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When Shouto was younger, he didn’t quite grasp the concept of a name.
Something that other people addressed you as that referred to him and only him, something that showed how people cared about him based on the way they addressed him.
Shouto was hesitant to say that anyone had ever cared about him at all, because they hadn’t, not really, not in the way he needed them to.
Growing up, no one called him Shouto—no one except Mom, but even just the memory of searing pain and then biting cold, a woman’s voice he no longer recognized screaming, making his ears ring from the sound, was too much for him. He couldn’t think about it, not when thinking about it meant reliving that painful memory, the heat and the cold and the pain and betrayal-
After Shouto turned five, Touya died, and mom was sent away for good, no one called him Shouto. His tutors addressed him by Todoroki, as did anyone else that he had the displeasure of coming into contact with while at home. None of them were particularly nice people, nor did they teach him particularly well, but they got the job done and knew how to take money and shut up, as Shouto had noticed.
Father never called Shouto by his name, only addressing him by “the Masterpiece,” or even, if it was a good day, “my Masterpiece.”
Shouto wasn’t allowed to see his siblings. It had been like that for so long that sometimes he could hardly remember that they existed at all. He doubted that they cared for him much at all, especially since he was the reason Mom was sent away.
Mom hadn’t even had time to hang out with them as much after he had been born. Even as a baby, Shouto had been ruining people’s lives.
When Shouto turned seven, one of his new tutors noticed something entirely peculiar about him. Since Shouto was essentially homeschooled—bringing in outside tutors still counts as homeschooling, though his father taught him little more than how to grit his teeth and bear the pain—he never had to write his name on any of his papers. Shouto was a smart kid, had picked up on reading quickly and was an exceptional writer for his age, and yet…
And yet, when this new tutor asked Shouto to write his name on the top of the paper when he turned it into her, since she tutored more than only him, he stared at her like she was crazy.
She urged him to write his name again, quickly becoming worried when he still didn’t move a muscle. He was typically so obedient in class, and even Shouto could tell that she was beginning to freak out a little, but he didn’t know what to do. What if he did the wrong thing again and she went crazy, poured boiling water on his face, and was sent away to the mental hospital for the rest of her life?
“Hiragana is okay,” she assured, not getting what he was struggling with. He had no way of protesting, though. Father always said that if he didn’t listen to something the tutors said, he would feel it the next day in training.
Shouto threw up that day and most certainly did not want to throw up again the day after—he was already plenty exhausted and ready to drop.
So, Shouto listened to her, writing out in his perfectly neat hiragana characters, perfected by hours of practice and the occasional harsh scolding from his father.
Ke-ssa-ku. Masterpiece.
His tutor looked alarmed and more than a bit confused. Their session ended quickly after that, something that confused Shouto, since they still had another hour planned. He knew, because he always counted down the minutes until he had to see Father again, though not out of any excitement. He was anticipating the pain that came from interacting with him, the hours of screaming and yelling until his brain went fuzzy and he couldn’t remember what happened anymore.
Despite having an hour left, the tutor left to speak with Father as soon as he came home. Shouto didn’t know what she told the man, but he never saw her again and had the “training” session of his life that night. He felt the bruises for weeks and couldn’t even remember what he had been screaming at him about.
The same thing happened with the next tutor he had, though they had managed to see his father on a good day. It didn’t spare the tutor their job, but it did save Shouto from more bruised ribs and broken burns.
This time, his father stood in front of him, his intimidating presence making Shouto nearly shake—he would have been trembling if not for the fact that his father absolutely hated when he did.
“Your name is Todoroki Shouto.” Father said. “When someone asks you to write your name, that is what you will write. Understood?”
Despite the fact that this was his father when he was being kind, Shouto couldn’t help but be afraid of him. He nodded his head jerkily, hoping that it would hide the way his lip wobbled. He didn’t get it.
Who was Todoroki Shouto? Shouto himself certainly didn't know them. Shouto was Masterpiece. That was what his father always told him when justifying why he was better than his siblings—which he still didn’t understand, since they looked so cool, but he knew better than to speak back to his father—and he even had a very old, fuzzy memory of an older boy with red and white hair addressing him by the same title.
As Shouto grew up, he quickly began to connect being addressed by Shouto with his father when he was trying to look normal. At first, he didn’t understand why his father would flip-flop between the names, but then he connected that Father called him Shouto in public.
Still, the only person who ever called him Shouto was Father. How was he supposed to be Shouto if the only contributing factor was Endeavor? He didn’t want everything about him to lead back to his father. He wanted to be his own person, to do well outside of him, to prove that he can be a hero of his own right, not because of the man who “raised” him.
So, at fifteen years old, when Aizawa called him to the front of the class to present his hero name, he showed his own name, written in beautiful kanji, the kind that most people his age were incapable of.
Shouto. From now on he would be Shouto.