Meeting with Shigaraki Tomura becomes standard. It comes to play that he memorized some things about the kid (Tomura's a whole year younger than him, and that means that Kurogiri says that Aster's in charge when he leaves them). He knows that Tomura knows things too, things he keeps secret. Nobody knows about Toshi, but he knows that Aster has a little brother.

(Aster also knows how to kill the kid without thinking, but so does Tomura. They spar, sometimes. Boss's just glad he has a higher contact on the food chain; that he's getting along with, if the rumors are right, and they are, one of biggest menaces underground.)

Aster's damn near fifteen. He's also dumb as shit, all things considered for the brain in his head; for as shitty as their school is, they still have a rulebook. A rulebook that made them call DCS on Aster's ass. Aster's going to get a hit on whoever did that. He knows none of Toshi's bruises are from him, and the kid eats more than Aster does most days, he does his work. Apparently, there was some goody-two-shoes who thought they were doing the world a favor by separating him from his little brother. (Toshi is his ototo and he's never going to let go. Ever.)

He's whining about it to Tomura. "I'm gonna kill whoever said that shit. Toshi's mine. "

"Y'talk about him like he's an object, he's not your fucking favorite weapon in inventory."

Aster knows his pupils are thin from the way Tomura flinches back, scratching at his neck, around that creepy hand of his. "Toshi's mine, I'm Toshi's."

"Fallen," there's a buzzing, purple swallows his eyes in foggy shapes. "Giran-san is here for you."

"Boy wonder." Boss nods from behind his glass. It smells awful, like that shit that Papa used to make him drink when he burned himself. "I gotta job for you."

Aster can see something dust in Tomura-kun's hand. He ignores it. Tomura-kun isn't paying him to hang out, and Toshi needs the money for a new uniform and maybe a homemade dinner. Where they can both eat. "See ya later, Shigaraki-san."

"Fallen." Tomura-kun blinks. He nods, soft, like this means goodbye; Aster wonders how many people he's nodded goodbye forever.

__

It's an ugly job. It's a very ugly job. There's ash and soot and that awful smell like a crematorium and he knows he's smelled that before, he knows. He knows it, he does. It's like his reflection, maybe. If black ink spilled down the middle and he cracked the glass into his then-bloodied knuckles. Now-bloodied, really. His hands are sticky and red and his entire head is filled with something red.

He wonders quietly, in that secret place, dark place in his head, what Toshi would say if he knew that this is what Aster does.

He gets his hands dirty.

_

"Toshi!" Aster's smile is loud, it's a tad too wide.

"Niichan, niichan, niichan!" Toshi's fumbling at Aster, eyes wide wide wide and childish, like he's going to live forever, Aster hopes he does. "Look! I made a drawing of us! Look!"

He did. Toshi's eight, so his artistic renditions aren't Michelangelo or anything, but it still makes his chest swell fondly. There's a crayola remake of a choppy Toshi, face purple and sharp, and Aster is holding his hand with a backpack on to carry his feathers. Toshi made their eyes both blue, the same blue, some kind of deep, sea-driven color. Aster feels something choke up in his mouth.

"That's一that一we're gonna hang it on the wall!" Aster says. "We're gonna buy a stupid frame and, and, and一"

"Don't have to!" Toshi says, quick. Aster looks at him, because why not? He can just steal a frame and patch the weird hook they have on their shitty apartment. "I一I mean. Keito-nii, it一you don't gotta."

"'Course I don't, 'toto, but I wanna. Look! People are gonna wan'it when yer all big and famous, Shimura Toshi's childhood crayon collection! It'll be everywhere, they'll be makin' fakes, y'know?"

Toshi goes all red in that pleasant way that makes Aster's grin go all big and wide. There's a kind of warmth in his chest, a humming that keeps him sturdy, loved. Well-worn and crowned like it's a tapestry to put amongst the masses. This is love, if love is anything. This is what it is. A rumbling, steady and smooth and一and一and一

"Yeah," Toshi's sniffling. Aster wonders who did that. He'll kill'em. "yeah I do."

Aster grins, even though the world is terribly ugly and grim, he smiles, because he's never been one to give in all that easily. He's too fast for his own good, sometimes. Maybe that's the silver lining. Maybe.

He'll think about it, maybe.

_

There's a monster in the walls. Aster looks it right in the eye leaking out of its head and it smiles. Its' teeth look like Aster's. He wonders what that means.

_

Giran is getting snappier, Aster steps on eggshells with the precision of an elephant that does not want them to crack. Giran doesn't appreciate it, he almost shoots Aster in the foot for standing there too long, hissing into the phone. Aster is stepping on eggshells like they're landmines, like one twitch will send him falling.

They won't have enough money for food at the end of the week. It's fine. He'll go back to eating bugs and dead birds.

"Yo, pay fucking attention, shithead, I need to to do somethin' for me."

"Yessir?"

Giran puts out his seventh cigarette, grinding it under his feet in the way that drives Aster up the walls. He doesn't say anything though, Giran's already in a bad mood. "Y'know the Hassaikai?"

Aster tilts his head. Everyone knows about the Hassiakai. Their old leader kicked the bucket two months ago and there's been an uprising. "Yeah?"

"They want me to set'em up with a gopher to run some shit. They'll be payin' us both a pretty penny. What'dya say?"

"What're they putting out?"

Giran scowls. "Trigger."

Aster grimaces. He doesn't want to, he really, really doesn't want to一but. They could really use the money. Aster swallows his doubts and smiles, sharp and sweet like this it almost covers the guilt burning in the back of his mouth. "Yeah." He swallows. Toshi won't forgive him, he knows. "I'll do it."

Toshi's going to be a hero, though, and he needs to be alive to do that.

_

Toshi turns nine today and Aster won't be able to go home today. There's a note about it, and a cake in the fridge if Toshi wants any. There's a feather by the door. Toshi meanders in, and there's something excited in the way he bounces up and down the walls; Aster swallows the feeling in his chest and blames the welling in his eyes for the way air lashes on his eyes from the medical mask.

"Your job," says a tacky man in white. "Is to distribute everything from the fifteenth to second in Airinchiku. We will check your pay, and if you get robbed, you'd best kill the guy or make up the money somehow before coming back." The tacky man looks at Aster. "Go on, Fallen. They sell for two-thousand yen apiece. No freebies."

Aster nods, takes the package, stuffs it in his backpack and folds the feathers over top. He smiles under the mask when he leaves, taking it off. He hops on a train to Tokyo.

It takes too long, despite how short the ride actually is. Aster hums to himself; keeps his thoughts in his head and keeps his focus on using his feather to play with Toshi. He gets off the train and he feels like a ghost. He's not allowed to be spotted, they could take Toshi away. Rule number two and all that.

He knows he's going to follow it to his death一because he knows what looks like and it's Toshi. It's staying up until two days later when his purple-haired not brother makes him sleep and he doesn't wake up til the next three hours have passed, and he's screaming, so Toshi just puts him back to sleep. And sometimes Aster will try to think back to the name before it was the nickname一Toshi. It's spending his money on gauze and bandages because they're both trouble makers with a penchant for saving people even when they don't want to. Toshi is the sun during rain, the rain in a heatwave, the stars when the sky is clear from pollution, after it rains.

Aster chokes it down. He has a job to do. It's for Toshi, he promises. Because Toshi's going to be a hero, and he needs to live long enough to die a martyr, he needs to live long enough that Aster can save him when he's falling; because Aster will catch Toshi because he knows he can fly where Toshi can't. He is going to be Toshi's hero, pick him up where he falls, he is Toshi's big brother, his niisan, he is his brother. And Toshi is Aster's world. They aren't anything special, slum-boys in a slumyard, uneducated. Aster isn't going to make far, but Toshi一Toshi will. Toshi's going to be a hero. And that is everything.

_

Aster doesn't like dreaming, he dreams of white hair and red eyes and he doesn't like the association with Tomura.

_

The cigarettes on the side corner choke him up. He thinks he might've been a boy once. He thinks he might've had a father once, maybe two, he can't remember their names, their faces, but he knows in his heart of hearts that he has his father's eyes. It makes him want to scream. It makes the walls whisper at him to scream.

_

The end of the world starts on a Tuesday, in his dreams. It starts in a house fire, it starts in a field. The end of the end of the world starts on a Wednesday, and there was a woman with red eyes and short white hair and a horn that glowed golden that promised reprieve if he saved a hero. If he told a hero that a boy's quirk is called something if a boy named victory wins his first year一if useless loses he's supposed to tell the end of a pencil, the name of a hero, that a boy's quirk is the name of an old movie quote that Tomura said would be cool to watch. All for one and one for all 一 there must be an All for One if there is a One for All, there must be a yang, if there is a yin.

Aster wonders why the weight of the end of the world, which happens on a Tuesday, which ends on a Wednesday, was placed on the flammable wings of a boy who cannot make his mind up on what his name is.

Sometimes, he wonders what he'd do if he had an inch of time to himself. If the end of the end of the world was not laced on the back of an eleven-year-old boy一

Aster wonders what he'd do if he did not dream about the end of the end of the world.

(If there is a woman that could end the world, he wonders why she didn't go back on her own.)

_

At least Giran was right. He did make a pretty penny.

_

The sun is going back up when he gets back home, his knees bob against each other and his back aches. Toshi is waiting on the chair in the itty bitty kitchen they have. He's all sleepy and shit. And Aster smiles through the drowsiness eating his skin, because even when he feels like he's something else, a monster in a world of gods, he's anything but lonely.

He's read it, and if home is what you make of it, Aster hopes he doesn't ruin the shoddy structure he's bled over. He's mastered the art of keeping his head above the stress, if he doesn't eat then he can't throw up and Toshi gets more food.

"'Toto-chan!" he grins too wide, but he knows it's real. Toshi smiles back a grimace.

"Uh, niisan, this is my friend. She's sleeping over."

There's a girl with a buzz cut sitting on the other chair, her cheeks are a burning red, baby fat helplessly stuck to the sides. "Hi!" She cheers. "I'm Uraraka Ochako, and you can call me Uraraka, only Tocchan can call me Akocchan."

"Parents know she's here?"

"Yeah."

"Hey there, Uraraka-kun, I'm Toshi's niisan, Keito. You can call me Kei-chan if you'd like."

Uraraka tilts her head. "Okay Kei-chan."