Work Text:
You were only supposed to be watching a training exercise.
Not as a hero, not as a teacher, just as a psychiatrist with a quirk that meant you’d be useful for judging what was inside the kids’ heads, which ones would need more help to become proper heroes.
The kids were gathered, excited, happy voice chattering all around you. You stood a distance away from Thirteen, from the teachers, hanging back with your notepad ready. Your job was only to take notes on the students, on what the insides of their heads were like.
Emotion Manipulation. The power to see and control feelings. That was your quirk. For obvious reasons, you were good at getting inside people.
Everything was going just as it should. You’d pinpointed the students who were more violent, more impulsive already, judging at a glance the ones who were likely to act out. The blond with the explosion quirk was the worst so far, a pile of pure anger issues waiting to be unleashed.
Thirteen had just gotten done with his explanation when the lights started to flicker, sparking with energy as the fountain in the center of the area began to sputter. Black mist began to pool around it like tar.
Slowly, a hole began to open in the empty air, blackness spreading and opening until a hand could be seen, pale skin stark white against the blackness behind it. Beside you, Aizawa barked a panicked order.
People began to emerge, first a man covered in hands, then villains, one after another, pouring out of the hole in reality like ants.
In the center, there was something, huge and black, with an exposed brain poking out from its bruise dark skin. You couldn’t pick up on any of its emotions, and that alone was cause for concern. Nothing close to human was a void like that; nothing with a mind was so empty.
You weren’t a hero. You weren’t trained for a crisis. Aizawa jumped into combat before anyone could react, and you weren’t surprised. From what you knew of the man, he knew when he had no choice but to fight.
The students were afraid; you could feel their fear hanging heavy in the air, feel Aizawa’s determination as he pushed himself to the limits of his skills. The villains themselves were dripping with overconfidence, a sticky, thick feeling that made you feel nauseous. The two strong ones oozed it even deeper than the rest, the fog and the hands in the center of it all.
Aizawa began to weaken, growing tired from overuse of his quirk. The man covered in hands began to laugh, a dry, vicious sound.
What happened next felt like a blur.
The black thing grabbed Aizawa, wrenching his arms behind his back with a sickening snap. The hand covered man stepped forward. The students screamed, terror zapping off of them like static. Shigaraki Tomura introduced himself, told Aizawa what exactly was about to happen to him.
Your heartbeat pounded in your ears, your breath coming short. You were going to see a man die in front of you, helpless to stop it.
Then Shigaraki said that his power worked through all five fingers.
Something clicked in your head, electricity snapping into place. Suddenly, you knew what you had to do to stop this.
You were running forward before you could stop yourself.
As soon as you were within the crowd of villains, before any of them had time to stop you, you let loose your quirk, sending a wave of the deepest, darkest fear you could muster at everything in your way.
Your quirk worked in a unique way. It stimulated emotion, genuine emotion, by manipulating the signals in the brain. It had been useful for therapy, for getting people to open up to you, but now, now–
It was a force of mass panic, driving into their brains like a stake.
Villains fell to their knees, screaming, retching bile onto the ground. They felt like they were going to die, that it was them who were the ones in danger now, and your quirk was slipping deeper into their brains with every second that passed, forcing in mortal terror like none of them had ever felt.
The black thing howled like something dying, eyes bugging out of its head. Shigaraki froze in place, hollering at it to hurry up and crush you.
Another wave, and it too was on the ground.
You reached Shigaraki.
You could feel his eyes on you from behind the hand. His fingers clenched, twitched, and you knew that he wanted you dead.
You closed your eyes for an instant, focused on the feeling of his anger, his hatred, his doubt–
And sent the strongest wave of feeling you could possibly handle.
But this time, it wasn’t fear.
Time froze in place, slowing to a crawl. Shigaraki’s mouth dropped open with a soft, wet pop. His hands went limp where they hung at his sides, and a shudder began to work its way through his skinny frame.
The man fell to his knees, a slow, sick smile carving its way across his face like it was sliced into the flesh. You took a deep breath.
Happiness. Pure bliss. A feeling of warmth, safety, and comfort unlike anything the human brain could produce naturally. That was what you’d forced Shigaraki to feel. You’d used a milder version of this before, in therapy sessions, as a last resort when someone needed to relax or they would pose a danger to themselves. You knew how well it worked.
Everyone else was lost in their fear; Shigaraki himself was unable to do anything but giggle helplessly at the air, trapped in his own head.
You pulled out the knife you’d been given for self defense.
He had said that he needed all five fingers for his quirk to activate.
. . .
Blood slicked your skin, fingers slipping against the knife that you held. It was hot against your bare skin, and you fought the urge to retch.
You’d already sawed through one wrist. You couldn’t stop now.
Breath came heavily in your chest, heat burning through your head. This was the most violent thing you’d ever done, but it– it was necessary. If you didn’t act, if you didn’t disable him yourself, none of the students would make it out alive. This was the leader. He was who you had to beat.
Skin and flesh and tendon snapped slowly under your blade, blood making your grip unsteady. It was hard to focus when you had to keep sending out pulses of fear, had to keep Shigaraki’s mind under control.
You didn’t know if you were hitting any of the students.
You didn’t have time to worry if you were.
Shigaraki moaned pathetically when you broke through the ligaments that held his hand to his arm, jerking a bit in your grip.
There wasn’t much left but muscle and skin, just a few tendrils of flesh left keeping his hand attached to his body. You glanced over at the already detached hand laying on the ground a few inches away.
Nausea coiled in your stomach like live snakes.
You don’t know how much of this Shigaraki can feel, what’s getting through past the wave of bliss you’ve dosed him with. A part of you hopes he isn’t feeling much. Your work isn’t exactly delicate, and even if he is a villian, you are amputating his hands with no anesthesia.
Sending out another pulse of fear into the area, you slice through the last bit of skin holding hand to wrist. Shigaraki’s hand falls to the ground.
You smile, jaw clenching. You laugh, hollow and low.
. . .
All Might shows up eventually, making his typical boisterous entrance. He finds you on the floor, the bleeding body of Shigaraki Tomura halfway in your lap, two severed hands on the ground beside you.
You’d been keeping up the pulses of fear, trying to keep anything and everything else in the room paralyzed, unsure of who all you were hitting, but you’re clearly reaching your limits. When All Might places one huge hand on your shoulder, signals for you to stop, you collapse.
He tells you that the students are alright, that no one was seriously injured, that the rest of the villains scattered as soon as he appeared. You breathe a sigh of relief that feels a bit like dying.
Feeling his eyes on the Shigaraki’s body, feeling the unspoken questions hanging the air, you laugh again.
All Might makes a face like he’s concerned, and you laugh louder, doubling over on yourself as you try to find your breath.
“I fixed it. . .” you say, voice sounding unhinged even to your own ears. “He’s not going to be a threat again. His quirk is gone; he won’t be able to hurt anyone anymore.” You gesture at the hands, one shaky hand prying itself out of your lap to point at the bloody mess by your side.
“You might want to get him to a hospital, though. I think he’ll die if we leave him like this for much longer.”
Those are the last words out of your mouth before you pass out.
. . .
A couple of days pass. You’re alive, and so is everyone else. U.A. covers up your actions with everything they have, making up some story about the teachers and All Might handling the situation.
All Might thanks you personally for acting to protect the students.
You spend every morning throwing up in your toilet, heaving up the contents of an empty stomach as you struggle to make peace with what you did. The thought that you could have been so violent, that in a crisis, you could have cut off a man’s hands feels like some kind of awful dream. It’s hard to believe that you had that kind of terrible thing inside of you.
To add to the problem, you overused your quirk terribly, and a feeling of nauseous exhaustion hangs over your head like an anvil waiting to drop. You’re tired to your core, and you do nothing but laze around in bed for the days immediately after the conflict, doing nothing and trying not to think.
(Everytime you close your eyes, you see Shigaraki’s face, lost in the bliss you caused, all while your knife is buried in his flesh.)
But time passes, as it always does, and you almost think you’ll never have to face what you did again. U.A. seems to want the evidence gone, and you have the feeling they won’t bring it up again for fear of repercussions.
Until one of their Heroes appears on your doorstep.
The man, someone that you don’t recognize, tells you that you’re needed at the hospital where Shigaraki is being held.
Your stomach sinks to your feet and lodges itself there.
Of course, there’s not much choice but to go, you know that well, and you follow the man without more than a brief acknowledgement. Another wave of nausea hits you, and you wonder if you should have taken a few more minutes to throw up again before you left your house.
By the time you get to the hospital, your mind has fallen down a rabbit hole of worry, trying to figure out what they could possibly want from you, why you’d ever be needed at with the man who you’d permanently maimed.
Antiseptic smell fills the air, the feelings of people close to death sinking into you through your quirk. A migraine begins to form around your temples, sharp and aching, and you resist the urge to turn and run.
There aren’t very many people there; no visitors. Just a couple members of the hospital staff who look tired to their core.
The walk up to the room you were told to go to is stressful. You’re shaking by the time the elevator stops, yet still aware enough to notice that this floor of the hospital is eerily empty. It would make sense, you think, that they store Shigaraki somewhere away from the world.
Room 451. The door is plain wood, like nothing horrible could possibly be behind it. Even so, you feel seconds away from running away.
But you gather your courage, push it open anyway.
Inside is the dullest, sickliest looking hospital room you think you’ve ever seen. The walls are painted the shade of gray that nothing pleasant ever is, bland and unhappy. There’s no decoration, no flowers, just a few pieces of medical supplies on the table of a cabinet in the corner. The whole room smells like blood and cleaning supplies, sharp and artificial.
There are red-soaked bandages hanging out of a hazard bin, you notice, a few streaked stains of blood on the floor.
Shigaraki lays in the single bed, tied down at wrist, ankle, and waist. His eyes are closed, his face looks gaunt and sunken in, and he’s wearing a plain white hospital gown that makes him look painfully small and young. His eyelids are bruise-dark, scarred face so pale you can make out blue veins.
His stumps are bandaged, you note, with a sick feeling in your chest.
“Excuse me.” A woman in the hospital uniform pushes past you, lank, dark hair falling half in her face. There are dark circles under her eyes, and she’s clutching a clipboard like it’s some kind of lifeline.
She asks your name, and closes her eyes in something like misery when you tell her, bony fingers twitching against the clipboard.
“So, um, why am I here?” you bring yourself to ask, voice coming out quiet and exhausted. The woman glances over at Shigaraki, makes a face like she wishes she could cut out his throat with a scalpel.
“Him. When he wakes up, he’s in hysterics. Every time. Drugs aren’t working; we’re on the verge of overdosing him just to keep him from injuring himself, and your quirk has a history of, well, helping. ” Her voice is as cold as stone, worn thin from exhaustion and apparent frustration.
It makes sense. Your quirk is effective, dangerously so, and if what happened at USJ has gotten back to these people, then it’s no wonder why they’d want someone like you to come fix things for them.
But you’re tired. So tired. It feels like using your quirk one more time will make you pass out, vomit on the floor where you stand.
(You don’t want to be near him, don’t want to have to face what you’ve done. You saved people but at this cost, and the idea of Shigaraki looking you in the eye while he’s awake and aware makes you sick. )
“Okay. I’ll do what I can,” your mouth says on its own.
“Thank goodness,” the nurse says bitterly. “And here I was thinking that we’d actually have to overdose him just to get some peace.”
You don’t think this is a good hospital. You doubt that anyone cares.
The woman tells you to stay here until Shigaraki wakes up, to use your quirk on him in whatever way you have to to get him to cooperate. She says that it doesn’t really matter what you do, so long as he’s contained.
She leaves, and you’re left alone, questioning what kind of place the Heroes were willing to leave a seriously injured man in alone.
You sit down in the one chair in the room, gazing over at Shigaraki with a sick feeling in your stomach. He looks younger and smaller than you remember, pale hair hanging limp and dirty in his face, skin sickly pale. He’s thin, worryingly so, and the bandages around his stumps are already red.
Time passes, with you doing nothing but staring at the veins under Shigaraki’s skin, unsure of what to do next. It feels eerie, tense, like something awful is going to happen the second you let your guard down.
You look at the smears of blood on the floor, glancing away from Shigaraki for just a moment, and wonder what exactly he did.
When you look back, Shigaraki’s eyes are open.
And then he starts to scream.
Frantic, howling screams tear themselves from his throat. He thrashes against his bonds, pulling so hard you can hear the straps creaking in protest. The almost-peace drops from his face, replaced with some emotion that you can’t place, can’t feel, dread sinking into you like tar.
He’s pulling at where he’s tied down so forcefully that you begin to see blood, straps breaking through his skin and leaving sticky trails of red dripping down his arms. The bandages around his stumps go crimson.
You realize that he’s saying something, demanding to be released with every breath that leaves his lungs, threatening to kill anyone he can find.
He’s not looking at you, unfocused eyes flickering around the room like he can’t find anything to settle on, and you are quickly figuring out why the nurse looked so exhausted. Shigaraki howls, and your mind is made up.
Standing up, you slowly, carefully move yourself to Shigaraki’s side.
You can feel terror, dread, anger, hatred, killing intent, and longing all blended together in a concoction of raw emotion that burns at your mind.
You close your eyes, focus, and send out a pulse of comfort that’s all you can manage, worn thin as you are. He sobs, dry and frantic, like he wishes he was dead, and you do it again.
Shigaraki goes still all at once, dropping back down onto the mattress like you’ve killed him. His eyes are still open, staring at the ceiling with an empty gaze. His body shivers, shakes like he’s falling apart, but he starts to relax, tension dripping out of him in a steady heave.
You hover for a moment, staring at the frail, worn form of the man before you. He reminds you of a child, and in all your work with the mentally ill, you’ve never seen someone as obviously disturbed.
Somehow, there’s sympathy coiling in your chest.
There’s something fragile about Shigaraki, something that you didn’t notice the last time you were close to him. He’s deathly pale, his hair looks thin and soft, and his whole self seems so thin and washed out that you can’t help but feel some degree of pity. You remember the feel of his hands, thin and bony in yours as you sawed through his wrists, and you shudder.
It’s hard not to wonder who he was screaming for, who made him so desperate, when you can feel his longing in your chest, vivid as anything.
The man felt absolutely franic, pained beyond what you hope he’s physically feeling. You don’t like the idea of anyone being in pain because of you. You have to remind yourself that this person is a villian.
After a few more minutes spent staring at Shigaraki’s gaunt face, you send one more pulse of comfort into him, not missing the way he shivers.
Then, you turn and leave, quietly shutting the door behind you.
. . .
The hospital calls you back the next day, the day after that, and the day after that. Each time, you go, sit in Shigaraki’s room until he wakes up and starts to have a fit, then use your quirk to calm him down.
You’re healing, recovering from the overuse of your power in USJ, and it gets easier and easier to find the strength to keep him at peace.
You stop vomiting afterwards sometime around day two of the routine.
Every day you’re there, you run into a nurse or two on your way two or from Shigaraki’s room. They joke about the man inside, about how terrible it is that he needs someone to come in and force him to relax every time he wakes up. You have the feeling that the drugs they keep him on are the only reason why you’re not coming in more than once a day.
Choking the nurses starts to seem like a good idea, even though you can’t help but agree with them. You begin to question your own sanity.
By day four, you’re getting sick of this. It feels wrong to use your quirk to force a man into submission, even if he will hurt himself if you don’t. You saw the way he thrashed at his restraints, the way he made himself bleed, but you still don’t like having to practically drug him yourself.
So that afternoon, while you’re sitting quietly in Shigaraki’s room, waiting for him to wake up, you decide to try something new.
There are new wounds on his body that you can see, bruises around where the straps dig into his skin. On one ankle, he’s managed to break through the skin, and the wound is an ugly plum color beneath the restraint.
Somehow, Shigaraki looks even thinner than you remember, collarbone standing out like a knife’s edge against his pale skin.
The blood smears are still on the floor (or perhaps these are fresh ones), and what are supposed to be off-white bandages around what used to be Shigaraki’s hands are a dry reddish-brown, the color of blood left to dry.
You feel sick to your stomach, nausea churning with disgust.
When Shigaraki wakes up and starts his usual fit, howling and yanking on his tied down limbs, instead of rushing to send him back into unconsciousness, all you do is sit there, staring at him with the most neutral expression you can muster, hands clasped in your lap as he thrashes.
His hysterics continue for a good few minutes, some mixture of frantic pain spurring him on even as he digs into his own skin with enough force to draw blood, to bruise his pale, thin skin around the straps holding him down.
“I’m not going to play along, this time,” you say eventually, when there’s a gap in the noise. “You can calm down and talk to me.”
You sit there, quietly, not saying anything else, staring him down with what little calm you have left, hands shaking in your lap. Little by little, his screaming dies down, and eventually, the noises die down to hollow, quiet moans of pain, broken little things that sound more hurt than angry.
Even though all the emotion you’re getting from him is absolute fury.
You refuse to give in, refuse to speak, and instead, give him a look like you know exactly what he’s trying to pull.
A few minutes more, and Shigaraki goes abruptly silent.
“Ah, you figured me out.” His voice is exactly how you remember it, back when he was trying to kill you, and chills go down your spine.
“Yeah, I did,” you say, forcing down the fear. Shigaraki turns his head and meets your eyes, and his red gaze is cold and vicious, expression blank and empty. “It was real at first, though, wasn’t it?”
“Yep. First couple days, anyway.” he giggles a bit, hollow and dry, and you resist the urge to flinch. “When did you manage to guess?”
“My quirk lets me see people’s emotions.” Blunt as possible, not hiding anything. You’re going to face this. “You weren’t scared anymore, just angry; you felt like you wanted to kill me.”
Shigaraki laughs again, eyes still fixated on your face. “So I can’t hide anything from you? Good, good. . . It’ll be nice for you to know exactly how I plan to kill you when I get out of here.” He grins a bit, scarred lips twisting up, and the smile is like it’s sliced into his gaunt, pale face.
Something dawns on you like a rock hitting you in the head.
“You plan to decay me, right, like you were going to at USJ?” you propose, but even you can hear that your voice has gone cold.
Shigaraki stills for a moment, looks at you like you’ve lost your mind. “Of course. That way hurts, you know?” His grin widens. “I’m going to make you wish you’d never got me captured, never gotten in my way. ”
Swallowing, you finally break eye contact with him, standing up and walking over to his bed. “I don’t think you’ll be able to,” you say, and even though your voice shakes, you can hear something dark and unhinged budding in your tone, the same as– the same as back then.
Still grinning, Shigaraki hisses at you, “We’re going to kill All Might, you know? You think you can stand up to me? Hah! I’ll make you wish you’d never been born. ” You can feel the malice seeping off of him.
“Can you feel your hands right now?” you ask, ignoring the threat. Shigaraki looks at you like you’ve grown a second head.
“What does that have to do with anything? Are you just going to drug me more, like the heroes have? Gonna use the cheat code and make me quiet and compliant so I can’t scare you anymore?” There’s bitterness in his voice, rage dripping off of him, and even as he smiles, you can feel how badly he wants to reach out and turn you to dust.
There’s an absolutely sick feeling in your gut, and you feel seconds away from bursting into laughter yourself.
You undo one of the wrist straps.
You lift his stump up where he can see it.
A look of utter horror creeps across Shigaraki’s face.
“What th-the fuck?” he stutters, voice cracked and softer than you’ve ever heard. “What kind of shitty trick are you trying to pl-play on me?”
“You don’t have your quirk anymore,” you say, as bluntly as possible. “At USJ, I cut off your hands. You can’t hurt anyone now.” With every word, Shigaraki’s eyes get impossibly wider, his face goes more pale.
Mumbling inaudibly, he brings the stump up to his face, staring at the place where his hand used to be. He’s shaking, so badly his eyes can barely focus on what used to be his hand, and there’s a wild, terrified look in his eyes that almost makes you pause. He looks frightened, genuinely so.
And then he starts to scream.
“Get out! Go away! Get out of my sight!” he howls, smile replaced with a feral look of anger. Shigaraki starts to thrash again, but this time, you have the feeling that what he wants is to get to you.
You don’t move, frozen, and he starts screaming threats, angry, vicious things about how he wants to cut you open and rot you alive.
The image of him as childish, fragile fades from your mind.
You remember what it felt like to hold him in your lap, saw through his wrist while hot blood coats your skin. You see his face every time you’ve forced him to calm down. You think about how he was faking all along.
Something inside you snaps.
“Shut up.” Your voice sounds cold, furious, and you don’t care.
Shigaraki screams at you again, more threats.
“I said shut up! Do you get it? You’re finished. You can’t be a villain if you don’t have your quirk, you’re stuck in a rotten hospital that jokes about overdosing you if you won’t behave, and the Heroes could kill you any time they damn feel like it. You’re helpless,” you seethe, grabbing his wrist.
He’s furious, you can feel it, deep, unhappy anger radiating off of him like poison. There’s a note of fear deep down there, though, and you wonder what it is he’s trying so hard to hide.
Shigaraki glares at you. Shigaraki yanks his wrist weakly in your grip. Shigaraki opens his mouth to say something awful, and you’re furious.
“They could kill you, you know,” you interrupt, and Shigaraki’s voice dies in his throat. “You’re not a threat anymore. The heroes wouldn’t care; no one would. Anyone could just come in here and end you.”
He sputters in fury, glares at you like he wishes you were dead. You tighten your fingers around his stump, and remember something you heard.
“Whoever’s leading you, are they really going to want you now? A useless villain with no quirk, who can’t even take care of himself.” You look Shigaraki dead in the eye, and see something like horror form.
You drop Shigaraki’s wrist, turn around, and leave the room, shutting the door behind you, leaving him alone with whatever fear he has.
You can’t help but feel like he deserves it.
Blood boiling in your veins, you escape the hospital before anyone can stop you. Shigaraki is infuriating when he’s awake, all pride and cruel threats, and you can see now, more than ever, what kind of villain he used to be. You wish you had the guts to wrap your hands around his neck and squeeze the life out of him yourself, erase his threat from the world.
Disgust is choking you, tar filling you up from stomach to lungs. You’ve never wished a person dead before, but now it consumes you.
You get home, and promptly throw up.
. . .
You refuse to go to the hospital the next day, ignore the calls lighting up your phone every few minutes with insistence that you listen.
Instead, you spend the day in bed, hiding from the world as you try not to think about what happened the day before. You don’t want anything to do with Shigaraki anymore, not after what happened.
Just thinking about those red eyes on you makes your skin crawl, the idea that he’d been faking for days just to mess with you leaving you sickened and furious. You wish you’d never been called in to help him.
You feel like you would choke him if you got the chance.
The image of Shigaraki screaming at you, threatening to kill you himself is embedded in your mind. You can’t forget the malice in his tone, nor the way he looked at you like he wanted to gut you himself. He’s a villain, you remind yourself, the most dangerous kind of criminal.
And yet, at the same time, you’re still remembering the fragile parts of him, the parts that made you see him as childish and frail.
His thin, pale body, hospital gown loose around his shoulders. The bloody, bruised wound on his ankle that he’d given himself in his struggles. The little whimpers he’d made when you cut his hands off. What it felt like to see all the strength and tension drain out of him when you used your quirk. The horror that crept across his face when you said something that hurt.
Every time you close your eyes, you hear him screaming at you, threatening to kill you. You quit trying to resist, ball the blankets up around you, and force yourself to sleep, if only to get away from it all.
. . .
You’re at the hospital again the next day.
You’d finally caved and answered your phone, were met with a nurse screaming about how their patient was going to injure himself if you weren’t there. She’d threatened to call the heroes if you didn’t cooperate.
Somehow, you already had a feeling how that would go.
Tired as you are, you drag yourself to the hospital, feeling like you’re going to pass out at any second. Your sleep was restless, tense.
The hospital is as unpleasant as any day you’d been there, dull and reeking of blood and antiseptic. This time, though, a group of nurses are crowded around each other in the lobby, pale uniforms almost blending in with the dull walls. They’re whispering, loud enough to be easily heard.
“Did you hear what that patient did?” one of them hisses, and the others all nod like bobbleheads. “I hear we had to call in a Hero just to contain him.” In sync, most of them gasp, hands flying to their mouths.
More whispering, the gossip of people who have nothing better to do than fuss over the misery of others. Somehow, you already have a feeling which patient the group of them are talking about.
The nurses see you, whip their heads around, and glare.
You keep walking, and catch the beginning of a new topic to dissect. The last thing you hear is quiet, mocking laughter as you enter the elevator.
Shigaraki’s room feels even more off than before. There’s blood on his sheets, you notice, more bandages overflowing from the hazard bin, and Shigaraki himself has been strapped down with twice as many restraints. His eyes are open, blank, and he’s muttering at nothing.
There’s a note waiting for you on the bedside table, claiming that he’d managed to remove the bandages from one of his stumps, then proceeded to chew it to the bone for reasons currently unknown.
You sigh, glance at Shigaraki, mumbling into thin air like he’s seeing people that you can’t, and think that that seems very likely.
Sitting down, you look at him again, sickened by the same childish image that you can’t seem to remove from your head. You can just picture him gnawing at his wrist until he bleeds, probably in some kind of twisted temper tantrum meant to get under people’s skin.
Or perhaps, he was just so angry that he had to take it out on himself.
Imagining what it would be like to wrap your hands around Shigaraki’s neck and squeeze the life out of him, you stay in your chair and wait. He’s awake, but not thinking clearly, and you find a note on the bottom of the slip of paper that says that he’s been drugged recently to keep him calm.
You think of the nurses, spreading gossip about one of the people they’re supposed to be taking care of, sharing mock horror over how awful Shigaraki is. You imagine that this state is a common one for him.
And then, you notice that Shigaraki is crying.
It’s only a little bit, but there are streaks of wetness trailing over his dry, scarred skin, a faint shine to his eyes. His mumbiling gets louder, and you can finally make out what it is that he’s trying to say.
“Sensei. . . Sensei. . . I’m sorry. . . please take me back. . . I’ll be useful. . . I promise. . . please don’t leave me here . . .”
Shigaraki’s voice is cracked and quiet, words slurred. Even so, what you’re hearing is pathetic, the desperate ramblings of a man dangerously past sanity. He sounds weaker than he ever has, genuinely afraid.
He starts to sob, tiny, quiet things that make him seem even more like a child, and you could imagine that, if it weren’t for the restraints around him, he’d be curled up in a little ball on the bed, hiding from the world. Tears run down his unguarded face, and he squims against his bonds.
It’s pathetic, bordering on heartbreaking, and even though Shigaraki has been nothing but horrible to you so far, you can’t stand watching him break down like this, fall apart while he can’t even try to hide.
Perhaps it’s just because it contests your image of him as a ruthless villain, makes him seem even more fragile and childlike than before.
Whatever it is, you’re on your feet, beside his bed before you can think to stop yourself. Up close, Shigaraki’s face is a twisted up, miserable thing, wet with tears and flushed red under his pale skin.
Hesitantly, as if he’s going to snap out of his drugged haze and lash out at you, you place one hand over his shoulder.
Shigaraki’s bones stand out even through the fabric of the hospital gown, and his collarbone is like a knife against your fingers. He makes a pathetic noise at the contact, unfocused eyes flickering back and forth, and you swallow heavily. He’s not faking this time.
You hate this. You hate that you’re stuck taking care of a remorseless villain who’s done nothing but mock and threaten you, who tried to kill children just for being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
You activate your quirk anyway.
The second your power kicks in, you can feel it. Shigaraki goes from radiating fear and stress to melting against the bedsheets, relaxed.
It’s as bad as drugging him, you can imagine. You are technically using artificial means to make him feel something he wouldn’t naturally experience. The effect will only last for about a half hour at most, and there are no side effects, but it still feels vaguely wrong to force it.
You don’t know when you started pitying a villain like this.
Shigaraki keeps crying, tear tracks streaking down his face slowly, and you stand there for a few minutes with your hand on his skinny shoulder.
It’s painful to watch. He’s out of his mind, drugged beyond comprehension, and you can’t help but feel like this is pathetic and cruel. Tied down as he is, Shigaraki can’t even do anything to hide from your gaze.
He’s whimpering sad little things, begging someone he calls “Sensei” not to leave him here. Even though you’ve calmed him out of the worst of it, his drug-glazed eyes still stare unfocused at things in the ceiling, emotions going haywire as his mind takes in things that aren’t there.
You notice, eventually, that he’s shivering. The only blankets on the bed are the ones under him, and even though the thought of a feared villain tied down and trembling isn’t one that should make you feel anything. . .
You’re digging a spare blanket out of his room’s closet before you can convince yourself that it’s a bad idea to even try to help.
When you spread the blanket over Shigaraki’s miserable, tied down form, something in you twists with anger, cold in your gut. How you wound up doing anything to help this man is beyond you.
Shigaraki stops shivering once the blanket is over him. He squirms a bit in his restraints instead, like he wishes he could roll over and hide.
You hit him with your quirk one more time and go home seething.
. . .
When you come back to the hospital a couple days later, Shigaraki is laying, tied down, eyes wide and wild when they fix on you.
He’s paler than you remember, the skin around his eyes as dark as a bruise, and you can see blue veins running spider-thin through his face. When you look closer, there are dark, angry needle marks in his arm.
You sit down in your usual place, holding eye contact with him and expecting some kind of explosion. Considering how things went the last time you talked, you can only imagine how badly he wants to yell at you again, threaten to kill you as he lays strapped down in a hospital bed.
It takes legitimate effort to swallow the urge to say that.
Minutes pass, and Shigaraki doesn’t say anything. He just keeps staring at you, red eyes fixed on you with burning intensity, throat bobbing as he swallows, expression an unreadable blank.
The emotions that you’re feeling from him are equally confusing, something unnamed that feels dangerously close to fear.
“A-Aren’t you going to use your quirk?” he says, finally breaking the silence, and his voice is as thin and unstable as you’ve ever heard it.
“Not if you’re calm,” you reply, voice even and cold. “I only do that if your behavior warrants it.” Shigaraki blinks, pale eyelashes fluttering against his skin, and you clench one hand into a loose fist in your lap.
His eyes fix on you, wild and afraid, and you almost flinch. There’s something different this time, something off about the man in front of you.
“Th-Then have them d-drug me again. Until I’m dead. Wouldn’t it be better j-just to put the villain down, huh?” He sounds unhinged, and his voice is shaking, stuttering over words like you’ve never heard before. You think of restraints, drugs, and a bloodstained floor beneath him.
In an impulsive motion, you reach out one hand, place it on top of his bandaged stump. Shigaraki’s eyes go impossibly wide, and his breath speeds up in his chest. In him, you feel a strange mixture of fear and longing.
You run your hand just far enough up to hit skin.
Shigaraki flinches as soon as your hand makes contact, gaze snapping onto you. Just once, you rub your thumb across his cool skin, gently.
He’s hyperventilating, chest making sharp, quick movements, and you could imagine that he would have killed you by now, if he could. Instead, you meet his eyes, calmly, and pull your hand away from him.
Swallowing words that will likely make things worse, you stand up, turn away, and act like you’re about to leave the room.
Nothing happens for a moment, but as soon as your hand touches the door knob, Shigaraki says to wait. His voice is quiet, shaky still, nothing like when he was screaming that he wanted you dead, and you imagine that this is some critical moment in whatever is forming between you.
For a moment, you consider leaving. You consider breaking the quiet spell that has fallen on the room and abandoning Shigaraki to his demons.
You imagine how it might destroy him if you did.
But you turn around, sit back down, and give Shigaraki a look of feigned curiosity. You can feel what he’s thinking, all nerves and fear and something close to genuine need.
Shigaraki looks at you like he’s seeing you for the first time, and flexes his arms where they’re tied down, jerking miserably at his bonds.
He’s starting to break, and you both know it.
. . .
When you return the next day, Shigaraki is waiting for you with something like anticipation. There are fresh needle marks in his arm, the dark under his eyes is worse, and his hair is starting to get greasy in a way that implies it hasn’t been washed since you’ve been seeing him.
There’s a note from the nurse on the bedside table again, and Shigaraki mutters bitterly when you examine it. It says that they’ve started having to drug him to get him to sleep, and asks you to do more.
The unsaid words that he needs to be under control don’t escape you.
Instead of using your quirk on him, you sit down, facing Shigaraki and nearly forcing him to look you in the eye. His eyes are glazed, and there’s a sense of misery hanging over him that feels like a dark cloud.
“I have some rules, as you must have guessed,” you start, voice low and even. “You’re not going to make trouble anymore, for one.”
“I don’t have to listen to you, ” Shigaraki bites back.
Before he can say more, you interrupt. “If you don’t, I’ll leave. I’ll leave and I’ll never come back, and the Heroes might keep you here forever. We both know you wouldn’t like that, don’t we?”
It’s harsh, you know, but for the first time, it feels like you might be able to gain control of the situation.
Shigaraki’s furious expression flickers for a moment, and you know you’ve won this fight already.
“You understand now, don’t you? You realized it the day you first talked to me. No one is coming back for you. ” You’re perfectly calm when you say it, as if his entire world abandoning him is just a fact of life. He twitches a bit in a motion that looks like it could have been a flinch.
You let a moment pass, let your works sink in. Your history of working with people’s minds is doing you good here, allowing you to understand just how to make someone like Shigaraki realize that he’s doomed.
“Alright, now that we’ve established that, it’s time for the rest of my rules. First, as you heard, I don’t want you making any more trouble here. If you throw fits, they’ll drug you more, and I know already that you don’t like that. Next, don’t you ever threaten to kill me again, or anyone close to me. And, if I ever catch you lying to me, I’ll leave you here for good,” you say.
Shigaraki clenches his jaw, looks at you with hatred in his eyes. “And why should I listen to you?” he mutters, voice cold and threatening.
It’s cruel. It’s the worst thing you’ve ever done to him, even worse that chopping his hands off while he couldn’t fight back. You’re well aware that this has the potential to shatter him. You open your mouth anyway.
“Because no one else is ever going to treat you like a human being again. You’re finished as a villain. You’re no longer useful to whoever sent you. The heroes want you to rot here. You don’t have a choice. ” Looking Shigaraki dead in the eye, you say what you know will ruin him.
And you see the moment the anger in his eyes starts to crack.
The moment Shigaraki goes from vicious fury to an almost frightened sort of resignation is visible.
His expression changes to something dangerously fragile and childlike, jaw shaking from tension, and you know you’ve won. All you can feel from him is a conflicted mess of fear and misery and hate, but he’s breaking.
“Do you agree to my rules?” you press, not giving Shigaraki a chance to recover. You feel like you’re treading on thin ice, but you don’t stop.
It takes him a moment, but Shigaraki slowly nods, acting like you’ve stolen the words from him. He’s afraid, you can tell, but you don’t allow yourself to pity him. If you give in here, you’ll lose control for good, lose your one chance to rein this situation in to something manageable.
“Good. I’ll stay here with you for a while, if you want, and I’m willing use my quirk on you again. It’s your choice. As long as you behave, I won’t do anything bad to you.” It’s hard to say, but you can’t falter now.
Your heart feels somewhere near your throat, choking you with guilt. Treating someone like this feels beyond wrong, even if it’s him.
“. . . stay,” Shigaraki mutters after a bit, looking down and away from you. He’s trying to sound tough and resigned, but there’s a hollow, frightened note in his voice that ruins any chance of that.
“Alright,” you reply, and lean back in your chair. Shigaraki shifts a bit under the straps holding him down, and all you do is watch.
You’re not going to press anything, not going to go out of your way to be kind to this awful man, but you do pity him in some sick way. He’s helpless, now, nothing like the threatening villain you met just a bit ago.
In the quiet moments that follow, you notice a few things about Shigaraki and his room. His hair is falling in his face and looks unbrushed. The blood stains on the floor have finally been cleaned up. There’s a fresh wound on Shigaraki’s arm where he’s tied down and must have struggled. The bandages around his stumps are a dull red with blood.
It takes a bit, but you do something impulsive again.
You ask if he’d mind if you change the bandages, and Shigaraki bitterly replies that even someone like you would be better than the nurses who leave him to sit like that for days.
So you undo the straps that hold Shigaraki’s wrists and slowly undo the bandages, treating him as carefully as you can manage.
It doesn’t feel right to be kind to him, but, so close to the injuries that you caused, you can’t imagine doing more harm, either.
Underneath, Shigaraki’s wounds are fresh and raw. The gashes are ugly and dark red, held together with black stitches, and bloody from his attempts to struggle. You can see where he chewed through one a couple days ago, the barely scabbed over hole in his skin dark and bloody.
They look like they hurt, to put it simply, and after you grab a bit of antiseptic salve and fresh bandages from the cabinet in the room, you give him a low bust of your quirk, a calming feeling of safety and peace.
As soon as it sinks in, Shigaraki relaxes visibly. You try not to think about how much sympathy you feel when he goes limp.
You clean the wounds carefully, dabbing at them with antiseptic and wiping up blood, then bandage them with fresh white. The whole time, you’re as gentle as you can possibly be, working slowly so you don’t cause him any unnecessary pain while you take care of the injuries.
It’s surreal to think that you caused these.
Shigaraki doesn’t try to fight back the whole time you clean them. He’s still, dark eyelids closed as you wrap up the bloody, open parts of him.
Tying off the bandages carefully, you double check to make sure that nothing pinches. You imagine that Shigaraki has been through much worse than bandages that are tied a bit too tight, but your goal today is to be kind.
When you’re done, you run your fingers up the wrist of the stump that he chewed at, brushing your fingers over Shigaraki’s skin in a gesture more tender than you knew you could be with him. It works. Shigaraki squinches his eyes shut tighter, and shivers, once. You know that you’ve won.
The thin, helpless figure in front of you looks miserable, and you start making a mental checklist for how to win the man over.
His hair is greasy and tangled, like it hasn’t been washed since he’s come to the hospital. He’s skinny, worryingly so, and you doubt that the nurses have been giving him proper food. His bandages will need to be changed much more frequently, not just when they’re soaked with red. The drugs will have to stop, since his temper tantrums have come to an end.
It already seems like effort wasted on someone like Shigaraki.
You close your eyes for a moment, remember the way he froze up when you treated him gently, the way he looks at you like he wishes he was dead, the little signs that he’s starting to fall apart at the edges.
“I’ll be back tomorrow, alright?” you say softly, and glazed, red eyes slowly focus on you. “Do you want me to use my quirk before I go?”
Shigaraki nods, and victory is a bitter tasting thing.
. . .
Over the next week, you see Shigaraki almost every day. On the side, you’re working on some things, getting permission to do what you need to.
On one day, when you visit the hospital, you have a conversation with the nurses again. The dark haired one you met on your first day there glares at you at first, but they all change their tune once you start talking.
Smiling, you offer to help out more with Shigaraki, relieve them of the burden of dealing with him. The words are sickly sweet on your lips.
The nurses smile and snicker, look at you like you’re some poor little thing who doesn’t know what you’re getting into. You see blood on your hands, and wonder if any of them know what kind of person they’re laughing at. They agree anyway, moments later, passing pointed looks.
You get permission to do what you need to, assuring the nurses that your quirk will be plenty for keeping Shigaraki under control. The women seem happy to be rid of one more person to take care of.
You feel vaguely sick just watching them.
Up in Shigaraki’s room, things seem a bit more peaceful than before. Shigaraki himself is asleep, breathing steadily in the dull, quiet room, and you decide to leave him be for now, to let him get some rest while he can.
Instead you wet a towel in the bathroom and set to scrubbing the bloodstains off the floor. You’ve hated seeing those things for over a week; it’s time for them to go. While you’re at it, you wipe off the hazard bin, pleased to see that there aren’t any bandages hanging out of it, and open the window, hoping to let in air that doesn’t smell like disinfectant.
Next, you go into the attached bathroom and turn on warm water. Your first order of business today is dealing with the greasy, miserable looking mess that is Shigaraki and his disgusting hair.
(In theory, you’re only doing it to earn his trust and gain some control. In reality, maybe you do feel just a bit sorry for him.)
When you wake up Shigaraki, nudging his shoulder gently, his eyes snap open, looking at you like he’s been through some kind of awful nightmare. You smile, as real as you can make it, and tell him good morning, watch his thin, pale face twist up into a look of confusion.
He questions why you’re here, and you smile wider.
“You remember, don’t you? We agreed on some things. You’re going to behave, and I’ll help you. It’s our deal, isn’t it–” a half second pause, and something slips from your mouth before you can stop it– “Tomura?”
Tomura looks at you like you’ve lost your mind, and you set to undoing his straps before he can say anything to question you.
Making sure to brush his skin with every strap you undo, you take in the way that Tomura twitches and shivers. You’re gentle, as you imagine few people have been, and when you haul him to his feet, supporting his (worryingly light) weight on your shoulder, he doesn’t complain.
He glares at you momentarily when you go to undo the ties of his hospital gown, but one remark about how exactly he intends to do it himself with no hands changes that glare to a pathetic look of resigned shock.
You can imagine that a total lack of independence is hard to take.
Tomura is thin everywhere, bones showing through his pale skin, blue veins visible just beneath the surface. He’s nothing but skin, bone, and lean muscle, dotted with scars here and there, as well as bruises from the straps. You make a mental note to try to get him to eat more often.
Just as carefully, you undo his bandages. It can’t hurt to get the wounds washed up again, red and unpleasant looking as they are.
When the warm water hits his skin, Tomura shivers again, eyes fluttering closed. From the state of his hair, you can imagine that he hasn’t had a proper bath since he got to the hospital.
You let him spend a moment just enjoying the heat, sinking up to his chin in the water. It’s almost cute, even though you’d never say it aloud.
But soon enough, you squeeze some of the hospital shampoo out into your hands and get to taking care of the mess that is Tomura’s hair. A soft noise escapes him when you begin to rub at his scalp, so quiet it almost seems unreal. You dig your fingers in deeper, work in smooth, steady motions, and before long, Tomura looks half asleep.
You wonder what his life has been like; if there was ever anyone who was willing to take care of him like you are now.
Tomura’s eyelids flutter, all the pain and viciousness gone from his expression, and it seems like you’re the first. You brush a strand of hair off of Tomura’s cheek, and he actually leans into the contact a bit.
The pity you’ve felt for weeks surges hot in your chest.
You spend a few quiet minutes combing through Tomura’s hair with your fingers, washing as you go. His hair is fluffy and soft, and he relaxes steadily into your touch, shoulders lowering little by little as the slow, gentle contact works away the tension he’s been holding for so long.
When you start to hum some nonsense tune, just to fill the silent air, you could swear you see Tomura shiver once again.
All too soon, the peace is over. Tomura’s hair is as clean as you’re going to get it, and fully combed from its mess before. You let the water drain, and wrap a towel around Tomura’s shoulders when he stands up. He’s helpless like this, you’re realizing, unable to do anything for himself.
You take one of Tomura’s wrists, begin to wrap it up again with fresh bandages, fingers smoothing over the uninjured skin.
Tomura looks at you with the softest expression you’ve ever seen on him.
. . .
Tomura is starting to like you.
He’s gone from hissing death threats and straining at the ties that hold him down to looking at you like you’re the only person who’s kind to him, perking up noticeably as soon as you walk into his hospital room.
You’ve been bringing him food, keeping his wounds clean and neatly wrapped, doing everything you can to make him feel human again.
And the sick part is that it’s working.
With your rules in place, Tomura has been behaving himself. He hasn’t tried anything violent since you started being kind to him, and in the past couple of weeks, he’s changed from looking like some kind of vicious shadow of a human being to the kind of fragile, childlike person you’ve somehow seen in him since the very beginning, back when you first visited him.
The skin around his eyes is still dark as a bruise, face too thin. The scars on his face still stand out, making him look ragged and frail. His hair is still an untameable mess of pale fluff.
You can feel yourself growing fond of him, and by now, there’s nothing you can do to stop it from happening.
When you visit him, now, you untie every strap, leaving Tomura free to move and face you. He’s grateful for the freedom, you can feel it, and bitter pity wells in the back of your throat like tar.
He’s started to act like some kind of oversized puppy, looking forward to your every visit with some sick sort of loyalty.
It makes you question what his life was like before all this.
It makes you wonder what kind of person he depended on before you.
And you know there was someone before you.
But you force those feelings down. It won’t do either of you any good if you falter now. You’ve come much too far to be having second thoughts about the disturbed manchild you decided to take care of.
Today, you’ve brought your laptop, set it up in front of Tomura with a video of someone playing through a complex, fast-paced video game running on it. Tomura had specifically requested to watch a game, and since he’d been behaving himself, you’d had to reason to say no.
(It’s sick. It’s beyond sick. You’re doting on a villain like he’s some kind of child, and it’s the only thing stopping him from being drugged into a stupor, left to rot in some abhorrent hospital from a bad movie.)
“Is that fun?” you ask, when he’s been staring at the video for close to an hour, entranced by the action on the screen.
“Yeah,” he mumbles, voice quiet. “I like video games. Well, I did. I doubt I can play them very well now, but this is. . . okay.” He glances at his stumps with an unreadable expression, then looks back at the computer.
“You can watch it for as long as you want,” you say, leaning back in your chair with a book. “I don’t mind sitting here for a while.”
That’s how your days have been, recently. Quiet, peaceful things that are more like hanging out with a friend than babysitting a serial killer. It feels almost normal, and it’s easy to forget how sick the situation is.
Time passes, but eventually, you get up and set to work changing Tomura’s bandages. He’s compliant, contentedly watching the screen while you unwrap his stumps, and you work neatly, accustomed to the task. His wounds are healing, you notice, and that raises a new question.
What will be done with the man when he’s healed?
You can imagine that the Heroes will leave him in the hospital for as long as they can, keeping him out of the way and out of the public eye, but sooner or later, people will start to ask questions.
It’s hard to picture them just throwing Tomura in prison, though, not with all they’ve gone through to keep him away from the world.
At the moment, you’re positive that you’re the only thing holding Tomura together. He’s started to truly rely on you, and if he was separated, you could see it ending very badly. He’d have to be drugged again, for sure, and there’s no guarantee he wouldn’t be killed off this time.
You don’t think that the Heroes would want to have to keep drugging Tomura, not while you’ve proven that you can more or less control him.
When you finish wrapping the bandages, you run one hand through Tomura’s fluffy mess of hair. He leans into the contact with a soft noise, and you try not to feel sick at the show of obvious trust.
He’s so dependent on you that it’s worrying. You can only imagine what he was like with the person who filled this role before.
Tomura leans his head into your side in a gesture that’s painfully childish, still watching his video. Like this, it’s hard to remember that you were the reason he’s here to begin with.
You still remember what it felt like to saw off his hands.
. . .
A week later, and you’ve done something you know you’ll regret.
This time, it’s not something that can be swept under the rug by the Heroes. This time, it’s not something you can pretend to ignore.
As you climb the steps to Tomura’s hospital room, your stomach is tying itself in knots. It’s almost more nerve-wracking than the first time you were there, back before you knew how deep into this you’d get to be.
Tomura is laying back in his hospital bed, still tied down. The nurses refused to leave him unbound when you weren’t there, but, ever since you started taking care of him, he’s been worlds calmer, no longer needing to be drugged into submission or forced to stay down and out of the way.
His eyes fix on you the second you step into the room, dark circles still painfully prominent. Tomura looks better than when you met him here; less thin, less frail, but he still has an almost breakable look about him.
You barely have to use your quirk on him anymore, except when he wants it to calm down, almost attached to the feeling of peace you give him.
“Good morning,” you say, trying to keep the worry out of your voice.
Tomura looks at you like he knows exact what you’re trying to hide.
You sit down and start undoing the straps, carefully working each one loose. Tomura sits up when you’re finished, a bit unsteady, and you have a hand out keeping him upright before you know what you’re doing.
“You’re acting funny,” he states bluntly, looking at you with suspicion. After everything he’s been through, you can imagine why.
“It’s. . . nothing,” you manage, forcing a smile. “Nothing bad. You’ll find out what’s happening soon, and I promise it’s not a bad thing.”
Tomura makes a face like he doesn’t trust you, and that only intensifies when you help him to his feet, slowly getting him upright. He’s lost a lot of strength in the past weeks, you’ve noticed.
You try not to think about how helpless he’s become.
There’s the package on the chair that you asked the nurses for, and you unwrap a black t-shirt and loose, grey pants, both in Tomura’s size.
It’s not Tomura can dress himself as he is, so you help him out of the hospital gown and into the clothes, reassuring him with empty words when he tries to question what’s happening. It’s the first time in weeks he’s worn anything but the gown, and it looks strange to see him in regular clothes.
He’s still so skinny, muscle almost gone from his lean frame, and you make a mental note to keep encouraging him to eat more.
Finally, you pull a loose, black hat down over Tomura’s head, obscuring his face with the shadow of it. Between the clothes and how much weight he’s lost, you doubt anyone would recognize him.
“Come on,” you coax, smiling in response to Tomura’s nervous expression. He’s been trying to protest since you got him stand up, and you’ve been intentionally ignoring his quiet, prodding complaints. Now isn’t the time for you to explain what’s going to happen.
Carefully, with one hand around the upper part of one of Tomura’s wrists, you lead him down the hallway to the one elevator.
You would have preferred to take the stairs, where less people would be around, but considering that Tomura has barely walked in the time he’s been here, you don’t think he’d be able to make it.
As it is, he’s looking dangerously unsteady.
In the elevator, Tomura glares at you halfheartedly. He’s trying to look tough, but confusion and fear are winning out, and you sigh.
“I’m taking you somewhere, alright? I have permission from the Heroes, and you’ll see what’s going to happen. I don’t want to talk about it here, but I promise it won’t hurt you in any way. You can trust me, right?” Even though you’re the only people in the elevator, it feels wrong to discuss things where you’re at, not considering Tomura’s history.
The way he looks at you almost makes you sick. It’s trusting, openly so, and the fact that this is the man you disfigured makes you feel nauseous. It’s disturbing that you’ve been able to win him over so easily.
When you walk through the lobby, what used to be Tomura’s hand in yours, the nurses glare at the both of you viciously.
You know that they hate Tomura. You’ve heard the gossip between them for weeks, every nasty, hateful thing they’ve said about him, and you, the person who’s going out of your way to help him. You still sort of wish you could get away with choking one of them.
Ignoring the people who spent weeks drugging Tomura, you guide him out of the hospital. The bright light makes him flinch and squeeze his eyes shut, pained. You give his wrist a comforting little squeeze.
A soft, cool breeze blowing through both of your hair, you take Tomura to your car, open the door, and help him sit down without losing his balance.
He’s still giving you those hurt eyes, like he’s terrified, and from what emotions you can feel from him, you know that it’s genuine. You send a little pulse of your quirk into him, calming, and Tomura relaxes instantly, sickeningly trusting as you manipulate his emotions.
You wonder if the person before you saw this side of him.
. . . You’re well aware that they did.
The drive starts out uneventful, simple enough as you follow a series of familiar steps.
A few minutes in, tears start to flow.
You’re crying before you can stop yourself, struggling to see clearly as tears cloud your vision and soak your skin.
You can feel Tomura’s gaze on you, concerned, but it’s like all the stress you’ve been holding in has finally decided to come pouring out of you all at once, and there’s little you can do to stop it.
There’s an exhaustion weighing you down, the stress of weeks hanging on your shoulders, and even though it’s all over now, you can’t help but feel like this won’t be the end. You’ve made a choice that will damn you, and you don’t know if you’ll ever be able to handle it’s weight.
The tears are the silent, still kind, without sobs or noise, and after a moment, you feel something brushing against your shoulder.
Tomura is reaching over with one bandaged stump, nudging you lightly in a gesture that’s probably meant to be comforting. He looks spaced out, your quirk still affecting him, and the motion itself feels like he’s not used to trying to touch anyone in a way that isn’t supposed to hurt.
It’s crushing, and you know that you’ve made the right decision.
You don’t stop crying for the rest of the drive, and the tears only slow down when you pull up to your destination. Neither of you have spoken the entire time, and the silence hangs thick in the unhappy air.
Once out of the car, you open Tomura’s door, helping him to his feet.
He looks up, and sees your house for the first time.
“Hey, um, where a-are we?” Looking at you with confusion, Tomura starts to speak. His voice is quiet and slurred, and you can imagine that your quirk is still rendering him compliant and mostly helpless.
You take what used to be his hand in yours, and start to lead him up to the front door, smiling. For once, you sort of mean it.
“I talked to the Heroes. They don’t care where you end up, as long as it keeps you out of the public eye. As long as you behave, and don’t do anything that will makes them care about you again, you have been allowed to stay with me, since I can control you the best.” You spit out the words like lead, finally saying what you’ve been thinking for days.
Tomura looks at you like you’ve gone crazy, but you open the front door, wiping away the last of your tears.
Your home is on the small side, but nice. You definitely have enough money to take in another person, and you’ve been helping Tomura with so many things so far.
He looks around, wide-eyed, hat halfway falling off his head. From the face he’s making and the feelings he’s giving off, you can guess that this is close to the first time he’s been told that anywhere is home. You try very hard not to think about what that means for him now.
“B-But. . . why would they. . . You d-don’t. . .” He’s getting overwhelmed, you can tell, confused.
With a gentle motion, you pull the hat off his head and run your fingers through his hair, hitting him with your quirk again. Tomura wobbles a bit, going soft, leaning into you on something close to instinct.
“It’s alright. It’ll be just the same as the hospital, but you’ll only have to deal with me. I don’t really know what I’m doing either, but we’ll figure it out. If you’re good, everything will work out just fine.”
You don’t know if you mean those words, but they come out easily. It seems simple to pacify him, after all you’ve done before.
You guide Tomura up to the place that will be his bedroom, ease him into a bed with no straps to hold him down. One of his bandages is coming loose, and you can see the scar where he tried to chew through himself.
The skin of his wrist is pink and fresh, healing.
Tomura looks at you with an emotion even you can’t place, and your fingers brush over his skin. You’ve entered something that you don’t know if you can ever escape, but for once, you don’t feel afraid.
Since the moment you saw him, Tomura has seemed dangerous and far away, someone that you could never hope to truly control.
As he lies soft and trusting in your home, you feel like you’ve finally figured something out. When you first climbed the steps to his hospital room, you never would have imagined that the last time would end like this.
You don’t regret what you did.