Chapter Text
"He is a weapon, a killer. Do not forget it. You can use a spear as a walking stick, but that will not change its nature."
― Madeline Miller, The Song of Achilles
When he was seven, the course of Todoroki Shouto’s life was forever altered. It began with a car wreck, with men in suits pulling him from the battered vehicle. Taking him from the light of the outside world down into a fortress. Into a darkness that surrounded him, until he became one with it.
Now Shouto sat on his knees before the upper echelon of the Eight Precepts of Death. This was his initiation ceremony, which he had been training for six years now to reach. At last he was ready to truly become the gift he was meant to be.
The Overseer’s gaze held the weight of mountains as he looked upon him. “I’m told you wish to take a vow of silence and want to make that vow permanent.”
Shouto nodded. “Correct.”
“Speak your final words, and then proceed.”
Taking the dagger in his hands, Shouto kept his gaze trained towards the golden-eyed man who was now his master. “My final words are this: Chisaki Kai, I am yours to command, yours to use. I will serve you to the death and beyond.” And with that declaration, he unsheathed the dagger and began to cut his neck, aiming to sever his voice box.
As the blade sliced through the delicate layers of flesh and sinews of muscle to reach its target, Shouto felt as though he were being born again. Not a new sensation. He had stood upon the threshold of death over a dozen times now. Brought back only by the mercy of his master.
I am a demon. A weapon. The living shadow of Chisaki Kai. That is all that I am, and all that I will ever be .
+
When he remembers these moments, they’re always in fragments, like a book with pages ripped out. He believes he was eight when it first started, but he could be wrong.
Lying on the hard, unforgiving cot he was permitted to sleep on, no rest came to him. In the movies and shows he remembered watching, they always made it seem like too much pain would put you to sleep. Now he knew that was a lie. Pain kept him awake when nothing else would. Kept him delirious, his vision fuzzy and fading in and out.
A man came into the room, eyes golden like a wild cat, a strange mask on the lower half of his face which made him appear grotesque to the child. Nightmarish.
He began touching Shouto freely wherever he wished. Prying fingers (his night clothes torn), hungry eyes (his body examined). Reducing him piece by piece into an unclaimed object. His body felt too heavy to move himself so he laid frozen, dread choking him. A wet stream fell from between his legs and soaked through the cot.
Oh the man wasn’t hurting him yet, but he knew it was coming.
What boy hasn’t torn apart his toy in a curious, greedy display of dominant possession?
In the end the man made him cry and sob and with strange slips of paper, he soaked up Shouto’s tears. “Beautiful.” He said. “I’ve never seen someone suffer so beautifully.”
+
It only takes two life cycles in the wild for a feral pig to become a wild boar. It took Shouto three years of constant pain and torment to morph from a terrified child to cold steel being fashioned into a blade. Every footstep an attempted wound.
When he was first brought underground, they spent the initial two years working him through a variety of torture methods. Teaching him to endure pain. More than once, Shouto thought he would die from how much it hurt. But he was always healed eventually by the man with the golden eyes. In time he came to accept pain as an integral part of his life. That did not mean he had ceased to suffer from it.
His tears were always collected, on thin slips of paper or into a bottle. Third year was when the actual combat training began. Shouto was made to fight other boys his own age or a little older, all for the chance to be granted a temporary reprieve from physical suffering. And fight he did, to the death, killing one after another.
His trainers boasted of his resolve, his swift desensitizing to bloodshed. Shouto was special, he was going to become the greatest gift the Boss had ever given one of his subordinates.
While Shouto mastered the art of killing, he took no joy in it and thought less of those around him that did. They had deluded themselves into believing they were a measure above animals. But what species reveled in violence for the sake violence? Only the most primitive.
+
“Please…” The boy beneath him begged, eyes wide with primal fear. Usually when they’d spar you couldn’t read his expression at all. But death had a way of bringing out raw honesty in others.
Shouto’s grip on the blade tightened, his eyes narrowed. Blood ran from his nose to his lips before dripping onto his opponent’s face. He had him pinned, all that was left was for him to claim his victory. This was no idle game. It never was here. Only bloodsport and there could be but one winner.
He knew he was being watched closely from outside the room. There was always someone watching him.
"Mercy…” Shouto breathed out, trying to make his voice flat and steady. Unaffected. “Mercy is weakness.”
“No-” He plunged the blade into his opponents chest, pushing through a sternum that gave like wet clay under the pressure he applied to the blow. Shouto kept his eyes on the other boy’s. They had grown even wider, pupils shrinking into a sea of white. Life began to bleed out in a surprisingly slow process. While he could have left the boy on the floor to die, turned away, Shouto felt the kindest act he could allow was to pay witness to his death. Because he knew what they would do to the body. It would be taken to be burned. Like trash.
That was the worth of a loser’s life. A simple truth. From the moment a human is born until the day they died their life had a value that either fluctuated or decreased based shifting sets of conditions. All life was never equal in the eyes of men, merely a game of checks and balances. A scale going up and down. Shouto was determined to remain on top. The cost of doing so no longer mattered to him.