Enough To Go By (Chapter 11) - A Shigaraki X F!Reader Fic
Enough to Go By (Chapter 11) - a Shigaraki x f!Reader fic
Your best friend vanished on the same night his family was murdered, and even though the world forgot about him, you never did. When a chance encounter brings you back into contact with Shimura Tenko, you'll do anything to make sure you don't lose him again. Keep his secrets? Sure. Aid the League of Villains? Of course. Sacrifice everything? You would - but as the battle between the League of Villains and hero society unfolds, it becomes clear that everything is far more than you or anyone else imagined it would be. (cross-posted to Ao3)
Chapters: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
Chapter 11
“Hey, there you are!” Spinner spots you and Tomura first as you step through the portal. “Twice is on his way. We thought you two were never going to show up!”
Tomura lets go of your hand and peels off his gloves, heading for the pile of gear that contains the rest of the hands and his coat. He put the hand he calls Father on his face before you left the apartment. “Kurogiri was busy.”
“Sure he was.” On the far corner of the wall, Dabi is rolling his eyes. “We all know what you two were busy doing.”
Your face heats up, but you’re behind your veil, and Tomura’s busy securing a set of hands over his neck, covering both the bandage and the mark you left on the other side. Nobody else seems too interested in joining Dabi in picking on you, although Magne’s ribbing him for supposed jealousy over his own lack of a cute girlfriend. Toga is studying you. “You changed your costume,” she says, and you hold your breath while she renders her verdict. “It’s cute.”
Compress drifts closer to investigate, too. “It’s an improvement. What’s the occasion?”
“We’re meeting somebody in an official capacity. I just thought I shouldn’t wear street clothes.”
Your costume upgrade isn’t much, and it took a while to put together. You’ve still got the grey veil and crown of thorns, but underneath it you’ve added a grey long-sleeved tunic you thrifted, leggings you bought, and boots you already had. Then you decided that the tunic was a little shapeless and cinched it at the waist with a red scarf. Worst comes to worst, you can use it as a tourniquet. You were worried about what Tenko would think of the entire effect, but when you showed him before Kurogiri came to get the two of you, you could tell he was pleased. Pleased enough to kiss you over it, although it took a while to make it work around the veil.
The aesthetics of your costume aren’t the important part. There’s a thin backpack over your shoulders, completely hidden by the back of the veil, which contains your best approximation of an EMT kit, and there’s a spare suture kit taped to your thigh, out of sight under the tunic. That was Tenko’s idea. He doesn’t want Overhaul to guess what role you play in the League.
And apparently he’s not the only one who’s been thinking along those lines. “It’s a good thing you changed your costume,” Spinner says. You look questioningly at him before remembering that he can’t see your face under the veil. “We were thinking. Shigaraki wants you to stay undercover, which means we can’t use your name in front of outsiders. And that means you need –”
“A code name!” Toga chimes in. “We all talked about it –”
“Nobody liked my ideas,” Dabi mutters.
You don’t even want to know. “And we all agreed,” Compress continues. “Unless Shigaraki has already given you one –”
You look to Tomura. This looks like it’s news to him, just like it’s news to you, and he only ever calls you by name. He shakes his head. “Excellent,” Compress says. “Spinner’s idea was chosen. Spinner should reveal it.”
Spinner looks a little nervous. “We already use a nickname for you,” he starts, “but ‘Saint’ sounds really dumb for a code name. So we decided instead – Saintess.”
It’s quiet for a second. “That’s not a word,” Tomura says.
“It is! We looked it up,” Toga sings out. “It’s like actor and actress, or villain and villainess. Saint, Saintess. It’s perfect, don’t you think?”
You’re not sure if you like it. It feels like kind of a dig against you. More than ‘kind of’, if you’re being honest. “It suits your look,” Magne points out. “And your attitude, since the boss wouldn’t dream of letting you get your hands dirty.”
“My hands will get dirty the first time one of you gets hurt,” you say. “You have the important work. My job is to make sure you can keep doing it.”
“Spoken like a true Saintess,” Compress proclaims. “Shigaraki. Your thoughts?”
“Yeah. She’s your girlfriend,” Dabi says. “You really want to let Spinner name her?”
Tomura considers it for a moment. “If it’s a good name, it doesn’t matter who it comes from. And it’s better to be named by your friends than your enemies.” He nods to Spinner. “It’s a good name. Call her Saintess from now on.”
Toga wandered over to one of the windows while Tomura was talking, but now she hurries back. “I see Twice! He’s got the other guy with him.”
“Places,” Tomura orders, and the League scatters to the sides. He reaches out and links little fingers with you. “You’re with me. This way.”
The League arranges themselves on and around a pile of shipping containers, set up in a rough pyramid. Tomura settles on one just below the highest level, and you sit down on one just below his, slightly off to the side so you won’t block his view. Tomura looks dissatisfied. “You should be up here,” he says. “But it’ll draw his attention to you. I’m not risking that.”
“I’m fine where I am,” you say. You glance up at him. “How’s your neck?”
“It’ll be fine,” he says, which means it hurts. You’ll look at it later, once this is over. “What about you?”
“I’m fine. You did a great job with the aftercare.”
Tomura’s face flushes, and you remind yourself to be careful what you say. The hand over his face doesn’t hide him nearly as well as your veil hides you. “Tell me what your friend said about them again,” he says. “The Hassaikai.”
“The new head – the one we’re meeting – he isn’t liked the way the old one was,” you say. “Someone who worked for both of them called him a monster. After he left the gang.”
“Yakuza don’t defect. For someone to do something like that, it must be serious.” Tenko’s expression is grim behind the hand. He raises his voice. “Be careful. Twice is trustworthy, but the one he’s bringing isn’t.”
“Understood.”
“You got it, boss,” Magne says, winking.
“For sure, Tomura-kun!” Toga chirps. She’s the only person other than you who uses Tomura’s given name. “I can’t wait to meet our new friend!”
You wish you had Toga’s optimism. Instead, all you feel as the head of the Shie Hassaikai walks into the warehouse is apprehension. You know you shouldn’t. Everyone here is battle-tested, except you. Everybody here has a quirk, except you. They can handle themselves, and they have the yakuza boss outnumbered seven to one – and if things wind up, it’s your job to settle them down.
Overhaul wears a mask over the lower half of his face, and thin white gloves on both hands. Is his quirk in his hands, like Tomura’s is? He’s peering up at Tomura and the rest of you, only the barest spark of interest in his eyes. “So this is where you’ve been hiding. I expected a little more.”
“It takes some time for an organization to adjust following a change in leadership,” Tomura says. “I’m sure you understand.”
Overhaul inclines his head. “Of course. Still, I expected more from All For One’s student.”
His voice is dry, almost inflectionless. Tomura chuckles. “And yet you’re coming to me, not the other way around. Explain that.”
Overhaul’s eyes started on Tomura. Now they’re shifting, from Magne and Spinner and Dabi on one side to Compress and Toga and Twice on the other. Then back to Tomura. Then down to you. His eyes are still on you as he addresses Tomura again. “To my generation, your master was nothing more than a dark legend, but the elders believed we still had reason to fear him. It seems they were right.”
To fear him, not to fear Tomura. Overhaul’s not scared of Tomura, and he doesn’t seem worried about just how badly outnumbered he is. Your stomach clenches. “With All Might gone, the underworld is in chaos,” Overhaul continues. “And it’ll stay that way, so long as the question of who the next leader will be remains in doubt.”
“I’m the next leader.” Tomura’s confidence sounds unshakeable. “All Might fell because of the League’s actions. The heroes are rattled because of what we’ve done.”
He gestures at all of you. “We’ve got victories to our name. What have you got?”
“All Might didn’t fall. He was forced to retire. And it was by your master’s hand, not yours.” Overhaul’s gaze drifts across the League, lingering on each person for a few moments, you included. “Every time you’ve won, you’ve taken losses equal to or greater than the victory you’ve claimed. You still have outside help – you don’t look nearly as filthy as I’d expect for staying three weeks in a warehouse without running water – but it’s much less than you had before.”
“Congratulations. You have eyes.” Tomura’s voice is sharp. “But again – you came to us. Not the other way around. I’m the next leader. You can join me or you can stay out of my way.”
“Let’s assume you’re correct, and you are the next leader. What’s your goal?”
Tomura scoffs. “To expose the so-called heroic system for what it is, and bring it down.”
“How?”
The question rings out, and it’s met with silence. Too long of a silence. Tomura regroups, but not fast enough. “All Might –”
“One hero, who would have retired anyway. Others will come to take his place,” Overhaul says. “You have ideals, but ideals are useless without a plan. And I have a plan.”
Tomura’s jaw is clenched, and you see Spinner’s shoulders stiffen, see a blue spark flicker around Dabi’s fingers. Useless is never anything but inflammatory, and you know enough about the League at this point to know that almost all of them feel like they’ve been thrown away. You speak before anyone else can. “It’s nice that you have a plan,” you say to Overhaul. Nice isn’t the best word, but you’re thinking on your feet. “That’s less important than your goal. If your goal doesn’t align with ours, we should go our separate ways in peace.”
Overhaul studies you. “We do share a goal,” he says after a moment. “The destruction of the current system, and a return to the old ways. We can assist each other in that regard.”
“How?”
“My plan is sound, but my organization is small, with few flashy victories. In order to secure more support –”
“You want our name,” Tomura says. “Why should we loan it to you?”
Overhaul doesn’t answer him. “Put yourselves under me,” he says, and the League reacts exactly how you’d expect them to. Overhaul ignores them. “I’ll ensure you’re better taken care of than this. In exchange, you’ll reap the rewards of my plan to return to the old order.”
“And take orders from you?” Tomura’s voice is full of scorn. “I don’t think so.”
“It isn’t a request.” Overhaul shakes his head. “You lack the vision necessary to make your childish dreams a reality. Since your master didn’t teach you properly, it falls to someone else to rein you in.”
It’s not a request. If it’s not a request, it’s because he thinks he has the upper hand. Why does he think that? “Someone ought to rein you in,” Magne says. She’s on her feet, and a bolt of terror shoots through you. “I’ll put you in your place.”
She activates her quirk, and Overhaul’s yanked towards her from across the warehouse. It surprises him, but not enough. You see him yank off one of his sheer gloves, extend his hand, making contact with Magne’s forearm before her support item can strike the side of his head. He touches her, and then –
Spinner, Toga, and Twice all cry out, but it’s too late. You can barely make sense of what you’re seeing. Dabi looks up at you, shouts at you to do something, but Magne’s beyond your help, beyond anyone’s. Even if you had a healing quirk, you’d need something to heal, and the top half of Magne’s body is gone. All that’s left are her support items and her legs, which teeter horribly in place, twitching, before falling limply to the floor.
Everyone’s frozen – you, Dabi, even Tomura. The only person who moves is the person who’s close enough to contain the situation. Compress lunges forward. A gunshot rings out from somewhere, and you see his arm jerk as his hand makes contact with Overhaul. His quirk should contain Overhaul instantly, but nothing happens. Overhaul seizes him by the wrist with the same hand that killed Magne and blows his arm apart.
He screams, and the sound breaks your paralysis and Tomura’s at the same time. You both leap into motion, Tomura headed for Overhaul, you aiming for Compress, and for a few seconds, you’re running side by side. A second gunshot rings out, from the same direction as before. You know who they’re aiming at, whoever they are. You throw yourself forward, getting ahead of Tomura by a single step, and the bullet tears through your veil, sinks into your shoulder. It doesn’t hurt like you expected it to. It feels more like a sting.
There’s a third shot, but Tomura’s aware now. He dodges, closing the gap between himself and Overhaul, and you readjust your trajectory and race to Compress’s side.
The floor’s covered in his blood and Magne’s, but you drop to your knees at his side anyway. There’s an explosion somewhere in the offing, and for a moment, you’re dragged back to Kamino – but you aren’t there, and you’ve got a job to do. You pull your backpack from beneath the veil, unzip it, and start pressing sterile pads down over the open wound. Compress howls, tries to squirm away, but someone pins him in place. Spinner, who’s come to help. You don’t have even a second to thank him. Your entire world narrows down to finding a way to control the bleeding, to secure the bandages, to make sure the job Overhaul started isn’t finished on your watch.
You don’t see what happens with Overhaul. You hear pieces of it, enough to know that the Hassaikai is withdrawing for now, that Tomura killed one of them, that the not-a-request is still on the table and Overhaul fully expects Tomura to agree once he’s had time to think. And then he’s leaving. Overhaul is leaving, and Magne is dead – but Overhaul’s quirk isn’t what he did to Compress and Magne, is it? That can’t be it. If that was it, they’d call it something else. If that’s not all it is, is there something more he can do?
“Wait!” The words leave your mouth at a volume you didn’t expect, and Overhaul’s progress towards the hole he punched in the wall stops. He turns back to face you, and you seize the chance to speak before anyone else can stop you. “You can fix people, can’t you?”
Overhaul inclines his head. That’s as close to a yes as you’re going to get. You swallow hard. “Please,” you say, “bring Magne back.”
“Why should I do that?” Overhaul’s voice is flat. “He attacked first.”
“She did,” you admit.
“And Shigaraki killed one of my subordinates. Wouldn’t you say we’re even?”
“No,” you say. Overhaul tilts his head to one side, studying you. “You called the person Tomura killed a subordinate. Magne is our friend. We made a mistake, but you can save her. Please, bring her back.”
Don’t disagree with him, but make your point. Don’t look helpless, but hand him as much power as you can. Be respectful, deferential, but not submissive. Every de-escalation skill you’ve ever practiced flashes through your head, and it’ll all be useless if any of the other members of the League open their mouths, Tomura included. But they’re quiet, for once, and Overhaul’s still looking at you. What happens to Magne now is up to him – and up to you, if you’re able to convince him.
“If I bring him back, I leave a valuable piece in Shigaraki’s hands, and I’m not interested in rewarding bad behavior,” he says. You nod. He’s not saying no yet. As long as he hasn’t said no, there’s a chance. “So I’ll make you a deal. If you value his life so much, then I’ll bring him back – and you’ll leave him here for the police to find.”
Your stomach lurches. “Decide quickly,” Overhaul says, and finally, he looks away from you. “As the leader, Shigaraki, the choice is yours.”
Tomura doesn’t hesitate. “Bring her back.”
Overhaul walks past you without looking at you again, to the same spot where Magne’s legs and support item lay in a pool of blood. He peels his glove off his hand and touches the puddle of blood and tissue. You don’t know how to explain what he’s doing, except that he’s reassembling her body, piece by piece. Someone throws up – Spinner, who at least has the presence of mind to turn away from Compress before he does it. Compress, and his missing arm. Why didn’t you negotiate for that as well? You’re an idiot. You’re out of your mind, and Compress is still losing blood. Your job still isn’t done.
You don’t look up again until you’ve packed enough sterile pads onto the stump of Compress’s arm that they don’t bleed through instantly, and when you look up, you find the rest of the League gathered around, and Overhaul’s minions standing back, guarding the exits. Twice is melting down. Toga’s trying to console him, but she looks furious herself, and Dabi’s expression is masklike, frozen. Tomura crouches next to you. “How is he?”
“I’ve secured it for now, but he needs those arteries clamped off. Does law enforcement know his face?” You see Tomura shake his head out of the corner of your eye. “If we take the mask off and lose some of the costume, I can take him to the clinic. They won’t ask questions.”
Tomura nods once. “I’ve called Kurogiri. He’ll take you there. Can you stay with him?”
“We can’t stay here,” Dabi interrupts sharply, before you can finish saying yes. “Half the prefecture heard that explosion. Where are we supposed to go?”
“Back to the waystation.” Tomura answers before you can offer. You would have. He looks to you. “Meet us back there as soon as you can get away.”
Warp gates begin to appear, engulfing the other members of the League, and you start removing the identifying features of Compress’s costume. Hat, waistcoat, tie, mask, the one remaining glove. Now he just looks like a normal guy. A guy who’s had a really awful accident. You pack up your medical kit, put your backpack on, and start pulling Compress to his feet. He doesn’t resist, exactly. It’s more that he just doesn’t try. “Leave me here. I lost my arm. My quirk. There’s no point to anything anymore.”
You’ve lived your whole life without a quirk. It’s not the end of the world. Sometimes people with quirks say the dumbest things. You chalk it up to blood loss and decide to ignore it. “I’m not leaving you behind. We’re going to get you patched up and get back to the others.
The warp gate appears and you drag Compress through it, the two of you emerging in the alleyway behind the clinic. You barely remember to take off the veil and crown and tuck them away before you and Compress make it to the waiting room. All you can think about is how you failed to negotiate for Compress’s arm. All you can think about is how you had to leave Magne behind.
You figured it might be a while before you got back to your apartment, but you weren’t counting on all the complications – the clinic’s short-staffed, and in order to circumvent the policy about sending major trauma to the ER unless there’s no choice, you hop in to help and free up a nurse-practitioner with a quirk that helps blood clot to tend to Compress. Unsurprisingly, there are questions about how Compress got the injury. You don’t feel any shame in saying that a villain did it.
About four hours in, you get a phone call on the clinic’s phone. The person who initially answers it tells you it’s your sister, which sounds not-right – Isuzu doesn’t know where you work, and if she wanted to talk to you, she’d call your phone, not the clinic’s. You pick up the call and hear Toga’s voice on the other end. “Tomura-kun wants to talk to you,” she says. She sounds miserable. “Hang on.”
Tomura doesn’t sound much better than her. “How is he?”
“As good as he can be. Once he’s hemodynamically stable they’ll let him go.” You hear the questioning sound Tomura makes and define your terms. “Once his blood volume’s a little more compatible with life. How are things back there?”
“Fucked.” There’s a light thud. You imagine Tomura flopping back against the wall. “Twice hasn’t quit freaking out. Dabi and Spinner are climbing the fucking walls. Toga is – I don’t know what. You need to come back soon. I don’t know what to do.”
“As soon as I can. But you do know what to do.” You try to think. “Tell them that he won’t get away with this. That we’ll make sure he answers for it. Make them believe you.”
You think of what you’ve seen from the League so far, how they’ve gone from at each other’s throats that first night in the bar to ready to fight for each other now. It’s because of Tomura, because of who he is. “You’ve always known how to do that.”
Someone shouts for you down the hall – something about a patient who needs a pelvic exam. You wince. “I have to go. I’ll call when we’re ready for – wait, how are you calling me? Whose phone is this?”
“Yours. You left it on the kitchen table.”
You did. You’re not under suspicion, but you didn’t want to risk anybody tracking your phone’s location. “I’ll call when we’re ready for a pickup. Soon.”
“Soon.” Tomura hangs up, and you head down the hall to talk a patient into a pelvic exam they really don’t want.
The nurse-practitioner who was looking after Compress really doesn’t want to let him go, but you manage to talk her into it, and you and Compress make it back to the alley and through the warp gate to your apartment. The mood within the apartment is palpable. Sadness. Frustration. Fury. With the number of unstable personalities in the League, it’s a miracle that no one’s trashed the place yet.
Dabi is sprawled on the couch, but even he’s not so much of an asshole that he’d make Compress stand. He gets up, and once Compress is lying down, he climbs up to sit on the back of the couch instead. He peers down at Compress. “You look like hell.”
“So would you.” Compress looks pretty sickeningly pale. “I lost my arm and my quirk.”
“Your quirk?”
“He touched Overhaul. It should have worked,” Spinner says. “But it was after he got shot with one of those.”
He points at the coffee table. There’s a bright-red capsule sitting there. You’d say it was a bullet, except for the fact that it’s tipped with a needle. “What is that?”
“We don’t know,” Tomura says. He’s sitting on your kitchen table, legs crossed, elbows on his knees. “We need to find out.”
“I heard three shots.” Toga’s voice drifts out of the kitchen. When you take a peek, you find she and Twice lying on their backs on the tiles. “One hit Mr. Compress and one missed Tomura-kun. What about the third one?”
You become aware, suddenly, of a sore spot on your shoulder. “I think that was me.”
“Right,” Spinner says. “You and Shigaraki both ran. I saw you get in front of him. What happened to your quirk?”
You look blankly at him. Is it really possible that the League doesn’t know you’re quirkless? Tomura wouldn’t have told him. It doesn’t matter to him. You glance to Tomura. Tomura nods once, and you take a deep breath. No matter how many times you say it, it never gets easier. “I don’t have one.”
It’s quiet for a second. “Twice,” Dabi says, “pay up.”
“No fair,” Twice protests. “You bet she had a lame quirk, not that she didn’t have one at all.”
“Having no quirk is probably better than having a lame quirk,” Spinner says. You’d argue, except you have a vague idea of the hell that heteromorphs go through, and if Spinner would rather have your problem than his, you’re not going to judge him for it. “Healing quirks are really rare anyway. And I’ve heard they burn through tons of mana.”
“Even if you had one, it’s not like you could make somebody’s arm grow back,” Toga says practically. “Or somebody’s –”
She trails off. You know what she’s thinking of, because you’re thinking of it, too – what happened to Magne, something so sudden and catastrophic that it would take a miracle or turning back time to fix. You got a miracle, but you lost Magne anyway. Her arrest was reported on the news while you were still at the clinic. In the silence that falls, Tomura climbs down from the kitchen table and steps into the center of the room. “Three days from now I’ll tell Overhaul that we’re accepting his offer,” he says. No one says a word. “When we respond to what he did, we need to respond decisively. That means we need more information. And we need to know more about this.”
He points at the bullet on the coffee table. “Starting tomorrow, Compress will test his quirk on the hour, every hour, to see how fast it returns.”
“It won’t return.”
“We don’t know that yet,” Tomura says. He looks around at the rest of you. “Compress’s injury and what happened to Magne won’t go unanswered. But our answer will be the final word. Does anyone disagree?”
There’s silence. Tomura turns away and climbs back onto the kitchen table, assuming the same position as before. You check one last time on your patient, note that he’s shivering, and find a blanket to drape over him. Dabi is peering through your closed blinds, down at the street; Spinner’s sprawled in one of your chairs, lost in thought. Kurogiri is wherever Kurogiri goes when Tomura doesn’t summon him. Now that you think about it, it’s strange that Tomura didn’t summon him for the meeting with Overhaul.
You have questions about that. But as much as your feelings are pulling you in Tomura’s direction, you know rationally that it’s Twice and Toga you need to check on first.
You have a feeling they won’t react well to you checking on them. You’re not their mom or their sister. You head into the kitchen with the excuse of making tea and step carefully around and over them, trying to think of a solid opening line. “If you guys want somewhere to sit, I’ll arm-wrestle Spinner over that armchair.”
“Hey!”
You don’t know why Spinner’s getting wound up. In an arm-wrestling contest between the two of you, you’d almost definitely lose. “Twice likes the floor better. It’s cool and welcoming,” Toga says. She doesn’t open her eyes. “Sorry I said I was your sister.”
“You should have said cousin.” Twice’s eyes are closed, too. “You two don’t look anything alike.”
“I was on the phone. They couldn’t see me.”
“Sister was the right call,” you say. “I only have one female cousin, and she’s a villain.”
“Really?” Toga sits up, interested, and Tomura looks up from the kitchen table. “Why isn’t she in the League?”
“I don’t know that she’s, um, in your league,” you say. “Have you guys ever heard of Gentle Criminal?”
“That guy? I’ve met him! He’s a tool,” Twice says cheerily. “We were locked up in the same holding cell one time. The first time he went to jail it was for trying to be a hero. Your cousin’s with him?”
“Yeah, she’s his sidekick. Or videographer. Or something.” You’re understating it slightly. “I’m pretty sure they’re a thing.”
“Like you and Tomura-kun?”
“Not like that,” Twice disagrees before you can say anything. “The boss is way cooler. Saintess has better taste.”
“Or higher standards,” Toga says. “Or both.”
“What are their quirks?” Tomura asks. He slides down from the kitchen table and comes closer. “Could we use them?”
“I’m not sure about his. Hers – I don’t think so.” Your family thought Manami was quirkless for a while. When her quirk popped up late in primary school, they were thrilled. “None of my family are power types. All their quirks do is change things about other people – like status effects in a video game. My dad can change how people perceive time, so time-out really sucked when I was a kid. My youngest sisters can make people feel the same emotions they feel, which is terrible.”
Tomura makes a disgusted sound. “That’s worse than the twins.”
It’s not great, but on the whole, you’d rather deal with the triplets. “Those are all broad-spectrum. Manami – my cousin – her quirk is a power-up, but it only lets her affect one person. The person she loves the most. So unless her boss’s quirk is something really special, I don’t think they’d be much use.”
That’s true, but only halfway. You don’t want your cousin mixed up with the League. You don’t want anyone you know involved with them. You and Manami were pretty close, since you were the only quirkless ones in the family at for a while, and it was her running away to join Gentle Criminal that inspired you to shake off your parents and follow your own dream. You haven’t talked to her since, but ever since you found yourself a member of the League, you’ve thought about her more than usual. Wondering if she’s happy. Hoping she found what she was looking for, whatever it was. Praying she doesn’t get hurt.
The tea finishes steeping. Green tea. You remember Tomura likes that. You pass a cup to him, then down to Toga, and watch with no small sense of relief as Twice sits up for one of his own. When you look up, you find that Spinner’s come over, too. Once you’ve given him a cup, you call out to Dabi and Compress. “Do either of you want tea?”
Compress says no. Dabi, to your shock, says yes. “I’ll bring it to him,” Toga says. She hops up from the floor, takes the cup you pour, and brings it over to him at the window. When she comes back, she sits on the counter instead of the floor, and she focuses on you. “How many siblings do you have?”
“Seven.”
Toga looks surprised. “That’s even more than me,” she says. “Are you the oldest? You seem like the oldest.”
Not by much, but enough to count. Enough to make sure your childhood ended before it began. “How did you know?”
“Nobody starts out good enough to be a Saintess,” Toga says with a shrug. “You have to learn it somewhere. I’m the oldest, too. But I was never very good at that part.”
You have to learn it somewhere. You’ve never heard someone say that before, but now that you think about it, it’s true. You wouldn’t have gotten so good at keeping things calm, at smoothing things over, if you hadn’t had to. If tamping down your feelings, controlling the negative ones by any means possible, hadn’t been a necessity in your family, you wouldn’t have done it. It’s a personality trait, but not one you were born with. For a split second, you wonder who you would have been if you hadn’t grown up the way you did – and then you realize that you know. The lessons you learned set in before the triplets were born, but long before. The person you would have been is who you were with your best friend.
You push the thought aside. “How many siblings do you have?” you ask Toga. “Did you get along?”
She says yes, which makes sense. She’s outgoing compared to the rest of the League, and just like you learned from your family, she learned from hers. Spinner surprises everybody when he chimes in about his family, too – he’s a middle child, with one older brother and one younger sister. Tomura doesn’t add anything, but that doesn’t surprise you. He stays at the edge of the conversation, listening, and you keep one eye on him and one on Twice. If you wait long enough, you have a feeling Twice will talk about what’s bothering him.
You’re right about that. He speaks up in the next lull in the conversation. “I wish Magne was here,” he says. “She’s the only big sister I ever had.”
It’s quiet for a little while. Twice’s voice is small when he speaks again. “It’s my fault. I brought him there.”
“Nobody blames you,” Spinner says. “He lied. It’s what villains do.”
Nobody steps in to point out to Spinner that he’s also a villain, and something clicks in your head: The League thinks Overhaul is more of a villain than they are. Having seen what Overhaul did, you’re not going to argue. “He lied,” Tomura agrees. “Unless you have a mind-reading quirk we didn’t know about, there’s no way you could have known what he was planning.”
“Big Sis wouldn’t blame you.” Toga pokes Twice in the shoulder with her foot. “So you shouldn’t blame you, either.”
“And she’s still alive,” Tomura adds. “We’ll deal with Overhaul, and then we’ll break her out of wherever the heroes are keeping her. It’s not anything close to over.”
The situation seems like it’s resolving, sort of, and you have other stuff to do. You finish your tea, then make your way out of the kitchen. If you’re going to be responsible for caring for Compress’s injuries, you need to make sure you have the necessary supplies. And there’s blood all over your costume. You should probably change. When you shut the door to your room and peel off the tunic, it sticks to you, which is when you realize that your skin is covered with dried blood, too. It’s all over you, and the sight reminds you of something you wish the memory wipe had cleared away – what happened in the wreckage of Tenko’s house, when you tripped and fell and sprawled out in what was left of a member of his family.
You need to clean up. You need to clean up right now. You strip out of your clothes on the way to the shower, turn the water on hot, and throw yourself in before it’s even started warming up.
The cold water isn’t enough to freeze out the memory, and the hot water can’t burn it away. It’s your turn to throw up in the bathroom, and you do, on your hands and knees in the shower, trusting the water to cover up the sound. Your head is spinning again, between Magne’s death and Compress’s injury and getting shot and getting Magne back and outing yourself as quirkless and getting a new name – a new name, like a villain, like your cousin Manami except you’re all but useless to the villain you serve – and hosting the League for the next three days, and getting shot. You keep forgetting that you got shot. You keep forgetting how it happened.
It’s been clear for a while that you put Tenko above yourself, in a lot of ways. His memory above your sanity. His mission above your integrity. His needs over your pain. But today was the first time you actually put Tenko’s life over your own. Sure, the gun had quirk-canceling bullets instead of real ones, but you didn’t know that when you heard the first shot. You heard the first shot, knew who the second one would be aimed at, and threw yourself in front of him. And you did it without hesitating.
You don’t like thinking about that. You don’t like looking at it, either, once you’re out of the shower, wrapped in a towel and trying to patch it back up. It’s not a bullet hole – more like a puncture wound, angry and inflamed, with jagged red lines emanating from the impact point. You don’t like looking at it so much that you leave dealing with it for last, patching up yesterday’s injuries and getting most of the way dressed before finally facing up to it. You’re just deciding whether to use spray disinfectant or antibiotic cream when someone knocks on the door. “Just a second,” you say, and the door opens anyway. It pisses you off. “Out. If you can’t give me a second –”
The door shuts again, and a moment later, Tenko appears in the mirror behind you. His eyes are fixed on the wound in your shoulder, and without asking, he lifts the supplies out of your hands and gets to work. He does with the Neosporin over the antiseptic spray. In general, you’re pretty stoic about pain, but the spot where the quirk-canceling bullet struck feels like the worst bruise you’ve ever gotten, combined with an ache in your shoulder and arm that almost feel like you’ve got the flu. You flinch from Tenko’s touch. “Careful.”
“Sorry.” Tenko’s hands are barely touching you. It just hurts. Now that you’ve let yourself admit it, you have to admit that it hurts a lot. “This was stupid. Don’t do it again.”
Your stomach clenches. It’s not like you were expecting him to thank you, but – “It was necessary. We’d have been in big trouble without your quirk. And I’m your sidekick. My job is to –”
“Have my back. Help me. Be with me.” Tenko looks up from his work, makes eye contact with you in the mirror. “We’re supposed to win together. You’re not supposed to die for me. I never let that happen.”
Even when you were little, you were a little too realistic for the games you and Tenko played. Sometimes you’d imagine yourselves into a corner you couldn’t see a way out of, and in those cases, you’d try to say your goodbyes – and Tenko never let you. If I can’t save my own sidekick, how will I save anyone else? “Those were just games.”
“And now they’re real. Nothing else has changed.” Tenko’s much more careful than usual as he bandages your shoulder. “Did you get the other ones?”
You nod. And while the two of you are here, he’s got wounds you need to check. You unwrap the bandage without asking, just like he did, and inspect the scratches. For injuries incurred last night, they don’t look so bad, and you pick up into the same routine as before. There’s something almost comforting about the pattern you’ve fallen into with Tenko, of tending to each other no matter where the wounds came from. It settles your nerves, slows down the frantic spinning of your mind. This is why you’re here. To be with Tenko. And you are, so what does the rest of it matter?
You’ve just put the panic in its place when Tenko speaks up. “Don’t do it again,” he says. “Say you won’t.”
“I won’t,” you say. The words roll off your tongue easily enough, but they feel wrong, and it’s not until Tenko kisses you that you understand why. All this time, he hasn’t lied to you. Whether he’s Tenko or Tomura, he tells you the truth. You’ve just lied to him for the first time ever, selling it so smoothly that he can’t help but believe you, and it feels awful.
It’s not the worst part, though. The worst part is that you’re not sorry.
More Posts from Flamme-shigaraki-spithoe and Others
My bbg Tomura :3
I want this man kneeling before me (just kidding hahu)
Little thing here
internet boy.
shigaraki x reader one-shot
Summary: You are on a popular video chat website late at night. After many disconnects, you come across a dusty-blue haired boy. You wait for him to say “show your tits” to skip him, but strangely enough he didn’t say anything. To this, you become intrigued, and stay to chat with him.
Warnings: swearing, slight yandere tendencies.
Pairing: Tomura Shigaraki x Reader
Word Count: 4680
You yawn. You check the time on the corner of your laptops’ screen. 2 AM. Why weren’t you sleeping? Well, you were on Omegle for almost two hours, and you didn’t realize how fast the time flew by. You were bored and couldn’t sleep, so you chose to talk to strangers online who were also up late at night. Maybe you were the strange one.
You haven’t gone on Omegle for a long time, so you forgot about all the dick showing and the dudes asking to either show your tits or your ass. If you didn’t comply they’d call you a bitch and disconnect. Sometimes if you got lucky, you connected with someone sweet and you’d chat a bit until they needed to go. At least there were still some people who just wanted to talk.
You sighed as you disconnected from another penis on your screen.
If I see another dick one more time, I’m getting off.
You tapped your fingers on your laptop, waiting for someone to connect.
And someone did. It was an odd looking guy. He had shaggy light blue hair and deep, red eyes that you could hardly see. He had a tightened black hoodie, so you couldn’t see his full face; only his eyes and nose. He was leaning against a white wall behind him, and his camera only showed his torso and up. The only light was from his own screen, illuminating his face.
You furrowed a brow. He didn’t say anything, so you started typing.
You: hey
You notice his eyes move to the chat, and down to his keyboard. He started typing, and you heard the sound of the keyboard clicking. So he did have a microphone.
Stranger: what’s your name
You: (Y/N). what’s urs?
At this point, you expected him to ask something vulgar, so you hovered your mouse over the “Really?” button to disconnect if he did. But shockingly enough, didn’t.
Stranger: uh. you can call me Tom.
You smiled a bit. You found the name “Tom” funny considering the fact that maybe he was using a fake name, and to add onto your suspicion he added an “uh” in the beginning.
You: cool. i hear that u have a mic. do u wanna talk? i’m too tired to type lol
You: or do u have to be quiet because of your parents loll
You watch him read the chat, and hear a “tch” noise come out of his mouth before he aggressively starts typing.
Stranger: i can talk. but you aren’t talking, so i’m not talking. wouldn’t it be weird if i was the only one talking? weirdo.
You huff and roll your eyes. “The whole point of me asking if you want to talk is so we could talk instead of texting each other. Watch who you call a weirdo, weirdo.” You retorted. He furrowed his brows and rolled his eyes back.
“Whatever. Anyways, what time is it for you?” He asked. You noticed his voice was slightly gravelly. You squint your eyes. “Aren’t you a curious one. With the blunt questions and everything. It’s 2 at night here. You?” You smile slightly. “It’s 2 am here too. Why are you up so late?” He plays with the strings attached to his hoodie.
You sigh. “Dunno. I’m tired but can’t sleep. Why are you up so late?” You ask back. He makes his hand through his hair and hoodie and scratches his neck. “Well, I’ve been thinking about stuff, so I can’t sleep either.” You hum in response, and there’s a minute of silence between you two.
“Well, what’s on your mind then?” You ask, trying to break the awkward tension.
He grumbles. “It’s nothing. Just have a few people that I don’t like on my mind. No, hate. Deeply hate. They are terrible.” He growls, and continues scratching his neck. You frown and look at him. “Hey, don’t worry about them okay? Don’t let bullies effect you and how you feel. They’re dumb.” You comforted. You felt a bit weird comforting a person you just met online about bullies, but you really did feel sympathy for him. He probably has a hard time with them.
He looks away and nods slowly. “Yeah.. bullies..” He stops scratching his neck and puts his hand down. He looks back at the camera. “Do you have anything we can talk on?”
You giggle. “We’re talking on something already, idiot.” To that, he just looks at the screen with an annoyed look. “I’m just playing. Here’s my instagram. Or, if you prefer-“
“Instagram is fine.” He cuts you off, seconds after pulling out his phone and searching up the username you put in the chat. You pressed your lips together, and pull out your phone yourself.
tomxrxow.s has requested to follow you!
“So, Tom.. your name is an abbreviation of Tomorrow?” You ask, quietly chuckling as you accept the follow request. “Uh, sure.” He mumbled. You requested to follow him back, and in an instant he accepted. You notice he has no posts and the only people he follows is a few pro heroes and you. He only has about 20 followers too. You found it slightly uncomfortable, considering that you had a few posts of you and a couple hundred followers. You look back at the screen and see him holding his phone up and moving it to look at you.
“Hm, you’re kind of weird looking right now compared to your posts.” He shows one of your posts of you in a restaurant. You looked pretty in that photo, until you realized that he insulted you. You gasped and furrowed your brows. “Hey!” You pouted. He smirked and put his phone down. “I’m just ‘playing.’” He says, quoting you from earlier. You squint your eyes and scoff, but silently smile to yourself. You like this guy.
“Well, you got my instagram, so we could chat more. I’m feeling kind of tired, so I’ll text you tomorrow morning okay?” You smile. He sighs through his nose. “Alright, good night.” He puts up a backwards peace sign. “Don’t let the villains bite.” You roll your eyes, and to that, you disconnect and shut your laptop.
What a strange guy.
You lay down and close your eyes, and soon enough you drift to sleep.
—
You stir your cereal, waiting for Tom to finish typing.
You and him have gotten close the past 3 weeks. He was quite nice to talk to. He talked about his problems, and you talk about yours. I think it’s safe to say that you guys were great friends, and were there for each other. Not in real life, but through each other’s screen. And you were okay with that.
txmxrxow.s: i haven’t got much sleep last night.
You: ahh well you should go to sleep earlier today!
You smile to yourself. You and Tom stood up late at night talking. Sometimes you guys would call, sometimes you guys chose to just text. In the beginning of your friendship with him, you guys first went from talking for an hour, to a few hours, to the whole night. You found him interesting. The way he talked, what he talked about.. he was just nice to talk to.
txmxrxow.s: but i want to talk to youu :’(
Your heart fluttered as you read his text message. You smile goofily.
You: and i want to talk to you too! but if you don’t go to sleep early then you might just fall asleep while we’re talking, and i’ll get worried that you’re not responding. how about this, we can talk all day today and you can go to sleep tonight so we could talk tomorrow. deal?
You sigh happily. You haven’t had someone to talk to this much in a long time. The world is in a middle of a pandemic; it’s not like you can go out and hang out with your friends when everyone is in quarantine. You walk to your living room with the bowl of cereal in your hand and put it on the coffee table. You sit down on your couch, and turn on the TV. You put a spoonful of cereal in your mouth and lean back to watch what the news is for today.
“Breaking news. The League of Villains attacked the city unexpectedly last night! Heroes came late due to the fact that it was at 4 am. But thankfully, we can never not trust our strong heroes! They were close to defeat, but they struck back with all their might, leaving the villains running away! Thank you for your service Pro-Heroes, for keeping us and the city safe!”
The T.V showed footage from a helicopter above of the villains running away into a dark alley. They all disappear as they enter a purple portal one of the villains created. The camera then showed the pro heroes panting in exhaustion, walking away from the scene like it was nothing. You couldn’t blame them, it was late at night- they were tired. They weren’t willing to have an interview this late.
txmxrxow.s: Did you see the news? Smh. Pro heroes this, pro heroes that. It’s getting tiring.
You take another bite of cereal and pick up your phone to reply.
You: Yeah, but at least they keep us safe. And on that note, im glad you’re safe, but I mean we were literally up at that time just texting each other lmaooo
txmxrxow.s: haha, yeah :)
You pick up the remote control and switch the channel to something else. You were getting tired of hearing about villains and heroes all the time too.
You: anyways, i’m bored. wanna call?
txmxrxow.s: sure
You: i mean like, video call? we haven’t video called since omegle lolol
txmxrxow.s: hmm.. nah.
You frown. Didn’t he just say sure a few seconds ago?
txmxrxow.s: but i miss your cute little face. so, get on discord.
You blush and furrow your brows. Who does this guy think he is?! You huff, and pull out your laptop and open discord. Seconds after, you receive a call from Tom and accept it.
“Hello. Guess you couldn’t resist my cute ass face.” You teased. He chuckles in response, and turned on his camera. Again, he’s wearing a black tightened hoodie, so you could only see his eyes and nose, along with his messy light blue hair. “I really couldn’t.” He responded flatly. You blush and roll your eyes. “Shut up.” You grin.
You and him talked about random things. You would occasionally take a bite of your cereal, and he would snap a photo before you eat the spoonful of Froot Loops. “Hey!! Delete that!” You pleaded, covering your mouth full of milk and cereal with your hand. He laughed in response, showing his phones’ screen to the camera, which was the photo of you about to put the spoon in your mouth. You swallowed the food in your mouth and crossed your arms. “Not funny! I’m turning off my camera.” You huffed, and turned off the camera.
“Nooo! Come back!” He pleaded, exaggerating the “No.” You laughed, and turned on your camera just as fast as you turned it off. Needless to say, you enjoyed talking to Tom.
—
You and Tom were on call for the past five hours. You didn’t get bored of his company, and although your laptop was heating up, you wanted to stay.
“Hm.. say,” He started. You hummed back. “What’s up?” You didn’t lift your eyes from your phone. You were scrolling through your instagram feed and occasionally were sending Tom funny cat photos and videos.
“Do you want to meet up?” Your heart skipped a beat. You looked at your laptops’ screen with wide eyes. “Now?” You ask. He shrugged, twirling his hoodie string between his finger. “Sure. Or, if you want we could meet up later this week. Or later tonight, so there isn’t much people, especially with the whole virus thing going on.” You nod.
Should you go today? Later tonight? I mean, he seems pretty real to you. And you really liked talking to him. You liked him in general.
“I um, have to talk to you about something too.” He said, slightly choking on his words. Your heart rushes. You look at the time on your phone. 3 pm. Wow, time flew by fast.
“Sure. Let’s meet up at 10 pm.” You smile. He sighed in relief. “Okay, cool. I’m.. excited to see you.” He blushed. Your heart continued pounding against your chest and you tucked a strand of hair behind your ear. “I’m excited too.” You guys sat in silence, scrolling through your phones. You gulped, feeling uncomfortable.
God, why is everything so much more awkward now?! It’s fine. You’ll meet each other, and talk. It’ll be your first time seeing each other in real life, and it’ll be fine.
You turn to your laptop screen. “Well, my laptop is heating up really badly, so I’m gonna go. We can still text if you want.” You put your index finger on the trackpad, hovering it over the hang up button. “Alright, see you soon.” He puts his phone down and waves. You smile and make a silly face before hanging up. You needed to get ready, even though it was only 3 pm.
— *Time skip to 10 pm*
You didn’t want to appear to extra and flashy on the first time meeting, so you went with an oversized (F/C) sweatshirt and jeans. You let your hair down, and put on mascara. Your heart was beating loudly. You were excited, but nervous. What did he want to talk about? You had an idea, but you dismissed it.
You heard a notification go off and checked your phone.
txmxrxow.s: let’s meet over here.
After he sent that text, he sent a photo of a building that you passed by occasionally.
You: okay. see you soon! ^^
You smile to yourself. You breathe in and out to calm yourself. You turn off the lights and put your phone in your pocket. You grab a mask and put in on your face, and put on latex gloves. You shut the door behind you and start walking towards the direction of the building. You decided to listen to music to calm yourself.
What a weird coincidence that you met a person on Omegle that lived in the same country as you. Matter of fact, in the same city as you. You couldn’t believe it. And you fell in love with him? Truly strange. But, you don’t hate it. You smile happily. You realize that you shouldn’t be nervous. You guys have been talking for three weeks. He was comfortable with you, and you were comfortable with him. You guys were friends.
You hummed to the song that was currently on, and you noticed that you were close to the place you guys were meeting up at. You just had to cross this street and you’ll be there. You patted your hands on your jeans, realizing how sweaty they got from you being anxious. The street sign turned to a walking figure, and you slowly crossed.
You took out the earphones in your ears, and put them in your jean pocket. You squeeze your hands into fists as you see a figure a few yards away from you wearing a black hoodie. He was facing the other way, but you noticed that they were on their phone. You decided to walked up to them. This was Tom, it had to be. You looked at the building next to the figure. Yep, it is Tom.
You walk until you’re a few feet away from him.
“T-Tom?” You let out, almost as silent as a squeak. Their head looks up, and they slowly turn around. Your eyes made eye contact with their deep, red eyes. Their shaggy light blue hair was sticking out of their hoodie, and they had the strings tied together like you’ve seen on video call.
You smiled in joy, and went to wrap your arms around him. You pressed your face on their chest. He slightly stepped back, not expecting you to do that. He hesitantly wrapped his arms around you, careful not to touch you with all five of his fingers on each hand.
“(Y/N), you came.” He smiled, sighing. He didn’t want this moment to end; and neither did you. You moved your head up to look up at him. He was looking back down at you. “Are you always in these clothes? You have the same exact outfit from when we called on Omegle and video called today.” You teased, furrowing your brows. He grunted in response, and rolled his eyes.
“Haha, so funny. No, I don’t. But, I wanted to meet you because I wanted to talk to you about something.” You unwrapped your arms from him and slightly stepped back. You put your arms behind you and tapped the floor with the tip of your shoe. “What did you want to talk about?” You had a faint blush on your cheeks. He rubbed the top of head awkwardly and looked to the side.
“Well.. I know it’s only been three weeks but..” He started, taking a deep breath. You felt your heart beating loudly against your chest. You rubbed your lips together. You fidgeted with your hands. This is it.
“I feel like I’m the most comfortable with you. You let me talk about my problems and you help me with them. I calm down when you’re talking to me. After ending our calls at night, I wouldn’t be able to get you out of my mind.”
You felt your blush grow redder, and your breathing gradually increased. He’s doing it. He’s doing it.
“You’re.. simply to say.. the best thing that has happened to me. Nobody has acted this way to me besides you. Life makes sense when I’m talking to you.” He blushes, and grabs your shoulders. His pinkys don’t touch you. You widened your eyes at this, not expecting him to do that suddenly. You look at his eyes in a daze, feeling your heart almost explode out of your chest.
“(Y/N).. I..” He swallows, his throat dry.
“I love you.”
He finishes it at that, and there’s a silence. You blink, feeling fireworks explode in your stomach. You slowly smile. You raise your arm and move your hand through his hair and hoodie to his cheek. “Tom.. I love you too.” You felt your legs shake. Honestly, you never felt this way about anyone. So why do you feel this way with someone you met online? You didn’t know, but you didn’t feel bad.
He moves one of his hands towards his hoodie strings, and pulls them so they untie. His hoodie loosens, and you finally see his lips. They were chapped, colorless. Scarred. But you smiled. He moved towards you and placed his lips on yours. You close your eyes slowly. Carefully, he moves his hand down to your back, and pulls you closer. You felt yourself going crazy. You moved your free hand and placed it on his shoulder gently. Both of you deepened the kiss, feeling the passion between each other.
After a few seconds, you guys moved away from each other. You breathed silently while you stared at each others eyes. He smiled at you, but then his smile slowly went away. He sighed, and looked down.
“(Y/N), There’s something else I need to tell you.”
You look at him confused, but you still smile. “Yes, Tom? You could tell me anything.”
He lets go of your body and squeezes your hands in his hands. They were cold. “Will.. will you look at me differently? Will you still love me?”
Taken back by this, you didn’t know what to say. “Of.. Of course I will still love you. We’ve come this far, why would I stop loving you?” You ran your hand across his arm, trying to reassure him. He sighed, and suddenly looked up at you in all serious.
“My name is Shigaraki Tomura.” He spoke. “I’m.. the leader of the League of Villains.”
Your eyes went wide. Your whole body froze. You slightly squeezed your hand on his arm.
Leader of the villain league? Him? How? You couldn’t believe it. The same person you talked to about problems you believed to be normal; were just problems of a villain?
He noticed your fear, and his eyes went wide. He grabbed your shoulders, looking at you in panic. “You still love me right? You won’t leave me, will you? You know I love you right? I would never do anything bad to you.” He tried reassuring you, shaking you slightly.
You couldn’t help but be startled by him now. The same person you called insults and teased, could’ve easily lost control and killed you? Right now, you in the grip of his hands; if he lands his pinkies on you, you’re done for.
Do you still love him? You thought to yourself. Just the other night, he went out and attacked the city with his league of villains. That was the same night you guys were texting. You believed that he was at home, in his bed, just texting you. You couldn’t believe this.
“Tom… ura…” You choked. You realized that Tom wasn’t a fake name. It wasn’t an abbreviation of tomorrow. You gulped. Were you in his hands of delusion all along? Since the beginning?
Shigaraki gritted his teeth. “Please… (Y/N).. I’ll- I’ll change for you! I promise! Please.. me meeting you is possibly the most life changing thing that has happened to me. For the better! I love you so much! I would die for you!! I would disband the League of Villains for you! If- If you want, I’ll just kill them instead! The world could be in peace! (Y/N)-“
“Tom. Err.. Tomura. Listen.. this is a lot to take in right now. So please, just calm down. I don’t know your intentions, and I just can’t believe that… you’re a villain.” You let out, frowning. You looked down at the concrete below your feet, debating with yourself. What do you say next? Now knowing his true identity, you felt that if you say something wrong, you’re done for.
You squeezed his hands. Suddenly, you wrapped your arms around him, squeezing his hoodie between you hands. “Just please… change for me. Stop..” You blinked back your tears.
“Stop killing people.”
You heard his breath hitch, and he slowly wrapped his arms around you. “(Y/N).. I love you.” You closed your eyes. This is real life. The guy you met online, someone you felt was a normal person, turned out to be a villain.
You felt him move your hair away and moved it over your shoulder with his fingers. You looked up at him. He had an indescribable facial expression.
“(Y/N), I’m sorry. Just know I love you. But this is for our safety.” You furrow your brows in confusion, until you felt a sharp sting on the side of your neck. You widened your eyes. “Tomura..” You felt drowzy. An injection. You looked at him one final time, reading pain on his face. “I love you.” He said once again, but his voice was muffled. You felt darkness consume your vision, and fell onto your knees.
—
Leather. Your wrists were binded together with leather. You slowly opened your eyes, blinking to adjust to the light.
You slowly realized that your chest and your feet were binded against the chair you were sitting on as well. Your mind felt fuzzy, and you felt sick. Where am I?
“Aww, look guys! Shigarakis little girlfriend is starting to wake up!” You hear a girls voice. What is going on? You look up slowly. You see many figures. There were men, and distinctly one girl. You blinked a few more times to adjust your vision, and you looked to the back of the room. You felt your memories slowly start to come back as your eyes landed on Tomura. You widened your eyes, and felt tears run down your face. Tomura had his villain costume on, the hand on his face making it harder to see what his face looks like.
He got up and walked towards you. Fear pulsing through you, you kicked and pushed- trying to get out of the chair. Your quirk wasn’t much help, so you felt hopeless. Trying to fight back was your only option right now. Tomura bent over and put his hands on your shoulders. You rapidly shook your head. “Don’t touch me! Get off me!! You lied to me, you lied to me!! You never loved me!! You lied.. you want to kill me!” You screamed hysterically. More tears ran down your face. You weeped, noticing that Tomura hasn’t done anything yet. His pinkies were up like last time, and he didn’t harm you yet.
You sniffled. “Why.. why are you doing this?” You whimpered. He took one hand off your shoulder and carefully took off the plastic hand that was on his face. He was unreadable. Is he regretting what he is doing? Is he angry at you? Or does he simply not care at all and is just waiting for you to stop fighting so he could kill you already? He stands up straight and turns to the other villains. “Leave. We need privacy.” He demanded. They nodded, and with that, the villains walked out and left. Where? You don’t know. He turned back to you and put his hands back on your shoulders. You gulped in fear, feeling your breathing quicken.
“Wh-What do you want, Tomura.” You choked, sniffling. He frowned, and sighed. “(Y/N), I’m doing this for your safety and mine. If I just let you go after telling you who I am, you could’ve easily told the police about your connection with me, and they could use that to their advantage to track me down and arrest me. And we can’t have that, can we?” He stood up straight and walked to the wall to the right.
“And for your safety, if someone saw us talking, they would take the chance of kidnapping you themselves. They would try to get info from you and use you to their advantage.” He turns to look at you. You were still silently crying. You bit your bottom lip in anxiousness, until you heard footsteps from him walking towards you. You widened your eyes and quickly shut them, afraid of what is going to happen next.
You felt him cup your cheek softly with his hand. You flinched, realizing you lost all trust for him. “S-Stop..” You whisper. He frowns. He crossed his arms. “(Y/N). Look at me.” You didn’t comply, and still had your eyes closed. He furrowed his brows, frustrated. He banged his fist on the arm rest next to you, making you jump. “Look at me goddamnit!” He yelled. You looked at him with fear in your eyes. He widened his eyes slightly. He didn’t want to scare you. He just wanted you to understand. He softened his eyes and sighed in frustration. He pinched the bridge of his nose and continued looking at you.
“Look. I never lied to you. I still love you, (Y/N). Truly, I do. I meant everything I said in my, err, confession as you may call it. But things are too dangerous right now. I can’t change for you just yet. You understand that right?” You looked down in hopelessness. “I hope you can realize soon enough that what I’m doing is protecting you. Trust me, I won’t let the rest of the villains lay a single hand on you. I’ll treat you with good care.”
He held your chin up with his index finger, and you looked up at him in defeat. He smiled gently. “Alright princess?” –
My first fanfic in a while!! Hope you enjoyed! Hopefully there is more to come ;) this was requested by my amazing friend @crabziee-writez <3!
my darling blue can i please get C and U for yandere!shigaraki? (˶˃ ᵕ ˂˶)
hi cutie pie! of course u can :3 shiggy changes a lot over the course of the manga so how he acts in early lov days vs plf/war days is very different. i'm gunna write for both!
tw: abuse, degradation, character development and angst, dollification? he picks out clothes for you. i always write tomura like an asshole.
link to the yandere alphabet
c - cruelty
i think tomu in the early days of the lov was very cruel. he was mean and he wasn't afraid to get physical. he would say nasty things to you any time you didn't do exactly what he wanted. really no matter what you did or how you did it, he would throw out words like bitch, whore, and slut. he would throw things around his room when he was upset. he couldn't touch you to hurt you without possibly dusting you, but the shit in his room was free game to throw. he was angry and vitriolic. he was a 19 year old man child. he wasn't afraid to keep you chained up until your wrists bled.
as he matured he regretted these actions deeply. he wishes he could knock some sense into himself back then. sometimes he has a hard time looking at you when he remembers what he did. now, he's relatively gentle with you. his touches and commands are firm, but he doesn't raise his voice anymore. he would do anything to make you less afraid of him. it's all his fault.
that got serious! moving on.
u - unique
tomura likes to dress you up. he's embarrassed about it in a way. he throws clothes at you and snaps at you to put them on with his face bright red. they aren't even fancy dresses or dolly stuff- they're comfy pink pajamas. all the clothes he makes you wear are comfortable and soft but very much discord-kitten. he likes seeing you in pjs to fulfill that willing girlfriend fantasy he has.
THIS MASTERPIECE !✨✨✨
Once Upon a Time
Summary: You’re no princess but he’s no Prince Charming. It seems only fitting that a deranged little vagabond down on her luck would run into the big, bad villain himself in a seedy bar. Perhaps he’ll make a queen of you yet.
Rating: Very Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-con/Severe dubcon (listen, I’m not fuckin’ around on this one. If you’re even slightly squeamish or traumatized in this department, don’t. There’s a really fucked up, unrealistic dynamic going on here. And don’t read it and then @ me because it’s glorifying/romanticizing. IDC.) Spitting (specifically him into your mouth.) Manhandling, alcohol, abusive actions, choking, slight stalking, unhealthy and toxic relationships, depictions of violence, blood, biting, cursing, degradation, dirty talk, cringey dialogue, cliche storyline, poorly written by a bad author.
Length: Fuckin’ long.
Anyway, take this sack of flaming garbage. It sucks but it’s driving me nuts in my drafts. Sorry for infecting your feed with this shit, you have my apologies.
There is absolutely nothing charming about this bar.
A shitty hole-in-the-wall dive located in a back alley in the shady part of town, complete with watered down booze, haughty patrons, and a sinuous 15 minute walk to the nearest train station because no one who comes here willingly is leaving sober. The drinks are cheap but you certainly make up for the money you save in the quality of the company you keep while you’re inside.
Dilapidated plywood walls littered with fist and foot shaped holes from drunken brawls and floors that hadn’t been cleaned since the day they were laid. None one quite knows what the original color was anymore, not now that they were covered in all manner of Christ knows what. The smell of cheap alcohol seems to have permeated the pores of the building itself to give it the permanent stench of 5 dollar gaso-liquor.
This isn’t a place where a princess finds her Prince Charming, and no storybook fairytale has ever crossed paths with the building or extended its mercy to the patrons. That works just fine for you. You’re not here to find your happily ever after unless that happily ever after entails getting black out drunk and stumbling back home with a few new bruises and someone’s blood between your knuckles.
Afficher davantage
Come Down to the Black Sea IV
Summary: The sea seems to call to you, but it’s not the tumultuous clash of the waves you should fear. Something lurks deep beneath the black waters, something sinister with a piqued interest and ill intent.
Rating: Explicit
No real warnings in this chapter, surprisingly. A little bit of blood and mentions of depression, but nothing overtly terrible. If you’re new, please check out the previous parts for applicable warnings.
PART I, PART II, PART III, AO3 MIRROR
TAGLIST: @lemonzoey, @babayaga67, @badtimechara, @prospekt-42 @krystalwithakay, @lunera-san, @jenorca (If you wish to be added or removed, please let me know, it’s very difficult to find everyone who wanted to be added on the older posts so I might have missed some and I apologize.)
It seems so lonely sometimes, the ocean.
The gentle push and shove of the waves, pulling at the sand as if to yank land into a reluctant embrace. The sea swallows anything you give to it, finding a home in her waters for whatever you might offer. She preserves our devastation and tragedy, collections of scattered bones and memories buried deep in a sepulchral graveyard of algae. Once picturesque ships now rusted and rotten along her depths that humanity once revered and has now left to rot. She leaves them relatively undisturbed, finding a home for her creatures instead, repurposing our disasters and death to bring new life inside of her.
You wonder, sometimes, if she gets lonely too. If perhaps that’s why she clings to the surface’s lost trinkets and breeds new growth in its stead. We offer only destruction, and she benevolently gives back life. Ying and yang. Water and land. Life and death. A forlorn balance.
She’s calm tonight. Tame waves tenderly caressing the side of the rock you’ve dubbed your new cathedra. It’s a mild night; soft winds and balmy. It’s mournful in a way you can’t describe, almost sad in nature despite the general pleasantness of the atmosphere. Like there’s something missing, something taken. Something it searches for but can’t find or replace. Something important replaced by dust and emptiness. An entire piece taken out of being.
Or perhaps you’re projecting your own emotions onto an inanimate entity.
It’s been building for some time- ashes still simmering beneath an extinguished fire. A dull ache in your chest that hollows in your throat during your weaker moments. A part of you that longs to reach out and grasp something that cannot be felt.
Humans aren’t islands. They weren’t meant to exist alone. Yet, for years, you’ve felt nothing but.
You can cry your sorrows to the water and dip your toes in the tides but even if she wanted to, the ocean cannot respond to your pleas. She can only listen, returning your confidence with small sea creatures that cross your path as if to soothe you. Occasionally a small school of fish you can barely see beneath the navy waves. Sometimes a small crab.
You’re left wondering why she saw fit to send Shigaraki. Perhaps her way of telling you to quit trauma-dumping.
Afficher davantage
Shigaraki is a missionary man you can’t tell me otherwise.
He likes the whole power dynamic of putting you on your back and being on top, crowding into your personal space, giving you nothing else to focus on but him. Does he like the other positions? Sure. He’s not exactly going to turn down sex.
But his favourite is you pressed beneath him, panting, gasping. He loves being smug about how you ‘had so much to say before’, and watching as embarrassment forces you to hide your face in his shoulder. He likes your faces being so close, noses brushing and foreheads touching. He likes your sounds in his ear, the messy, yearning kisses that you give him. He likes being able to hide his own face in your chest when he’s about to cum, and the way your hands move over his body and your legs lock around his hips to keep him inside.
He’ll act like missionary annoys him because he has to do all the work, and like the only reason he agrees to it is because he wants to see you squirm (which is also true). But ultimately, shigaraki craves missionary - he craves the intimacy of it all.
I have to confess
I have another comfort character...yes Tomura isn't the only one even if he's my fav 😂✋
I also have sundrop✨ from fnaf i can't i...such a sunshine 🥺
i'll have to do a drawing of that with mha x cult of the land !✨🤌
Enough to Go By (Chapter 2) -- a Shigaraki x f!Reader fic
Your best friend vanished on the same night his family was murdered, and even though the world forgot about him, you never did. When a chance encounter brings you back into contact with Shimura Tenko, you'll do anything to make sure you don't lose him again. Keep his secrets? Sure. Aid the League of Villains? Of course. Sacrifice everything? You would - but as the battle between the League of Villains and hero society unfolds, it becomes clear that everything is far more than you or anyone else imagined it would be. (cross-posted to Ao3)
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
When the ER doctors ask you how you got hurt, you lie. You know you shouldn’t lie, know that Tenko’s dangerous, know that his quirk, whatever it is, is deadly on contact. Some part of you thinks you should be scared of the possibility that Tenko will come back to finish the job. But at the same time, you know you’re the one who chased him. You’re the one who wouldn’t let him go. If you hadn’t run after him, none of this would have happened.
This, it turns out, is a wrist that requires a specialized healing quirk to fix, and a bruised larynx that makes you sound like you’ve been deepthroating a lead pipe. “Whoever you’re protecting, you shouldn’t,” an old, sort of grizzled nurse says severely after the fifth time you’ve repeated your lie. “Another few pounds of pressure on your throat and you’d be dead.”
Tenko was fine with killing you, at least at first. You’re not sure what changed his mind, or why he let you go, and in spite of the fact that he gave you injuries severe enough for an overnight in the ER, you can’t help wondering what happened to him. The friend you knew was nothing like that. He got frustrated sometimes, like everyone else, but he was kind. And hurting people? He wouldn’t. His older sister did more playground fighting than he did. In fact, when you think about it – you close your eyes against the fluorescent lights in your hospital room and try to fend off the memory. You can’t quite do it, because it’s crystal clear. Tenko spent more time getting hurt than doing the hurting.
If Tenko and Hana got out the door first on school days, they’d wait outside your house on the sidewalk for you to come out, so you could all walk to school together. If you were ready first, you’d wait for them. One morning you were waiting, tapping your feet, fiddling with your umbrella because the weather looked like rain even if the forecast didn’t say so, when you heard voices. One raised grown-up voice and one small anxious one, from inside the house.
You didn’t want to eavesdrop, but you didn’t know how not to. Hana had a cold, so she was staying home. Tenko had wanted to say goodbye to her before he left, but their dad said no, and when Tenko stuck his head in the door anyway, his dad yelled. And was still yelling, over whatever Tenko was trying to say, until Tenko stumbled out onto the sidewalk, without a raincoat or an umbrella and scratching the skin around his eyes.
Or wiping his eyes, maybe. He started scrubbing at them frantically when he saw you. “Don’t look –”
You turned around, and as you did, you felt the first drops of rain. “Are you okay?”
“Hana’s sick.” Tenko sniffled. “I went in her room when I wasn’t supposed to.”
I heard, you almost said. But you didn’t. You just asked again. “Are you okay?”
“We have to walk or we’ll be late.” Tenko started walking, past you, and you followed him. The rain was falling harder, spattering Tenko’s shirt and his backpack. “It wasn’t supposed to rain.”
“Here.” You put up your umbrella and hurried to catch him, holding it over both your heads. You didn’t have a choice but to look at him now, and you saw how puffy his eyes were. “I bet Hana was happy.”
Tenko nodded. He wiped his nose on the back of his hand and sniffled again, and when his hand fell back to his side, it brushed against yours. Tenko cringed. “Sorry.”
“It’s okay,” you said. You linked your pinky finger with his. “I swear.”
Tenko’s finger hooked tighter around yours. “Only since you swore.”
He had a cold the next day, and so did you. You cried until your mom went over to his house to apologize for you getting Tenko and Hana sick. So this isn’t the first time you’ve lied to protect Tenko. It might just be the first time you’re getting away with it.
You’re out of the ER at eight in the morning, and by nine-thirty you’re at work. You’re a medical assistant in a network of urgent care clinics that serve low-income people, uninsured people, or people who don’t want to risk going to a standard hospital. Your friends call your workplace Villains, Inc., and you’re not going to say you haven’t met your share – but you also meet a lot of people, and you think it’s good for you. Sometimes it feels like there are two Japans, sharing space in the same territory. One full of pretty, shiny heroes and happy, law-abiding civilians and uncomplicatedly evil villains, where everybody has a quirk and everybody’s always doing their best. And then there’s the other Japan, populated by everybody who doesn’t belong in the first one.
They say one in five people are quirkless, but you see at least fifty people a day at work, and the number of quirkless people on your side of Japan is a lot higher. Quirkless children have the school system to nominally protect them, but there’s no such system for quirkless adults. A lot of them are pushed to the margins, losing jobs to those with quirks, even if their quirk is useless for the jobs in question. Even when quirkless people can get work, it’s at a lower level than a quirked person could get. Your applications to nursing school were rejected, even though your grades matched the standard. You’re lucky that you’d already found an apprenticeship, in a workplace willing to sponsor your education and train you on the job.
You’ve been working here for two years, part-time as an apprentice and CNA in high school and full-time since you graduated. You’re a medical assistant now, which means you can do a whole bunch of things – take history, check vitals, draw blood, give vaccines. You have a specific exam room you work out of, and the newest workers, the ones still in high school, bring patients from the waiting room to you. From there, you figure out where to route them. To an exam room with a nurse or a physician, to the lab for blood tests, to Imaging, to the ER if their injuries or illness are too severe to be treated here. You’ve only had to route somebody to the morgue once.
You’ve just delivered your most recent patient to an exam room with a doctor, and you’re in the process of documenting it in the chart when a message pops up from one of your coworkers at the front desk. FOF. Can you handle it?
FOF – freak out front. You don’t love that acronym. How F are we talking?
Creepy-looking + mean. The new kid messed up, but not that bad.
You’re not in the mood for difficult patients today. Your throat is sore and your wrist is itching and the turtleneck you’re wearing to cover the bruises on your neck is a little too tight. But you’re the most senior medical assistant working today, and even if you weren’t, dealing with difficult people is sort of your specialty. You did a great job last night right up until you decided to chase after Tenko.
Nobody’s perfect, and you learned your lesson, didn’t you? You sigh, wincing at how it feels, and respond. Send them over.
You go back to your chart, trying desperately to finish it before the new patient arrives, and you’re just about to send it to your supervisor when the CNA knocks on the door. “Come in!”
The door opens and the patient steps through, shutting it behind them. “Just a second,” you say, deciding you’re going to finish your documentation if it kills you. “You can have a seat and I’ll be with you as soon as I just –”
“Your voice sounds weird.”
You almost choke on your own spit. You look up from your computer and find Tenko staring at you from across the exam room.
Between the fluorescent lights of the convenience stores and the shadowy darkness of the street, your encounter with Tenko last night had the sense of a fever dream or an acid trip – shiny around the edges, not quite real. Seeing him in broad daylight in your dingy exam room is unnerving beyond words. He looks even more like your best friend than he did before, but there are more differences, too – a scar over Tenko’s mouth, another scar over his right eye. Whatever skin condition he had around his eyes as a child, it’s gotten worse, so much worse that it’s obliterated his eyebrows and spread to his forehead. He’s wearing a black hoodie, maybe the same hoodie he was wearing last night. And he’s staring at you.
You thought there was no way he’d come back to finish the job. You thought you were safe. You thought wrong. Your voice comes out in an airless whisper, like you’re still sprawled on the concrete with his arm across your throat. “What are you doing here?”
“It says outside you have to treat everybody. Is that true?” Tenko’s voice is abrupt, bordering on rude, and he doesn’t wait for an answer. “Your voice sounds weird. And that shirt is stupid. You wouldn’t sound so weird if the collar wasn’t –”
He’s reaching towards you, and you’re frozen, even as your mind screams at you to get out of the way. Tenko’s index finger hooks into the collar of your turtleneck and pulls it down. His eyes narrow at first, turning his expression sharp and mean. Then they widen once more, past where they were before, until he looks more like the Tenko you knew than you’ve seen yet. “Who did that?”
You don’t remember your best friend being this stupid. “Who do you think?”
“I didn’t do that,” Tenko says, but his eyes dart to one side, the way they used to do when he knew he was wrong. A second later he changes his tune. “You made me do it. If you hadn’t chased me –”
You shouldn’t have chased him, but he didn’t have to choke you and burn the skin off your wrist. You look Tenko over and change the subject. You don’t want to argue. You don’t want him to get mad. “Aren’t you missing something?”
He gives you a puzzled look, and you mime a hand covering your face. “Father,” Tenko says. He calls it Father? That’s – weird. “He’s here.”
He unhooks his finger from your collar, reaches into his hoodie pocket, extracts the hand, and secures it over his face. It should look ridiculous, but instead it’s terrifying. “I can’t wear him in daylight. Master says he’s too recognizable yet.”
None of those words make any sense, and you’ve lost your ability to speak. “It says you treat everybody here. You have to. Right?” Tenko asks. You nod wordlessly. “So treat me.”
“Um –” You get the syllable out of your mouth, watching Tenko’s shoulders stiffen at the sound of your voice. “Do you have your intake form? They would have given it to you when you checked in.”
Tenko’s mouth twists. “The brat at the front desk didn’t give me anything. She said she could fill it in herself, since she knew I was here for dermatology.”
You think back to your coworker’s message. You’d say the new kid messed up pretty bad. “I’m sorry. She shouldn’t have made that assumption.”
“You did too. Didn’t you? I bet you thought I came in here for help with my disgusting skin.”
“No,” you say. “I think you’re probably coming in for your wrist.”
It’s the only thing that makes sense to you, short of him tracking you down to finish the job, and when he’s reached for you or taken the hand out of his pocket, he’s used his left hand. If your memory’s correct, Tenko’s right-handed. “It looked like you hurt it when you fell,” you continue. Tenko stares at you. “Are there any other issues you’d like us to investigate while you’re here?”
Tenko shakes his head. Okay. Nineteen-year-old male, here for suspected injury to wrist. What’s next in your exam workflow? A process you run through at least a hundred times per week has exited your mind completely. You glance around the room uselessly and your eyes land on your blood pressure cuff. “Okay. I’m going to take your vitals.”
“Why do you need those?” Tenko looks suspicious. “Stay away from me.”
“I need your blood pressure, your pulse rate, and your pulse oxygen level. None of those are invasive tests.” Not usually, anyway – given how Tenko reacted the last time you came anywhere close to touching him, you’re pretty sure that pushing the point here could get you killed. “Or just the pulse oxygen. That goes on your finger.”
You take it out, only to remember about Tenko’s quirk. Tenko notices your hesitation. He sneers behind the hand. “Don’t worry. It only works with all five fingers.”
Good to know. You clip the pulse oxygen monitor onto his middle finger and turn back to your computer. Even without looking at his wrist, an x-ray is standard protocol, and you need to get Tenko into the queue right away. The less time he spends here, the less danger everybody else is in. It might be too late for you already.
“What do you think?” Tenko asks. You look at him. “The quirk.”
“You’ve got one.” You’re not really sure what else to say.
“And you don’t. Still?” Tenko raises his eyebrows. You nod. “And you still don’t care.”
“No,” you say. “I never cared about not having one. Only about how people treat me.”
“I bet they treat you like shit,” Tenko says. He sounds gleeful, but his expression doesn’t match his tone of voice. It’s weird. “If I ask you why you’re here instead of some fancy clinic on the nice side of town, you’ll probably lie and say you love it here. But you’re here because nowhere else will take somebody who doesn’t have a quirk. Isn’t that right?”
“I do like it here.” You aren’t lying. The pulse ox monitor beeps and you take it back from Tenko, recording the reading on your computer. “And I’m here because nowhere else will take me. Let me see your wrist.”
Tenko’s had his other hand in the front pocket of his hoodie this whole time. He draws it out slowly and extends it towards you. You’re not qualified to diagnose anything, but you can see that it’s bruised and swollen, and the skin is hot when you touch it. Tenko hisses as your fingers make contact. “What are you doing?”
“Trying to see if there’s an obvious break.” You shouldn’t – he’ll be headed to Imaging no matter what – but you don’t want anyone else to come into contact with Tenko unless they have to. Tenko’s wrist is swollen to the point that you can barely feel anything beneath it. “Were you resting this last night? Or using it?”
“I had games to play.”
Tenko’s a gamer now. Huh. “That’s probably why it’s so sore. And so swollen. No more gaming with that hand until it heals.”
“You’re not a doctor. Don’t tell me what to do.”
“The doctor’s going to say the same thing.” You glance away at your screen, checking your position in the Imaging queue. There’s a chest x-ray ahead of you, with a sick kid, and those always take a while. “I’m going to get you some ice for this. It’ll help with the x-rays if the swelling goes down. Stay here.”
“No.” Tenko gets to his feet, pulling his wrist out of your grip, grimacing as the motion jars the injury. “You think I don’t know what you’ll do? You’re just dying to go to the cops.”
“I had a chance to go to the cops. Last night, when I went to the hospital for this.” You gesture at your throat, and Tenko’s expression twists behind the hand. “I didn’t go then. Why would I go now?”
Tenko stares at you. You hold his gaze. You’ve never lost a staring contest in your life, and you’re not planning to start today – and after a long moment, Tenko averts his eyes. “You can go,” he says shortly. “But I won’t use it unless you get some for your neck.”
Does he feel guilty? Is that why he’s saying that? You decide not to think about it too hard. He’s your patient right now. If this is what it’ll take for him to ice his injury, you’ll happily slap a bag of ice on your throat.
But once you’ve brought the ice back, and you’re holding yours to your throat while Tenko applies his gingerly to his wrist, you’re out of other things to do. It’s just you and your best friend, who tried to kill you last night, sitting in a room together. Tenko still has the hand over his face. Your wrist is still itching. Before last night, when you still had the luxury of imagining what it would be like to meet Tenko again after all this time, you didn’t imagine it would be like this. It makes you sad.
You’re expecting silence until Tenko gets called back to Imaging, but to your surprise, Tenko speaks up. “Your parents had three more kids,” he says. You nod. “Why?”
“To be fair to them, they thought they were only having one.” You don’t like being fair to them about this, given what happened afterwards, even if there’s no way they could have known. “It was triplets, and they were pretty sick. They got the same kind of quirk as the rest of the family, so they made us all feel how they felt. Which was – bad.”
Tenko doesn’t say anything. You shouldn’t be talking about your family, not when his family is dead. Does he even know what happened to his family? You’re not going to ask. “Sorry.”
“Did you have to take care of them?”
“What?”
“The stupid triplets. Did you have to take care of them, too?” Tenko glares from behind the hand. “I remember you always had to before. You never stayed as long as you wanted to.”
“Oh,” you say, startled. “No, um – I had to get home. I wanted to.”
“My birthday party. Your mom came to get you early and you said you weren’t crying but you were.” Tenko is still glaring at you, and you find yourself shrinking back in your chair. “I remember. Don’t lie.”
“You didn’t remember last night,” you say, but he must have remembered something, or he wouldn’t have spoken up when you mentioned how many siblings you have. “Tenko, what –”
“That’s not my name. Anymore.” Tenko scratches at his neck lefthanded. “Master gave me a new one. Tomura.”
“Tomura,” you repeat. “Is that what I should call you?”
Tenko – Tomura? – keeps scratching, clawing up red scrapes in his skin. Then his hand falls back down. “Tenko. You should call me Tenko.” He averts his eyes from yours again. “You knew me before.”
Before what? You can’t decide whether to ask, and Tenko makes the decision for you. “I knew you before, too. When you were a kid whose parents wouldn’t let her stay long enough at a birthday party for a fucking piece of cake.”
“You brought me some. The next day.” Your voice is small. “I remember that. It was the nicest thing anybody ever did for me.”
Tenko’s shoulders stiffen. “That’s pathetic.”
“It was the nicest thing back then,” you say. “Nicer stuff has happened since then.”
Has it? It probably has, but right now your mind is full, all your memories of Tenko flooding to the forefront. There aren’t many. Not nearly enough. Three years at most – your memory is good enough to pick up some things from when you were a toddler, and you and Tenko met when you were barely old enough to speak full sentences. But you talked. You always talked. You talked to each other about everything. Right now it feels like there’s nothing in the world you could say to each other, and it breaks your heart.
Your computer pings, snapping you out of it and giving you something else to fixate on. “They’re ready for us in Imaging. I’ll walk you.”
“What, you think I can’t walk by myself?”
“I want to keep an eye on you,” you say, and Tenko scoffs. “Come on.”
He takes the hand down off his face and tucks it away again before exiting the exam room. He pulls his hood up, too, shuffling along at your side too close to be a shadow. You pass more than a few of your coworkers, all of whom give you pitying looks. They feel bad for you, but they don’t know enough to feel bad for the right reason. It makes you angry, just like it made you angry to hear Tenko’s father shout at him, a useless anger that felt too large for your tiny body. You couldn’t protect him then, and he wouldn’t let you do it now, but the urge is there, as insane as it might be. He almost killed you last night. And here you are wanting to save him.
The x-rays go quickly. A few different angles, and then you and Tenko stand there while the doctor on shift interprets them. “No fracture,” he reports. “Just a bad sprain. We’ll send you home with a brace to wear. Just take it easy for a few days.”
Tenko jerks his chin downwards. It would be charitable to call it a nod. The doctor makes a quick note in his chart and turns away, trusting you to dig up a brace and conclude the visit. Tenko won’t ask, so you will. “What about for pain?”
The doctor turns, raises an eyebrow. “The patient didn’t ask.”
“The patient wouldn’t have come in if it didn’t hurt.” You’re insane. You must be, to help someone who hurt you, except you’re not thinking of last night, you’re thinking of today – of your best friend, who’s not your friend anymore, but remembers you enough to be angry on your behalf. Who brought you a slice of birthday cake the next day because you couldn’t stay long enough to have one. “What would you recommend?”
“Ice it at least three times a day, and double up on NSAIDs,” the doctor says finally. “The OTC brands will be fine. If you rest it properly it should be healed by next week. Is there anything else?”
You glance at Tenko. Tenko shakes his head. “Feel better soon,” the doctor says. “Come back for a follow-up if anything worsens.”
Tenko trails after you as you retrieve a brace from the supply cabinet. “What the hell were all those acronyms?”
“NSAIDs – nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs,” you explain. “Things like ibuprofen and acetaminophen. OTC means over the counter – things you can buy without a prescription. Any convenience store should have them.”
You find a brace in the correct size and turn to find Tenko already holding out his arm. It surprises you, to the extent that you freeze for a moment, but then you snap out of it and secure the brace around his wrist. It’s simple to avoid his quirk, now that you think about it. All you have to do is make sure all five fingers don’t touch you at once.
Tenko grimaces as you fasten the last of the Velcro straps on the brace. “It’s tight.”
“It needs to be tight to support your wrist,” you say. “If it hurts, loosen it a little bit, but not so much that it slides. Do you have questions about anything else?”
Tenko shakes his head. “He didn’t say I couldn’t play games.”
“He said you had to rest your wrist,” you say. “You can play point-and-clicks. With your other hand.”
Tenko snorts. “I’m not playing point-and-clicks.”
“Better than nothing.” They’re the only type of video game you’re good at. Sometimes you and your friends make a drinking game out of them, doing a shot every time you find a clue or solve a puzzle. “If there’s nothing else, I can go ahead and walk you out.”
It’s quiet for a second. Tenko is looking at you, and you look back, unsure of what else to do. Part of you wants him gone as fast as possible, but it’s a smaller part of you than it should be. The rest of you wants your best friend, who remembers the things you don’t talk about, who saw you through the smile you knew to paste on even at five years old. You want to find out what happened to him. You want to know where he’s been. You want to know if he knew you were here, if that’s why he came to this clinic instead of any of the others. You want to know if it’s going to be another fifteen years before you see him again.
For a moment you think Tenko will say something, will come up with something else to stretch this out. Instead he glances left, then right. “Which way do I go to get out of here?”
“I’ll walk you out,” you say again. You lead him down the hall to the door that opens onto the street, fighting the lump in your throat. There’s a spiel you’re supposed to give to patients as they leave, but you can’t get it out of your mouth.
Tenko stands there a moment, then pushes the door open lefthanded, and something inside you snaps loose. You catch his sleeve and he turns to stare at you, a sneer already beginning to twist his features. You’ve got maybe three seconds before he hurts you again, and you have to use them wisely. “I won’t ask about the rest of it. I’m not going to follow you again,” you say. “I know we won’t see each other after this. I just need to know. Are you okay, wherever you are?”
You’re expecting him to mock you, but instead the sneer falls from his face. He looks like himself again, the part of him you knew best. He doesn’t ask why you care, and you realize it’s because he knows. He knew last night when he let you go instead of killing you. You’re his best friend. Of course you care.
“Yeah. I –” Tenko coughs, clears his throat. His voice is back to its usual rasp when he speaks. “I’m okay.”
You know he’s lying. You think he might know that you know, too. But he pulls his arm away slightly, not yanking it from your grip but making it clear that he wants to leave, and you let him go.
The door swings shut behind him, and you turn and head back to your exam room, working on documenting his visit in the chart until your eyes go blurry. You didn’t sleep at all last night. You won’t sleep well tonight, either. You know already that you’ll be up late into the night, retracing every second in your head, trying to figure out what went wrong. Trying to guess what happened. Wondering, like you always wonder about Tenko – if he’s alive, if he’s all right.
You have answers to the first two questions now. Other than that, the things that keep you up tonight will be the same as they’ve been since you were six years old. Other than the scar around your wrist and the bruises around your throat, nothing’s changed at all.
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