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queer-obsession · 6 days ago

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Expiation (Chapter 7) - a Shigaraki x f!Reader fic

Even after slaying the High Kingdom's greatest enemy and sparing its people from a terrible fate, Shigaraki Tomura's past crimes make him an outcast in the castle. Still, someone has to attend to him, and that someone is you -- and unlike the maids who came before you, you're not afraid to ask a question. (cross-posted to Ao3)

Chapters: 1 2 3 4 5 6

Chapter 7

The Veil wreaks havoc on those who have never passed through it before, and it does not discriminate in who it torments. Servants, squires, knights, lords — even King Izuku, who you thought would be protected by the power of One For All. While you continue to make steady progress through the Veil, it’s as part of an increasingly rattled, increasingly sleep-deprived army. When you ride with the other squires, the only thing you discuss is how to get your masters (and therefore yourselves) even a few hours of uninterrupted rest.

“You get them, too, don’t you?” Setsuna, at her wit’s end with herself and her knight, is seeking any port in a storm, and she’s targeted Itsuka specifically. “What helps you?”

Itsuka goes inexplicably red in the face and shakes her head, and Setsuna turns away to fixate on you. “Has anything worked for you?”

“I don’t get them. I’ve come through the Veil before.” You remind someone of that at least once a day, and it’s never stuck. “If I knew, I would share.”

“What about for him?” Tetsutetsu poses the question. “Your master? Or is the White Death’s conscience so blackened that even this damn forest can’t pierce it?”

You shake your head. “Sir Tomura suffers, too.”

Suffers, and suffers worse than many of the others; while they succumb to troubled sleep each night, Sir Tomura refuses to sleep at all. He won’t tell you what he sees in the nightmares, but whatever it is, he wants nothing to do with it, and no matter what you do, you can’t get him to even try to rest. As a result of the sleep deprivation, his temper is short with everyone, you included. You don’t know how to help him. It hurts you to see him struggle, more than it should. So much that you wish your sleep was disturbed, too, so that he would not have to suffer alone.

“I’ll try sleeping potions tonight,” Mirio decides. His normally bright grin is faded, dim. The dark circles under his eyes stand out in sharp relief. “Even if it slows Tamaki, he has me to watch his back.”

The others are nodding, agreeing to try something similar, but you know Sir Tomura will never accept something that dulls his senses. And even if he was willing, you can’t protect him the way the other squires protect their knights and lords. What the others will try won’t work for you. Your eyes are drawn to Itsuka, who’s riding back straight, eyes front, her face still a little red. There’s something else she knows, or has tried. You guide the grey mare in alongside her horse. “Is Lady Momo’s sleep still disturbed?”

“It was,” Itsuka says. “I — there is a trick to it. Those who have passed through the Veil before are spared, but there are others, too. Have you noticed?”

“Others like who?”

“Aizawa, for one. Yamada is rested, too.”

Your stomach clenches. “Who else?”

She lists a few more names. One married couple. Two sets of knight and squire you know to be involved. “It’s said that those who walk in the Veil walk alone. We don’t, not in daylight, so we’re protected,” Itsuka continues. “At night we separate, and that leaves us vulnerable. My Lady and I can avoid the nightmares if we stay — close.”

Her face is turning red again. “How close?” you ask.

“As close as you both desire,” Itsuka says miserably. “For you, as close as you can bear.”

Of course — she thinks proximity to Sir Tomura is a horrible thing, but you think otherwise. You know otherwise. Would it help to stay close to him? He fell back asleep the first night, after you bandaged his wound and wiped his face and sat up all night piecing his shirt back together. If you offered that closeness again, would it ease his mind enough to sleep? One thing is for certain: The idea can’t come from you. It would be unseemly for a maid or even a squire to force themselves upon their master, and if you were to suggest it, Sir Tomura would know that you’ve been thinking about him in that way. He’d dismiss you from his service. You’re certain of it.

“Perhaps Lady Momo could raise the topic,” you say, and Itsuka gives you a shocked look. “He has not slept in nights. It takes a toll. And I cannot.”

“For fear that he’ll punish you?” Itsuka’s expression shifts into pity. “If you truly want to try it, I’ll ask if my Lady will speak to him.”

“Thank you,” you say to Itsuka, and mean it. You still feel a little sick.

The sickness doesn’t fade, and whether Lady Momo spoke to him or not, Sir Tomura shows no sign of it when he draws alongside you for the last hours of the day’s ride. He looks terrible, barely speaking when you address him, and when the army stops for the night, you find yourself helping him down from his horse, not the other way around. You erect the tent on your own, find Sir Tomura a fire to sit beside and food to eat, and resolve somewhere in the midst of this all that it must stop. Whether Lady Momo spoke to Sir Tomura or not, you must raise the topic yourself. Tonight.

When Sir Tomura comes back to the tent for the night, he’s holding a book. “I borrowed this from the king,” he says, when he sees you looking at it. “Something to occupy me, so that you might at least sleep well.”

You’ve been staying up with him. “Ideally we would both sleep well,” you say, and Sir Tomura gives you a flat, frustrated look. “I spoke to the other squires. One of them had an idea —”

“To drug me? I heard. Most of the others drank sleeping potions with dinner.” Sir Tomura, so exhausted that he can barely see straight, still has more than enough disdain to spare. “It won’t work. I need my wits about me.”

“As they are now?” You won’t let Sir Tomura cloud the truth. “You needed help dismounting from your horse. If it came to a battle —”

“What, then?” Sir Tomura cuts you off abruptly. “I have told you I will not dull my senses. If there is nothing else, then go to sleep. I have reading to do.”

“I didn’t suggest a sleeping potion,” you say, and then you’re lost. There’s no way to frame it that feels anything but ridiculous. If it’s going to be ridiculous no matter what, you may as well be direct in the bargain. “The presence of others keeps the Veil at bay during daylight. Some evidence suggests that the nightmares can be helped by staying — close.”

“What evidence?”

“My friend and their master. Others, within the army.” You say the names, but no spark of understanding flares in Sir Tomura’s eyes. “It is your choice.”

“We already share a tent,” Sir Tomura says. Your face burns. “How much closer?”

As close as you and your master desire, Itsuka had said, but that wasn’t all. “As close as you can bear, my Lord.”

It’s silent for some time after that. Sir Tomura says nothing, and neither do you, and eventually you turn away to begin to prepare for bed. The clatter of Sir Tomura’s armor tells you he’s doing the same. You hear him sit down at the edge of his cot, then the sound of his boots being cast off, one at a time, all sounds you’ve grown familiar with. You wait for the sounds of a book being opened, and pages being turned, but there’s only silence. “Come closer, then,” Sir Tomura says, and heat ripples through you from hairline to heels. “As close as you can bear.”

Is he challenging you? You don’t know, and you don’t understand, but you turn anyway to find Sir Tomura halfway beneath the blankets, one corner of them turned back for you. It looks like a tight fit for two, but maybe that’s for the best. This way, you have no choice but to touch, and an excuse ready for why it must happen. You cross the scant space between your bedroll and Sir Tomura’s cot and slip into the space provided. Sir Tomura drops the blanket over you. You douse the lantern. The two of you lay down and begin the struggle to get comfortable.

You’ve never shared a bed with someone before. There’s not room for you and Sir Tomura to both lie side by side on your backs. You turn to face outwards, and Sir Tomura faces the opposite way, and then you’re lying back-to-back. Sir Tomura makes an irritated sound. “My Lord?”

“I cannot reach my sword quickly this way. Change sides with me.” Sir Tomura sits up, and you do the same, scrambling awkwardly over him before laying down with your back to him once more. “If we should be attacked in the night, do your best to stay out of my way.”

“I doubt we’ll be attacked,” you say. “This may be the most dangerous part of the forest, but those who walk here walk alone.”

Sir Tomura scoffs quietly. “This is hardly the only part of the forest where that holds true.”

You wouldn’t know. This is the only path through the Forest Perilous you’ve ever traveled. Sir Tomura lies down again, back-to-back with you once more, and silence falls within the tent. You take stock of the situation and decide it’s both worse and better than you imagined it would be. Better because Sir Tomura allowed it. Worse because you want to believe it means more than a final grasp for a good night’s sleep, and worse again because you know how foolish it is to want such a thing.

You know Sir Tomura is going to speak before he does it when you feel him take a deeper breath than usual. “You would suffer as I do, had you not passed through the Veil before.”

“Yes, my Lord.”

“It follows, then, that your first journey was unpleasant.” Another deep breath. You know what’s coming next, and your stomach ties itself in a knot. “What happened to you?”

Has Sir Tomura ever asked you a personal question? You don’t think so — all your conversations are related to the tasks at hand, whatever they might be, or else they’re the result of questions you’ve asked him. You’re not at all sure you want to answer. “It was a long time ago, my Lord. I don’t remember.”

“You served Warlord Kai for three years prior to your journey, and your memory of those years is unclouded.” Sir Tomura shifts on the bed, collecting far more than his share of the blanket. A shiver runs through you. “I refuse to believe that you recall nothing of this place.”

“I told you what I recalled.”

“And you changed the subject,” Sir Tomura says. “You asked after my journey instead.”

You didn’t ask to deflect; you asked because you wanted to know. “You didn’t answer, either.”

It’s quiet again. A few moments later, Sir Tomura rolls to his back, crowding you to the edge of the cot. If he wants you to go back to your bedroll, you wish he’d say so, but when he speaks up again, he takes you by surprise with the topic. “I avoided the forest in my travels, before. I heard that it trapped the unworthy, leaving them to wander until they died of thirst or starvation, or simply fell dead from exhaustion. As there is no one unworthier than I am, I assumed I would meet the same fate when I crossed its borders.”

It’s quiet for a moment. “It seemed as good a way as any to die.”

Your skin crawls. “My Lord —”

“Don’t act so surprised,” Sir Tomura says, almost snaps. “The man who slew the Enemy was supposed to die in the attempt, not survive with wounds that would never heal. I wanted to live that way even less than I had wanted to live before. I had not thought that such a thing was possible.”

He’s tense beside you, the same way he gets when the nightmares strike him. “At first the forest lived up to its promise. We rode day and night with no discernible progress, but the tales of starvation in the forest were greatly exaggerated. There was an abundance of food. Nomu ate like a king.”

But Sir Tomura didn’t. He was skeletal when he arrived at Castle Ultra. He’s gained weight since then, still far from the picture of health but no longer so close to death. “I had no wish to dwell in the forest for eternity. I abstained. Once again, I assumed — that my wound would hasten the process, that my stubbornness could outlast my hunger, that the forest would judge me unworthy and trap me forever. Imagine my surprise when it spat me out on the High Kingdom’s doorstep. It seems I was too unworthy even to die there.”

You remember the emptiness of his gaze the first time you met his eyes. How lost he seemed to be, how lost he still is, sometimes. “I have answered,” Sir Tomura says. His voice is flat. “Your turn.”

“I entered the Veil with my parents, my grandparents, my aunt and uncle, and three cousins. By the time I left it, I was alone.”

“And?”

“And what? I don’t remember what happened to them.” When you try to think of it, your thoughts tangle and your chest goes tight. “I’m sorry to disappoint —”

“Your family. Do you think they were worthy?” Sir Tomura asks, cutting you off with a question that feels like a stab to the gut. “Do you think yourself worthier than them for having emerged from the forest in one piece?”

“I didn’t emerge in one piece,” you snap. Your eyes are starting to sting. “I left part of me here, with them.”

You used to imagine for yourself that they made it out, on some other edge of the woods, confused and worried for you but otherwise safe and sound. You imagined them settling down on a farm within sight of the trees. They were young enough for other children, so you imagined they had a few, all healthy, none with magic. You wanted them to be happy, and in your imagination, they were — only worried for you, missing you, the same way you missed them. It didn’t matter if you missed them forever, if they never knew. If all three of you were alive somewhere, everything was all right.

Your parents died in the Forest Perilous. Wandered off the path and off the edge of some glade, fell into an enchanted stream and drowned, starved or dehydrated or froze to death or simply laid down to die, too exhausted to travel another step. There’s a reason you don’t think of them, and this is it — so you won’t fall into misery and loneliness and guilt for being the reason they had to leave, the only one who survived the journey. For not being able to save them, too.

You keep your breathing steady with an effort. You won’t give Sir Tomura the satisfaction of knowing he’s struck true, or ask the question of whether he meant to hurt you at all. “It’s not worthiness,” you say. “It’s magic. You’re the one who said any kind of magic can be cruel.”

It’s silent for a long time, so long that you begin to hope that it’s worked, that Sir Tomura has fallen asleep at last. Then his hand comes to rest against your shoulder. “Face me, if you can bear it.”

That is a challenge, if ever you’ve heard one. You aren’t afraid to meet it. You roll from your side to your back, and then to your other side, until you and your Lord are nose to nose. You’ve never gotten so close to him before, and although you have no doubt Sir Tomura expects you to be frightened of him, it’s not fear that tenses you — at least not the sort of fear he expects. “Yes, my Lord?”

“You say ‘my Lord’ so often. I am beginning to wonder if you’ve forgotten my name.”

“I have not, Sir Tomura,” you say. His hand is still on your shoulder. “Is there a reason you asked me to face you?”

His gaze slides away from yours. “I wanted you to come closer.”

Your stomach pulls into a knot. “How close?”

“As close as you can bear.”

A half-dozen responses flash through your head, some respectfully distant, some familiar enough to make your face heat up. You should hold your ground here, remind Sir Tomura of the rules, of propriety and good sense and the vast difference in your ranks, but you cannot bring yourself to do it. Nor can you bring yourself to respond with complete familiarity, although the idea sends a flood of heat through you. Instead you shift closer, and closer again, and as Sir Tomura rolls to his back, your head comes to rest against his shoulder.

Sir Tomura lies frozen for a moment. Then his arm wraps around you, pulling you tight against his side.

The question feels unnecessary, but you can’t help but ask. “Is this better, Sir Tomura?”

“Yes,” Sir Tomura says, “but for one thing. When you share my bed, I ask that use my given name. My title is a mockery. I don’t wish to hear it when I don’t have to.”

Your head spins, for a multitude of reasons. First among them is the phrasing — ‘share my bed’, while technically correct for what’s happening here, typically means something much more intimate — but the larger shock comes from the request itself. You know maids and servants who’ve slept with nobles. When they’ve spoken of it in detail, they describe their highborn lovers as demanding the use of their title, as almost taking pleasure in it. For a noble to request the opposite is completely outside your understanding.

Your stunned silence draws something unusual from your Lord — an elaboration. “I use your name. I want you to use mine in return.”

“Only here.”

“Yes, only here.” Sir Tomura’s voice holds a note of impatience, and something more, something that sounds almost like embarrassment. “Do not act as if I’ve ordered you to parade around the campsite naked. What I have asked of you cannot be so strange, even here.”

It is. Almost unbearably strange. And yet, you don’t wish to refuse him. “I will do as you ask — Tomura.”

Your Lord — you make up your mind to refer to him thus and only thus in your thoughts — lets out a long, slow breath. “Thank you.”

It’s always strange to you when your Lord thanks you. So much about your Lord is strange to you, not simply his request that you use his name. There’s the way he shifts to accommodate you at his side, the way his cheek comes to rest against the top of your head, the placement of his hands at the small of your back and the back of your neck, nowhere untoward but intimate all the same. But in one respect, he is like any other; with someone at his side, he sleeps through the night for the first time since the army entered the Veil.

Togetherness helps. Sleeping potions do not, and for those unwilling or unable to reach out to others, the nightmares worsen and sleep goes from scarce to nonexistent. With every day that passes, it grows worse. Poor decisions are made, barely checked in time. Sir Tomura, whose sleep is restless on his best night even with you at his side, is pressed into service by King Izuku, corralling those who wander off the path. But it hasn’t escaped your notice that the army’s progress is slowing drastically. It still comes as a surprise when the column comes to a complete halt.

“Why are we stopping?” Itsuka asks wearily. “It’s not nightfall yet. Is it?”

“It’s dark,” Setsuna mumbles. “I’m tired.”

“It’s not past noon,” you say. You know the Veil plays with time — you can feel it — but you remember it, too. “Something’s gone wrong.”

“Yes.” Sir Tomura draws alongside you. He’s astride Nomu, while you’ve been leading your mare on foot. “Come with me.”

You mount up with your typical clumsiness and guide the gray mare after Nomu, towards the head of the column. Sir Tomura explains what’s befallen the army before you can ask. “The path has forked, at least to their vision. To mine, less so, but even I cannot be sure. Someone with unclouded eyes is needed to point the way.”

It takes you a moment to grasp his point, and once you do, your stomach lurches. “Not me.”

“It must be you. You passed this way through the Veil before, and you were old enough to remember it,” Sir Tomura says. “Look at the paths, and tell us which way to go. Is that so difficult?”

No. You’ve yet to fall prey to the Veil’s illusions, because you’ve seen them before, but you trust your vision only for yourself. For your Lord, for the army, for the king — “What if I’m wrong?”

“You will not lead us astray. Point out the correct path, and I’ll see it, too.” Sir Tomura’s red eyes are steady on yours, but you can’t hold his gaze. “Forget about the rest of them. Pretend you’re guiding me and no one else.”

Just as you spoke to only him when you testified before the council. Sir Tomura’s presence grounded you, kept you focused on your task rather than sliding into fear. Answering to him felt less terrifying than answering the full council; perhaps guiding him will feel easier than guiding the army.

“It should not be too difficult,” Sir Tomura says, filling the silence you’ve let fall. “You have been my guide since I arrived at Castle Ultra, and that is far more dangerous territory than this.”

His expression doesn’t change, but something flickers in his eyes. You can only stare. “Did you just tell a joke?”

“Don’t look so surprised. It’s not so strange.”

“From you it is,” you say, still stunned. “I rarely hear you laugh. I never thought I’d hear you tell a joke.”

“Perhaps I would like to hear you laugh, for a change.”

Your mind empties itself of any possible response, and in the midst of yet another silence, Sir Tomura leans over and lifts the grey mare’s reins out of your hands. “They’re waiting for you. This way.”

By the time you reach the head of the column, you’ve regained most of your powers of speech, which is a good thing; the king and his councilors are waiting for you. “Thank you,” King Izuku says, although you haven’t done anything yet. “We have need of your vision. Which of the paths before us is the right one?”

The Veil must be employing all its tricks to stymie them. No matter how you squint or tilt your head, there’s no change in what you see. “I see only one path.”

The king breathes a sigh of relief. “Which one?”

You point it out, and behind you, the council erupts into whispers. Most of them. “I see no path that way,” Sir Katsuki says loudly. “You would lead us into oblivion.”

“Oblivion is all you’ll find if you remain here,” Sir Tomura says shortly. Then, to you: “Start forward. Show me the way.”

You guide the grey mare forward, onto a path that apparently only you can see, conscious of Sir Tomura and Nomu following close behind you. The whispers of the council crest, then fall into silence, and King Izuku’s voice rings out brightly. “I see it!” he calls. “I saw it as soon as you took the first steps, but it is not visible past where you stand. Wait there a moment. The order to advance will take time to travel.”

“We must travel close to single file,” Sir Tomura says. “All depends on the ability to see the rider ahead of you.”

But there’s no rider ahead of you. All you can see is the path, familiar and not, unfolding through the surrounding illusions of the Veil, and once again, you’re gripped by terrible nerves. If it was only your fate that rested on this, that would be one thing. But the army contains hundreds of people. Thousands. If you make a mistake, if you lead them wrong —

A hand brushes lightly against your back, and you glance towards Sir Tomura. “Forget about them,” he reminds you. “You’re only leading me.”

“Do you not fear that I will lead you false?”

“You haven’t yet.” Sir Tomura draws alongside you, close enough that your foot brushes Nomu’s flank. “And I have already trusted you with far more than this.”

“I know,” you say. The urge to look towards him, for comfort, for reassurance, is almost too strong for you to bear. You keep your eyes up, straight ahead. “I will not fail you, my Lord.”

“You won’t,” King Izuku says, drawing even with you. “All you have to do is lead the way.”

You’re leading Sir Tomura. Anyone else who chooses to follow along isn’t your concern. You tap your heels against the grey mare’s sides, keep your grip on her reins loose as she tilts into a walk. “The path lies here,” you say – and then, for the first time in your life, you issue an order. “Follow me.”

<- Chapter 6

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queer-obsession · 27 days ago

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Enough to Go By (Chapter 29) - a Shigaraki x f!Reader fic

Your best friend vanished on the same night his family was murdered, and even though the world forgot about him, you never did. When a chance encounter brings you back into contact with Shimura Tenko, you'll do anything to make sure you don't lose him again. Keep his secrets? Sure. Aid the League of Villains? Of course. Sacrifice everything? You would - but as the battle between the League of Villains and hero society unfolds, it becomes clear that everything is far more than you or anyone else imagined it would be. (cross-posted to Ao3)

Chapters: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28

Chapter 29

You push open the doors and step forward into an enormous room. Enormous, and empty, like an auditorium with the seats stripped or the world’s fanciest gym. Even the sound of your breathing seems to echo. When you look across the room, you see an absurdly tall dais, and an ornate chair on top of it. Your brain supplies the right word. Throne. A red-cloaked figure lies across the bottom steps, head pillowed on his arms, white hair fanned across the steps and his shoulders. Tomura doesn’t look up when the doors shut behind you and Spinner.

He speaks, though. “It’s not working, Spinner. I can’t shut him out.”

“Yes you can,” Spinner says. “You’ve done it before.”

“Not when he’s here.”

“Somebody else is here,” Spinner says. He waves you forward, and you force yourself to walk at a normal pace instead of bolting to Tomura’s side. “Come on. This is going to help.”

“No.” Tomura seems to slump further. “Run. Before it’s too late.”

“Not happening. I promised Saintess I’d look after you,” Spinner says. “I finally got some help.”

“Tomura,” you say, cutting him off as he curses at Spinner. His head snaps up, and he turns to stare at you. Your breath catches at the sight of him. “Hi.”

He looks awful. Maybe worse than you look, although it’s been a while since you looked in the mirror. He looks awful, and almost angry as he gets to his feet. He looks past you, to Spinner. “If this is some kind of joke –”

“It’s not a joke,” you say. “I can tell one if you want.”

“It’s not her,” Tomura says. He won’t look at you, even as you draw closer to him. “She only knew one joke.”

“I met All Might,” you say. Tomura freezes. “He’s even more unfuckable in person.”

Tomura turns to face you slowly. You don’t know how to quantify his expression at first — then it contorts in a way you recognize, one that makes you so happy you can hardly speak. “Right now?” he says, forcing the words through gritted teeth. “You’re going to make that joke right now?”

“Like you said, it’s the only one I know.” You shrug. Your eyes are blurring. You don’t think you’ve ever cried happy tears before — except maybe the last time you were reunited with Tenko after thinking you’d never see him again. “I’ll stop telling it when you stop laughing.”

“I’m not laughing,” Tomura says. He closed the space between you in a single step and yanks you into his arms.

He hugs you so tightly your ribs creak and all the air whooshes out of your lungs and Spinner hollers at him to be careful, but you don’t care. You’re back with Tenko, back where you belong. He’s alive and so are you and as long as that’s true, there’s still a chance, however small, that things will work out. You want to bury your face in his shoulder, but he’s beaten you to it with yours, and you decide after a moment that it’s fair. You’ve just been missing him, worrying about him. He’s thought you were dead. He can hold onto you as long as he wants.

Tenko’s voice is a whisper against the side of your neck. “I get it now,” he says. You make a questioning sound. “Why you were like that the first time. I’m worse than you and it was only a month.”

“Except I never believed you were dead,” you remind him. “It was just a reunion.”

The best reunion ever, as unexpected and dramatic as it was, isn’t anything compared to a resurrection. “I told you she wasn’t dead,” Spinner says from somewhere off to one side. Tomura growls at him to go away as he feels along the edge of your prison jumpsuit, looking for the zipper. “You two can — do that — later. Right now we need to get our shit together. Can you keep him out?”

“Easy.” Tomura’s voice is muffled by his mouth against your shoulder. He’s been biting down, just like in the old days, but now he draws away and kisses the mark he left. “A lot easier now.”

“Tell us if he starts trying to get back in,” you say. “We can help.”

“You’ll know,” Spinner tells you. You don’t like the sound of that at all. “Okay. Saintess was going to tell me how she got out of –”

“Further back.” Tomura sits down on the floor and pulls you down with him, directly into his lap. “From the beginning.”

“Do you need this stuff?” Spinner asks. He’s studying the file and medication box the heroes sent along with you — the kind of stuff they’d send on a real prisoner transfer. “It’s — wait — you had a –”

The next words will either be ‘miscarriage’ or ‘heart attack’, and neither of those are important right now. “We’ll get to that,” you say. “Okay, so I didn’t wake up until a few days in. The first person I talked to was Present Mic. He was my main interrogator, and he wanted to know about the bullets. Apparently they couldn’t find any after the battle.”

“Yeah, I grabbed them.” Spinner says. You give him a grateful look. “It’s a good thing you’ve made so many. We’ve needed them.”

Present Mic said the bullets hadn’t been used again. “For what?”

“We’ll get to that,” Tomura mumbles, his face still pressed against your shoulder. “Tell us first.”

You’re able to cough up an immediately useful piece of information — Kurogiri’s location, and the fact that he’s been partially deprogrammed — and from there it’s on to explaining how you got out. Or why you were let out. Spinner asks questions, but Tomura doesn’t. He just sits with you, wrapped around you, holding on with shaky hands. When you first mention All For One’s name, Tomura freezes. You fumble for his hand, link your little finger with his, and feel him slowly relax again. Is that all it takes to set him off? You’re going to have to be really careful.

“That fixed it fast,” Spinner remarks, nodding at your hands. “I should have tried that.”

“Wouldn’t have worked with you,” Tomura says, and Spinner snorts. “I have it. I’m fine. What else?”

“They’re a lot more scared of — him — than they are of you,” you say. You remember the clear desperation in their faces. “They know they’re losing. I think they want to negotiate, or they’re pretending to want to negotiate. Either way they want this to stop. And they think they’ve got a better shot at it if you’re in charge.”

“I mean, yeah,” Spinner says. You blink. “We need to stop him, too. Not just because he’s body-jacking Shigaraki. Because of what he’s making him do.”

You look at Tomura. Tomura looks sick. “What is it?” You ask, but he won’t look at you, suddenly. Nope. You catch his face between your hands and turn him back to face you. “Tell me. Please.”

“Stealing quirks. He takes them from everyone, when he’s in charge.” Tomura’s eyes are blank in a way that reminds you too much of the transformation, too much of the moments where he screamed until his vocal cords snapped and he couldn’t scream anymore. “I spin them off when it’s me. To anybody. If there are too many — he needs all of them. He can’t do what he wants to do without them.”

“We don’t know what he wants. The doctor did, but he wouldn’t say,” Spinner says. He looks at you. “You spent more time with him than anybody. What’s All For One trying to do by collecting so many quirks?”

You listened to everything the doctor said, because you didn’t trust him. He talked more about All For One’s plans after All For One was transplanted, and you spell it out hesitantly, racking your brain. “He said there was a limit to the normal human body, to how many quirks it could take. Part of why so many things about Tomura’s body had to change was so he could collect even more quirks. After a certain number of quirks —”

The name pops into your head. “Quirk singularity,” you say. “In theory, after a certain number of quirks, the growth becomes exponential. The quirks combine until they’re indistinguishable from one another. Until the person who has them is omnipotent. But even the Nomus start to break down past six or seven, so a person would have to be specially engineered — and their mindset would have to match —”

“What happened to my body. That kind of engineering,” Tomura says, and you nod miserably. “You warned me. I should have listened.”

You wish he had. Everything would be different. “So if he steals Shigaraki’s body all the way and manages to collect enough quirks,” Spinner starts, then stops. “Then what?”

“He becomes not-human. More than human. A god.” You struggle to remember the doctor’s notes, what little you could decipher from them. “Or he can’t contain that power and it expands outward, and it, um —”

“What?”

“That’s the doomsday part,” you say. “If All For One is the foundation quirk, then all the other quirks will serve to amplify it. It’ll consume quirk after quirk, and with every one it consumes, its reach will grow.”

“It’ll swallow up every quirk in the world,” Tomura says. “If the doomsday thing doesn’t happen, he’ll do it himself. That’s what he wants. For everything to be him.”

You don’t doubt it. You knew All For One was insane and hideously evil, and this fits well within those parameters, but you’re struggling to comprehend the sheer scale of it. If it’s possible — how is it possible? Theory is one thing, but the idea of forcing hundreds of quirks, thousands of them, into Tomura’s body is so horrible and so outside anything you’ve ever considered that it’s hard to imagine how it could be done, how it would work. The laws of nature should stop it in its tracks.

But the laws of nature can be bent. Your quirk bends them, in its own tiny way. If All For One pulls it off, it’ll be in some small part because of you — because your quirk will hold Tomura’s body together until your heart stops beating.

“We’ve been trying to stop him from getting the quirks,” Spinner says, and you force yourself to focus. “That’s where your bullets come in. Once he decides he wants a quirk from somebody, the only way to make sure he doesn’t get it is to destroy it or die before he can take it. And he doesn’t let people die.”

“What?”

“He gave me Overhaul. When he was in charge.” A shudder runs through Tomura’s body. “When someone dies, he uses it to bring them back. Some of them. Enough that he can take their quirk.”

“So we destroy the quirks first,” Spinner says. “I heard him say that there should be a way to bring the quirks back, but he’d need to know, like, the exact specifications of the quirk to do that. And since the doctor got captured, he doesn’t have that anymore.”

That’s news to you. “The doctor got captured? When?”

“Same time as they grabbed Skeptic. We hit Kobe and they hit our research facility at the same time,” Spinner says. Tomura’s gotten quiet. He’s holding you close, his head against your shoulder. “We drove them off, so we still have most of the stuff, but we lost those two. So now All For One can’t reconstruct the quirks your bullets destroy.”

“Even if we do that forever, he can still take more quirks,” you say. You twist in Tomura’s arms to look at him. “We could use the bullets to destroy All For One.”

Tomura shakes his head. “We thought about that,” Spinner says. “I tried it on a Nomu first, and it worked, sure — but only on one quirk at a time. And we didn’t get to choose which one.”

So you could get lucky, and get rid of All For One on the first try. Or with the sheer number of quirks Tomura now has, you could get rid of something else. “Do you think we should do it like that?” Tomura looks up at you. “You were there while the quirks were being transferred. If you think that’s the best way —

“It’s too much of a risk,” you say. You can’t guarantee a direct hit on All For One, and there’s the risk of hitting Super-Regeneration instead. You won’t take that chance. “We’ll think of something else.”

“We’d better do it fast,” Spinner says. He looks hopefully at you. “Could you take it out? Like Shigaraki said, you were there during the transplants —”

You know where it is. You know how it went on — exactly how it went on, exactly what it took to attach All For One’s parasitic consciousness to Tomura’s body. The problem is taking it off. You’d be fighting against Super-Regeneration, combined with your own quirk, and the process of removing the palms of both of Tomura’s hands would be agonizingly painful. You’d have to sedate him, but you have no idea how much sedative it would take to put him under, if he could even be put under at all. And all of that would take time to prepare. Time the two of you don’t have. Time the world doesn’t have, because if Tomura’s right about what All For One is planning — and you’ve got no reason to think he’s wrong — the entire world is at risk, too.

You rack your brain. “Okay. Maybe if I can hit just your hands with the deleter compound — on a Nomu, there’d be no way to target the exact quirk site, but I know where it is, so maybe —”

“It’s a risk —”

“It’s worth it.” Tomura stands up without shifting you out of his lap. He sets you down on your feet with absurd ease, takes one step back, and holds out his hands to you, palms-up. “Do it now.”

You look to Spinner. Spinner starts fumbling in his pockets for quirk-canceling bullets, and a split second later there’s a resounding crack from somewhere just above your head. It scares you so badly that you stagger, and you’re not the only one. And your stumble’s going to cost you. When you look up, you see the ceiling coming down in pieces, red sky peeking through, before an enormous chunk of concrete and rebar blots it out.

It’s there for a second — then it’s gone, and you’re blinking dust out of your eyes. Tomura grabs you. “Hold on,” he orders, and you wrap your arms around his neck and your legs around his waist, leaving both hands free. “Spinner, heads-up!”

Another piece of the ceiling is falling towards Spinner. Tomura Decays it with the touch of one hand, then grabs Spinner with the other, dragging him and carrying you to the corner of the room. “Stay down,” he orders. You let go of him and wedge yourself in next to Spinner. “I’ve got this.”

He has both hands held upwards, ready to catch and destroy the debris that’s raining steadily downwards towards you. The noise is ear-shattering, but Spinner somehow manages to be louder when he presses his mouth against your ear. “Is this the heroes?”

Not unless they misrepresented their position so skillfully that you fell for it — but if they were lying, why would Manami and Mitsuko and Ryuhei go along with it? The heroes who could still fight were headed to Seikan to try to hold off the PLF, with every expectation that they’d be crushed eventually. Containing All For One has been their top priority since the war began. There’s no way they would give up on it for an unsuccessful assassination attempt on Tomura. Unless this isn’t an assassination. If it’s not an assassination, and it’s not the heroes —

Tomura’s body twists. He staggers. One hand comes up to claw at the side of his head, while another releases a blast you realize must be from Air Cannon, aimed directly upwards to blast the debris away. You look at Spinner, only to see Spinner’s terrified face, inches away from your own. “It’s him.”

No. You scramble to Tomura’s side, prying his hand away from his head, turning his face back to yours. Something horrible is happening to his eyes. Their pupils are vanishing, reappearing, vanishing — reappearing again. “Tomura, hang on. I know you can do it. Stay with me!”

“Do you remember?” Tomura’s voice is his own when he speaks, but it’s broken up with agony and fear. “What you promised?”

You’ve made him so many promises. You’ve kept them, too. “I remember,” you say desperately. “Tomura, please —”

“Keep it,” Tomura says through clenched teeth. His pupils vanish, gone for far longer this time than before, only to reappear again. “I’m sorry.”

“Tomura —“ Your voice cuts off abruptly as Tomura kisses you.

It’s brief and it’s messy. His teeth sink into your lower lip and draw blood, and you gasp — and something passes between the two of you, from his hand to yours, something that tears along your nerves and sets the palms of your hands on fire. You lose your balance, stumble backwards, and Tomura makes it official a second later when he throws you back, directly into Spinner as Spinner’s struggling to rise. Both of you topple, and Tomura stalks away, heading to the center of the throne room. The center of the throne room, where All For One has just stepped down from Gigantomachia’s hand.

“Tomura,” he greets. His voice is just as terrible as it was the first time you heard it. “Apologies for the unwieldy entrance, but I’m sure you’ll fix it when the mood strikes. How are our quirks treating you?”

“You know how.” Tomura’s voice — it’s not Tomura’s voice anymore. It’s not Tomura anymore. “It’s a relief to dispense with this at last. This vessel and his friends had plans.”

All For One chuckles. Both versions of him. “Nomu,” they call as one, and four Nomu descend from the sky to settle around them on the floor. They’re not the only ones who’ve arrived. The members of the PLF who survived are flooding into the room, too. You see Re-Destro among them. He looks like hell. “Nomu, go and retrieve Tomura’s most loyal followers. Let’s see how far their loyalty extends.”

The Nomus set off towards you, but the PLF is in their way. You think the PLF might be in their way on purpose — Re-Destro especially. You and Spinner have seconds at best. Spinner turns to you. “He gave you a quirk,” he says. “What was it?”

“I don’t know,” you say. Tears are running down your face. “I’m sorry. I don’t —”

And then the Nomus are upon you, wrenching the two of you apart. You’re powerless to stop them, but Spinner isn’t. He must have gotten some kind of quirk from Tomura, because he bulks up in an instant, not growing taller but broader, sturdier. One punch knocks the Nomu reaching for him flat on its back. “Don’t,” Spinner snarls. “Don’t touch me. I’ll walk.”

“As you wish,” All For One responds in that strange doubled voice. “Whenever you’re ready, Iguchi Shuiichi.”

Spinner looks furious, the same way he’s looked every time someone’s called him the name he went by before. He starts walking and the crowd parts for him. You thrash to be put down — you want to walk, too — but the Nomu won’t let you go. All For One is okay with Spinner being free to move around. Not okay with you. Why?

Spinner’s already standing before the throne when the Nomu drops you in a heap on the ground. You stay down, playing for time, but when Spinner tries to help you up, you can’t refuse his hand. You take it, letting him pull you to your feet, and look up. All For One’s original body sits in the throne at the top of the steps. Down below, just a few steps above you and Spinner, stands the body that used to hold Spinner’s best friend and the person you love most in the entire world. Love, or loved? You can’t say for sure. Your love for Tenko is immovable, unyielding. But this isn’t him.

Both versions of All For One speak in unsettling unison. “For two people whose loyalty to Tomura is their only desirable trait, the two of you have done quite a bit to thwart his plans.”

“Your plans. Not his,” Spinner says shortly. “Don’t lie.”

“My plans are also Tomura’s plans. I have a great deal of respect for his wishes.” The fact that All For One is puppeting Tomura’s body, claiming to understand anything about what Tomura wants, is obscene. “Which is why, rather than killing you both, I’m giving you a chance to make amends.”

Spinner curses at him. He can do that. The part of you that remembers being quirkless, remembers cowering and yielding to avoid being hurt, seizes control over your mouth. “How?”

“In Iguchi’s case, accepting the full set of quirks I’ve selected for him,” All For One says. You know what a full set of quirks does to a person’s mind if they aren’t ready for it, if they don’t want it. “But as for you, Saintess — your friends’ choice of name was apt, wasn’t it? You played the part so skillfully from the beginning that even I was fooled. Do you know how rare that is?”

All For One spoke to you with condescension before. Now his voice holds at least a veneer of respect. You need him not to do that. You need to play for time, and you need to give him a chance to do what villains love to do — twist the knife. “I didn’t fool you, sir,” you say, and the inhuman chuckle that issues from Tomura’s mouth almost makes you gag. “When you looked at me, you saw what you wanted to see. A worthless, quirkless piece in Tomura’s game.”

“Oh, but you were never worthless. And never quirkless, neither.” Both of All For One’s faces split into leers. Seeing what it does to Tomura brings tears to your eyes. “Your quirk, beneficial to me as it is, is the least interesting part of you. Far more intriguing is your devotion to the part you chose to play — devotion so strong that you chose to come back to Tomura’s side, even knowing that I would likely kill you for what you did. Devotion like that should not be thrown aside. What must you do to make amends, Saintess? Kneel at Tomura’s feet and show me just how sorry you are.”

“No!” Spinner protests. “Saintess, don’t —”

“I’m sorry,” you say to Spinner. You look up into All For One’s eyes, glimmering with malice inside your best friend’s face. “I can’t lose him again. Even if there’s nothing left. I can’t let him go.”

“There is always something left,” All For One says, almost indulgently. “I can assure you, Tomura will appreciate it very much.”

Something left. You hold tight to that faint piece of hope, remind yourself of the truth — as long as he’s alive and you’re alive, there’s still a chance. And that means you need to think. You need to figure out what quirk Tomura passed to you in the seconds before All For One took over. And you need to figure out what promise Tomura asked you to keep.

You’ve made a lot of promises to Tomura, but you’ve always given them freely. You can count on one hand the number of times he’s asked you to promise something, and he’s almost never used those exact words. All For One is beckoning you forward, but your legs give out before you can set foot on the stairs. It’s not entirely faked, either. “I’m sorry,” you say. “The time I spent with the heroes was — it was hard for me.”

“Yes, I’m sure they were most unkind,” All For One says. The All For One on the throne, not the one on the stairs. “We’re in no rush, Saintess. Whenever you’re ready.”

You try to rise again, but you put your weight on the arm Hawks fractured deliberately, and it caves from beneath you. A promise Tomura asked from you, with those words exactly? There haven’t been many. There’s only been one. When this is over. Promise you’ll take them away.

The quirks. That promise? How are you supposed to do that? You try to rise again, but this time it’s stress and frustration that knocks you down, and a shadow falls over you. All For One is coming. You try once more, plant your palm flat on the ground for maximum balance — and then, as you watch, a web of cracks spreads into the stone around your hand. Did he give you Decay?

The instant the panic surges, the cracks vanish, sealing over like they were never there in the first place. And that’s when it clicks. You look up as All For One’s shadow falls completely over you, Tomura’s face devoid of the horrid leer, his eyes completely blank. There’s nothing about him that’s familiar, except the hand he’s holding out to help you up. You take it, palm to palm, but you need the other, too, and a moment later, it appears in your field of vision. You grasp both of Tomura’s hands and pull yourself to your knees before him.

“Well?” All For One asks, through Tomura’s mouth and his own. “Make amends.”

You shift your grip on Tomura’s hands to ensure maximum contact. The two of you have never held hands this way before, and you lean forward until your forehead rests against his knuckles. What you’re about to do to Tomura might be the worst thing you’ve done to anyone who didn’t die from it. And if you screw it up — if you get it wrong —

If you doubt yourself, you’ll fuck it up for sure. You take a deep breath, clear your head as much as possible. “Forgive me,” you say, and you activate Overhaul.

You have to be fast, and you have to be merciless. If you can’t rip out every atom of All For One, Super-Regeneration will render your efforts moot, and it’ll all be over. But you know every inch of Tomura’s body, because you’re his lover and because you were there when the doctor built him into what he is today, and you know exactly where the margins are, exactly where you need to dissolve the skin from to remove all traces of All For One. You strip all three layers of skin off Tomura’s palms in a single surge of power, and from his throne above the rest of you, All For One screams.

Tomura doesn’t. You look anxiously up into his face as Super-Regeneration rebuilds the layer of skin on his palms, searching for any sign that something’s changed, any hope that something’s worked. The palm that’s regrown under your hand is missing the hole from All For One’s quirk. The pupils of Tomura’s eyes reappear, a split second before they slam shut and he pitches forward, unconscious. You try to catch him, but you’re weak, and you fall backward, directly onto Spinner. “We have to go,” Spinner says, as the ruins of the throne room dissolve into chaos. “Like, now! He’s not done! We have to — you have to walk —”

You struggle upright, pulling Tomura after you, but he’s completely dead weight, and even when Spinner joins you to hold him up from the other side, the two of you are going to be slow. Too slow to make it through the crowd before All For One can pull it together to attack. An enormous shadow falls across you and a scream builds in your throat — but it’s only Re-Destro, bulked out into his ultimate form. You have to wonder how he’s got any stress left to transform after the battle at Seikan, but maybe it’s not a surprise. You have enough stress from what just happened that it feels like your heart might explode.

“Is this it?” Re-Destro asks Spinner. You see Spinner nod. “Take them both and go. I’ll coordinate the secession.”

“No. Shigaraki’s down and she can’t carry him,” Spinner says. “You’re stronger than me. Get them out and I’ll catch up.”

You don’t want to be left alone with Re-Destro. You don’t want to leave Spinner here. “No! Spinner —”

“It’s okay. We planned for this,” Spinner says. His face is grim. “Re-Destro will fill you in. Go!”

He slips away from Tomura’s side, out of your reach, and Re-Destro scoops the two of you up easily. You can feel the strain in his arms, contrasted horribly with Tomura’s limp, almost-lifeless body. When you look up at Re-Destro, the look on his face tells you everything you need to know. This might have been what he and Spinner were hoping for. This might have been some kind of plan. But the leader of the former Meta Liberation Army looks just as lost as you are.

It only lasts for a second. Then Re-Destro’s expression hardens. “Hold on,” he orders you, and breaks into an unsteady run.

<- Chapter 28

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#i wait in a corner until this fic is updated #i love this series so much #shigaraki x reader #shigaraki x you #tomura shigaraki x reader #tomura shigaraki x you #shigaraki tomura x reader #shigaraki tomura x you #shimura tenko x reader #shimura tenko x you #tenko shimura x reader #tenko shimura x you

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