So this got started when I found the following prompt on the bnha kink meme:

I love fics where Rei leaves and takes the kids with her, but that's not what I want today.

I want to see Enji coming into the kitchen to his wife screaming, his youngest son injured and realizing how badly he's fucked up.

I want him getting Rei the help she needs and trying to figure out how to be a better parent while still being a hero. Maybe he gets counseling. Then he's realizing all the little things that have just been piling up in the corners that he's caused.

TLDR:

I just want Endeavor to try, really try, at raising his kids better.
-

And it got me thinking. See, I have complicated feelings where Endeavor's concerned. I grew up in an emotionally and mentally abusive house. But my parents got better. I'm not making excuses; what they did and how they treated me was fucked up, and likewise, I'm still recovering. But abusers can change. Sometimes, rarely. But they're people, and people have that capacity.

As far as I can tell, Endeavor is currently trying to be a better person. If he is indeed being a manipulative fuck, then this will really be an AU and I'll have to settle with that.

With that said, I love fics where he gets called out for his behavior and gets bashed. But I felt like something different.

Enji Todoroki was not a man prone to emotion.

He prided himself on his ability to place a distance between what he felt and how he acted.

But, sitting in the waiting room of the hospital, waiting for news on his son and his wife, Enji became acutely aware of the difference between ignoring how you felt and the complete abscense of feeling in a new, horrifying way.

Shock, his brain supplied helpfully.

He'd seen it in civilians, the complete shut down to prevent mental overload or to ignore a debilitating injury. He'd never...never imagined this.

Sitting there, waiting for word from anyone, Enji Todoroki realized that his hands were shaking.

He was Endeavor, the Number 2 Hero (and no matter how much that title stung, there was nothing professionally wrong with it. Many would kill to be in his position). His home was his fortress. The sounds of screaming had made him think that a villain (a very stupid, soon to be dead villain) had somehow found him and targeted his home. He'd come running, burning in all his glory, only to find his son on the floor, writhing in pain and screaming, Rei frantically struggling against Touya and Fuyumi as she sobbed, Natsuo on the phone with the paramedics. Rei struggled like an angry cat, and Enji had been the one to take over and try and separate her from their son.

Her panic had turned to blind fury in a moment, and she'd fought him.

She'd screamed and clawed at him, ice vaporizing as quickly as she could materialize it.

"You did this! It's your fault! You drove me to this!"

In their years of marriage, Rei had stood against him before. She'd spoken out, she'd argued, but it was quiet sort of rebellion, comparable to a shack before a hurricane. Her stands were brief, silent, and ultimately to no avail. But she'd never raised a hand or quirk against him.

But today, the look in her eyes was that of a mad dog.

So there they were; Shouto in the pediatric ward, Rei in psychiatric (sedated to the gills for now, but slated for evaluation the moment she was lucid) and Enji here.

All he could hear was static, behind that the low thumping of his own heartbeat. There was a sinking sensation, and the feeling that he locked in place, unable to move, despite watching the trembling of his fingers.

Absently, Enji realized that it was helplessness.

It was an alien feeling by now.

Enji Todoroki hadn't felt helpless since the dark days of his childhood, and it was something he'd never imagined feeling again.

Desperately, he found himself trying to turn away from that uncomfortable realization, but his mind was only going in circles, touching on the same things from new, worsening angles.

The kitchen, the veneer of safety shattered, then the ambulance, watching Shouto as he was looked over. He'd never realized just how small the boy was until he was looking at the 6 year old on the gurney, pale with pain and flinching from the medics.

Shouto's eye was fine.

(It was the left side, of course it was fine-)

He'd have scarring, but his vision wasn't impaired.

So his son was fine.

But his wife was not.

Psychotic break was an ugly term but it had been uglier to witness. Her violent mania had receeded into a quiet catatonia, interspersed with uncontrollable sobbing.

"It will take time," the doctor promised, "but we can help her." And Enji could only take him at his word.

Mental health was unfamiliar territory. In Enji's world you didn't get sick; any weakness was a challenge to overcome. Any emotion that wasn't productive, any feeling, was to be dismissed and ignored. Confronted by something that he couldn't fight or ignore, he was at a loss of what to do.

He didn't stop and see her before he took the boy home.

In the following days, the house was quiet. Enji had hoped that they could go on without acknowledging the ugliness of the last few days, and pretend that nothing had happened.

At first, it seemed that he might get his wish. Fuyumi had taken up Rei's place in keeping the house running, and Enji couldn't find much fault with what she was doing. Things ran smooth, Fuyumi never overstepped her bounds, and she didn't talk about it.

Shouto, however, was less adjusted. And Enji had expected it. He'd braced himself for a breakdown that could be handled, for a tantrum, though the boy had never been one for throwing fits. What he hadn't been prepared for was the boy's unnerving stillness and silence. He said nothing, looked through everyone, existing inside his own head, only an empty shell. It was unnerving. He wandered about the house like a ghost, silently, mechanically.

He'd get over it, recover. Pain was a foothold to becoming better, getting stronger.

It all went to hell at lunch.

Fuyumi made the meal under Enji's eye, they all sat at the table, Touya stared his father down with the flat stare of a man who had nothing to lose, while Natsuo kept quiet, gaze darting from person to person. Shouto was there only in body.

Then the tea kettle began to scream.

Enji saw it in slow motion:

He saw his youngest go pale as bone, as if he'd been injured, saw his pupil contract into a pinprick, and open his mouth in a scream that sounded more animal than human. As everyone startled, Shouto threw himself away from the table, still screaming as he scrambled away.

The kettle kept tune with him.

Fuyumi fumbled, caught between trying to comfort her brother, or turning off the burner, hands paused in midair. Touya was the one to vault over the table and rush to the stove, removing the kettle and dumping it in the sink.

Enji could only take it all in, watching his family with the eyes of a man looking at a living nightmare.

He saw Shouto, sobbing, flinching and too small, bandaged, shrinking from Natsuo's awkward attempts at comfort. Natsuo, too pale, not strong enough, unsure of what to say. Fuyumi, scared and shaken, eyes darting from him to her brothers as she carefully made her way to them, trying to take over, flanked by Touya, his silence accusatory, not turning his back on his father.

(Hadn't that been the first lesson that Endeavor had beaten into him? Never allow your enemy weakness-

Oh.

Enji's hands were shaking again)

He walked out.