It’s been a long day, and I’m just glad that the Commission didn’t seem to go as hard on Kaito as they usually do.

“You might be right,” I sigh in defeat. I can’t keep the fact that I’m actually considering his theory from him. “I think Dabi might actually be Touya.”

Really? Kaito signs back with wide eyes. What’s he like?

“Kai, I need you to understand that if he is, Dabi isn’t the same Touya I knew.” Even if I’m letting him know that he might be right, I don’t want him to get his hopes up too high. “I need you to remember that Touya or not, Dabi is still a villain.”

Kaito rolls his eyes at me. I know. I know, but so is the Commission.

That drags a slight chuckle out of me. The Commission does act pretty villainous at times. I’m about to respond when the burner phone Dabi gave me starts ringing. Why would he be calling me this late when we just spoke earlier?

“What’s up, Dabs?” I answer the phone. I have to wave away one of Kaito’s feathers that he sends to listen in the moment he hears me mention Dabi.

Dabi’s voice on the other side of the line is more chilling than normal. “We need to talk, Birdie. Meet me at the warehouse in an hour.”

“Understood.” I respond quickly. I wonder what has him so up tight. He wasn’t like this earlier when I was trying to get his reaction from me talking about Touya.

Since I only have an hour to meet with him, I have Kaito fly with me to the Commission, they would know if I left him by himself, and as soon as Kai is situated there, I take off for the warehouse, curious, and a little scared, of the reason that he wants to speak with me.

I arrive at the warehouse a little early, but it doesn’t matter because Dabi is already there, sitting on the floor and glaring at the door that I walk in through. Dabi has given me hard looks a few times since I met him, but never one this menacing. What did I do? Did he figure out that I think he’s Touya? Is he angry that I might know who he is?

“Keigo, how dare you!?” Dabi almost yells once I’m standing in front of him. He clumsily gets to his feet. “How long was I gone before you found someone else!? A day!? A month!?”

How long was he..? My eyes widen in shock. He literally just gave himself away as Touya, but what does he mean about finding someone else? I’ve never been able to get over his death enough to try dating, not like I have the time to anyways. “Touya?”

“Don’t Touya me!” He’s really pissed, and fire is dancing across his palms now. “Earlier, you were saying how I was the love of your life. Was that all a lie!?”

Now I’m really confused. I would answer, but I’m too stunned. Kaito has been right this whole time, Dabi really is Touya.

“I faked my death to get away from Endeavor.” He lurches a step towards me. “And you just turned around and found someone else, and had a little love child with them!”

“How do you know about him?” No one knows about Kaito. No one except me and the Commission, and now Endeavor, but I’m sure he barely even remembers our conversation.

“So you don’t deny the existence of your little love child.” Dabi’s flames on his palms are growing in intensity the angrier he gets. “Toga found out about the little brat for me. She’s very good at reconnaissance and undercover work.”

So I wasn’t crazy when I thought I had heard someone entering the house behind me earlier. It was Toga. She must have gotten ahold of the blood of someone with an invisibility quirk, someone like that girl in class 1A.

“Did she even describe him to you?” I ask calmly. If he’s anything like he was when we were teenagers, calm reasoning is the only thing that will get through to him. “Did she tell you how old he is?”

Dabi scoffs. “Why would I need to know those things? All I need to know is that the little brat is yours.”

I pull out my phone. “I swear, I’m not calling anyone. I want to show you something, Touya.”

I can tell that Dabi doesn’t want to let me use my phone, but his curiosity gets the better of him. I open my photos, and pull up the most recent picture I have of Kaito then hold out the phone so that Dabi can see the screen.

Dabi steps closer, his hands still engulfed in flames.

“This is Kaito,” I give him a look that pleads with him to understand. “Touya, who does he look like?”

The longer Dabi looks at the screen, the lower his flames get until they completely die out. “How old is he?”

“He’s ten. He hatched five months after we all thought you died.”

I watch Dabi’s facial expression closely to gauge his reaction. “So he’s…”

It takes everything in me not to smack my forehead in exasperation. “Yes, Touya, he’s yours. I went to find you, the day that I laid his egg, but by the time I got to the hill, you had disappeared into the flames.”

“Egg?” Now that he’s calm, Dabi’s words almost seem a little slurred, like he’s drunk or something. “Did you say egg?”

I laugh a little at the incredulous look on his face. I flare out my wings as if that answers everything. “Honestly, you’re surprised by that when you constantly call me a bird?”

Touya grabs my phone from my hand and starts scrolling through the pictures I have of Kaito in reverse order all the way back to the couple images I have of his egg sitting in the incubator. I didn’t take many pictures back then because of the dysphoria that the egg’s existence caused me, but I still wanted some documentation of that time, not to mention the fact that there’s not really any change over time of an egg. It wasn’t until Kaito hatched that I finally came to terms with who I was in relation to Kaito, and even though I thought Touya was dead, I just couldn’t bring myself to take the name that was reserved for who he is in relation to my son.

Touya’s eyes look sad as he looks over the pictures of Kaito as a baby for a second time. “I wish I had known. It must have been hard, raising him by yourself while training to be a hero.”

“I had a lot of help from the Hero Commission, but they constantly use him against me. If I don’t comply to their standards well enough, they’ll take him for days and train him more intensively than they ever did me.” I sigh. “They’ve almost killed him a few times in the process, but I don’t know how to get him out of their grasp.”

Flames return to Touya’s hands, but this time, the anger isn’t directed at me. “Those bastards! I’ll fucking kill them!”

It takes me a bit to calm him back down, and when I do, I start to tell him about Kai. I mostly talk about his personality and interests, but I don’t mention his vocal situation. I just don’t know how to tell him about that yet. Through our conversation, I see glimpses of the old Touya start to shine back through. I wonder what happened to the boy I loved in all the years that he’s been on the streets after he faked his death, but I don’t ask yet. I’m not sure that I could handle it this soon after getting him back.

Not wanting Kaito to be with the Commission for too long, I tell Touya that I have to go, but I’ll start sending him pictures of Kai when I have the chance. Before letting me leave, he gives me the number to his regular phone, one paid for by a credit card that he somehow managed to filch off of Endeavor, telling me to send the picture to that because the League doesn’t know about that phone. He doesn’t want the rest to find out about Kaito in fear that they’ll assume that Touya is actually a spy for the heroes. It pains me not to tell him that I actually am a spy for the heroes, but I think he already knows that based off of the fact that I wouldn’t be able to go against the Commission too much.

Once Kaito and I are back home, I tell him about my meeting with his father. Kai is excited to know that he’s alive, and that he actually seems to care about him, but I want to gauge Touya a little more before possibly taking the chance to let him actually meet Kaito, before taking the chance on us finally being a family.

Next chapter will be posted on TheWriterShikari787 's copy of the story.