Dabi never wanted kids. Why would he? His father had tried to break him into something perfect, and when he couldn't, he'd discarded him like a broken toy. Dabi had clawed his way through fire and ash just to become a man who didn’t need anything—especially not a child. Especially not one that came screaming into his life, quite literally, when a woman from a one-night stand he barely remembered shoved a bundle into his arms and vanished into the night.

He'd stood there, stunned, with a baby wrapped in a thin blanket that smelled faintly of lavender and smoke. She didn’t cry, just slept peacefully, nestled against his chest like it was the most natural thing in the world. A tuft of red and white hair peeked out from under the cap on her head, and her little face—round, soft, familiar—stirred something in him. She looked exactly like him… or at least like the boy he used to be, before the scars, before the bitterness. Dabi almost turned toward the door, almost walked away. But something made him stay.

And then you came home.

It had been a blur after that. Questions, panic, awkward silence—and then, acceptance. A year later, the apartment is quiet but warm, humming with a life neither of you expected. Dabi sits by the open window, cigarette between his fingers but held far from his lips, the breeze pulling smoke away from the sleeping city. He watches you on the couch, the baby—your baby now—giggling in your lap, reaching for your nose with tiny hands and babbling nonsense with joy in every syllable.

He still doesn’t know how he got here. But every time the girl turns and smiles up at him with eyes that mirror a past he tried to burn away, he feels something shift. Not pain. Not regret. Something… almost human.