WATCH IT ALL CRUMBLE
Chapter 1: As It Burns
In which, Lovely makes everyone suffer
Finley felt sick. Generally sick.
No, this couldn’t be happening. She refused.
Another goddamn quest. It had been 2 weeks. 2! This didn’t feel real.
The worse part (well, there were several worse parts but we’r not going to focus on that) was that Finley wasn’t involved.
Normally, Finley would be glad to not have to be on a quest. She had been on her own quest for the past 10 years, but, the other girls were, including a 13 year old.
She wasn’t all that upset that a 13 year old was going instead, she could care less, she was mad that a 13 year old was going on a quest in general.
Dorothea is a literal child. Finley was certain that girl could kick ass, but she knew just how badly it could affect her.
She didn’t want her experiencing that. Especially with seem so final as the prophecy they just got.
As all these thoughts ran through Finley’s head, she started to tune back in on the moment.
All four of them were emotional, as anyone would be.
She turned around at the sound of crying.
“Ah-”
The scene she saw was not pretty.
Dorothea was sobbing, and Brook and Anastasia looked to be getting angry as they cried.
They continued walking, leaving both Her and Dorothea in the dust.
“You’re joking, right?” Brook asked.
“Why would I be joking?”
“Jesus Christ…” Finley muttered. Dorothea looked at her with wide eyes.
Poor kid.
“I wouldn’t suggest following me in there.” She warned, looking at the Chaos cabin.
“Wha- no!”
“Thea, please. Just, wait.” The talking turned more into yelling.
“But-”
“No buts. This isn’t going to end well.”
Dorothea looked upset, but didn’t object. “Fine.” She continued walking to her cabin.
Finley sighed, before going in.
“Are you really saying I shouldn’t do this?!” Anastasia yelled.
“I’m saying you’re young.” Brook shot back.
“Yeah, no shit, sherlock. We’re all young!”
“uh-” Finley started, but was met with a monsterous glare from both of them.
Fuck- jeez
“You think I want to go on this?” Anastasia asked bitterly. “There is no way in hell I want too, and I would rather pluck my eyes out with a toothpick and eat it then let Thea go. But I don’t get a choice.”
“I know that, I’m trying to help you.”
“Help? How? Cause there is no soluation! We are stuck in this situation!”
“WHAT IS WRONG WITH ME TRYING TO HELP YOU?!” It got more heated.
“BECAUSE WHAT ARE YOU GOING TO DO?! ONE OF US IS GOING TO DIE! WE CAN’T DO ANYTHING!” Anastasia yelled, tears rolling down her cheeks. “You could die. Don’t you understand?!”
Finley felt tears of her own roll down her cheeks.
“Yes! I have things to live for now! I know damn well what I’d lose!”
“Really? Cause you don’t act like you do!”
“Neither do you!”
“Let’s just-”
They both shhed Finley, not even turning to look at her.
“I’m fine.” Anastasia told her.
“Bullshit. None of us are fine. We haven’t been fine in a while.” Brook stated.
“What do you want me to say?”
“I want you to let me help!”
“I don’t need your help!” Anastasia turned away.
“Stop making it harder for yourself-”
“I’m not. I don’t need help.”
Brook sighed. “You do. You’re just being stubborn at this point.”
“I’m not!”
Brook just gave her a look.
“Stop that.”
“Stop being stubborn.”
“You can’t do anything! You can’t fix it!” She snapped.
“I’m just trying to offer support-”
“That was not what you were doing 5 minutes ago.”
“What is your problem?!”
“My problem?! what’s my problem?! My problem is everything! Two people I care aboout might die!”
“You might die.”
“I don’t care! I would rather you two be okay.”
“Well, you should! You were just telling me that I didn’t act like I had something to live for and now you’re acting like this!”
“Because it matters when it’s you!”
“It matters when it’s you too!” Brook yelled.
“No, it doesn’t.” Anastasia said with enough certainty it broke Finley’s heart.
“Yes it does! Why wouldn’t it?!”
“Because your more important!”
“Anastasia, who on earth told you that?” Finley asked, finally having the courage to speak.
“No one needed too.”
“Annie…”
“Don’t. I don’t need anymore pity.”
“I am not more important than you.”
“Yes you are!”
“Please don’t lie to me.”
“We’re not lying!” Finley cried.
“I’m not stupid!”
“You’re acting like it.” Brook told her.
She went to say something else, but Anastasia cut he off.
“Sorry that I don’t want to pretend that it’s not happening.”
“It’s not happening, Anastasia!”
“You can both get out if you’re going to lie to my face.”
They both fell silent in shook.
“Anastasia-” Brook stated.
“I mean it.” She said harshly.
“You’re being childish-” Brook tried once more.
“Get. out.”
“Fine.” Brook stormed out.
Anastasia stared at Finley.
“I hope you know that we weren’t lying.” She walked out the cabin.
She felt tears roll down her cheeks once more.
She headed towards her cabin, she wanted nothing more than to pass out in her bed.
She spotted Dorothea sitting on the steps.
“What happened? Are you alright?” She stood up and ran over to her. FInley could tell she had been crying.
Finley quickly wiped her tears. A part of her wanted to pretend everything was a-ok, but she wasn’t the one that had to deal with the aftermath of that.
“It was… explosive, to say the least.”
Dorothea frowned. “Explosive?”
“Annie kicked us out.”
“Oh gods…” Dorothea wiped her tears.
Finley tok a shaky breath, trying to figure out what to say.
“I’m sorry you have to deal with that.”
“I’m sorry you had to deal with that.”
She looked down at the ground for a moment. “Are you okay?”
“I guess.” Dorothea sighed. “No ones really okay after everything that’s happened today.”
“Good point.” She chuckled weakly, trying not to cry more.
She could see Dorothea shaking. She wanted to tell her it would be okay, but it wouldn’t. She knew it wouldn’t. It wasn’t okay. Nothing about this was okay.
She wrapped her into a hug. She felt her start to cry into her.
“I’m scared.” She sobbed.
“I know… You have every right to be.”
“I don’t want to do this. I don’t want watch anyone die. I dont want to die!”
Finley felt her lip quiver. Gods, this was hard to watch all of them go through.
“I wish I could take this away from you.”
“I do too.”
OOC:
only took a few days to write this, which is the quickest I've ever written a first chapter.
Anyways will cook an open starter after this cause why not have more angst?
Yall have anyone in particular you want for the open starter???
@arisdaughter / @letsbelikethewindtogether @childofthewargod @dianedantedominic @kaiaalwayswins @theorphicforest
@that-girl-cupid @delilah-isnt-dead-yett @daonedaonlyskh @hispanic-child-of-hermes
@aria-pane @wine-cooper @i-am-persephones-daughter @unhinged-waterlilly
@seed-of-the-pomegranate @istglevi-gotmesimping
@if-chaos-was-a-boy @ariathemortal @i-was-never-sane @gaygirldoodles @superbstarlightsheep
If you want to be added, removed or if I forgot to tag you, let me know :)
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Opposites Attract (Chapter 3) - a Shigaraki x f!Reader fic
Your quirk lets you capture almost anyone with ease, and you can't believe you let Shigaraki Tomura escape. Shigaraki can't believe it, either, and according to the League, there's only one possible explanation -- you let him go because you've fallen in love with him. He decides to find out if it's true. You decide you won't fail to capture him again. You both get a lot more than you bargained for. (cross-posted to Ao3)
Chapters: 1 2
Chapter 3
You don’t notice the envelope that’s been shoved under your front door until you trip on it, and even once you pick it up, you’re not sure it’s for you. The name scrawled on the front of it is almost illegible, but after studying it for a few seconds you’re able to determine that it does in fact say Skynet. Maybe it’s hate mail. Even if your public profile’s improved significantly since the incident with the train, someone could have mailed this last week and you’re just finding it now.
You were in the hospital for three days. Getting dragged by a train isn’t the kind of thing you can just walk off. If you’d had the boots from your costume, you would have been able to anchor yourself, and with your feet planted and a good grip on a magnetic field nearby, you’d have avoided getting pulled off your feet. But you didn’t have your boots, because Yue made you wear heels, and you fractured your femur when one of them got caught in the rails. You also dislocated your shoulder, bit a chunk out of the inside of your cheek, and picked up the road rash from hell on the entire anterior of your body. It’s the worst set of injuries you’ve gotten in your career, and there wasn’t a single villain involved.
It got you off the public’s shit list, though, and it taught you something important about your quirk. If a metal has a distinct profile, different from what’s around it, you can latch onto just that metal and avoid drawing in anything else. Bullet-train steel is a beast of its own, unlike everything else in the area, which allowed you to focus all your power on it without ripping downtown Tokyo apart. So you can use Magnetism on a larger scale, as long as you know exactly what you’re aiming for. Most of the time, you don’t, and most of the time, there are too many metals with similar properties for you to yank one towards you without pulling up everything else. But it’s good to know that there are some cases where it’s safe to let loose.
You employ your metal sense on the envelope you’re holding and find only inert compounds, no moving parts. Nothing dangerous in here. You open it, fumbling slightly, and pull out a 500-yen coin. There’s a note wrapped around it. The handwriting on the note is just as bad as the handwriting on the envelope. Worse, maybe, because so much of it is crossed out, but in between all the cross-outs you’re able to make out a pair of sentences. Nice job with the train. Buy yourself a flower or something.
Huh. Whoever sent it didn’t leave a name, or a return address, and the note is sort of abrupt – but it’s still a nice note. And a nice thing to do. Maybe you will buy yourself a flower or something. Or maybe you’ll save the coin, so there’s evidence of the first time somebody thanked you personally for something heroic you did. Or evidence of the first truly heroic thing you’ve done in your career. One of the two.
You had some time to think in the hospital, and you thought a lot of things over. Some thoughts are ones you’ve had for a while, like the thought that stopping petty criminals isn’t actually that heroic, especially when they’re stealing things like food, warm clothes in the winter, or water bottles in the summer. Some are thoughts that make you wonder if you got a concussion during the train incident – like the idea that the existence of hero as a profession creates a demand for villains, and an incentive to expand the definition of villain as much as possible. The people you’re expected to arrest for stealing food from a convenience store aren’t in the same category as one of the various yakuza groups. They’re not even close to the League of Villains.
Those are the kind of thoughts you should keep to yourself if you want to have friends. You sit down on your couch and log into the hero network, seeing that you’ve got a pileup of messages. A lot of them are from heroes congratulating you on the train rescue. When you look closer at them, about a third of them were pretty clearly prompted by their agencies, as evidenced by the request to stop by their offices “at your earliest convenience” to “discuss your future”. After the way everyone’s been treating you, it rings pretty hollow.
Some of the messages are about team-ups, or requests to join missions. Those are usually about taking down actual criminals, which you’re still interested in, and most of them are yellow-flagged – important, but not urgent. You wouldn’t be able to respond to urgent ones. Even though UA’s Recovery Girl made a special trip out to Tokyo to heal your leg, you’re still supposed to rest for at least three more days.
Social media next. You took it off private while you were in the hospital, then forgot about it, and now you’re looking at an influx of followers and a ton of private messages. You get into the messages and start deleting anything that looks like a pickup line, which clears things out a bit. There are sponsorship offers, too, although why anybody wants to sponsor a hero whose twin claims to fame are letting the League of Villains slip through her fingers and getting dragged by a train is absolutely beyond you. You leave the offers alone for now. Time to look at the actual people who messaged you.
One in particular catches your eye. The profile picture is a cloudburst and most of the page is aesthetic photos – usually of clouds, with a secondary theme of purple things. The message doesn’t match the content of the page at all. Which iron supplements would you recommend for someone with iron-deficiency anemia?
You message back. Hi. I’m not a doctor. It would probably be best to ask a doctor about this.
Medical care is not universally accessible. What is the best supplement to use?
That was a fast response, but they’re right, whoever they are – Japan might have universal healthcare, but there are still a lot of reasons why somebody might not feel comfortable going to a doctor. And you do have some familiarity with this stuff. Of the supplements, sublingual is best. The capsules or the pills can do stuff to your digestive system. You want something that dissolves.
In what dosage?
It depends on your height, weight, and the severity of your anemia, you answer, only to remember that this person probably isn’t running off to the lab for a blood panel. Just go by what’s on the bottle. But honestly, the best way to improve your iron is to eat more iron-rich foods. That’s how your body really wants to absorb it.
Which foods?
Whoever this is could just look it up, but you’re feeling benevolent right now. Shellfish, legumes, fish, quinoa, spinach, red meat, dark chocolate, tofu, broccoli, pumpkin seeds. Organ meat is good for that, too.
He is not going to eat any of that.
If you have the right recipe, basically all of it tastes good, you reply. You’re about to send this person a link to your favorite recipe site, but then something clicks in your head – something about who’d ask you these questions, who wouldn’t be able to go to a doctor and get bloodwork done, or iron infusions prescribed. He wouldn’t refer to himself in the third person, which means the person messaging you right now can only be – Kurogiri?
Thank you for your assistance, Kurogiri says, and blocks you. All you can do is stare down at your phone in horror.
Shigaraki still has his anemia, it sounds like. Kurogiri is trying to help him treat it, but it must not be going well. You know next to nothing about Shigaraki, but it’s hard to imagine him popping an iron supplement or sitting down to a healthy meal. You weren’t on any of the teams during the first Kamino incident, but you heard things about what Shigaraki’s room was like when they searched it, and it sounds like he eats – or ate – a lot of processed food. He’s probably deficient in everything else along with the iron. If you end up being the one who finally apprehends him, you’ll probably swing by an urgent care on the way to the nearest police station so you can quantify just how not-okay he is.
You’re not sure why it bothers you. Except that Shigaraki’s supposed to be All For One’s heir, and All For One was funding the League, and apparently still had enough money left over to put himself in a tailored, custom-made suit for his showdown with All Might. All For One was loaded. If he had all that money, why didn’t he spend some of it on taking care of his successor? It’s not really a question you’re equipped to answer. You’re not a supervillain or a criminal mastermind. You’re not even investigating the League yourself. You’re just some hero who was there when they attacked. You don’t need to think about him any more than that.
It. You don’t need to think about it. The League, the fight at Kamino, anything. Sure, asking Shigaraki about his symptoms broke his focus so badly that you’d have had him dead to rights if Kurogiri hadn’t shown up, and sure, Kurogiri was messaging you on Instagram thirty seconds ago, but this has nothing to do with you.
You set your phone aside and roll the 500-yen coin between your fingers, first palm-side, then knuckle-side, then alternating, in an exercise you’ve been practicing since you were little to improve your control over your quirk. Maybe you’ll keep the coin. You can afford to buy your own flowers, but this is something you want to hang onto.
Life goes back to normal at shocking speed as soon as you’ve recovered from your injuries. Saving approximately three hundred people and getting dragged behind a train in the process is apparently enough to cancel out letting the League of Villains escape, and you’re back to being an approximate zero in the public consciousness. Which is how you like it. Even when you were at UA, you were never very interested in the spotlight – not because you don’t need the money you’d get from sponsorships, endorsements, and high-profile missions, but because your quirk was too much to handle, and the bigger the spotlight was, the more likely it was to catch you in a fatal mistake.
You’re out of the spotlight, but you’re a little busier than usual. When you went to work with Eraserhead’s class again, they had questions about how you stopped the train, and the girl with the Creation quirk suggested memorizing the profile of specific alloys, the ones commonly used in cars, buses, and building supports. That way you could focus your power on only objects with the specific profile rather than exerting a general pull and destroying whole city blocks. You decided it couldn’t hurt to give it a shot, and after a few days of memorizing the metallic profiles of the twenty most common car makes and models in Japan, you averted a car accident by magnetizing one of the two out-of-control vehicles and hoisting it – it, and only it – out of the way.
You can’t memorize every alloy on the planet, some of the alloys show up in almost everything, and the risk of tipping too many gravitational fields and causing a chain reaction is just as present as ever. But you’re a little more useful now. A little better at saving people. You’ve been wondering lately if it might not be a good idea to pivot to rescue heroics. Rescue heroics don’t have the same kind of ethical issues as combat heroics do.
But you can’t step out of combat heroics entirely. You’ve had a watch on a Shie Hassaikai safehouse in your city for a while, and you got a ping from the Nighteye agency summoning you to a strategy meeting about it sometime next week. In the meantime, you’re still getting into it with muggers, carjackers, and assorted creeps on a nightly basis. You’re busy. Tired when you wake up, tired when you get home. Most nights you’re too tired to cook.
Not tonight, though. Tonight you’re not allowed to fall asleep on the couch. You bought groceries on your day off last week in a fit of truly absurd optimism, and if you don’t use them tonight, they’ll go bad. You get home from patrol, shower off cold to wake yourself up, and get into the kitchen. Your rice cooker is waiting for you. You thank your lucky stars that you remembered to wash it out after your last kitchen escapade and get it started again.
You aren’t a good cook, but you aren’t a bad one, either. Maybe it’s more accurate to say that you’re not a pretty cook. Most meals you make are a bunch of different components piled up on a bowl or rice or noodles or dumped into a broth – not visually appealing, but still pretty tasty. Back when you were rooming with Yue and Kagura and Mayuko, Yue used to put a blindfold on so she wouldn’t see what the food you made looked like. Then again, she only ever ate seconds when it was your turn to cook.
That’s the other problem with your cooking – there are always seconds, and thirds, and sometimes fourths, because you always buy more than you can eat in one sitting, and you get bored with leftovers really fast. The scope of the problem begins to occur to you as you dice garlic and ginger and scrape them into a saucepan filled with sizzling cooking oil. You’ll eat this tonight, sure. Definitely tomorrow, but by the next day, you’ll be so sick of beef and assorted vegetables over rice that you’d almost rather run into the League of Villains a second time than have to eat it again. At least if you have to go into hiding from a vengeful public, no one will question why you didn’t eat your leftovers.
Once the aromatics start to brown and the smell infuses your apartment, the mass quantities of food you’re pawing through start to look a little less intimidating. You put on some music – quietly, since it’s past midnight and you’ve got neighbors, humming along to some English-language pop song from a decade and a half ago. The girl who babysat you back home always played it, the lyrics so simple that even four-year-old you could follow along. I really, really, really, really, really, really like you! And I want you – do you want me – do you want me too?
Between the sizzling of the flank steak and vegetables you’re currently sauteing, the sound of the music, and the rush of the wind whipping through the alley outside, you could almost write off the sound on the fire escape. It could be squirrels, or raccoons, or even a particularly chunky pigeon. It could just be the wind. But you reach for your metal-sense to check, just in case, and what you find sends a chill straight down your spine. You know that iron concentration. You couldn’t forget it if you tried.
This time, you react the right way. The fire escape is perfect for it. You bend the rails apart with a flick of your fingers, then wrap them tightly around the figure perched on the landing, pulling him down to seated. One around his waist, two immobilizing each arm, three spreading and pinning his fingers apart, so there’s no chance of all five making contact with anything at once. And one more railing around his throat, just to be extra safe.
You don’t step away from the stove until you know he’s secure. Your heart is racing as you turn off the music and make your way through your apartment to the window. You need four fingers on your right hand to manage the restraints, and you flip the latch on the window with your thumb and use your quirk to lever it open. This isn’t like last time. You’ve got the undisputed upper hand. So why do you feel so tense?
The tension comes through in your voice when you speak. “What are you doing here?”
Shigaraki Tomura looks up at you from where he’s ensnared by the railings you bent to your will. He’s not at ease like this. You can feel him straining to bring his fingers together, to break out of your grip, but he still manages the ghost of a cocky smirk. “Skynet,” he says. “Did you miss me?”
Shigaraki was expecting you to be surprised to see him, but he wasn’t expecting you to react quite this fast. Or to immobilize him this quickly. He squirms slightly, testing the restraints, only for two more to come up, wrapping around his thighs and welding him to the platform. You got him from inside your apartment, before he even realized you knew he was there. You’re good. Shigaraki hardens his resolve. If you’re this good, he absolutely needs you for the League.
“Did I miss you?” you repeat, incredulous. “Answer my question, Shigaraki. What are you doing here?”
Before Shigaraki can answer, you ask another question. “How do you know where I live?”
“I was in the neighborhood,” Shigaraki says. “I came to see if you bought yourself a flower like I said to.”
Your jaw drops. “That was you?”
“Who else?” Shigaraki can’t figure out why you looked so shocked. You’re in love with him. You should have guessed it was him, wanted it to be him. Is there somebody else you wanted it to be from? “Who did you think it was?”
“You can’t be here,” you say instead of answering. “You need to leave.”
“Do you want me to leave?” Shigaraki challenges. “You’re the one who won’t let me go.”
Your grip on him doesn’t loosen, and he still can’t bring his fingers together. Shigaraki’s stuck. If you call the cops to come get him, he can’t get away. Would you really call the cops on him? There’s no way. You love him. Right?
You still aren’t saying anything, but you also aren’t letting him go. Shigaraki tries to bring the subject back around to you liking him. “Did you buy a flower or not?”
“Why did you leave me that note?”
“I asked first.”
“Sure, I bought a flower.” You roll your eyes, which pisses Shigaraki off. He gave you something when he didn’t have to. What happened to gratitude? “Why did you leave me that note? Were you messing with me or something?”
“Messing with you?” Is that what you thought? Shigaraki wouldn’t be grateful, either. “I wasn’t messing with you. I saw the train thing, so I’m interested. I was just letting you know.”
He was expecting the news that he’s interested in you to land a little better. Then again, everything that’s happened today has proved that he’s a shitty judge of character, so maybe he’s wrong. He’s wrong, and the rest of the League was fucking with him, and because Shigaraki was stupid enough to believe them he’s now landed squarely in the hands of a hero who has every reason to think that turning him in will redeem her. He practically gift-wrapped himself.
Shigaraki’s throat tightens with rage, or something else. His skin crawls and his eyes burn. He can’t rub or scratch it away, because you’ve got him completely pinned. This is awful. It’s –
A timer goes off somewhere in your apartment, and you look away. Shigaraki seizes the opportunity to try to struggle free, but you’re already shaking your head. “Did you forget I’m the Capture Hero?” you ask. “If I can’t hang onto you and take a pan off the stove at the same time, I should hand in my license right now.”
You’re cooking something. The smell of it is drifting through the open window, and Shigaraki’s stupid mouth starts to water. He swallows. “You’re making dinner at midnight?”
You shrug. “That’s when I got home.”
“Kurogiri’s been cooking.” Trying to cook, and it’s weird that he’s trying. He used to leave Shigaraki alone about what he ate, but lately he’s been making Shigaraki eat things that have iron on them, or take iron pills, or dissolve iron tablets under his tongue. It’s a pain in the ass. “The stuff he makes doesn’t smell like that.”
You raise your eyebrows. “Like that?”
Maybe once you’re in the League, you can give Kurogiri lessons. Shigaraki had better start hinting about that now. “Good.”
You don’t say anything. Shigaraki’s stomach growls, so loudly that people on the moon can probably hear it, and his face heats up with embarrassment. But your expression is shifting, almost the same way it shifted in the square at Kamino. Seeing it gives Shigaraki a weird sense of relief. He wasn’t imagining it. The League wasn’t screwing with him. You do care. He can’t figure out why it took his stomach making stupid sounds to get it out of you.
“Are you hungry?” you ask.
Your voice sounds the same as it did when you asked if he was okay. This time Shigaraki tells the truth. “Yes.”
You glance back into your apartment, then look at him – then back to your apartment, then to him. “I must be out of my mind,” you mumble, and then you square your shoulders and make eye contact. “You’re hungry, and I made too much food. If you want, you can come inside.”
“What?” Shigaraki manages. You can’t be serious – but the metal railings are unwrapping from around his throat, his waist, his arms, until he’s anchored at the thighs and wrists and nowhere else. “You’re going to let me leave if I say no?”
“No one knows you’re here except me,” you say. “If you leave now, it’ll be like it never happened.”
Shigaraki should take you up on it, five seconds ago. You could change your mind at any moment, and now he knows he has to be a lot more careful the next time he tries to recruit you – keep a greater distance, stay disguised at first, not get complacent listening to you sing some song in English about how you really, really, really, really, really, really like someone. This was today’s second colossal fuckup, and unlike the first one, it’s recoverable. Shigaraki needs to leave. Now.
Instead – “I could eat,” he says, and you let him go.
Or you sort of let him go. He’s not attached to the fire escape anymore, but there are thin metal bands around his wrists and ankles. He shakes one of them at you. “What’s this?”
“Insurance policy,” you say. Huh. Shigaraki decides it’s fair, and probably a good sign as far as your usefulness to the League. After what happened today, it’s pretty clear that the League could use some members who are a little less trusting. You step back from the window, leaving space for Shigaraki to step through. “Get in here before someone sees you.”
Shigaraki smacks his head on the window frame, and it’s your fault. Your fault, because you’re holding out your hand for him to take, so you can help him through, and it’s such a weird thing to do that he can’t focus. You know how his quirk works. Why would you give him a chance to touch you? He avoids your outstretched hand, loses his balance, smacks his head on the other side of the window this time, and you catch his elbow to steady him. You’re touching him. Nobody touches Shigaraki on purpose. Nobody who’s not trying to hurt him.
You act like it’s nothing, and you let him go, shutting the window behind him with a wave of your hand. Then you turn away. “Find somewhere to sit. The food’s almost done.”
It smells even better inside your apartment than it did on the fire escape. Shigaraki wants to pay attention to that, but you just turned your back on him. “You sure you trust me this much?”
“I don’t need to look at you to know what you’re doing. My metal sense takes care of that.” You’re stirring something in a pan on the stove now. “I wouldn’t say I love my odds, but I’m okay with them. Do you want water to drink or something?”
“Uh, okay.” Shigaraki watches as you leave whatever’s on the stove to open a cabinet and retrieve a glass, which you fill from a pitcher in the fridge. You hand it to him and go back to the stove, and Shigaraki stares at it stupidly. Better that he stares at it than at you.
You aren’t doing what he expected you to do. Now that Shigaraki thinks about it, he’s got no idea what he was expecting you to do. Scream? Faint? Be ecstatic to see him? Drag him into your apartment and offer yourself to him – not just your allegiance to the League, but all of you, all for him? Shigaraki’s face heats up at the thought. You wouldn’t do that. You don’t even post thirst-traps on Instagram. There’s no way you’d get physical with him on your second meeting. Which is good. Because Shigaraki’s not exactly experienced in that department, and it’s possible that he’s never been less in the mood.
Shigaraki is used to having shitty days. He’s had a lot of shitty days in the last year. He’s gotten shot, stabbed, punched, punched but with explosions added in, and fucked things up so badly that Sensei had to get involved, only for Sensei get captured by the heroes. But today is abnormally, astronomically shitty – shitty enough to top all the others combined. This is the first shitty day in Shigaraki’s adult life where someone he cares about has died. And the first time it’s been his fault.
Maybe not totally his fault. There’s blame to go around. But Shigaraki’s the leader, so it’s on him. He should have been more suspicious of Overhaul from the start, regardless of what Twice said. He should have ended the meeting immediately when he realized Overhaul’s true intentions, and he should have had Kurogiri on standby, so the League could leave if Overhaul refused to. Failing all that, he should have found a way to stop Magne and Compress from engaging Overhaul – something he could have planned for, if he’d been smart enough to be suspicious. Instead he was stupid, and now Magne’s dead.
And Shigaraki couldn’t even take revenge on Overhaul. Assessing the scene, realizing they were outmatched, and calling a pause was probably the smartest thing Shigaraki did all day.
They couldn’t keep using that hideout. No one wanted to stay after what happened, and there was a chance Overhaul had tipped off the police to where they were. Shigaraki ordered the League to scatter for twenty-four hours and reunite at a new hideout, which Kurogiri is responsible for finding. Shigaraki doesn’t know where everyone else went. But he didn’t think twice before coming here, to your city. To your neighborhood. To you.
“Shigaraki.” You say his name as you’re setting two rice bowls in front of two chairs at a tiny kitchen table. “Do you want to sit down?”
Right. He’s standing here, staring at a glass of water, like an idiot. Shigaraki sits down in front of one bowl and you sit at the other. “What’s in here?”
“Flank steak, spinach, broccoli, mushrooms, carrots, garlic, ginger, green onions –” You trail off to eat some of it. “And rice underneath. I’m guessing Kurogiri forgot some of that stuff.”
“The last three things.” Shigaraki picks up his chopsticks, lifts out a piece of broccoli, and inspects it. It doesn’t look quite as disgusting as whatever Kurogiri made. He sticks it in his mouth, burns his tongue, realizes that it doesn’t actually taste bad, and starts talking in a hurry. “You can’t tell anyone about this. If they find out –”
“That you ate a vegetable?” You look skeptical. Maybe because Shigaraki’s talking with his mouth full. “There are lots of reasons I can’t tell anybody about this. I might as well add that to the list.”
Shigaraki makes sure to finish chewing before he tries to say anything else, then decides against saying anything at all in favor of trying to figure out which of the vegetables tastes the worst. You don’t ask him any questions. You’re just eating dinner, like it’s a normal night, like it doesn’t matter that Shigaraki’s here at all.
Maybe you’re playing it cool. “So,” Shigaraki starts, after a sip of water to wash the taste of carrots out of his mouth, “you must not think much of the League of Villains, if you used more of your quirk on a train than on us.”
You used more of your quirk pinning Shigaraki to the fire escape than you did during the second Kamino incident, but Shigaraki decides not to point that out. You’re making a face. “They were totally different situations. If I’d used that kind of power in our fight, I’d have taken down all the buildings your boss and All Might didn’t get to during the first battle.”
“So what? Capturing us wasn’t worth it?” Shigaraki can tell by your expression that this is the wrong way to go. He stuffs a wad of spinach into his mouth to give himself some time to think, then drinks some water to give a little more. “You said it was different with the train. Why?”
“It was on an elevated track.”
“Huh?”
“The train was on an elevated track.” You’re picking at your food. “The problem with my quirk isn’t whether I can grab something and pull it towards me, the problem is what happens to everything in between. If the train had been street level or underground, the magnetic field I was altering would have torn up everything with a similar metallic signature to the train. But the train was on an elevated track. There was nothing around it with a matching signature, so I could let loose.”
It sounds like there’s not a limit to your quirk. You held back at Kamino because you didn’t want to make a mess. “How hard was it to stop the train?”
“Harder once I fell over.”
You’re avoiding Shigaraki’s eyes, and Shigaraki adjusts your answer to reflect reality. “It wasn’t hard at all,” he says. You keep averting your eyes. There’s color coming up in your face. “Damn.”
You eat a few more bites, and so does Shigaraki. The food is good, or at least good enough to highlight how bad Kurogiri’s cooking is. If Shigaraki wasn’t already sure he needed you for the League, he’d be convinced now – between your quirk and the fact that you can make the vegetables he’s supposed to eat taste like anything other than garbage, he’s pretty sure you’ll be essential. “Is that why you came here?” you ask, and Shigaraki looks up. “To talk about my quirk?”
“What else is there to talk about?” What do people talk about on dinner dates, anyway? “How our days were? Like I’d tell you that.”
“You could,” you say. “There’s nobody I could tell about it.”
“Bullshit. You’re a hero –”
“And if I went to the cops and spilled all your secrets, their next question would be where I got the information,” you say. “I can’t exactly say ‘I got it from Shigaraki Tomura, when he came over for dinner last night.’ So if you want to talk about how your day went, you can.”
Shigaraki’s chest goes tight. Maybe he swallowed something wrong. “You first,” he says. “What did you do today? Let me guess – dispensing peace and justice with government-sponsored violence.”
You laugh. “Today I fixed some girl’s bike so she could get to work on time. Then I got called out to a primary school to help some kid who got his head stuck in the rails on a staircase. After that I caught some guy spray-painting ‘bitch’ on his ex-wife’s car. That would have been a nuisance crime, except he’d been stalking her, too.”
Shigaraki knew you were small-time, but this is ridiculous. “Don’t you get bored?”
“There was a car accident, too,” you say. “The fire department was late, so I helped pry open the car so the passengers could get out. And then I helped clear wreckage from somebody else’s villain fight downtown until my shift ended.”
Five incidents, one actual interaction with a criminal. “That’s not going to get you back in the headlines.”
“Believe me, I’d love to stay out of them,” you say. Shigaraki remembers what Spinner said about how you’re a hero Stain would approve of. It sounds like he’s right. “Today was a decent day. How was yours?”
Shigaraki’s throat closes. He’s still hungry – really hungry – but if he tried to swallow something right now, he’s pretty sure he’d choke on it. The anger builds inside him, seeking any target, and you’re the closest. “Don’t ask me that. You don’t give a shit about me.”
“Hey –”
“You call someone a villain and you can write them off for good. It doesn’t matter what happens to villains. Villains aren’t people to you.” Shigaraki can’t believe you’re trying to argue with him. “Sure, I could tell you how my day was. If I wanted to watch you pretend to care that one of my friends died.”
Your eyes widen. “Someone died?”
Shigaraki wasn’t going to tell you anything, and then he told you, right in the middle of telling you all the reasons why he wasn’t going to tell you. This is a fucking nightmare. “Save it for someone who believes your stupid act. I’m out of here.”
“My stupid act, huh?” Your voice is sharp. “Let me tell you something about what happened at Kamino, Shigaraki. I should have captured you then. I had everything I needed to take you down. And then I got so distracted when I realized you were sick that I let all four of you escape. I screwed myself pretty solidly for somebody who doesn’t care, don’t you think?”
You did, sort of. Shigaraki knows that if you hadn’t stopped the train, the public would still hate you. A society as corrupt as this one doesn’t forgive mistakes like the one you made. Like the one you’re making right now, if anybody ever finds out you let him in. “You’re still sick,” you continue. “I can feel it. And it doesn’t take a genius to see that something bad happened. I don’t know what’s going on in your head, but I don’t think you came here just to see if I bought a flower.”
You don’t say why you think Shigaraki came here. With Shigaraki’s luck, you’d guess right, and the sheer humiliation of being called out on it would probably kill him. “You said you bought one. Where is it?”
“Right there.”
Right there, as in dead center on the table, right in the middle of Shigaraki’s eyeline. And here he was thinking it couldn’t get worse. “I think you probably meant a cut flower, but I wanted this one,” you say. “It’s alive, so it should keep blooming as long as I don’t kill it through benign neglect.”
Shigaraki’s throat won’t relax. He coughs, trying to clear it. “Kill a lot of plants, do you?”
“Only by accident,” you say. “It probably doesn’t make a difference to the plant, but under human law, intention matters.”
“What?”
“Crime is bad,” you say. No shit. Shigaraki snorts. “But the degree of badness depends on the intention. If I lost control of my quirk and hurt someone, I’d be in trouble. But I’d be in a lot more trouble if I hurt them deliberately.”
Shigaraki’s stomach ties itself in a knot. “For serious crimes, the reason why a person did something matters, too,” you continue. “If I was a civilian and someone attacked me, I might hurt them with my quirk to protect myself. But if I hurt that person the same way in an argument, that would be different. And sometimes premeditation can be a mitigating factor – like, a person being stalked and threatened might feel so backed into a corner that killing the stalker feels like the only option. They’d have to plan that ahead of time, probably. But it’s not something they’d have done if they hadn’t been pushed to the limit first.”
The knot in Shigaraki’s stomach is pulling his entire body with it – intestines, heart, lungs. He stands up so fast he knocks his chair over. “Bathroom.”
“Down the hall. Door on the right,” you say. “Are you –”
Shigaraki’s in the bathroom with the door locked before you can finish asking the question. He hunches over the sink, struggling to breathe without gagging. Why did you tell him that? All that stuff about intention and premeditation and the reasons mattering – why would you think he needed to hear it? Shigaraki’s pretty sure you don’t monologue about the legal system to your hero friends, but you weren’t trying to convince him that the system’s good, or right. You were just telling him. Almost like you know.
Like you know what? That question gives Shigaraki pause, and in the pause, he forces himself to straighten up and take a look around. Your bathroom is small, like everything else in y our apartment. There’s not a lot of stuff lying around on the counter. Or a lot of stuff under the sink, when he looks down there. The cabinet behind the mirror has more in it, but Shigaraki’s not sure what to make of what he’s looking at. Girl stuff, probably. Does sunscreen count as girl stuff? There’s makeup, or what Shigaraki thinks is makeup, but not much of it has been used. Most of it is still in its packaging. There’s also a pile of narrow elastic bands – black, made of fabric, not rubber. Hair ties. Shigaraki picks one up and slides it down over his wrist.
He’s not sure why he did that, but he feels a little better, and he takes a few more deep breaths. You weren’t trying to do something to him. You were just talking, because people talk when they go out to dinner together. There’s nothing weird happening. You don’t know anything. You’re in love with him. It’s fine.
Shigaraki leaves the bathroom and makes his way down the hall, stopping in a few places to look at the pictures you have hanging up. There’s one where you’re hugging a big golden dog, looking stupid-happy and a lot younger than you are now. Another one from when you were a student at UA, in a school uniform, standing with three other girls. And then there’s one that makes Shigaraki feel sick and angry all over again – you and some guy. He’s got his arm around your shoulders.
“That’s my brother.”
Shigaraki jumps, swears. You snuck up on him. “He doesn’t live in Japan,” you continue. “So if you were planning to use him to get back at me, find something else.”
“I’ll get back at you when you do something to me,” Shigaraki says. “Not before.”
You study him, head tilted to one side. “Are you okay?” you ask. “You looked like you were going to be sick.”
“I want to finish the food,” Shigaraki says. He has a bad feeling about his ability to lie to you right now. Lying is a bad policy with somebody he’s trying to recruit. The fucking recruitment thing. How did he forget about that? “Did you get rid of it?”
“No,” you say, puzzled. “It’s probably gotten cold, though. I’ll heat it up again.”
Shigaraki leans against the kitchen counter while you mess with the microwave, and decides to test your supposed metal sense while he’s waiting. He reaches out, like he’s going to grab your shoulder, and his arm stalls in midair, held back by the metal shackle around his wrist. Pulling back doesn’t make a difference, and it fits too closely to pull his hand free. Shigaraki tries to bring up his other hand and Decay the shackle, but that hand freezes in place, too. You didn’t even turn around. “Can I help you?”
“Just testing you,” Shigaraki says. “You really are good. Want to let me go?”
You shrug. “You might not believe me, but I’m sorry about your friend,” you say. “Whichever of your friends it was. I wish it hadn’t happened. To them or to you.”
Shigaraki doesn’t sleep much. He’s pretty sure what happened to Magne and Compress will be making an appearance in his nightmares. It’ll fit in nicely with the nightmares he already has, which also include a lot of blood and dismembered bodies. “Heroes like it when villains kill villains, right? Like taking out the trash.”
“You must spend a lot of time arguing with the imaginary hero in your head.” The microwave beeps, and you lift the bowls out without touching them. “You’re talking to me. Listen to what I’m saying.”
“What are you saying, then?”
“I’m saying I’m sorry about your friend.” You turn to face Shigaraki, arms crossed over your chest, while the bowls drift back to the table and settle on opposite sides. “I wish it hadn’t happened. Is there anything I can do?”
“Let me out.” Shigaraki pulls at the shackles again, and you release your hold on them. “And if you get a chance, put Overhaul in the fucking ground.”
“Overhaul,” you repeat. “Like, Hassaikai Overhaul? He did it?”
“Yeah. Why?”
“You need to stay away from him,” you say flatly. “From all of them. It’s not safe.”
“I know it’s not fucking safe. They just killed my friend. Do you think I’m going to –” Shigaraki breaks off as a thought crosses his mind. “What do you mean, it’s not safe?”
“It’s not safe,” you say again. You step around Shigaraki, and he follows you to the table. “I can’t tell you why. But it’s not a good idea to be anywhere near Overhaul or his organization right now.”
“Why?”
“I can’t tell you,” you say. You pick up your chopsticks. “Are you going to eat?”
The food smells good heated up again. Shigaraki takes a few bites and thinks over what you said. You know something about the Shie Hassaikai, and whatever it is, it’s enough to make you warn Shigaraki away from them. You love him, so some of it is probably that you don’t want him going back near somebody who killed his friend. But it sounds like more than that. You can’t tell him why. What’s something a hero can’t tell a villain?
What the other heroes are up to. Shigaraki feels a grin spreading across his face. “The heroes are going after the Hassaikai.” Across the table, you cringe. “I’m right, aren’t I?”
“No!”
You’re not a good liar, at least not to Shigaraki. Good to know. Shigaraki eats fast, his mind working faster. Overhaul thinks he’s smarter than everyone else, heroes and villains both. Which will be more humiliating – getting his shit rocked by another villain, or being crushed by a gang of heroes? It’s the last one for sure. Shigaraki doesn’t have to do the heavy lifting of destroying Overhaul. All he has to do is pretend to help, stay out of the way, and yank the illusion of his support when Overhaul needs it most. To betray Overhaul’s trust. Just like Overhaul did to him.
Easy enough. And Shigaraki wouldn’t have known about it if you hadn’t told him.
Shigaraki has a hard time believing that he ever felt weird about you being in love with him. You didn’t hand him over to the cops. You let him in. You made food for him and tried to make him feel better and actually succeeded, at least a little, when you gave him a clue about how to crush Overhaul. As far as Shigaraki can see, there’s not a single downside to having a hero as a girlfriend.
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