Enough to Go By (Chapter 6) -- a Shigaraki x f!Reader fic
Your best friend vanished on the same night his family was murdered, and even though the world forgot about him, you never did. When a chance encounter brings you back into contact with Shimura Tenko, you'll do anything to make sure you don't lose him again. Keep his secrets? Sure. Aid the League of Villains? Of course. Sacrifice everything? You would - but as the battle between the League of Villains and hero society unfolds, it becomes clear that everything is far more than you or anyone else imagined it would be. (cross-posted to Ao3)
Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter 7 Chapter 8
Chapter 6
You find out what Tenko’s up to from the news – or from Kazuo, who texts you to tell you that “your friend” is making headlines again. It’s an uncharacteristic move for Tenko, who you know has been trying to keep to the shadows while he gathers allies, and it gets weirder when you find out that he showed up in a shopping center to have a conversation with one of the students from the class he attacked. You weren’t really watching the Sports Festival, but this kid made headlines for repeatedly breaking his fingers while trying to use his quirk. Every so often, quirked people make you really grateful that you don’t have one yourself.
Tenko didn’t get caught. He was long gone before the heroes and law enforcement showed up. But the incident leaves a weird taste in your mouth. He wandered into a mall to chat with a high school student. Why didn’t he talk to you? You’re supposed to be his best friend, his sidekick. He called the two of you hanging out together a date. What could he tell a high school student that he didn’t feel safe telling you?
The question consumes you more than you want it to, so you fall back on your now time-honored tradition of drowning yourself in tasks to avoid thoughts you don’t like. Work, and sitting with Yoshimi through her treatments, and ducking phone calls from your parents, who are moving the whole family – again – and want you to come home and help. Your mom threatens to throw away all your old stuff if you don’t, and even though you took everything you cared about with you when you moved away, the thought of your things being thrown out with the trash bothers you. It bothers you enough that you use your one day off in two weeks to go back to your parents’ house and clean out what’s left of your room.
When you get there, you find half the house out on the lawn, and your mother arguing with the oldest of your younger siblings. “Don’t take that tone with me, Haru,” she’s snapping. “Whatever you think you’re doing, it’s not as important as helping out your family. We need you here to –”
It’s like something snaps in your head, and you’re swamped in the memories of a hundred times where you were told the same thing. You thought that with you gone, your parents would have pulled themselves together, but it looks like not. It looks like they just dragged your brother into replace you. You step forward without thinking, right into the middle of it. “Hey, Haru. Hey, Mom. Sorry I’m late.”
Both of them stare at you. There’s something accusing in Haru’s stare, not that you blame him for that. Your mom looks more relieved than anything else, and with her temporarily neutralized, you turn to your brother. “Go do what you need to do, Haru. I’ll fill in until you get back.”
Haru doesn’t need to be told twice, and he doesn’t wait around for your mom to protest. He books it, and you turn to face your mom again, the feeling of accomplishment at defusing a conflict drowned almost immediately by your frustration with yourself. Two seconds. You’ve been here two seconds, and you’ve stepped back into the part you used to play like you never left.
Your mom hugs you. “Haru’s been just terrible these last few years,” she complains. “Any time we ask him to help, he throws the biggest fit. I can’t count the number of times I’ve told him to act more like you –”
“He’s nineteen, Mom. He’s got his own life,” you remind here, like it’ll help at all. You step back out of her embrace. “I came to sort through my stuff. Where is it?”
She gestures vaguely at one corner of the front yard, and you make your way over, at which point you discover that what your mom described as your stuff is actually only half yours. The other half seems to be every picture and keepsake your parents have of you. You knew your relationship with your parents wasn’t ideal, that they stopped being interested in you the second you stopped being useful to them, but seeing this gives you pause. “Mom –”
“We’re downsizing,” your mother explains. “Take what you want. We’ll throw the rest out.”
Fine. If that’s how they want it, that’s fine with you. The first things you dump in the throwaway pile are every photo that consists of just you and one or both of your parents. There goes the whole first year of your life, like it never happened at all. After that, it gets a little more difficult, because your siblings are in the pictures and it’s not their fault they were born. You find a partially filled photo album, start stripping the pictures you want to keep from their frames, and fit them into the remaining spaces. You don’t have a lot of space for picture frames. And this way you don’t have to look at them unless you want to.
Most of your toys and books went to your siblings as hand-me-downs, usually before you were actually done with them, so most of the things that are yours are things you had to fight to save. Your favorite books, which you rescued by carrying them around in your backpack twenty-four seven. A journal with a lock on it and no key, but you know how to pick locks now, so it doesn’t matter as much as it did before. Then there’s a box that’s been taped, glued, and stapled shut, with DO NOT TOUCH written all over it. You remember mummifying this box when you were ten or so. You just don’t remember why you did it.
You can open it once you’re home. You stack the photo album on top of it and keep hunting through all the pieces of your life that your parents are planning to throw away.
In the end, you can’t take much stuff. You don’t have very much room, and while Kazuo would probably agree to let you store things in his house, you don’t want to have to ask him to do that. There’s not really that much important stuff here, anyway. The books and games from when you were really little? You outgrew them a long time ago, so what would you even be keeping them for? It’s not like you’re going to have kids.
That thought came out of nowhere. You sit back on your heels, frowning at the change of tune. In spite of the shitshow of your childhood and the fact that you’d most likely pass on your quirklessness and put the next generation in the same second-class position as you are, you’ve always seen yourself having children. Not very many children. Two, most likely, and a decent difference in their ages – enough that you could let them have their own time instead of treating them like twins, not so much that you’d run the risk of parentifying the older one even slightly. You think you’d be a good parent, maybe. At the very least you know what not to do.
You’ve been sure of that since you were old enough to figure out where babies come from. This is the first time you’ve had the other thought, and it feels like a certainty. When did it change?
The answer is lurking somewhere in the back of your mind, and you decide you’re not interested in answering it right now. With your stuff sorted, you dump the things you’re not taking into the garbage pile, making sure your mom sees which photos you’re getting rid of. You really should leave after that, but then the rest of your siblings come barreling out of the house, and you don’t think you should leave without saying goodbye.
Isuzu, the oldest of your younger sisters, is in her last year of high school. Music is her thing, and she’s applying to every conservatory in the country – keeping her options open, she says, but you know she means getting away from home. The twins, Shigure and Shinji, are both at Ketsubutsu Academy, training to be heroes. They’ve enhanced their control over their quirks to the point where they can induce specific parts of the vomiting process at will, and they demonstrate it on you, making your throat burn and your mouth flood with bitter-tasting saliva before your mom catches them at it and makes them stop. The triplets, a full ten years younger than you, aren’t even out of primary school yet. They want to be heroes, too.
Your dad arrives, with Haru in tow, as you’re making your second attempt to escape. He hugs you, too, and asks why you don’t come home more – right before he asks you to get the triplets washed up for dinner and check that they’ve done their homework. You almost tell him to go fuck himself, but ultimately you don’t want the fight. You herd the triplets back inside and start with the homework.
Isuzu follows you, not speaking up until after you’ve confirmed that the homework is completed and shooed the triplets off to the bathroom. “How did you do that so fast? It takes me and Haru forever to get them moving.”
“Practice,” you say. “More than I should have gotten. More than you’ll get if you get out of here.”
“I’m working on it,” Isuzu says. She looks uncomfortable, and like she wants to say more. You wait. “I’m sorry I told on you back then. If I hadn’t, maybe –”
You shake your head. “I had to go.” You cover your upper arm, the same motion Tenko made, and a chill runs down your spine. “I didn’t leave because you told them about this. I left because I got into my apprenticeship, and they told me I couldn’t do it.”
“What?” Isuzu looks shocked. “Why?”
“They needed me at home.” You shrug, your nonchalance masking the memory of the bolt of rage that shot through you when you realized what they were trying to do. “The only way to stop it was to make sure I wasn’t home anymore. I wish it hadn’t landed on you and Haru.”
“Haru’s madder about it than me,” Isuzu says. She leans against you, her head on your shoulder. “I remember stuff he doesn’t. Like that friend you had across the street. I don’t remember his name –”
“Tenko,” you say. Your heart lurches into an unsteady rhythm. “You remember him?”
“Not really. I remember you talking about him, though. You always had so many stories to tell.” Isuzu sighs. “Did they ever find out what really happened to him?”
“No,” you say. You did, though. You might be the only one who knows what became of Shimura Tenko, and even you don’t know the details. “I’m surprised you remember. Mom and Dad didn’t like me talking about him.”
“They didn’t like you being sad,” Isuzu corrects. “They don’t like me being sad, either. I’d be sad if it was my best friend who vanished. You said you were gonna marry him.”
“I – what?” Before you can follow up on the absolutely batshit thing your sister just said, one of the triplets comes back into the living room with obviously unwashed hands. “Arisa, I know you didn’t wash those. Go back in.”
Arisa sticks her tongue out at you. “You can’t tell me what to do. You don’t even live here. And you don’t have a quirk.”
“Right,” you say, a moment before Arisa activates her quirk and wallops you with every ounce of the contempt she feels for you. It takes all your self-control to avoid bursting into tears. “I can leave, though. Mom can’t get me in trouble any more, because I’m grown up. But she can definitely get you in trouble. Risk it if you want.”
Arisa glares at you for a moment longer, then heads back to the bathroom. You clear your throat and blink hard, digging your nails into your palm to give yourself something else to focus on. “Even I felt that one,” Isuzu remarks, wincing. “How do you take this stuff?”
You clear your throat again. “Practice.”
You make it through dinner, then book it, telling Isuzu and Haru to look you up the next time they’re in Yokohama and hitting the road before the twins or the triplets can use their quirks on you again. You cry a little bit on the train home, just enough to let off steam, and text your friends, who know what your family’s like and all advised you not to go. When they ask how it went, you send back a sad face.
Mitsuko: fuck them, then. they don’t deserve you
Hirono: come over and get trashed if you want. always makes me feel better
Sho: ooh, party at Hiro’s
Sho: count me in
Yoshimi: I can’t but 💛💛💛
Mitsuru: can I bring Izumi
Mitsuru gets a resounding thumbs-down from everybody for that one. Ryuhei chimes in, saying he’s down for a party, and Kazuo moves the venue to his house from Hirono’s shitty apartment in Kamino Ward. When you get off the train in Yokohama, you head over to Kazuo’s without stopping at home first.
Your friends have varying ideas on how to make you feel better. Mitsuko and Hirono think you should get drunk, so you drink a little, and Sho thinks you should bitch as much as you want about your family, so you do. Mitsuru’s got lots of siblings, so you complain about siblings together, and Ryuhei, not to be outdone, offers to beat up the triplets for you. “My quirk is perfect for it,” he says. “They’ll never know what hit them.”
They wouldn’t – Ryuhei’s quirk is called Reflection, and it bounces any quirk-based attack right back in the face of whoever sent it. “They’re ten,” you say.
“So?”
“Wait until they’re adults and it’ll be legal,” Kazuo says blandly. “What’s in the box?”
“Oh,” you say. You haven’t let go of it, although you relinquished the photo album to Mitsuko and Hirono after extracting promises that they wouldn’t take the photos out. “I’m not sure. I guess I thought it was pretty important.”
Kazuo touches his temple, then lowers his hand. “You don’t know, so I don’t know, either.”
“Let’s open it,” Hirono suggests. Mitsuko is still flipping through the photo album. “What kind of dirty secrets have you got in there?”
“I was ten. Not a lot of dirty secrets at that age.” You hold the box out to her. “Mind doing the honors on the tape?”
Hirono’s quirk is called Slice. It lets her cut narrow lines in any substance she draws her finger over, and you know she’s used it for good and evil at various points in her life. She cuts through the tape, you pry out the staples, and you and your friends from high school look down at the things you thought were worth hiding when you were ten years old.
There’s another journal, which means the one you grabbed was probably a decoy. You don’t remember being this sneaky, but you’re guessing you had a reason, and as you look through the other things in the box, you realize what it was. “I hid this before my memory got wiped,” you say. “It’s all things about my friend.”
“I thought they were just wiping your memories of the murder scene,” Mitsuru says, frowning.
“That’s what they got, sort of.” Memories are coming back to you as you peer into the box, memories of collecting these things, squirreling them away, panic beating at the base of your throat the entire time. “They were going for all of it.”
There’s a plush toy – a corgi, the same kind as Tenko’s dog, because you’d always wanted a dog and your parents always said no. Tenko got it for you for your birthday, the same year you had to go home early from his party. There are a bunch of photos, too, stolen out of a photo album – possibly the same partially-empty album you found when you were sorting. Some are from school. Some are from parties – yours, Tenko’s, Hana’s. Some were pretty clearly taken by Tenko’s mom. Seeing them makes you want to cry.
In the pictures, Tenko’s house is still standing. Tenko’s family is still alive. There’s Tenko like he used to be, dark-haired and grey-eyed and quirkless and happy. The two of you were always happy together, even if you weren’t happy at home. “These are cute,” Sho remarks. “Lots of puppy love going on here, and I’m not talking about the dog.”
You remember that you apparently told Isuzu you were going to marry Tenko and cringe from the thought. “Don’t be weird.”
“If it helps, it doesn’t look all that unrequited,” Mitsuko says, peering over your shoulder. “Check that one out.”
The photo she’s pointing at is from your class’s Valentine’s Day party. You and Tenko are trying to trade valentines, except you’re too embarrassed to look at him while you hand yours over. He’s not embarrassed to look at you. He’s grinning, that same smile that some of the other girls called creepy, the one you still like seeing because you know that it’s real, and he’s holding out a valentine of his own for you.
The valentine Tenko gave you is in the box, although his handwriting is impossible to read when you’ve had as many drinks as you’ve had tonight. In the corner of the box is another, tinier box. It looks like a jewelry box, and when you pry it open, a memory floods over you. There’s a locket inside. You put a picture in it the day before you got your memory wiped, and when you pick it up, you find the picture staring up at you. Tenko. Even five years after he vanished, you couldn’t let him go.
You shouldn’t have had so much to drink. If you were sober, you absolutely wouldn’t be bursting into tears.
Your friends aren’t exactly clear on why you’re crying, but they comfort you anyway, Mitsuko and Hirono and Sho hugging you while Ryuhei and Mitsuru hang awkwardly back, patting your shoulders. The only person who doesn’t get in on it is Kazuo, but Kazuo was never the touchiest, even before his mind snapped. And something’s up with Kazuo tonight. Even through your own mess of emotion, you can tell.
You wait until everyone else is drifting off before you try to get it out of him. “What’s wrong?”
“The HPSC is reactivating me.”
“They – what?” The alcohol’s made you just a little slow – the anger hits before the understanding’s truly formed in your head. “No, they can’t. They can’t, Kazuo! After what they did to you –”
“My provisional license is still active. That means they can.” Kazuo extracts a letter from his pocket and holds it out for you to peruse. You can barely read it. Your vision is swimming with rage. “When All Might crippled the black market, he took down every possible informant with it. Someone is backing the League of Villains. They need to find out who. My quirk is the fastest way.”
“They can’t do this. Not with what happened last time.” Your heart is hammering. Kazuo’s work-study was in Yokohama. When he collapsed, they brought him to your clinic, and you saw firsthand what overuse of his quirk did to him. “It could kill you.”
“There are safeguards, theoretically.” Kazuo’s voice is flat, emotionless. Like it’s been for two years and counting. “If you read further in the letter, you’ll see the protocol they outlined.”
You don’t need to read it. “You’ve got a medical condition. Using your quirk will exacerbate it. They can’t just conscript you like this!”
“It’s done,” Kazuo says. You look at him, speechless with fury, still too close to tears. “I didn’t tell you so you could get angry over something you can’t solve. I told you because I’ve predicted the types of questions they’ll instruct me to ask. I can ask them in a way that will preclude you in the answers.”
You hadn’t even thought that far ahead. “But in order for me to do that,” Kazuo continues, “you must keep yourself out of their search parameters. As long as you don’t directly aid your friend in the committing of a crime, you’ll fall outside their net.”
“Directly aid,” you repeat. “What does that mean?”
Kazuo gives you a look. “Failing to stop something is not the same thing as assisting in it.”
Now you get it. Kazuo’s telling you that simply knowing what Tenko’s up to isn’t enough to get you in trouble. In order for you to come under suspicion through Kazuo’s quirk, you’d have to actually do something – not just to help Tenko, but to help Tenko commit a crime. “I understand.”
You do. But that fury is still bubbling up within you, pointless as it is, at the thought that catching some vague scraps of information about the League of Villains is worth Kazuo’s sanity, Kazuo’s life. “We’ll figure something out. I won’t let them keep using you.”
Kazuo’s eyes are blank. They’ve been blank for years. But every so often you’ve seen a flash of something within them – some feeling, something familiar, something of the boy you knew. “You can’t save both of us,” he says, and his right hand falls from his temple to rest in his lap.
He was using his quirk just then. What was he asking? What did he see? You want to ask him, but he’s just picked up a half-empty bottle of vodka and drained it, and now it’s all hands on deck to hustle him to the bathroom in time for him to throw it back up.
The thought crosses your mind, as you’re rubbing his shoulders and offering him tissues to wipe his mouth, that it would have been easier if you’d fallen harder for Kazuo. If you’d fallen hard enough to cling to him even when his heroic ambitions pulled him away, hard enough to hold on even when the overuse of his quirk destroyed his ability to feel anything at all, hard enough to fight for him even when he doesn’t see a point to trying at anything any longer. It would have been hard, sure. But at the same time, it would have been easier for everyone involved if you’d felt for Kazuo the way you feel for Tenko.
You and Kazuo fall asleep on the bathroom floor, and in the morning, you’ve got a backache and a hangover. So does everybody else, but there’s something at least a little relieving in the fact that you’re all suffering together. You’ve got work, but it’s a half day, and it starts at noon. Plenty of time for you to go home and take a shower and try to sober up the rest of the way.
At least that’s what you think. When you step out of the bathroom in your apartment wrapped in a towel, you step directly into a warp gate, and it swallows you whole.
Kurogiri said he’d tell you what you were walking into the next time Tenko summoned you, but maybe he just forgot. You think you can probably talk Tenko into sending you back long enough to put on clothes. But once your feet touch the ground, it’s clear that you aren’t in the bar, where you’ve been nearly every time Tenko’s called for you. The air is cold and clammy, and there’s a strange smell, half antiseptic, half rot. You know this smell. You remember it from a field trip you took in nursing school. It smells like a morgue.
It smells like a morgue, and it’s pitch-black. You can’t see your hand in front of your face. Where’s Tenko? You can’t imagine him summoning you here without an explanation – which means he’s not the one who summoned you. Who did?
A voice issues from the darkness, deep and almost friendly. “Do you know who I am?”
The revulsion and terror that sweeps over you at the sound of his voice are almost enough to bring you to your knees. But you grew up in a family full of quirk users whose quirks affected the mind and body, and they loved to practice on you. Sixteen years of surviving it gives you the experience to stay on your feet. And when you think about it, you do know who this is. “You’re Sensei,” you say, and the man in the darkness makes a pleased sound. “Shigaraki’s master.”
“Very good,” the man says, but it isn’t – you only remembered to use Tenko’s new name at the last second. “Now it’s your turn. Tell me who you are – and who you are to Tomura.”
“I’m – nobody,” you say. Sensei’s influence over you intensifies, and you keep your feet with an effort. “I’m a nurse. He came to the clinic I work at last year. He’d hurt his wrist.”
“I see,” Sensei says after a moment. “Had you met Tomura before that time?”
Tomura? No. You shake your head, only to remember that Tenko’s master probably can’t see in the dark. “No.”
“But you’ve seen him since.”
“Yes,” you say. “When he’s injured, he sends Kurogiri to find me. So I can help.”
“I see,” Sensei says again. You’re tempted to point out that if the doctor, whoever the doctor is, had treated Tenko’s gunshot wounds, Tenko wouldn’t have needed to call for you in the first place. But that would escalate things. You keep your mouth shut. “Do you possess a healing quirk?”
“No.”
“That’s a shame,” Sensei remarks. “Would you like one?”
“No,” you say at once. Maybe too quickly, given the insanity of the statement. “It’s not possible to give quirks.”
“It is. And they can be taken away just as easily,” Sensei says. You stay quiet, and when he speaks again, it’s a change of subject. “It seems Tomura has taken a liking to you.”
“I – I wouldn’t know,” you stammer. How much does Tenko’s master know? “I don’t know how Shigaraki feels about anything.”
“Thankfully, I do.” Sensei goes silent for a moment. “I suppose it’s wise of Tomura to keep a medical provider in his orbit, even if you would be more useful to him with a healing quirk. What is your quirk?”
Your stomach instantly twists into a knot. “I don’t have one.”
“Mm.” Sensei’s voice takes on a reflective note. “Let’s remedy that.”
The darkness is complete. You don’t see the hand coming; all you can do is startle when it clamps down over your face, enormous and rough and hot. Your breath leaves you in a sharp gasp, too quiet to be a scream but still too close for comfort. But just as suddenly as the hand settled over your face, it pulls away with equal speed. Sensei chuckles, a low, dark sound that makes your skin crawl. “You’ve been dishonest with me, but I can’t fault you for not sharing what you don’t know.”
You’ve been dishonest, yes. It doesn’t seem like he knows about that. But what don’t you know? “Sir? I don’t understand.”
“You have manners. It’s a shame Tomura won’t appreciate them,” Sensei says. “You will understand in time. Kurogiri?”
The mist begins to billow around you – and at the same time, it clears partially, revealing the shape of the man standing before you. He’s terrifyingly large, looming over you, and his face – “I would advise against telling Tomura of our meeting,” Sensei says as you stare up at him in terror, “but that is ultimately your decision to make. You and I will have no further dealings. Tomura has chosen you as a piece in his game. I will leave you to him.”
The terror drowns you. You fight to keep your head above water. “Yes, sir.”
“Sir,” Sensei repeats. “I do like that.”
The tone in his voice breaks your composure, just as the mist closes around you. By the time Kurogiri deposits you back on the floor in your apartment – in your apartment, they know where you live – you’re hyperventilating, panicking, almost out of your mind. “Shigaraki Tomura will call for you this evening,” Kurogiri says. “I do not know his purpose. I advise you to be prepared for either possibility.”
For a date. Or for a meeting with his new allies. You’ve never felt less prepared for anything in your life. Kurogiri vanishes, and you curl up in a ball, shivering. Maybe it’s from the cold. Maybe it’s from the smell of rot. Maybe it’s from the pure terror of meeting Tenko’s master, of the lingering sensation of his hand closing over your face. Whatever it is, you have to get rid of it. And you still have to go to work. You crawl back to the bathroom, turn the shower on scalding, and climb in.
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