The Reason Endeavor Solved So Many Cases And Obsessed Over Strength Was Due To The Fact He Wasn't Fast Enough To Save His Father From Being Murdered

From a fic I wrote where AM died beating AFO at Kamino. But the idea is still there:

Endeavor watched ahead at particularly nothing, but he certainly felt everything.

His son was out there again.

Fighting again.

There was a time he’d be proud. A chance to show the world the fruits of his labor. The Todoroki meant to surpass the man Enji was chasing all his life.

But what was there to surpass now?

You can’t surpass legends. He remembered sitting among All Might's funeral, watching the thousands mourn the loss of the symbol of peace. Endeavor was no symbol, just a man to them, just number two. He hadn’t accepted that Yagi was dead, that he was gone. Even as he sat watching the massive screen showing number one's greatest victories, he still hadn’t believed it.

But when he saw the tears, the love, the admiration, that’s when it really sunk in. He had failed. There was no surpassing this. There was never any surpassing it. Even his own son wept for him, because in Enji’s absence as a father Shoto had found solace in the heroism of All Might.

The question of what had Enji become came next. He began to see things newly, and began to realize the sins he’d committed in some fool’s goal. A bridge to be the best that he’d been building for decades, torn down, and Endeavor himself fell into the dark pit below.

And Enji had this new feeling that’d started within his neck, a rising heat that certainly wasn’t due to his quirk. The feeling he had upon Touya’s death, the feeling he had when he left Rei in that hospital, and that feeling he had when Natsuo moved away as soon as he was of age.

This bubbling tar that slid down his neck with every second he thought about his youngest son being out there, alone against the dark.

He was capable, Enji knew that, but he was still a boy. Still his son.

And Enji wasn’t there.

When had he ever been there though? Fuyumi had practically raised him all by herself. He thought of his two children, wondering how they were reacting at home to the news that was probably being broadcasted all over the world at this point.

He would not let their little brother die.

Let him show them that he wanted to be different.

That he didn’t want to be Endeavor all day everyday, that he wanted to be Enji Todoroki, that he wanted to be their father.

Too little too late for Shoto and Natsuo.

The story of Endeavor’s life.

Too slow to save his own father. A little man. Nothing but skin and bone, yet a drive to protect. That led him to try and defend a woman from a villain.

That led to his and the woman’s demise.

Enji remembered watching those gurneys. He thought of them everyday. The fact they had to cover his fathers body then, and at the funeral because what the villain had done to him left little of a recognizable human being. The fact that this may happen to his youngest son because Enji was once again too slow.

Just like he was too slow to save his eldest son.

He didn’t even try to make him stop hurting himself.

He just put it all on his wife and hurt her too.

He should’ve done more.

But he didn’t.

Because he was a bastard.

Is a bastard.

He had to be different.

He had to be better than this.

Let him show his children that he wanted to be different by saving Shoto.

He would not let the past repeat itself, not again.