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Todoroki doesn’t know how to argue, so he just pretends he doesn’t care.
Todoroki doesn’t know how to argue, he just gets quiet instead. He just sort of shrivels, gets small, gets quiet. Too used to getting quiet whenever his dad yells at him, he guesses. He’s only ever tried to argue once or twice, and every time it made it worse. When he was younger, he was too young to know how to argue with a parent, and by the time he was older, he was too used to instinctively laying down and taking it.
He remembers the last time he tried to argue, seriously argue, tell his dad off for all the shit he did. His dad yelled at him for an hour after, while he had to stand there and take it, until he started crying and his dad started yelling at him for that too.
Todoroki doesn’t cry anymore. Not in front other people, anyway (in places when no one’s around, that’s another story).
Once, some kid in Todoroki’s class (who somehow didn’t know who he was) started teasing him on his weird hair. Automatically, Todoroki’s mouth snapped shut and he froze, just sat there staring at the kid without doing anything. He didn’t realize until later why he did it, that that was what he always did when his dad started yelling, just stood or sat and didn’t say anything because that would set him off more. Sitting there, he’d wondered why he wasn’t saying or doing anything, when considering doing anything made him instantly think, no, you can’t, you shouldn’t.
Why not? He remembered thinking, his heart beating fast for a reason he can't name.
I just can’t. I can’t.
The kid was different from his dad, though. He got unnerved when Todoroki kept staring at him blankly and eventually left him alone. Somehow, the kid and all his friends had gotten intimidated from just that, and Todoroki could see them avoiding him even more after whispering a conversation with someone saying, what, you didn’t know? He’s the son of the number two hero!
Maybe everyone would have clustered around him and asked him excitedly about what it was like having a hero for a father if he was more talkative, less intimidating. But Todoroki was quiet. And everyone avoided him from then on instead of seeking him out, probably thinking woah he’s the son of a powerful hero, he’ll mess you up! instead of anything along the lines of hey does your dad ever talk about what he does as a hero around the house? or anything like that.
It was probably for the best anyway. Todoroki didn’t know how he would respond if someone asked him if he had a hero for a father. He didn't really think his dad was one.
He remembered another time when a girl called out his name, even if it was just to ask what he did for a project. Her tone was much sharper than what she probably ever intended.
His head snapped around, like a call to attention, his body stiff and frozen.
“Yes?”
The girl was caught off guard by his reaction and stuttered out an answer, and they had an awkward minute-long conversation. They turned away from each other after that was done.
He’d reacted like she was about to yell at him. He’d tensed, wiped his face of emotion, turned around, prepared for a storm. He’d whipped his head around because usually an inclination that he wasn’t listening would make Dad yell for longer, about disrespect and disservice and failure and not doing what he was told.
He held it in until the end of the period then cried in the bathroom, and wondered why he had to have this family over and over.
Todoroki learned to be...cool, slowly, then all at once. His dad couldn’t yell at him for emotion (being upset, being angry) if he never showed it. He never cried inside the house when he could help it, because his dad had no qualms about walking into his room whenever he felt like it, and there wasn’t a place in the house where he could hide that his dad wouldn’t find him, anyway.
Dad always talked about Todoroki like he was his. He was always his masterpiece, his creation, even his name was his (“My Shoto…”). Never his own person. Either his, or just an extension of him himself. Never his own person.
Sometimes, Todoroki would cry in more bathrooms, laugh at himself for how pathetic he was, and wonder if he really was his own person at all.
Todoroki learned to be cool. He kept it up at school, even though he knew they wouldn’t hurt him like that, because there was always that voice, saying, no, don’t. You can’t. They’ll dismiss you. They’ll yell at you. They'll agree with him. You can’t.
I can’t.
Todoroki always kept quiet and never talked back, no matter who was talking to him, his dad or anyone else.
I can’t. I can’t.
I’m not allowed to.
And, god, the problem was that he was actually nice sometimes, against everything. Todoroki would see him on the news having stopped a robbery, or saved some people, and Todoroki could almost believe he was actually a hero. They would sit at dinner and he’d make a joke and they’d laugh and he was actually nice sometimes, so that the days when he was angry felt like a bad dream, some distant nightmare that didn’t exist and had never happened, and maybe Todoroki was a bad person for believing it ever had because right now there was this man in front of him who was so nice and wasn’t he over-exaggerating things, thinking he was a bad guy? Wasn’t that a terrible thing to do, overreact, condemn him? Wasn’t he was the one in the wrong?
And then Dad would get angry, and it would turn out that the nightmare was real.
Todoroki practiced the ice and he practiced the fire, because his dad would yell at him if he didn’t. Sometimes he’d stare at the hand on his left side, thinking about it for hours, because he tried to keep it from getting into his head, tried to tell himself he wasn’t anybody else’s but the idea bled through in small ways, and sometimes he looked at it like it was proof he was his dad’s in some way, like his dad had staked a claim in him from birth and there it was and he couldn’t get it out and oh, god-
Todoroki’s never been able to argue, so he just acts like he doesn’t care. He acts like the fire doesn’t keep him up at night. Like it doesn’t make him want to claw at that arm, scrape it until it’s raw and scrape out the Quirk, scrape out the proof, scrape out the claim his dad loves to boast about. Like he doesn’t ever think, when he’s feeling really badly, that maybe his mom had the right idea.
He acts like he doesn’t want to use his fire because of a hissy fit, teenage rebellion. He acts like he doesn’t care about it at all, either way. Because his dad may be unhappy with him, he may scold him and yell at him, but what his dad really can’t take is a challenge, and there’ll be hell to pay the day Todoroki finally tells him that he hates him and his fire. If he acts like he doesn’t care, his dad won’t be as angry. If his dad thinks this is all a phase and it’ll be over soon, he won’t yell as much.
Todoroki can’t argue, doesn’t know how to argue, never has. So he just pretends he doesn’t care even though he cares so much he wants to scream, because it’s what works.
Todoroki can’t argue, so he just pretends he doesn’t care.