greeting and Deidoro-san turns to him; the blonde man turns with him and Keito runs faster toward them. He gets there and pulls a big envelope with all the payments in them and hands it into Deidoro-sans' crooked, shaking hands. He counts the money in little segments and then hands it to the blonde man.

"You do it," he slurs. "Kid gets like.. Seven percent of earnings. Tha's the pay rate, gotta send like, thirteen percent to.. wass'is name? Girun? " Deidoro-san stumbles away, the only thing stable about him is the bottle in his hand and the goggles on his head.

The blonde man is one of the ones wearing a mask - that's been happening more, apparently the successor to be has a-gor-a-something, he's afraid of the outside. Keito wishes he could be afraid of the outside, he can't, he'd starve. And Keito is hungry, aching, starving, always. Toshi is, too, and Keito would become empty if Toshi was full, but they don't have enough food even if Keito doesn't eat any of it but-

He's handed enough money to fill his entire backpack with ten-thousand yen bills.

"Ya did good." Says the man with a crackly voice. "Uh- name's Setsuno."

Keito can't help copying it, really. "You too, name's Fallen."

Then the man squints his eyes into a glare and Keito flinches; "My quirk- " he says, quick. "Copies phrases I like- your voice is- I like your voice I want to - keep it."

He looks angry, he looks angry like when Endeavor burnt down the district, like Keito when he was Aster angry angry angry and angry hurts everyone. Keito doesn't like the hurt, it only spreads, and Setsuno looks mean; when Keito leaves he makes a note to avoid the Hassaikai from now on