Enough To Go By (Chapter 12) - A Shigaraki X F!Reader Fic

The moment AFO and the Doctor realize that their perfect plan, Tomura Shigaraki, is prone to temper tantrums... 😅

mentions: blood, injury, horror themes. sorry LMAO. they care u?

you were taught—like all others at a young age—that the word 'friend' has a positive connotation.

friend, best friend, work friend—they all have positive associations with them. it's only natural, you suppose, for humans to crave close connections to others. after all, you've experienced it your whole life, not only with yourself, but when looking at the people around you and how they interact with the world.

friends are good, simple as that. and to be called someone's friend means that you'll always be there for them. that you care about them and crave their presence in your life.

so when sun calls you his friend for the first time—your first day on the job, in fact—you're a bit surprised and maybe a little weirded out. you've only just met him and frankly, you hadn't been aware that this applied to robots as well. it's something you find yourself ruminating upon later.

he uses the title very often, you've noticed. not only with you, but with others as well. mostly the kids at the daycare, since they are whom he interacts with the most on a daily basis. you figure it must be part of his programming to make people more comfortable with him, so you let him call you whatever his little robot heart desires. not like it was really bothering you or anything—though you certainly grow more accustomed to it the closer you get to him.

part of you wonders if he puts any weight behind the word—if by calling you 'friend' he truly means it. maybe he doesn't understand the concept—made, as he is, from metal and code. perhaps it is just an empty word. perhaps it isn't. you're not sure if you'll ever know.

moon doesn't call you 'friend', not really. he's quite quiet when he wants to be and sticks to calling you other names that make your eye twitch sporadically on more than one occasion. what he does do relentlessly is tease you, and you figure that's his way of getting close to people. or driving them away, whichever comes first. you get used to him like you get used to sun's openness.

you find yourself pondering upon the relationship you form with the daycare attendant over time, analyzing and picking them apart in your mind in the nights you spend at home. they seem to have an affinity for your presence, seeking you out the moment you step into the daycare. they talk to you, they laugh with you. they show genuine interest in the things you have to say. they hug you and spin you around. they pat your head and pinch your nose.

and so you conclude, one night after returning from the pizzaplex, that sun and moon are your friends. a strange thought, you muse, to be friends with robots. it makes you happy, you admit.

so then why are you so afraid right now?

you swallow heavily as you try to level your shallow breaths, heart pounding a harsh beat in your chest. you need to calm down, you need to calm down or they'll hear you. their sensors allow them to pick up on irregular rhythms, they'll find you if you don't calm yourself. deep breath in, deep breath out. breathe.

perspiration slides down the side of your face as you hunker into yourself, curled underneath a party table with cloth adornments that conceal your form from the outside. you're safe here for now if you don't disturb the fabric around you. your legs curl farther into your body—squishing yourself into as small of a ball as possible. darkness surrounds your figure, interrupted by the dim light you can see filtering through the table cloth.

your right hand grips at your left shoulder, wet with a thick liquid that spills between your fingers and coats the inside of your shirt. it hurts, god, it hurts so much. you're confused, you're scared. you don't know what's going on—only that something is so very, very wrong. wrong from the moment you'd stepped into the daycare, and the moment you'd ran out.

your throat aches when you swallow, a dryness coating it like there are cotton balls instead of mucosa lining it. you lick your lips in a vain attempt to wet them and close your eyes to suppress the way your vision swims before you. deep breath in, deep breath out. you're not calming down, why aren't you calming down?

your heartrate spikes abruptly when you hear a slow, dull clanging sound somewhere to your far left. it's loud—getting louder with each beat—and makes you cover your mouth with your unoccupied hand as best as you can. something wet slides down the curves of your cheeks and drips onto your collarbones. you still your breaths and do your best not to make a sound.

the clanging gets louder and a glitched, warbling voice calls out over it in a way that makes your stomach drop down to your feet. "f-friend! friend!" it cries out desperately, static lining its voice. the word makes something icy coat your insides and seizes your guts in an iron grip. "w-where a-are you hi-hiding, f-friend?"

your teeth clench together so harshly you swear something in your jaw creaks. your eyes dart around, wishing you can see beyond the table cloth. but you're forced to rely on your hearing as the clanging—heavy, metallic stomping—moves somewhere behind you. "f-friend! we-we are s-so sorr-r-y for hur-hurting you!" the voice gets closer, like it's right on top of your head. "come out, pl-please?"

fat chance, you want to say, but you don't. your lower lip trembles minutely and your eyes catch onto a shadow that moves on your left. just beyond the table cloth. you don't move. you don't breathe. if you listen close enough, you can hear small clicks of metal against metal. little jerks and twitches.

a beat passes. your muscles tense.

a scream leaves your lips as cloth rushes over your head. the table gets flipped—thrown to the side like it weighs nothing—and you're left exposed to the chilly air of the pizzaplex. you scramble backwards, but feel something latch onto your ankle and drag you down until you're flat on your back and staring up up up. at the towering figure of metal and silicon crouched over you, three arms crooked towards you in a way like they are about to grab you.

its shadow casts itself over your prone form, interrupted by an iridescent purple that gleams across the pupils of its eyes—faint.

"f-friend!" it says excitedly as its grip tightens around your ankle. another one of its arms latches onto your uninjured shoulder while a third lifts its sharp claws up to wipe at the tears running down your face. "th-there y-you are! found you, we f-found you~! why did you h-hide from us?" its grin seems to widen and thins at the edges, voice dark with a static you've never heard before. your heart stutters in your chest, a sob lingers in your throat.

it's sun. it's moon. it's both of them. it's neither of them. it's your friend. it's not your friend.

you don't know who they are anymore. you don't know why them calling you their friend has turned that previously warm feeling in your gut into something much, much darker.

you were friends. you were friends.

you stare up at them and flinch when their hands tighten over you to bring you closer to them.

...right?

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 🥺

the new postmodern age (chapter one) - a Shigaraki x f!Reader fic

Written for @threadbaresweater's follower milestone event, and the prompt 'a day at the beach'! Congratulations on the milestone, and thanks for giving me a chance to write this fic.

dividers by @enchanthings

Before the war, you were nothing but a common criminal, but in the world that's arisen from the ashes, you got a second chance. Five years after the final battle between the heroes and the League of Villains, you run a coffee shop in a quiet seaside town, and you're devoted to keeping your customers happy. Even customers like Shimura Tenko, who needs a second chance even more than you did -- and who's harboring a secret that could upend everything you've tried to build. Will you let the past drag both of you down? Or will you find a way, against all odds, to a new beginning? (cross-posted to Ao3)

Chapters: 1 2

Chapter 1

You believe in second chances.

Before the war, you were living on the margins, just like the rest of even the pettiest criminals were. No one would hire someone with a record, even if the record was for something nonviolent, and that meant that you were always hungry, always freezing in the winter and getting heatstroke in the summer, always one step away from doing something worse and getting put away for good. You were going nowhere fast, and no matter how hard you tried, you couldn’t get back on your feet. It was a struggle to get up in the morning.

But after the war, something changed. Not a lot, but enough, because after a heartfelt public plea from the hero who saved the day, the world decided to care a little bit about people like you. The government passed new anti-discrimination laws, including one banning hiring discrimination against people with criminal records, and for nonviolent criminals like you, they opened up an extra opportunity – a choice between job training or a startup loan for a small business, so you could pay down your fines and restitution while adding something good to society. Sure, it was all in the name of preventing new villains from being created, but you’ll take it. You took it, picked up a loan, moved out of the city to a small town on the coast, and decided to open up a coffee shop.

You’re not really sure why you picked a coffee shop. Maybe because the town you moved to didn’t have one yet, or maybe because you used to hang out in them a lot when you had nowhere else to go. And the program you’re part of worked exactly like it was supposed to. You had to hire people to help you get the building you chose up to code, and that meant you met people in your new community. You showed those people that the criminals they hated were people, too. You’ve paid most of your fines and you’re able to break even anyway, and even though there’s a sign on the door telling everyone that you’re a convicted felon and you have to answer any questions you’re asked about it, you have customers.

Not just customers – regulars. People whose kids you’ve seen grow up, people who talk to you when they see you out and about. After five years of trying, you’ve finally carved out a place where you belong. So yeah, you believe in second chances. How could you not?

You stand back from your front window, admiring the latest addition. There’s the sign identifying your business as one sponsored by the Nonviolent Criminal Reintegration Act, but just above it, you’ve added a bigger sign: Free Internet Access. Osono, whose bakery makes the pastries you sell, studies it alongside you. “Free access? Shouldn’t it be access with purchase?”

“I thought about it a lot, but no.” You’re sort of lying. You thought about it for two seconds and that was it. “This is better.”

“It’ll attract riff-raff.”

That’s the kind of comment that used to really piss you off, but you know Osono. You know it’s just a blind spot, and you know how to respond. “Most things are online these days. Job applications, apartment listings, information on government assistance. When I was in trouble before, free internet access would have helped me a lot. And I usually bought something anyway, even if it was just a cup of coffee.”

“Not a pastry?” Osono nods at the trays stacked on her cart, and you remember that she’s waiting for you to open the door. Oops. You unlock it in a hurry and prop it open with a rock you pulled up from the beach. “Where were you getting food?”

“Wherever I could.” You were hungry a lot. And sick a lot, because sometimes you had to eat things that were expired. You don’t like to think about that very much. “I stole sometimes so I wouldn’t starve. I’ve paid it all back by now.”

“You know how to take responsibility,” Osono says. She slides back the door on your pastry case without asking and starts loading things in. “I wish more of them were like you.”

“Most of us are,” you say, as gently as you can manage. “We just need a fighting chance.”

Sometimes people forget that you’re a criminal, that you’ll carry your record around for the rest of your life. You can’t let them forget. Osono nods in the way that tells you she’s humoring you and lifts a tray of pastries you haven’t seen before out of the cart. “These are a new recipe I’m trying out. What do you think?”

“They’re pretty,” you say. “Is that chocolate in the filling?”

“And cinnamon. They aren’t vegan, but there aren’t any common allergens in them.” Osono passes you the recipe anyway, and you scribble down the ingredients on the back of the name card you’re making, just in case someone asks. “Tell me how they do, all right? If they sell decently I’ll add them to my rotation.”

“Will do.” You help her with the last few trays. “Thanks, Osono. Say hi to the kids and Naoki for me?”

“Will do.” Osono wheels the cart back out the door, then pauses to study the internet access sign. “Good luck with this.”

“Thanks.”

You wait until the delivery van pulls away before you start rearranging the pastries to your preferred setup. You add “new arrival” to the label for the new pastry, then touch the lettering to turn it a pleasant but eye-catching green before placing it front and center in the case. Then you set up your espresso machine, wake up the cash register, switch on the lights and take down the chairs from the tops of the tables – and only then do you switch on the other sign in your window. It’s seven am. Skyline Coffee and Tea is open for business.

It’s grey and cold, and the low tide is closer to noon today, which means you’re in for a busy morning as the people who walk the beach daily stop in for food and coffee first. Only one person orders one of the new pastries, but almost everyone comments on the free internet access. They say the same kind of thing Osono said, and you say the same thing you said to her if they hold still long enough for you to answer. You say it nicely. It’s an effort to say it nicely, sometimes, but it’s worth doing.

Past noon, things slow down a bit. You decide to speed-clean the espresso machine, and you’re so focused on your work that you don’t notice the customer. It’s possibly also the customer’s fault, since he’s peering at you from over the pickup counter instead of standing by the cash register, and when he barks the question at you, it startles you badly. “What’s the password?”

“On the WiFi?” You tuck your burned hand behind your back. “No password. Find a place to sit down and have at it.”

The customer looks disconcerted. Or at least you think he does – the lower half of his face is covered with a surgical mask, and given that he doesn’t have eyebrows, it’s hard to read his expression. “Why?”

“Why isn’t there a password?” You haven’t gotten that question yet. “I want people to be able to use it if they need it.”

“They’re gonna watch porn.”

“Me putting a password on the WiFi wouldn’t stop that,” you say. “And I’m not the internet police. If somebody starts acting up, I’ll deal with it. If not – just use headphones.”

The customer’s expression twists. “I didn’t mean me.”

“Sure.” You’re not a moron. “It’s not my business what you do. Unless your business starts messing with my business. Seriously. Knock yourself out.”

The customer turns away, and you spend a second being extremely grateful that you went for single-occupancy bathrooms instead of multiple-stall bathrooms before you go back to cleaning the espresso machine. Your hand hurts, but it’s nothing running it under cold water won’t fix later. When you straighten up, there’s someone at the counter.

It’s porn guy, who you really shouldn’t call porn guy. Innocent until proven guilty and all that. You dry your hands and hurry over. “What can I get for you today?”

“Black coffee.”

“Sure. Anything else?”

The customer glances at the pastry case and shakes his head. Then his stomach growls. He knows you heard it. What little of his face is visible above the mask turns red. “No.”

“Tell you what,” you say. “I’ve got these new pastries the bakery wants me to try out, but next to nobody’s tried one yet. If you agree to tell me how it was, you can have it half off.”

“I have money.” The customer shoves a credit card across the counter to you, and you see that he’s wearing fingerless gloves. Or sort of fingerless gloves. They’re missing the first three fingers on each hand. “I don’t need help.”

“No, but you’re helping me out.” You add the pastry to his order and discount it by half, then fish it out of the case with a pair of tongs. “For here or to go?”

“Here.” The customer watches as you set it on a plate. “What is that?”

“It’s babka.”

“I can read. What is it?”

“I don’t really know,” you admit. Maybe that’s why people aren’t buying them. “The filling’s chocolate and cinnamon, though. It’s hard to go wrong with that. It’ll be just a second with the coffee.”

You fill a cup, then point out the cream and sugar. Then you realize you still haven’t tapped the customer’s card. You finish ringing up the order and glance at the cardholder’s name. Shimura Tenko. He hasn’t been in before today. You’re not the best with faces, but you never forget a name.

Shimura Tenko sets up shop at the booth in the farthest corner, and although you sneak by once or twice to check on him, you’re pretty sure he’s not watching porn. People don’t usually take notes when they’re watching porn. It looks like he’s working or something. Working remote, but he doesn’t have internet access at home? Or maybe he does, and he’s just looking for a change of scenery. That’s a normal thing to do. A change of scenery is one thing Skyline Coffee and Tea is equipped to provide.

Speaking of that, it’s been a while since you changed out the mural on the café’s back wall. Your quirk, Color, lets you change the color of any object you touch, and choose how long the color sets. You’ve used it for a lot of things over the years, but now you mainly use it to create new murals every few months or so. The back wall’s been a cityscape since the fall, when you saw a picture of Tokyo’s skyline at night and got inspired. Maybe this weekend you’ll switch it out for something a little softer. If people wanted the city, they’d stay there instead of coming here.

Customers come in and out, a few lingering for conversations or to test out the free WiFi, but Shimura Tenko stays put, somehow making a single cup of black coffee last until you give the fifteen-minute warning that you’re closing up shop. Another person might be pissed about someone hanging out so long without buying anything else, but you’ve been there. You let it go, except to ask him how the babka was as he’s on his way out the door. He throws the answer back over his shoulder without looking your way. “It was fine. Nothing special.”

Fine, sure. When you go back to clear his table, you find the plate it was on wiped clean. There’s not even a smear of the filling left.

“Check this place out!” Your probation officer leans across the counter, eyes bright, out of costume and way too enthusiastic for eight in the morning. “It’s looking great in here. You changed something. New color scheme? New uniform?”

“Nope.” You don’t get nervous for your check-ins, but you don’t like the fact that they’re random. Today’s not a good day. “There’s some new stuff on the menu, and in the pastry case. Maybe that’s it.”

“No,” Present Mic says, drawing out the word. He turns in a slow circle, then whips back around with a grin. “When did you repaint that wall?”

“I didn’t paint it,” you say. It’s best to be honest. “I used my quirk. I’m not making money off of it and it’s not hurting anyone, so it falls within the terms of my probation.”

“Take it easy there, listener. I’m not trying to bust you,” Present Mic says. Heroes always say that. You know better than to buy it. “It looks good. Really brightens the place up.”

“I thought it could use it,” you say. “It’s kind of a rough time of year.”

Cold weather always brings you lots of customers, but people are sharper, unhappier, and if they’re in the mood to take it out on someone, they pick somebody who can’t make a fuss or hit back. Somebody like you. You’ve learned not to take it personally. “Not too rough financially. You’ve made all your payments on time. I checked.” Present Mic is peering into the pastry case. “How’s that free internet access thing going for you?”

“Not so bad,” you say. “The connection’s pretty fast, so I get people in here who are taking online classes, or working remote. I’ve only had to kick one person out for watching porn.”

“Yeah, he filed a complaint,” Present Mic says, and your stomach drops. “You made the right call. Don’t worry.”

You’re going to worry. It’s going to take all day for that one to wear off. “I haven’t had problems with it otherwise.”

“Why’d you do it?” Present Mic gives you a curious look. “Free stuff brings all kinds of people out of the woodwork. Why give yourself the headache?”

“I want this to be the kind of place I needed,” you say. “Somewhere safe where nobody would kick me out if I couldn’t buy more than one cup of coffee, where I could use the internet without getting in trouble for it. A headache’s worth that to me.”

It’s quiet for a second, but Present Mic being Present Mic, it doesn’t last. “You really turned a corner, huh? Hard to believe you were ever on the wrong side of the law.”

“We all could be there,” you say. “It only takes one mistake.”

Present Mic sighs. “You’re telling me. Did you catch the news last week?”

“The thing with Todoroki Touya?” The surviving members of the League of Villains all went through their own rehab, and they’re on permanent probation – and last weekend, Todoroki Touya, formerly known as Dabi, lit somebody’s motorcycle on fire after they followed him for six blocks, harassing him the whole way. “I saw. Is he getting revoked?”

“Nope. The other guy was way out of line, and the panel ruled that the majority of people – former villains or not – would have reacted similarly under that kind of pressure.” Present Mic rolls his shoulders, and his leather jacket squeaks. “All I can say is, he’s lucky we’re in the business of second chances these days. Or fifth chances.”

“Why so many?” you ask. “The rest of us are on three strikes, you’re out.”

“Yeah, but you have to mess up a lot worse for it to count as a strike,” Present Mic points out. “If I had to guess, I’d say it’s a guilt thing. This whole rehab thing is Deku’s idea. And Deku never got over what happened with Shigaraki.”

Members of the League of Villains died leading up to the final battle, but of the five who made it that far, only one of them was dead at the end of the war – Shigaraki Tomura, their leader. To most people, it was good riddance to the greatest evil Japan has ever seen, but Deku’s always been publicly against that viewpoint. Insistent that All For One was the true villain. Regretful that the war ended with Shigaraki’s death, too. “Since he couldn’t save him, he’s stuck on saving the other four,” Present Mic continues. “Which equals infinite chances. So far Todoroki’s the only one who’s needed them.”

You nod. Present Mic stretches. “Let’s take a walk,” he decides. “I’ll buy coffee for both of us.”

“I can’t leave,” you say. “I don’t have anybody else to watch this place. If a customer comes by –”

“Half an hour, tops. Come on.” Present Mic produces a wallet from the inside of his leather jacket. “The sooner we leave, the sooner you can come back.”

You lock up, hating every second of it, and follow Present Mic into the cold, a to-go cup of your own coffee in your hands. Present Mic runs through the usual list of questions, the ones that cover your mindset as much as they cover your progress on your program requirements. Some of them are about how you’re getting along with the civilians in town, and you know he’ll be checking in with some of your customers, seeing if their perception lines up with yours. It feels invasive. Intrusive. Some part of you always pushes back. You always quiet it down. You made this bed for yourself, coming up on a decade ago. Now you have to lie in it.

“I’ve got some news,” Present Mic says, once he’s finished with the questions. “The program’s considering early release for some of the participants.”

“Why?”

“The legislative review’s coming up, and they want success stories,” Present Mic says. “You know, people who clawed their way out of the criminal underworld to become productive members of society. I’m putting your name on the list.”

You almost drop your coffee. “Really?”

“Yeah,” Mic says. He seems taken aback by your surprise. “I mean – you’re kind of who this thing was designed for, listener. You caught your first charge when you were underage, for a nonviolent crime, and the rest of your case is a perfect example of just one of the many problems Deku won’t shush about. Now look at you. You’ve got your own business, you’re paying back your debt to society, you’re participating in civilian life. There are civilians who don’t do that much.”

Of course they don’t. Actual civilians don’t have to prove they have a right to exist. “If you’re approved for early release, the government will waive interest on your startup loan, and I heard a rumor that they’re considering wiping charges off people’s records,” Mic continues. “It’s a pretty good deal, listener. And you’re making a pretty weird face.”

“Sorry,” you say, trying to fix it. “I mean – felonies are a forever thing. They don’t get wiped.”

“It’s just a rumor,” Mic says, and pats your shoulder. “Even if that doesn’t pan out, you could use a break on the interest. Anyway, it’s not a sure thing, but I put your name up. You’ve got as good a shot as anybody.”

You think that’s probably true, which is weird to think about. You’ve been behind the eight ball since you were in high school. Present Mic throws down the rest of his coffee, then turns back the way the two of you came. “Let’s go. I saw a pastry I wanted to buy, and I bet you have a customer or two.”

You’ve heard things about other program participants’ probation officers taking things without paying, but you got lucky with Present Mic – he always pays. Sometimes he even gives you a hard time for setting your prices too low. And he’s right about the customers. When you get back, one of your regulars is sitting cross-legged, leaning back against the locked door with his hood up and his laptop open.

It’s Shimura Tenko, who you never saw before you started offering free internet, and who’s turned into a regular ever since. The two of you don’t talk the way you do with some of your other regulars – something about the mask and the hood and the gloves tells you that Shimura isn’t looking to make friends. But he shows up two or three times a week, orders black coffee, and camps out in the corner of the café until closing time. Sometimes you can talk him into a pastry, and it’s always a babka. Whether he orders one or not, he’s always hungry when he comes in.

Shimura looks up as you and Present Mic approach. His eyes narrow, then widen abruptly, almost comically shocked. Then he slams his laptop shut, rockets to his feet, and books it, vanishing down the street and around the corner. You feel a surge of frustration. “Can you not scare my customers?”

“I’m out of costume. Even when I’m in, nobody’s scared of me.” Present Mic is lying. You’d have been scared out of your mind to run into him back in the day. “Damn, that guy was skittish. What’s his deal?”

“He’s one of my regulars.” Was one of your regulars, probably. People don’t react the way Shimura just did and come back for more. You unlock the door, feeling strangely dispirited. “Which pastry were you thinking about?”

Present Mic sticks around for an hour or so, long enough to talk to a few customers who don’t run away from him. Most of your regulars have seen him before. He leaves a little bit before noon, after eating three pastries he paid for, and as usual, the café quiets down in the afternoon. You don’t mind. Today wasn’t a good day even before Mic put in a surprise appearance and scared off a customer for good. Days like today, you’d rather have the place to yourself.

Sometimes in the midst of proving you’re a model citizen to anybody who looks your way, you forget that there’s a reason you weren’t. It wasn’t a good reason. Your family wasn’t rich, but you always had what you needed and some of what you wanted. Your parents weren’t perfect, but they loved you. You weren’t the most popular kid at school, but you always had someone to talk to. And none of that mattered, because you felt hollow and miserable and lonely no matter what else was going on around you.

Nothing you did or said could make you feel better. Everything felt the same, and everything felt awful, and no matter how hard you tried to explain, to ask for help, to raise the alarm, you couldn’t get your point across. You had a good life. What did you have to complain about?

The judge who handed you your first conviction said pretty much exactly that. You’ve heard that the sentencing guidelines for minors have changed, that untreated mental health issues are considered a mitigating factor these days, but back then it didn’t matter at all. You got help at some point. You take your meds like you’re supposed to, and you did therapy until you realized the people who monitor your probation were reading your notes. And you’re older now. You know the hollow feeling goes away. But that doesn’t mean it’s any easier to tolerate when it’s here.

You’re hanging out behind the counter, staring at your most recent mural and wishing you’d chosen something less cheerful than the field of wildflowers that’s currently decorating it, when the door opens. You barely have time to get your game face on before Shimura Tenko steps up to the counter. “Um –”

“How many heroes are you friends with?” Shimura asks shortly.

“I’m not friends with Present Mic,” you say. “That was a spot check. He’s my probation officer.”

Shimura blinks. He has crimson eyes and dark lashes, matching his dark hair. “Huh?”

“My probation officer,” you repeat. “I’m a convicted felon.”

“Don’t lie. They’d never let a convicted felon run a coffee shop.”

“I got a loan,” you say. “Through the Nonviolent Criminal Rehabilitation Act. It says so on the sign.”

“Your sign says free internet access.”

“Underneath that.” You wonder if it’s really possible that Shimura didn’t see the other sign. Maybe he was just too hyped at the prospect of free internet to look any harder. “How long have you lived here?”

“Five years.” Shimura looks defensive now. “What’s it to you?”

Five years, and you never saw him before today. He must keep to himself. “Nothing. I just – I thought everybody around here knew. I’m not very quiet about it. I’m not allowed to be.”

“Why not?”

You don’t want to do this right now, but rules are rules. “Part of the Reintegration Act involves educating civilians about where criminals come from – like, how a person goes from you to me.”

Shimura snorts. It’s rude, but not anywhere close to the rudest thing someone’s done to you when you talk about this. “The government thinks the people who are best equipped to educate about this are the actual criminals, so I’m legally obligated to answer any questions people ask me – about my record, about why I did it, about the program and why I’m doing that. So they understand what’s happening and why it’s happening. For transparency.”

“And that means anybody can question you, any time,” Shimura says, eyes narrowing.

“Yep. Stop, drop, and educate.” You wait, but he’s quiet, and you’re tired enough and hollow enough that the suspense gets to you first. “You can ask what I did. I have to tell you.”

Shimura nods – but then he doesn’t ask. About that, at least. “It’s dead in here. Did Present Mic clear everybody else out?”

“No. It gets quiet on sunny days when the tide’s low.” You nod through the window, and the sliver of beach visible between the buildings across the street. “I was thinking about closing early.”

“Why?” Shimura’s voice holds the faintest shadow of a sneer. “To walk on the beach?”

To lay facedown on your bed and wait for tears that won’t come, and won’t make you feel any better if they do. “Now you’re here, so I’m open. Do you want the usual?”

Shimura hesitates. Then he shakes his head. “Go home.”

“I’m open,” you repeat. You don’t want him to complain to Present Mic like the actual porn guy did. “Do you want the usual or do you feel like something new?”

“The usual.”

“Come on,” you say. He glares at you over his mask. There’s an old scar over his right eye. “There’s nobody here. Nobody’s going to catch you drinking something that actually tastes good.”

“The usual,” Shimura Tenko says, and crosses his arms over his chest. “And –”

He glances at the pastry case, and you see his expression shift into disappointment. It makes you sadder than it should, but you can fix it easily. You slide the babka you saved on the faint hope that he’d come back out of hiding and into full view. “One of these?”

Shimura stares at it for a full fifteen seconds before he looks up at you. “You saved it for me.”

“Yeah.” You pride yourself on knowing what your regulars like. You don’t want someone you see a few times a week to leave unsatisfied. “One babka and one black coffee, coming up.”

Shimura holds out his card, then hesitates. You’ve never seen him look uncertain at all. “And whatever you think tastes better than black coffee. One of those.”

“Really?” You can’t hide your surprise, or what an unexpected lift it is for your mood. “You won’t regret it. Which flavors do you like?”

“I don’t care.” Shimura waits while you swipe his card, then tucks it away. “This was your idea. I’m going – over there.”

He gestures at the back corner. “I know where you like to sit,” you say. “I’ll bring it out.”

As soon as he leaves, you get to work. You need to nail this. He’ll laugh at you if you bring him a tea latte, so it needs to have an espresso base. What goes well with babka? You already have chocolate and cinnamon on board – what about caramel, or hazelnut? Does he even like sweet things? He must, if he keeps ordering the damn babka. Maybe hazelnut, but what if he’s allergic? You pitch your voice to carry and see him startle. “Do you have any allergies?”

“Not to food.”

You wonder what he’s actually allergic to as you start pulling espresso shots for a chocolate hazelnut mocha. You really hope Shimura likes Nutella, because that’s exactly what this is going to taste like. Using bittersweet chocolate syrup instead of milk chocolate fixes it partway, but when you pour off a tiny bit to try it, it still tastes a lot like something you’d eat out of a jar with a spoon.

Whatever. You’re committed now. You don’t have a choice. You pour it into a cup, make some vague gesture at foam art, and carry it and the black coffee through the empty café to Shimura’s table. “One black coffee and one drink that actually tastes good.”

Shimura eyes the second cup. “What’s in there?”

“You said you didn’t care.”

“Yeah, well, now that I know you’ve done time I’m not sure I can trust you,” Shimura says, and you lock your expression down. That one hurt. A lot. He drags the cup towards himself with his right hand and lifts it to his mouth as he pulls down his mask with his left, but you’ve lost interest in the outcome. You turn and head back to the counter, trying not to feel like someone’s slapped you in the face and convincing yourself at least a little that it works.

You screw around behind the counter, taking inventory and counting down the minutes until last call, but Shimura’s back at the counter with forty-five minutes to go, an empty cup in his hand. It’s not the cup you put the black coffee in. “Fine. You win. I want another one of these.”

“Yep.” You set your clipboard aside and head back to the cash register to ring him up. “For here or to go?”

“Here.”

“I’m closing soon. To-go’s probably better.”

“Are you kicking me out?” Shimura asks. You look up at him, make eye contact, and whatever he sees in your face sets him off. Not in the way you thought it would. “Before, about the doing time thing. You know I was kidding, right?”

“Sure you were. Do you want a receipt?”

“Hey,” Shimura snaps. “It was a joke.”

“Not a good one.”

“Yeah, it was. If you –” Shimura breaks off, his scowl clear even from behind the mask. “Look, I’m sorry, okay? I wouldn’t have said that if I didn’t get it.”

“Get it,” you repeat. “You’ve done time?”

“Yeah.” Shimura Tenko covers the back of his neck with one hand. “No charges, but – yeah, I did time. So it’s funny.”

“It’s still not funny.” You lift the empty cup out of Shimura’s hands and turn to start making a second Nutella-esque mocha, trying to decide if you feel better or not. “It’s just not mean.”

A shadow falls across you as you work. Shimura’s following you along the edge of the counter. “So am I getting kicked out or what?”

“Yes,” you say. “In forty-five minutes, when I close.”

Shimura’s eyes crinkle ever so slightly at the corners. You wonder what his smile looks like under that mask, but you’ve got espresso shots to pull, and you need to focus if you don’t want to burn your hand. You look away, and when you look back again, he’s at his table, laptop open, mask on, chin propped in his gloved hand. No charges, but he’s done time. You didn’t expect that. Even though you’ve spent the last five years of your life trying to prove that you’re no different than anybody else, it still catches you by surprise to learn that one of your customers is like you.

You bring the second drink by his table, then start working through your closing checklist. He stands up with five minutes to go, just like clockwork. He leaves without another word, as usual, but when you step outside, he’s still standing there. “You didn’t ask why.”

Why he did time? “Neither did you,” you say.

“Yeah, but I won’t break probation if I don’t answer.”

“It’s the principle of the thing,” you say. It’s not quite dark, but the sun’s almost down, and the shadows are growing long. Late March already, but it feels like you’ve got a long way to go before spring. “If I want people who meet me to look at the person I am now, I have to do the same thing for them.”

Shimura Tenko makes a sound, half-laughter and half-scoffing. “They sure did a number on you,” he says. You turn and walk away, and his footsteps follow yours. “Hey. Come on. There’s no way you’re that sensitive.”

“I’m not,” you say. “I’m just having a bad day.”

A bad day, and you never get a day off. Even if the café’s not open, you’re still in sunshine mode every second, making sure that the people who want to treat you like a criminal look absolutely insane for doing it. You fought hard for this life. You’re glad you fought for it. And today more than usual, you’re just really tired. “I’ll see you later, okay?”

“Yeah,” Shimura says. You’re glad he doesn’t try to apologize again. You know it would be painfully insincere. “How did you know?”

“Hmm?”

“The pastry. How did you know I’d come back?”

“I didn’t,” you say. “I just hoped you would.”

You don’t know why you hoped. Maybe because he’d clearly been waiting a while when you and Present Mic got back. Maybe because you remember how much it mattered to have somewhere else to go, whether you had a place of your own or not. Maybe because you’ve gotten sort of a sense of him over the past few months, and you know he’s the kind of person who pretends not to want the things he wants. Wanting the coffee shop he hangs out in to be open and to have his favorite pastry available is such a reasonable thing to want. You were hoping he’d come back so you could give it to him.

Shimura doesn’t say anything. You keep walking, and he doesn’t follow you. When you glance back over your shoulder as you round the corner, you see him standing just outside of Skyline Coffee and Tea, staring intently at something. You can’t say for sure. But you’re pretty sure it’s the sign that explains about the NCRA.

A while back, you read that some countries set aside two days to commemorate a war. One day to celebrate that it ended, another to mourn that it happened at all. When it comes to the war you lived through, Japan does things differently. There’s just one day, a national holiday, where every government office closes and most businesses do, too. For most people, it’s a day to celebrate. There are carnivals, street fairs, concerts, parties. It’s been a holiday for exactly four years and a whole host of traditions have already sprung up around it.

But there’s one person who never celebrates, and it didn’t take you long to come around to his way of thinking. On April 4th, the fifth annual Day of Peace, you close the café early and make the trek to Kamino Ward.

You’re not sure how Kamino Ward became the place. Maybe because the final battlefield’s been overtaken by celebrations, and at least some people still see Kamino as hallowed ground. The place where the Symbol of Peace made his last stand. The place where the Symbol of Fear passed the torch onto his successor. You get there a little while before sunset, and you join the hundreds of people who’ve already gathered there. The crowd looks smaller than it did last year, and it hasn’t grown much by the time Midoriya Izuku, known to the world as Deku, climbs onto the steps leading up to the All Might statue’s plinth.

Someone hands him a microphone, which he takes with hands that tremble ever so slightly. He’s only twenty-one, and he looks old before his time. “I’m here,” he starts, then swallows hard. “I’m here because we didn’t win. Not really. If you’re here instead of at a party somewhere, I think it’s probably because you lost something. Something, or someone, who was important to you. Something you can’t get back.”

It’s quiet. It’s always quiet after he says something like that. “I’d like to think we did something. That we changed for the better,” Deku continues, “but I think we can only say that if we don’t forget what we had to lose for it to happen. So, um – you know the drill. If you brought a candle, great. If you didn’t, we have some. You can say the thing you lost if you want – we have a microphone – but when you’re done, light the candle and put it down somewhere that feels right to you.”

He takes a deep breath, lets it go. “And then you can go. But I’ll stay until they all burn out.”

People swarmed the first two years. This year they form a line, stepping up to light their candles one by one. You never know what to say when it’s your turn, because it’s not something specific you miss. The way things used to be was awful. You don’t miss that, and you weren’t close enough to anybody to lose someone who mattered in the war. But April 4th has never felt like a happy day. It feels wrong to you to be setting off fireworks and throwing parties in response to a war that almost destroyed the world.

A lot of people say names when it’s their turn to light a candle. Some say places. Some share an ideal they lost, a hero they venerated who fell from their pedestal, a dream they had that will never come true. Each lost thing named is met with respectful silence. But just like last year and the year before, there are three names that aren’t, no matter who says them. “Big Sis Magne. Bubaigawara Jin,” says Toga Himiko as she lights her candle. Say Todoroki Touya and Sako Atsuhiro and Iguchi Shuichi, who still answers to Spinner, as they light theirs. “Shigaraki Tomura.”

There’s always whispering after their names, especially Shigaraki’s. But Deku always goes last, and Deku always shuts them up. He lights his candle and grasps the microphone, speaking clearly, firmly. “Shigaraki Tomura.”

You remember what Present Mic said, about how Deku never got over failing to save Shigaraki. Deku was sixteen when he won the war. Still a kid. Was saving Shigaraki really his job? Maybe that’s the point of all this. It was everyone’s job to stop villains like Shigaraki from being created, and you all failed, so it fell to Deku – and he failed, too. It’s one big, sad, ugly mess. When you’re honest with yourself, you’re not surprised that most people try to cover it up with fireworks.

People begin to filter out of the memorial park, and you find a place to sit down. It’s not like you have somewhere else to go. The others who say settle in as well, in small groups amidst the rows and clusters of candles. You’re within earshot of one of the groups. Without meaning to, you find yourself listening in.

“They’d have hated this,” Todoroki Touya is saying, his voice low and bitter. “Every second of it.”

“Big Sis Magne wouldn’t have. And Twice would have liked it,” Toga Himiko says. Her voice is soft. “All the candles. He’d say it’s like his birthday.”

“Yeah. Sure.” Todoroki Touya’s voice goes even quieter. “Do any of us know when his birthday was?”

It’s quiet. “Shigaraki would hate this,” Todoroki states. “You know he would. What did he tell you to tell Spinner, Deku?”

Deku doesn’t answer. Spinner does. “Shigaraki Tomura fought to destroy until the very end.”

“Yeah,” Todoroki says. “To destroy. And Deku made him a martyr.”

“He destroyed a lot of things,” Deku says quietly. “All For One is gone. One For All, too – there’s never going to be another Symbol of Peace. He destroyed the way we saw villains. We don’t just get to look at what they’re doing right now. We have to think about how they got there. And he destroyed how we saw ourselves.”

“Yeah?” Spinner says. “How?”

“We didn’t think we were responsible for other people,” Deku says. “Now we have to be.”

It’s quiet again. This time it’s quiet for a while. “Whatever,” Todoroki says. “I’m going home. See you all at the next sobfest.”

“He always says that,” Spinner says, once his footsteps have faded. “He’s gonna get tanked at home and text us just like he did last year.”

“I miss Tomura-kun,” Toga says, her voice softer than before. “I thought we’d all be together at the end.”

“I know,” Deku says. “I’m sorry.”

“And you’re sure –” Spinner breaks off. “You’re sure you couldn’t get his ashes or something? So we could –”

“There was nothing left of Shigaraki,” Deku says. “I’m sorry.”

“Yeah,” Spinner says. Toga sniffles. “We know.”

The group splits, Toga in one direction, Spinner in the other. A moment later, Deku walks past you, and you do everything you can to fade into the background short of turning yourself camo-colored. It doesn’t work. “Did you hear all that?” Deku asks. You nod. He sighs, or sniffles, maybe. He looks younger up close. “You were here last year, right?”

“And the year before,” you say. The longer you look at him, the worse shape he’s in. “Um, are you okay?”

“It’s just –” Deku’s eyes well up, suddenly. “It’s hard. I can’t say what I want to say to them.”

“Why not?” you ask stupidly, and he shakes his head. “Um – do you want to sit down?”

You wouldn’t ask another hero that, but you feel like it’s worth the risk. Even though he’s twenty-one, you can’t look at him and see anything other than a kid, and it feels wrong to let a kid stand there and cry. Deku sits down next to you. “I know I’m not supposed to ask,” he starts, his voice watery, “but you never say anything when it’s your turn. Most people don’t come here. Even the ones who lost somebody would rather be at a party somewhere. Why do you come back?”

You have to think about it for a second. Deku cringes. “Sorry. You don’t have to answer.”

“I sort of do.” It might hit your probation requirements, and even if it doesn’t, you should explain anyway. “What you said earlier, in your speech – I’m one of the people the world got better for. My life would have been awful if it had stayed the same. But in order for me to have this life, we had to have the war.”

“What did you do during the war? Were you in a shelter?”

You shake your head. “The shelters banned people with criminal records,” you say. Deku’s eyes widen. “Nowhere would let me in.”

It wasn’t all that different from the way you were living before – not much food, not very safe. The only difference was a sharp increase in the number of abandoned buildings for you to crash in. But it looks like you’re making Deku feel worse, not better, and you scramble into part two of your explanation. “I’m one of the NCRA participants. That program only exists because of the war – and you, because you won’t let people forget why the war happened. So I want to remember why the war happened, too. And I want to honor it. Them.”

“Him,” Deku corrects, and your stomach clenches. “I wonder what he thinks of all of this. If it’s enough. If it’ll ever be enough. I mean, obviously it’ll never be enough for him, because he doesn’t – I mean, I can’t ask him, but I know he can see it. I don’t know where he is, but if I could just ask him –”

You didn’t realize Deku believed this strongly in the afterlife. You sit quietly, and after a few seconds, he remembers you’re there. He glances at you, embarrassed. “Sorry.”

“It’s okay,” you say. “Do you not get to talk about it very much?”

“No,” Deku admits. “People want to move on. And I don’t really blame them. But I can’t. Not until I know for sure.”

It’s quiet for a little bit. He wipes his eyes. You watch the candles flicker down a few millimeters more. “You’re in the NCRA,” Deku says finally. “For job training, or did you get a loan?”

“I got a loan,” you say. “I run a coffee shop now. With free WiFi.”

“Do people like it?”

“I think so,” you say. You think of the kids who come to study, the people who use the WiFi for remote work, the old people who walk the beach every morning and stop by for coffee and pastry afterwards. “I have regulars, anyway. And people talk to me now. They never used to.”

“People talk to me now, too,” Deku says. “It’s nice.”

“Yeah,” you agree. “It is.”

It is, but it’s not quite what you meant, and you don’t want to interrupt when Deku starts talking about the NCRA. It’s not just that people talk to you. They talked to you before, but now they see you – not as a criminal, but as a person like them, minus the squeaky-clean record. That’s new, and that’s good. You know even less about Shigaraki Tomura than Deku does, but even if he’d hate what’s happened to the world he wanted to destroy, you’re thankful anyway. The world is better now. It’s better because of Deku, and Deku’s the way he is because of Shigaraki.

There are fireworks going off over the bay, distant enough that you can’t hear the sound. Closer than that, you hear music and laughter from a street party you passed on your way here from the train station. Deku trails off after a while, and you don’t speak up again. The two of you sit in silence until the last of the candles burns away.

You get home late, and it’s an early morning opening up the café. Luckily for you, everybody else is also running late courtesy of the holiday yesterday. Osono comes by fifteen minutes off-schedule and full of apologies, and while you’ve got your doors open by seven, it’s not until seven-fifty-eight that your first customers come through the door. It’s a double shot of espresso kind of day, and while you’re pulling them, your customers tell you about the parties they went to last night. When they ask what you did, you tell them you went into the city. It’s not a lie.

After the slow start, the shop stays quieter than usual, quiet enough that when Shimura Tenko rolls up just past noon, there’s still plenty of babka left in the pastry case. You start his order before he’s even opened the door – one black coffee, one Nutella-flavored nightmare – and he stops to drop off his stuff at his usual table before he comes up to the counter. You can tell he’s disquieted by something. “Did Present Mic come by and scare everybody off again? How are you going to keep this place open if no one’s here?”

“Mornings are a lot busier than afternoons,” you say. “And spring’s my quietest season, anyway. No tourists like there are in the summer, and it’s not very cold.”

“Yeah.” Shimura glances around, still displeased. “This place had better stay open.”

“It will,” you say. “One shot of espresso or two?”

“Three.”

“Three? It’s your funeral,” you say, but you pull the extra shot. “Late night last night?”

“I went to a party,” Shimura says. You nod. “It was my birthday.”

“Happy birthday.” You cancel half his order. You give people a free drink on their birthday, if you know it and they come in. “Your birthday is April 4th? That’s a tough draw, especially the last few years.”

“You’re telling me.” Instead of retreating to his table like usual, Shimura hovers at the bar. “What about you? Did you go to a party?”

You shake your head. “I went into the city.”

“Which city?”

“Yokohama,” you admit. Shimura’s eyes narrow. “I go to the vigil at Kamino. I have every year they’ve done it.”

“Really,” Shimura says, skeptical. “Why?”

Deku asked you the same question. You have a feeling Shimura won’t like the answer, but it’s the only one you have. “My life is better than it was before the war, because of what happened in the war. I want to be thankful for that. It doesn’t feel right to me to go to a carnival.”

Shimura doesn’t say anything, just watches you. It makes you feel weird. “If I’d known it was your birthday, though, I’d have gone to a party for that. It was your birthday way before it was the Day of Peace.” You’re babbling, and Shimura still hasn’t said a word. “Not that you’d invite me to your birthday party or anything.”

“I didn’t know you’d want to go,” Shimura says slowly. The espresso machine beeps, and you focus on it way harder than you’d do under ordinary circumstances. “Look, I – it wasn’t my party. Just a party. It’s not like I went in a fucking birthday hat.”

“That would look pretty weird with your hood still up,” you say. Shimura makes an odd sound. You look up and see the corners of his eyes crinkling again. “Still, though. I’ll remember for next year. I’ll get a cupcake or something. Even if you don’t want somebody who’s done time at your birthday party.”

Shimura laughs at that. Actually laughs. Your chest constricts, filling with warmth in a way that feels out of proportion to the situation at hand. “I only want people who’ve done time at my birthday party,” he says. “Don’t try to give me that drink for free. You letting this place go under would be a shitty birthday present.”

“Too late. It’s already free and I’m not rerunning the sale.” You pour the black coffee and set it down on the pickup counter, followed by the godawful Nutella drink. “Happy birthday plus one.”

Shimura rolls his eyes, but they’re still crinkled slightly at the corners. He doesn’t respond until he’s already halfway back to the table, and he’s so quiet that you have to strain your ears to hear. “Thanks.”

You should say something. Something like “you’re welcome”, or “any time”. Something that sounds like good customer service, instead of what you’re worried will come out of your mouth if you open it right now. The conversation is over. Nothing else needs to be said. You turn to face your small workspace, searching for a distraction. There has to be something you can clean.

It’s been so long since you had a crush that you barely remember what it’s like, but you’re pretty sure you have a crush on Shimura. As far as crushes go, he’s kind of a weird pick – because he’s a customer, because he’s not the friendliest, because he hasn’t given any indication that he likes you at all. He likes babka and free internet and the horrible off-menu mocha you make just for him. That’s it.

It feels weird to have a crush. Weird in how normal of a thing it is to do, when you’ve been so focused on looking normal and pretending to be normal that you haven’t done anything actually normal in a while. But maybe this is a good thing, and maybe it’s okay. You might get released early from your NCRA requirements, and even if you don’t, you’re doing well. You can afford to like somebody again.

The café stays quiet, and with two hours left before closing time, you’re getting bored. Bored, and you haven’t switched out the mural since before your last check-in with Present Mic. Now’s an okay time for that. You scribble a sign to prop up on the counter – I’m here, just yell – and head towards the back wall. You have to pass Shimura to get there, and as you do, he looks up. “I’m not looking,” you say. “I’ll just be over here.”

“Doing what?”

“A new mural,” you say. “Pretend I’m not here.”

Shimura decides to start right away, and you flex your fingers more out of habit than anything else. Then you set your hand on the wall and activate your quirk, changing the entire wall from the wildflower mural back to the same blank neutral as the others. That’s a good start. Now you just need to figure out what you’re going to do with it.

Actual muralists sketch and line their work. They work from references and they draft the design before they actually start painting. You know that because you used to want to be a muralist yourself. You could sketch and line things, but these days you’re more about feelings than anything else, and feelings take color. You block the wall into a few sections – you remember to do that, at least – and fill in general colors, running your fingers along the edges to blur them together. Grey base and sides. Dark-colored middle. The entire upper half of the wall is light. It’s not until you’ve added the half-circle above the horizon that you get a real understanding of what you’re making.

It's another cityscape, or the ruins of one, something you saw in photos or maybe in person. It looks a lot like the sunrise view from Kamino Ward, the sky on fire with deep purple and orange and pink and gold, the reflection of those colors splashed across the sea, the wreckage of the city bathed in morning light. You’ve done enough therapy to psychoanalyze yourself, and it’s not hard to see what you were going for with this. Things are horrible. Things were horrible for a long time before today, but the sun is still rising, and the sunrise is still beautiful. And it’s a lot easier to see now, with all the other stuff out of the way.

“That’s not paint.”

You weren’t expecting Shimura to say anything, and you weren’t expecting him to pay attention to what you’re doing. But when you look back over your shoulder, you see him staring, his phone set aside, the lid of his laptop shut. “It’s not paint,” you say. “Just my quirk.”

“How does it work?” Shimura asks. You turn back to your mural, and you hear him get to his feet. A moment later he’s standing beside you, answering his own question. “You can change the color of things you touch. And decide how long it stays that way.”

“Yeah.” After using it your whole life, you’re pretty good at it. You can fine-tune stuff, enough to add shading to the buildings and the rubble at the sides and bottom of the mural without compromising the light from the sunrise. “Not a very powerful quirk.”

“You could still cause trouble,” Shimura says. You could. And you did. “This is how you got your charges, isn’t it? Stuff like this.”

“Graffiti? Yeah,” you say. You remember the rush you got the first time you tagged something, the first time you spilled your thoughts and feelings in a way no one could ignore. “Except when you do that, you get charged with trespassing and vandalism, and when they figure out they can’t remove it, you get charged with destruction of property. Throw in malicious unlicensed quirk usage and – boom. Felonies.”

“That’s stupid.”

“Me or them?”

“Giving somebody a felony for painting stuff on walls.” Shimura studies what you’ve done so far. “All of these have been yours, right? Is this the same stuff you were painting before?”

“Not always,” you say. This conversation falls under your NCRA obligations, but it doesn’t feel like it’s the reason Shimura’s asking – and it’s not the reason you’re telling him. “When I first got into it, it was just words or sentences. Stuff I couldn’t figure out how to say out loud. The first time I really got busted, it was for tagging the side of my parents’ house.”

“Your parents called the cops on you?”

“And pressed charges,” you say. He’s staring at you again. You pretend you don’t notice and fuss over the shoreline in the mural. “I got better at it when I was older. The art got better, anyway. But I got in more trouble because of where I put it. And I guess what was in it.”

“Anything I’d have seen?”

“I don’t know. Where did you hang around?” you ask. You got booked in most of the big cities in Japan during your criminal career. “Uh, I did the UA barrier. The one with the – you know.”

“The human shields?” Shimura bursts out laughing. “Did you have a sibling in Eraserhead’s class or something?”

“No, I just thought it was stupid to do the Sports Festival a week after what happened,” you say. Shimura snickers. “It felt like they were using the kids as props to distract from how much of a mistake they’d made, and I was mad about a lot of other stuff, too, and – yeah. I kind of went off.”

You really went off. There’s no other way to describe triggering the UA barrier on purpose at two am so you could make a crude mural of All Might, Endeavor, Hawks, and Best Jeanist hiding behind a bunch of kids in school uniforms. Shimura is still snickering. “Damn. I’m surprised they call you nonviolent with how bad you hurt their feelings.”

“They had to replace the whole barrier,” you say, and Shimura wheezes. “I’m not trying to be funny.”

“No, but it is funny.” Shimura glances at you over the edge of his mask. “And now you run a coffee shop and make things like this.”

He looks away from you, back to the mural. “Is this something real? It looks familiar,” he says. Before you can answer, his eyes widen, and he says it himself. “Kamino Ward. Why would you paint it like that?”

“It’s how I see it in my head. Or how I feel it. I don’t really know.” You reach out and use the tip of your index finger to highlight one of the buildings that’s still standing in sunrise gold. “What do you think?”

“I don’t know.” Shimura reaches out and touches it with one gloved hand. “People are going to be pissed at you.”

“If they recognize it.” You’re not too worried. “Most people just look at the colors.”

“I recognized it.”

“You’re not most people.”

You instantly wish you hadn’t said a word. Shimura Tenko glances at you quickly, then looks back to the mural. “Yeah,” he says. “I was there.”

Your stomach drops. “You were?” you repeat hopelessly, and he nods without looking your way. “I’m sorry. It’s – insensitive. I’ll take it down –”

“No.” Shimura catches your wrist before you can make contact with the mural. “Leave it. I was gone for this part. It’s a nice view. The horizon, I mean.”

That’s your favorite part, and you’re not even done with it yet. “I still have some stuff to add,” you say. Shimura nods but doesn’t let go of your wrist. You pull at it slightly. “I need this back.”

“Fuck. Sorry.” Shimura recoils like you’ve burned him, then backs away. Way too far away. You’d say he was making fun of you, except you can see his eyes over the mask, and they’re expressive in spite of his complete lack of eyebrows. “Sorry. I don’t usually – touch people.”

“It’s okay.” Your wrist feels tingly where his hand made contact, and there are butterflies in your stomach. He doesn’t usually touch people, but he touched you. “Thanks for stopping me.”

Shimura turns away completely. “I have to work.”

“Yeah. I didn’t mean to distract you.”

“I know.” Shimura slides back into his booth. You turn back to put the finishing touches on your mural.

He’s right about it. In the hour left before you close, at least one customer who trickles in gives you a hard time for putting up something so upsetting. You listen to his concerns, but you stick to your guns, and when he sits down to wait for his order, you see him watching it. Just like Shimura is, the screen of his laptop long since gone dark.

Honestly...both blue fire, both crazy because if dads..one burn himself the other could but don't (1pts for azula) one shot litteral thunder..(2pts for azula)..azula win

very curious to see these answers so....

Rb for larger sample size

I choose both i just love him so much 🥺

Be honest, which shiggy do you prefer?

(Reblog if you have another answer or you jus wanna rant about which shig you like better x)

Enough to Go By (Chapter 4) - 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 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6

Chapter 4

You think about Tenko more now, but you’re allowed to – he’s your patient, and if he was your patient at the clinic, you’d expect to see him for a follow-up on the four gunshot wounds you cleaned and dressed. You’re allowed to think about him, so you think about him. You think about him a lot.

The thoughts take two directions. One is just wondering about him – how he’s feeling, how he spends his days, what he’s thinking about, what he thinks of you, whether he’s thought about you at all. The other is thinking about the situation he’s in. His parents and grandparents and his sister are dead. He’s been missing for fifteen years. He’s got a quirk and he’s a villain, ambitious and strategic enough to target UA High and escape alive, albeit badly injured. His guardian is a cloud of mist in a suit with some kind of split personality. And there’s someone else in his world – two someone elses. The doctor he referenced, who wouldn’t help him, and the one he calls Sensei, who gave him his new name and a hand to wear over his face and set him up to fail.

You think about Tenko a lot, but you can’t think about him all the time, because now that you’re a nurse, you’re twice as busy as you were before. The doctors expect more of you, and so do the other nurses – and so do the MAs and CNAs and high school students who are starting their apprenticeships, since you now have three years’ experience to go with your reputation for smoothing things over with difficult patients. Your friends keep you busy, too. They might call Kazuo to find out if something’s wrong with them, but they call you to find out what to do about it.

“You need to get a scan,” you say to Yoshimi for probably the fifth time. “I know you don’t want to –”

“It’s weird!”

“Not any weirder than whatever Yoji does when the two of you are at second base,” you say, and in the background of the call, someone snickers. If you had to guess, you’d say it’s Mitsuko – she has the guts to bully Yoshimi into making the call, combined with the brass balls to feel comfortable eavesdropping. “It’s called a mammogram. You’d have to start getting them at some point anyway, just like we all do. It’s just to make sure there’s nothing weird going on.”

“Stop it. You’re freaking her out for no reason.” Yoji’s there, too. “It’s probably just an STD.”

You’re stunned into silence for a second by the sheer classlessness of saying that about one’s own girlfriend, but you bounce back fast. “First of all, they’re called STIs, genius. Secondly, there’s not an STI on the planet that gives you nipple discharge. Yoshimi, get the scan. I’ll go with you if you want. Just get it done.”

“Can I do it at your clinic?”

“Uh –” You glance at the Imaging queue. Things look quiet, but you can’t count on that to last – but if you report Yoshimi’s symptoms, which include soreness, nipple discharge, and what she describes as a weird rash, you’re pretty sure the doctor on call will bump her to the head of the line. “Yeah, come in now. I can’t stick around after my shift, though. I have stuff to do tonight.”

“Ooh, stuff. Let me see –” There’s some rustling, which you can only assume is Mitsuko grabbing the phone. “Is stuff tall, dark, handsome, way too serious, and currently working as a sidekick?”

“That would be stuff,” you admit. “It’s not a big deal. We’re just grabbing a drink after our shifts.”

For the first time since you and Kazuo broke up, you have a date, and it’s Kazuo’s fault. Or maybe it’s you and your friends’ fault, because you decided to throw Kazuo a twentieth birthday party and invited a few of his friends from UA. One of those friends is Sugimura Hiroki, who fits perfectly with your type of dark-haired boys who want to be heroes and who’s so painfully shy that it took him six beers and the entire party to talk to you. You were sort of weirded out by that. You’re not very intimidating, and you spent the first half of the conversation trying to figure out if he knew you were quirkless, since you learned the hard way that it’s something you need to disclose up front. But the two of you eventually worked your way around to the point, which was that Sugimura wants to get to know you better, and he tripped over his tongue so badly that you finally just asked him out to end the suspense.

It’s taken you a while to actually schedule the date, but tonight’s the night, and you’re sort of anxious about it. Luckily, work is busy enough to keep you distracted. Your lunch break ends while Mitsuko is still going into increasingly nasty speculations about Sugimura’s physical attributes, and you hang up the phone without saying goodbye.

There’s a message waiting for you on your computer, from the front desk. FOF. Can you take him?

It’s not Tenko. You know Tenko wouldn’t come here again. You send the same message you did when it was him. How F are we talking?

Jumpy, talking to himself, chainsmoking. He’s in costume.

“In costume” could literally mean that the patient’s wearing a costume, but it’s also code for when the front desk thinks the patient’s a villain. You’re used to dealing with villains by now. Send him back.

When the knock on the door comes, you’re ready and waiting, and the CNA ushers in a tall man in a black-and-grey bodysuit – so “in costume” was literal this time around – and a paper bag over his head. You’re momentarily transfixed by the paper bag, and more so when you realize that he’s bringing a lighted cigarette to his mouth while wearing something highly flammable on his face. The CNA shuts the door and bolts. You face your patient and introduce yourself. “Have a seat if you feel comfortable doing so. What brings you in today?”

“I’m not – whole.”

That’s concerning. “Are you injured?” Your concern grows when he gestures at his face. “It would really help if I could see the injury. Can you take the bag off?”

He shakes his head. Instead he reaches into his pocket and produces a torn full-face mask. You look at him, then at him, putting the pieces together. “How do you feel right now?”

He doesn’t answer – maybe can’t answer – so you default to the face chart you use when little kids aren’t able to express how they feel in words. Your patient points to scared, stressed, anxious, angry. Then he throws in happy, possibly to mess with you, or to distract you from the fact that the first four emotions indicate that he’s ready to snap at any second. “How about this?” you ask, after thinking it over. “I can ask the doctor to give you something that will help you calm down –”

“Please!” The patient bursts out. Drug-seeking? “No, I don’t need it, sister! I’m so calm it’s hard to believe.”

“Okay, then we’ll just have it here in case you decide you want it. As an option,” you say, keeping your voice smooth and calm. “Either way, this is a quiet place to wait. You’re safe in here with me. And if you want, I can sew up your mask for you. Would that help?”

“You can do that?”

“Easily,” you say. “Can I see it for a second? I need to make sure I grab the right thread.”

The patient hands the mask over, which is a good sign. You’ve established at least a little bit of trust. You examine the mask and decide that you’ll need the thinnest-gauge needle and thread you have. “I can definitely fix this,” you tell the patient. “It might look a little rough, but it’ll cover you up like it did before. And it should last until you get where you’re going.”

The patient nods. You stand up. “I’m going to get some supplies, and a little anxiety medication if you decide you want it. I’ll be right back, okay? Just wait here.”

The patient nods again. Given how labile his mood is, you need to be fast about this, and get back before he gets upset or decides to leave. You step out the door and shut it behind you, heading for the supply closet, but you’re waylaid on the way there by one of the doctors. “We need you up front. Now.”

“I can’t. I have a patient, and he’s –”

“I don’t care. We’ve got a hero coming to visit, and we need somebody to keep things calm,” the doctor says. Shit. “Figure out what they want, get them as little of it as you can get away with, and get them out of here.”

“Which hero?”

The doctor shakes his head. Great. “Just hurry.”

You can’t go just yet. “My patient’s got a lot of anxiety and he’s in costume. I need him to stay calm. Can you –”

“2mg diazepam. I’ll put it in the chart.” The doctor unlocks one of the medicine cabinets, extracts a prefilled dosage cup, and hands it to you. “Go.”

Diazepam is long-acting. Hopefully long-acting enough to keep your patient quiet while you get rid of the hero. You skitter back down the hall with the dosage cup and hand it over to the patient, along with a tiny bottle of water to wash it down. “I’ll be right back. Just finding the right thread.”

The patient downs the pill dry, which is both good and bad for you. You shut the door again and head for the lobby. You don’t make it there. A cloud of black mist boils up around you, swallowing you whole.

By the time your feet hit the familiar wooden floor of the bar, you’re already out of patience. “No. Send me back right now.”

“Shigaraki Tomura has need of you. You will assist him.”

“Not right now I won’t. You snatched me from work,” you say. You’re facing the wall and the All Might poster again, and you don’t want to turn around. If you see Tenko, it’ll make it harder to say no. “If I go missing, people will notice. Is he dying?”

“No,” Kurogiri says.

“Is he in imminent danger of dying?”

“No.”

“Then send me back,” you say. If Tenko’s asked Kurogiri to get you, it means he needs medical assistance – or follow-up. You’ve needed to follow up anyway. “I can come back later.”

“No, I need you right now!”

“How much later?” Kurogiri asks, ignoring Tenko’s protest.

You think it over. You can dispense with the hero situation quickly, stitch your patient’s mask, and sneak out of work early. They’ll have to give you the emergency time off. You’ve never asked before in three years of working there. “Ninety minutes.”

“That’s too long. Kurogiri, don’t let her leave!”

“Ninety minutes. I’ll be in the alley behind the clinic.” You ignore Tenko, too, in favor of focusing on Kurogiri. He’s the one who decides if you leave or not. “All right?”

The mist wells up around you again, which counts as a yes. You land on your feet in the hallway, reorient yourself, and head for the lobby again. Tenko wants you again – needs you, your stupid brain corrects – but he’s going to have to wait for you to sort this out.

The hero in the lobby is Uwabami, the Snake Hero, and she’s got two sidekicks with her. No, students. You recognize one of them from your limited viewing of the UA Sports Festival and feel a spike of guilt run through you. She’s from Class 1-A. The same class Tenko tried to kill.

You don’t need to think about that, and you don’t need to feel guilty, because you didn’t do anything to her. You force yourself to focus. Uwabami wouldn’t have brought high school students here if she was doing any kind of investigating, which means your patient and any others who might be nervous around law enforcement are probably safe. The question of why she’s here still remains. You step forward. “Welcome to Yokohama Free Clinic South. What can we help you with today?”

“We’re on patrol,” Uwabami says. “My interns gave some feedback that our patrol involved a little too much publicity –”

The students look unrepentant. Good for them. “So we’re engaging in some down-to-earth patrolling,” Uwabami continues. “Tell us about how heroes support your clinic.”

Heroes don’t support your clinic. Most heroes strongly dislike the free clinic network, and the feeling is mutual, for a bunch of reasons you’re more than willing to articulate. Then you think better of it. Picking a fight with a hero in front of hero students is a bad move if you want to get out of here any time soon, and if you’re going to keep helping Tenko, you need to stay completely off the heroic radar. You focus on the students instead. “You’re on internships, right? They’re supposed to show you what life will be like as a hero.”

“Yes,” the girl who’s not from 1-A says. “They’re supposed to.”

“We have a program like that here, too,” you say. You gesture for them to come forward, and they desert their supervising hero at high speed. “A lot of our nurses and techs started working here in high school. Let me introduce you.”

You’re on much more solid ground talking about this. This clinic and this program saved your ass – without their sponsorship, you’d never have been able to get around your quirklessness as a barrier to nursing school, and you started getting on-the-job clinical training while most other nursing students were stuck in the classroom. You catch yourself evangelizing a little bit, but you don’t think it’s the worst thing in the world to do. You’re proud of the work you do as part of the clinic. It’s nice to get to talk about it.

You clear the hero students out in half an hour, hoping you’ve impressed them even a little bit, then hurry back to your patient. The diazepam’s kicked in nicely, and he chatters away to you while you stitch the tear in his mask. You learn that his name is Jin, or Bubaigawara, or Twice, which you’d guess are his first name, his family name, and his villain name, in that order. He doesn’t say how his mask got torn and you don’t ask, but you send him on his way in a better mood than before. “Thanks, sister,” he says on his way out the door. “You could be worse. You’re a saint!”

Different tone, different pitch, completely different meaning between the first sentence and the second. It reminds you of Kurogiri. You know enough villains now that you can compare them to one another. You shake your head, bemused, then head back inside. Time to guilt-trip your boss into letting you leave two hours early.

Your guilt-trip is successful, mostly because of how you handled the hero situation, but as you’re trying to sneak out, Yoshimi arrives for her scan. After you cajoled her into the office, you can’t abandon her to some random tech. You do abandon Mitsuko in the waiting room, though – she says the words “nipple discharge” as loudly as possible, then starts picking on the scant amount of makeup you did for your date. You don’t feel bad at all for leaving her behind.

Yoshimi’s scan goes quickly, and just like you feared, it nets her a follow-up appointment at the main branch of the free clinic tomorrow. Tomorrow’s your day off. You promise her you’ll go with her – you, and not Mitsuko or Yoji – then talk the doctor into sending her home with a dose of a different anti-anxiety medication than the one you got for Twice. Then you check your phone for the time. Almost ninety minutes exactly. You race out to the alley.

The mist engulfs you almost the instant you set foot in the alley, and you’re in the bar a moment later, facing Kurogiri. Tenko’s nowhere to be found, and before you can ask the question, Kurogiri turns and sets off through a doorway, deeper into the recesses of the building. You follow him, wondering if this counts as being taken to a secondary location. Or maybe the bar counts as the secondary location, even though you’ve been here before. Either way, you’ve listened to way too many of Mitsuru’s true-crime podcasts.

Kurogiri leads you into an absolutely filthy room. The floor is covered – empty wrappers, empty cans, old newspapers and magazines, plastic cases for game disks and chips. You have a bad feeling about who lives here, and when Kurogiri clears his throat and speaks up, you’re proven right. “Shigaraki Tomura. I have brought the girl.”

The only semi-organized spot in the room is a desk with two monitors on it, a keyboard in front of it, and Tenko slumped down with his head pillowed on one arm. He looks up, and for a split second, you can see that he’s happy even behind the hand. Then his face turns bright red and his expression twists into a snarl. “I told you not to bring her in here! Get out!”

You don’t need to be told twice. You duck out the door and retreat about twenty feet down the hallway, listening as Kurogiri tries to placate Tenko. “You asked for her to be brought to you immediately, not for me to summon you when she arrived. I followed your orders to the letter.”

“I didn’t want –” Tenko breaks off, swears. Then he mumbles something, and Kurogiri chuckles. “Don’t laugh at me!”

You check your phone. You aren’t supposed to meet Sugimura until eight, but you’ve got no idea how long this particular encounter is going to run. You might need to tell him you’re running late. You’ve just sent the text and tucked your phone away when Kurogiri reappears. “We will return to the bar,” he says. “Shigaraki Tomura awaits you there.”

So Kurogiri warped him to the bar. You wonder what that was all about. Was Tenko embarrassed that you saw how filthy his room was, or just embarrassed that you saw his room at all? Or did he change his mind about wanting you here? The last thought upsets you. You follow Kurogiri back into the bar and find Tenko sitting at the counter. It’s an improvement from the last time you saw him, when he was sprawled out and bleeding from four gunshot wounds, but this time he’s got his arms crossed, clearly pissed about something. His face is still red behind the hand. There’s a bloodstained bandage taped to his right shoulder.

A pile of supplies appears on the bar as you come closer. “What happened this time?”

“It wouldn’t stop bleeding.” Tenko uncrosses his left arm to gesture at the wound. “This is the fourth one I’ve used.”

If he’s gone through four bandages, it must be pretty deep. “How long ago did it happen?”

“Two hours,” Kurogiri says. “Shigaraki Tomura sent me to retrieve you immediately.”

“Can you fix it or not?” Tenko snaps.

“I need to see it first,” you say. You come a few steps closer, sit down facing Tenko on the barstool next to his, and reach for the bandage. He doesn’t stop you from unwrapping it, and you detour to glove up before you start peeling the fabric of his shirt back from the wound. It’s oozing blood rapidly. It’s jagged at the edges, and deep – if you suctioned the blood away, you’d be looking at exposed muscle, and you’re so horrified by the fact that Tenko’s been badly hurt again that you ask a question you shouldn’t. “How did this happen?”

“Hero Killer,” Tenko says, and your stomach lurches. “I thought he might be useful, but he’s just like the rest of them. Obsessed with the precious Symbol of Peace.”

You don’t know very much about the Hero Killer, except that he kills or cripples heroes and he’s not in Yokohama any longer. Tenko’s still ranting. “Why can’t anybody shut up about All Might? Don’t they know –”

“That he’s not gonna fuck them?” you interrupt, and Tenko nearly chokes. “I guess they can dream.”

Tenko’s expression is contorting behind the hand. You’re pretty sure it’s not the result of your explorations of the wound, because you’re not touching it. You watch, concerned, as his shoulders shake and his mouth twitches, until awkward, rusty laughter finally issues from his mouth.

You always try to make people laugh. You’ve been in the habit since you were little. It’s an effective strategy for defusing tension, whether the joke is funny or not, and your jokes are usually at least kind of funny. But you always liked making Tenko laugh when you were kids. You were always just a little prouder of that than you were with other people. Tenko made people smile all the time. He deserved for somebody to make him laugh, too.

Tenko’s laughter is brief and uneven, because he’s trying to get it under control. “Stop it,” he finally snaps at you. His mouth is still twitching. “It’s serious.”

“Right,” you agree. But you can’t resist another joke. “It would be a novel strategy. If you can’t beat the Symbol of Peace, make him unfuckable instead.”

“I can beat him,” Tenko says, but his voice is strained to the point of snapping, and his shoulders are shaking again. “Can you fix my arm or not?”

“I can fix it,” you say, “but I’ll need a suture kit. And I’ll either need to cut your sleeve or you’ll need to take your shirt off.”

“I’m not taking my shirt off.” Tenko’s face is red again. “It’s ruined anyway. Just cut it.”

You cut his sleeve open from the neckline and peel it back, then go looking through the medical supplies. Kurogiri took your advice about additions to their supplies, and nothing turned up missing at work, which means they honored your request to steal from someone else. You’ve got local anesthetic this time, which is good, because you need it. You start numbing the edges of the wound, asking every so often if Tenko can feel what you’re doing. When he stops saying yes, you open the suture kit.

It’s a bit weird, but putting stitches in is one of your favorite parts of the job. You can get in the zone with it, even when the patient wants to talk. Tenko wants to talk. “People talk about the League of Villains out there. Don’t they?” he asks. You nod. “What do they say?”

“Um –” You’re not sure this is an answer Tenko wants to hear. “They’re wondering why the attack on UA happened.”

“What do you mean, why?”

“Like, if there was a message behind it,” you elaborate. You need to be careful, with the stitches and with this line of thought. “More than just killing All Might, because lots of villains want to do that. If there was a message, it didn’t get out. The police and UA haven’t shared much information – not even how the breach happened in the first place.”

Tenko scoffs. “They don’t have a clue. They won’t see it coming the next time we hit them, either.”

He’s planning something else. Your blood runs cold, and for a moment you’re torn about whether or not to ask. Tenko makes the decision for you. “What else do they say about the League?”

“Not very much, otherwise,” you say, and Tenko swears. “There are a lot of villains, just like there are a lot of heroes. People talk about the ones they see the most of.”

“Which heroes do you talk about?”

“I don’t really talk about heroes.” You tie off a stitch, trim the thread to the appropriate length, and take another. “One of my friends has this nasty crush on Endeavor, so we talk about him sometimes, but otherwise – no.”

“Your friend has a crush on Endeavor,” Tenko repeats.

“Like I said. Nasty.”

You’re conscious of Tenko staring at you, and you will your face not to heat up under his gaze. You don’t even know why he’s staring, and you’ve got stitches to do, so it doesn’t matter. Your phone buzzes in your pocket – probably Sugimura, probably confirming your date. A date you’re not sure you want to go on anymore. Did you ever really want to go on it? Or did you just say yes because –

“You look weird.”

You look up from the stitches, startled. “Huh?”

“You look weird,” Tenko repeats. “Your clothes are different and you’ve got stuff on your face.”

Tenko and Mitsuko feel the same about your makeup skills, apparently. “Sorry.”

“Why do you look like that?” Tenko presses. You tie off his next stitch. “Are you going on a date or something?”

You answer without thinking about whether it’s the smart thing to do. “Yes.”

It’s quiet for a long stretch of seconds. “Go on your date, then,” Tenko says. His voice is flat. “I don’t need you.”

It stings. You don’t want it to, but it does, and you look down at the cut on his shoulder so he won’t see it on your face. “You still need a few more stitches. At least let me finish them.”

“No. Get out.” Tenko jerks out of your grip. You barely have enough time to cut the hanging thread on your last stitch. “I don’t want you here. Kurogiri –”

“Shigaraki Tomura, I’m not sure that’s wise.”

“I didn’t ask you!” Tenko swats at you open-handed and you leap backwards. “Get out! I don’t –”

You don’t hear the end of that sentence. Kurogiri warps you away too fast, and possibly saves your life. He drops you back in the alley behind the clinic, holding half a suture kit and still wearing bloodstained gloves. You peel them off and dump them into the garbage, furious with yourself. You shouldn’t have said that. You shouldn’t have talked about your life at all, and above all else, you should have remembered that you were talking to a villain, not your best friend – that whatever’s left of your best friend isn’t enough. He’s angry with you, and he’s been having you followed. Just how angry is he? Angry enough to hurt you? Or angry enough to never talk to you again?

You’re sickened and more than a little scared to realize that you’re more frightened of the latter possibility than the former. It’s entirely possible that you’ve never been in less of a mood to go on a date.

But you do go on the date, because you said you would, and it’s – fine. There’s nothing to complain about, but there’s nothing to be excited about, either. You and Sugimura hug to say goodbye, and you promise to text each other about setting up another one, and then you walk home. Mitsuko texts you, wanting details, or DETAILS, but you’ve got nothing to share. It was just a date, and no matter how many times you try to tell yourself otherwise, you’re angry about it.

Not because of Sugimura asking you out, not because you agreed, not because you went. Because you told Tenko and gave him a reason to get rid of you. Why does this keep happening? Why do you keep finding him and losing him, over and over again? What is it going to take for you to hold on?

“So how was the date?”

The voice emanates from the alleyway on your right and you nearly jump out of your skin. Tenko’s there, hand down from over his face, leaning against the wall with his arms crossed over his chest. He hasn’t changed his shirt. “I didn’t think heroes were your type.”

“They aren’t.”

“Then why were you on a date with one?”

“He asked.”

“And you just go with whoever asks?” Tenko looks half-incredulous, half-disgusted. You shake your head. “Forget it. Come with me.”

You shake your head again and take a step back – away from the alley, closer to the street. Tenko looks frustrated. “Come with me,” he repeats.

“What, so you can kill me?” You take another step back, well into the glow of a streetlight. You see shock flicker across Tenko’s face. “I don’t have a death wish.”

“Well, I don’t want to kill you,” Tenko fires back. He looks surprised at himself for saying it, but only for a moment – then he repeats himself, with more conviction. “I don’t want to kill you. You’re supposed to be my sidekick.”

Your jaw drops. “You remember?”

“I don’t remember everything.” Tenko takes the hand called Father out of the back pocket of his pants and studies it for a moment. Then he puts it away. “I remember that.”

Some kids played a different game every day. You and Tenko always played the same one, with a rotating cast of classmates at your side. All the heroes in the world were working together to fight one big villain, the worst villain the world had ever seen, and Tenko could never decide which hero he liked best, so he played a different one every day. But no matter which hero he played, no matter who else was playing with the two of you, you were always his sidekick. You reminded him every day that you didn’t have a quirk, and he always said the same thing in response, no matter which hero he was pretending to be that day, even though he didn’t have a quirk, either: You don’t need a quirk to be on my side. My quirk’s enough for both of us.

“Come on,” Tenko says again. He holds out his hand, three fingers and his thumb folded down, his pinky finger extended towards you. “Are you coming or what?”

You’ve never seen the world in black and white, but some things are unmistakable: There’s a line here, not visible to others but clear as day to you. On one side of it is Tenko and the darkness that’s swallowed him, the evil that surrounds him, the terrible things he’s done and is planning to do. On the other side is everything else – your dreams, your friends, your family that’s always loved you but used you anyway, a world that’s punished you time and time again for being born without a quirk, the knowledge that the world is so much crueler to so many others. You don’t think Tenko’s planning to kidnap you, to never let you leave. You’ll come back here, physically. You’ll go home and go to sleep and wake up early on your day off to take Yoshimi to her appointment at the main clinic, but you know instinctively that if you cross this line within yourself, there’s no coming back. Tenko was your best friend when you were five years old. Is he worth it?

You hate yourself for asking the question. You leave the light behind and link your finger with Tenko’s. “Where are we going?”

The black mist rises and wells up around you both. “You’ll see,” Tenko says, and for the first time since you found him again, he smiles.

Ok so we all write about big horny go getter Shigaraki, but what about sexually repressed, pent up Shigaraki

Bitch you K N O W I had to write it now

He’s trying not to look. He really is. Honest. No, really.

You’re frantically flouncing around the kitchen in nothing but a tank top and shorts -your “sleepwear”- at 2 am, desperately searching for something. He doesn’t know what. He wasn’t listening (truthfully, he couldn’t focus) when you asked him about it. Instead he went on autopilot, shaking his head while pretending he wasn’t lasciviously leering at the sight of so much of your skin on show.

Afficher davantage

A new life for Tomura part 8

Aftermath >;3

Start / Part 2 / Part 3 / Part 4 / Part 5 / Part 6 / Aftermath (you're here!) / Super Secret After Credits Sequence Haha Funny

rejoice

Bonus: