Work Text:
Can my life be the light of a heart that is beating slow
As they try to survive in a pain that I'd never know?
A second ago they were fighting, the heir of the demon lord and the symbol of peace, clashing violently above the ruined cityscape, but now they simply hang in the air with an eerie stillness. They’re talking, but whatever they’re saying is too low to be heard, drowned out by the shouts of the other combatants and the noise of battle.
You try to yell, but no sound comes.
They drift closer, Tomura’s brilliant white hair swaying in a rhythm disconnected from the wind howling around him. For a brief moment Tomura’s face is hidden behind the hero’s. When you see his face again, he is wearing a sad smile.
He says something that only the hero can hear, and then is gone in a spray of red.
Deep inside I will find all the words in a daze I wrote
Every line left to die for the one that I loved the most
The hero student hangs in the air for a second and begins to float slowly towards the ground. There are tears in his eyes, spilling over and running down his bloodstained face.
Aizawa’s capture weapon has gone slack. You take the opportunity and run, portals and flight forgotten, towards the boy. There are shouts behind you, the sound of feet pounding against stone in pursuit as you near the hero child. The boy turns to face him, tears still streaming down his face.
“I’m sorry.”
You wrap your arms around the boy and pull him to you, dead unmoving chest hoping to bring comfort to the boy’s erratic beat. The shoulder you’ve tucked your face into grows wet, and you realize that you too are crying.
You didn’t know you could still cry.
The town and populace are all a twisted lie
So full of demons, I had finally realized
When Kurogiri first meets his charge, Tomura Shigaraki is five years old, and Kurogiri knows that he is doomed.
Kurogiri has very little memory before a few months ago, waking up in a strange room with a strange white haired man claiming to be its savior. Even then, with no memory of who or what it was, Kurogiri did not trust him. After weeks of poking and prodding from the “doctor” that left it constantly clouded in a strange mist, that feeling has been solidified.
The boy looks up at it with pleading red eyes, and Kurogiri makes a decision that, even years later, it will never regret.
It reaches a hand out to the child.
What a life of desire eating them alive
As I gaze away with cold reflective eyes
The child, it is told, is called Tomura Shigaraki, and he is to be the white-haired man’s successor. Kurogiri sees the way he looks down hungrily at its charge like a dragon staring down a young adventurer.
Kurogiri is given an order: Protect Shigaraki Tomura. It is the one order it never questions.
And once again the puppets dance upon their strings
Too deaf to hear the twisted actor as he sings
Every week, Tomura goes to see his “Sensei”, and every week he comes back with the same empty look in his eyes as the first time they met. Every week it is harder and harder to bring back the child that Kurogiri has come to love.
One day he comes back with blood on his clothes and a new pair of hands gripping his tiny arms. He does not speak to Kurogiri that day, disappearing into his room above the bar. He finally tells Kurogiri what happened, as it sits beside its charge’s bed after a nightmare.
Tomura’s lessons with “Sensei” are not safe. Kurogiri must protect Tomura Shigaraki. Sensei is a danger to Tomura. Danger must be eliminated.
Lacking reason we were born, I wonder why we live
When every dream we catalyzed disappears in sin, so
The next week goes by in a haze of too bright lights and searing pain. It should have known that it stood no chance against Sensei.
"Please, somebody love me"
A prayer we all had dreamed about, just
Kurogiri misses Tomura’s birthday that year. It makes up for it the best it can the next year.
"Please, somebody love me"
We take the hand that's reaching out, so
They’re not supposed to leave the bar without telling Sensei, and they’re definitely not supposed to talk to heroes, but that shouldn’t be a problem. They won’t actually talk to Eraserhead.
"Please, somebody love me"
I'll carve and free my heart
Eraserhead finds them instead, dropping behind them when he notices them on the rooftop. He seems surprised to meet a fan, but he answers all of Tomura’s questions. It’s strange, something about the hero seems almost familiar to Kurogiri. As they return to the bar, Tomura dozing in Kurogiri’s arms says something that it will never forget.
“Thanks Dad!”
This is the first and only time Tomura calls Kurogiri dad.
With a love so pathetic and sweet that it may fall apart
Sensei is waiting for them when they get back.
Can my life be the light of a heart that is beating slow
As they try to survive in a pain that I'd never know?
It’s easier this time, somehow. Like knowing that Tomura is waiting for it gives it the strength to go on. They ramp up its programming this time, so it can barely think without orders echoing through his head. It doesn’t matter, its main priority is still Protect Tomura Shigaraki and it will never attempt to go against that order.
When my mind looked behind at the end of the fading road
Watching time, did I find: death was soon in tow
Sensei does all he can to make this hard for it. He starts taking Tomura for their lessons more and more often, sometimes bringing Tomura back with injuries they both refuse to explain. It’s okay, Kurogiri trusts Sensei, but it still causes it to worry.
I'd be alright if I drowned in the rain below
Close my eyes in the night and be one with the warping tones
Tomura doesn’t appreciate its fussing, hissing and retreating to his room if Kurogiri does much more than dress his wounds. Over time, as the lessons increase in frequency, he begins to withdraw from Kurogiri more and more.
Sensei tells him it is normal, and Kurogiri believes him. S̸̛̮̺͌̾e̶̳̅͗n̶̗̘̲̑̿ş̷̾͊͝ȅ̷̤̝̳ȋ̷̝̟̟̓ ̵͇̎̈́͛i̴̯͚̅̆̕ŝ̴̱ ̴̢̗͉̈́͝ả̷̡̻͂l̶̰͔͖͑̈͋w̵̰̲͕͛ȧ̶̼͈͂y̵͕̗̗̾̓s̸̜̝̗̕̚ ̵̠̯̣̈̊͊r̴͔͕̀̄̒ỉ̶̤͉g̸̢͈̒͘h̵̥͓̥̆̅ṫ̴̹̤̣̈̈.̵̺̈͜
So could I, oh could I, like the days that I loved the most
Shun the light by your side-an umbrella to hold us close?
Still, when Tomura is speaking with the recruits that escaped the forest raid, it’s the happiest he’s looked in years. Even after Magne’s death, he doesn’t retreat from the others the way Kurogiri expects. Something in the back of its head whispers that it should be concerned, that these new team members are wild cards that don’t listen to Sensei, but it pushes the thought away. Tomura is smiling, genuinely smiling for the first time in years. This is good for him, and Kurogiri is meant to look after his wellbeing, isn’t it?
If only I had never woken from the dream
I wonder, maybe, if we'd meet again in peace?
Kurogiri leaves Tomura to find Machia, confident that he’ll be alright without it for a little bit.
Tomura is fine, but Kurogiri is not.
But my fingers lose their warmth as I face reality
What's the force that moves my beating heart
The incessant memories?
Tartarus is surreal. It alternates between glaring and bright in the same way as the doctor’s workplace and oppressive all consuming blackness. Kurogiri is heavily restrained, and it’s fairly certain that if it still had blood to flow its limbs would have lost all feeling a long time ago.
Eraserhead and Present Mic ( Shota and Hizashi ) come to see it, and for the first time in years it remembers that ill fated trip out of the bar with Tomura. Does Shota remember, it wonders?
Sho Eraserhead asks where the Nomu factories are and it feels for a second as though your its very soul is tearing itself apart.
Kurogiri Shirakumo manages a few words, and then it you know s no more.
Fading station in the rain, a clinic colored gray, the Power lines all stacked the same
See the stop within the shade, a ferris wheel crumbling
Left to rot away
The crumbling city is beautiful and horrifying in equal measure. Tomura has grown so much, and you can’t help but be proud, but something in you weeps for the boy he once was.
Flowers blooming in your place, you sing another day, but
Something isn't sane
Ah, how can they act like nothing more remains?
You don’t join in with the celebrations when Tomura falls, or when the battle has finally ended. Himiko had attached herself to your side at first, leaning into you for comfort, but she’s eventually coaxed away by Yuuga and the gravity girl to join the hero students.
"Let me die close my eyes, yet I live through another day”
Himiko has been thriving at UA, and you feel a bit guilty for thinking this, but you wonder if she really needs you there. Shota has been remarkably accepting, and she finally has some real friends her age.
Surely if you just quietly slipped away, she’d be fine…
Wanting life, deep inside, now the last of your sorrow fades
You have to hold back tears every time you see Eri. Shota explains about her situation and it…
It’s not fair.
Why, oh why, do we cry when the petals all wilt in pain?
Pretty lies, borrowed time--that's the human race
You finally gather the courage to look in the mirror with the mist down. There’s a nasty scar running down your forehead and over your cheek, but you otherwise look exactly the same as the day you died.
Shota and Hizashi have changed, and yet you stay the same, too soft cheeks accentuating tired eyes in a face that hasn’t changed for over a decade.
There might not be such a thing as eternity
All the days we had paved might not ever have led to peace
Years pass, but you never get any older. Whatever process made you a nomu has frozen you in time, forever 17 beneath the inky mist. Unless you were killed, it’s entirely possible that you would have outlived your charge regardless of what happened to him.
That can’t have been intentional.
Yet the same, night will fade and we'll open our eyes to see
His grave is small, hidden away on the corner of the UA campus. You can’t leave him without some kind of memorial, and you know it wouldn’t survive if it were somewhere more public.
Tied by fate, we remain, by a thread that will never leave
Himiko is practically glued to you whenever anyone new shows up. She’s getting used to her new life, but it seems you’re still the only adult she trusts.
Yuuga is wary of you at first, until he wakes up one night from a nightmare to find you down in the common room. The dream is All for One, slow but inevitable, with his hands stretched out in front of him as you try to run. You’ve had that nightmare more times than you can count.
You’re pretty sure Bakugo doesn’t like you. You can’t exactly blame him, though, so you try to give him space. Still, there are some things that you can’t just sit by and watch. When you open a portal over his head as his mother brings her hand down he yells that he can deal with his own problems, but he’s a little less cold to you from then on.
Any place, any shame, I would live through the darkest dream
If the trade I had made meant you went through the night with me
It’s strange, that of all the things you’ve been through, it’s Tomura’s death that haunts you the most. But then again, it was his death that made all your suffering pointless in the end, wasn’t it?
In the flames, through the pain, you were all that I'd ever need
Every day, burnt away, you're my heart that beats
You cannot bring yourself to mourn Shirakumo Oboro, or what he could have been, not the way you know your old friends do. If Shirakumo had never died, you would never have met Tomura, never been there to give him what little happiness you could find in that hell.
Ah, let me be everything you had ever done for me
Yuuga asks if you regret what you’ve done. You say you do, that you never wanted to hurt your friends, but if you were to go back you would do it again in a heartbeat. Even through the horrors, you’ve gained things that you could never let go.
Yuuga agrees, says if he could go back he’d take All for One’s deal again if it meant that he’d end up where he is now. He asks if that makes him a bad person, that he isn’t willing to give that part of himself up.
You say no. It’s the fact that he took that deal, that he danced with the devil and came out the other side, that makes him who he is now. You’re sure he wouldn’t be half as good a hero if he didn’t know what it felt like to be a villain.
Be the heart in the grief that would reach out a hand and could set me free
“Thanks ‘Giri. I don’t know what I’d do without you.”