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Keep your face to the sunshine, and you cannot see the shadow - Hellen Keller
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He wakes up confused. The first thing he registers is the black smoke. It blots out large areas of his line of sight, shifting restlessly, and he catches glimpses of a white room beyond that gives the distinct impression of mad scientist lab.
He is not gagged, but he cannot speak, a line of fire running from the base of his throat to his pelvis. He is tied to a cold surface, on his back and facing the tiled white ceiling, where a domed steel lamp sways, splattering elongated shadows on the walls, covered in grime and speckles of something dark and rusted.
As the smoke shifts and exposes a body in the lamp's reflective surface, one that is cut open throat to navel, pins holding his skin back from the ribs. A fine black mist pours out of the incision, out of him, opaque at the centre. It writhes, alive, and he sees glimpses of yellow-white bone, several things red and glistening that should not be exposed as they are.
The next instant, he is on the ground, gagging on nothing.
Pins scatter to the cold tile, and the smoke tightens around his torso. He is distantly surprised considering he was shackled by the wrists and ankles not two seconds previous, but more immediately concerned by the nauseous feeling of it hurts it hurts it hurts organs should NOT move that way.
He finds a grip on the edge of the gurney he'd been tied to, pulling himself up to a half-standing position. Blackness rises from his torso to fill his vision -
Then he is stumbling in an empty hallway, bracing his hands on his knees to avoid faceplanting as vertigo hits. He catches his reflection in the window to his right, beyond it a white room with a bloodied table that was likely what he had been strapped to.
He has no face.
His head is coated in shadow, bright smears of light near the top of his head where his eyes should be.
A man steps into the end of the hallway. Passably handsome, dressed in a three-piece suit.
"Ah, you're out again."
He swallows once, twice. It feels like serrated knifes dragged down his throat.
"The children?" he asks. His voice is thin and croaky, but lower than it seems it should be. He is surprised he can still speak at all. He's less surprised it hurts like hell.
The man tilts his head. Inexplicable anxiety pricks in his brain, and he takes a shuffling step back.
"What children?" the man asks silkily.
He doesn't know - "The children I was protecting."
There is no context behind his words, a blank nothingness in his memory, question on autopilot.
"So you remember that, do you?"
Yes. No. He says nothing. His back hits a wall. (it doesn't seem like the obstacle it should be)
"What is your name?" The man asks. It seems to be an idle question.
"Shirakumo Oboro," he says, words spilling out before he can think to wonder where they came from.
The man clicks his tongue.
It is the wrong answer.
What is your name
Shirakumo Oboro
What is your name
Oboro
What is your name
Shira - Shir - Ob -
What is your name
I don’t know
What is your name
Please don’t hurt me
He wakes up confused. The first thing he registers is black smoke, filling the room. His thoughts go every which way, fragments and fragments that slip elusively through the cracks before they can form properly.
His body is made of mist. He can touch nothing (but that means nothing can touch him, which is one less thing to worry about)
A man in a three piece suit looms over him.
"What is your name?"
His thoughts are scattered, but this is an easy question to answer.
"I am Kurogiri," he says, and the man smiles.
There are no restraints that can hold him anymore. He knows better than to leave, the invisible shackles tight as a noose.
"If you just listened," the Doctor says. "We wouldn't have to put you to sleep so often."
"My apologies," Kurogiri says, even though he doesn't know what the Doctor is talking about.
His head is pounding and he knows things have been taken away again. It is not unusual though, for holes in his memories to exist. His thoughts are more holes than memory. If the Doctor were to his skull open, he wonders if his brain would look like Swiss cheese.
"You're a decent assistant," the other sighs, waving his clipboard at Kurogiri. "But this is the fourth time you've let my experiments go. How am I supposed to help our benefactor if I don't have subjects, stupid boy?"
"My apologies," he repeats.
"It's to be expected of a budding hero, I suppose. We might find some other use for you yet. Lie down."
The word hero rings alarm bells in his mind, but he is put to sleep before he can ponder further.
He has been awake for some time when he is introduced to the child.
"This is Kurogiri," Master says, dismissive. "Think of him as a 24/7 caretaker."
The child is another weight, another thing tying Kurogiri to Master. He can no longer remember why the notion is repugnant, only that it is, and thinks of how best to resist this one.
He looks up at Kurogiri with wide red eyes, stringy hair hanging in his face, scars running from forehead to cheekbone.
Kurogiri kneels to his level without resistance.
"Hello. I am Kurogiri. I shall be the one to protect you."
He lets the second shackle slip on, snug against his heart.
Tomura is a lovely child.
He likes video games and dog videos, and his eyes shine when he sees Kurogiri come in with Neapolitan ice cream. He laughs when Kurogiri's warp-assisted cooking inevitably fails and teleported takeout falls out of dark portals instead.
Kurogiri has not had to step into the Doctor's lab in a while, has not recieved any orders beyond mundane childcare from Master. This is a new status quo, a good one.
Good things, as per usual, are never meant to last.
Tomura comes back bruised and battered more often than not, but this time he is crying and hurting himself and Kurogiri cannot touch the boy.
"Shigaraki Tomura," he pleads, vapor grasping through a pale wrist.
"I don't want to kill them," Tomura says, dragging blunt nails down his face, uncaring for the red streaks they leave behind.
There was a body beneath the mist, he knows this. When he coaxes it out, he feels as though someone has taken a pickaxe to his right temple.
He holds Shigaraki Tomura that night, taking care that his body is solid.
When morning comes, Tomura is wrapped around his middle. Kurogiri still cannot feel touch, likely never will, but he can feel pressure.
It is akin to wisdom teeth surgery, numb with anaesthetic but with the feel the dentist cutting away.
(As is becoming more common, he does not stop to wonder how he knew that.)
His head feels as if it has been split in two by the concentration needed. It is a small price to pay.
"If anyone is a threat to you," he says softly into Tomura's hair. "Do not hesitate to eliminate them. You must remain safe."
The child does not wake, but his grip tightens on Kurogiri's waist.
Protect Shigaraki Tomura gets easier and easier to do. Kurogiri suspects that this is in part because the more the time he spends with Tomura, the less he does with Master and the Doctor.
They stuff his head so full of orders that willpower is no longer necessary.
The part of him that is constantly screaming is muted.
But.
Tomura comes home with broken bones and ash coating his clothes, his hands shaking. He knows by now that the order must have come from All for One. Something in him is unraveling, the world tilting to the side. Tomura's faded hoodie is dark with blood.
It has been years since Kurogiri was last put to sleep, not since he was tasked with protecting the child. His head is clearer than it has ever been, and he feels seconds away from vomiting.
"Shigaraki Tomura, listen to me." He cannot remember his own name, but he knows it isn't Kurogiri and he knows that - "We need to run. All for One is a monster. He will destroy you. We need to -"
"What are you talking about?" Tomura recoils from him, and his hand slips through the kid's sleeve when he reaches out. Not now, fuck -
His awareness is already slipping, but there is still a way to get out of here. With his quirk, he could go anywhere. If he is fast enough, they can get help from the heroes, escape All for One and never look back.
"You need to give me the order. To - Tenko, please."
The boy jerks back and bites his lip, indecision welling in his wide eyes.
He shakes his head, and Kurogiri's heart sinks.
"What is your name?" his Master says idly, habitual.
"I am Kurogiri." The name feels like a shirt that doesn't quite fit, but it is the only one he knows. "The one who protects Shigaraki Tomura."
Lights from the large screens illuminate the man's face, catching on the edge of a satisfied smirk.
"But I think," mist fills the room, leaking out of his body. If he cannot run... "That I have identified the biggest obstacle to my objective."
If anyone is a threat to you, Shigaraki Tomura, do not hesitate to eliminate them.
All for One tilts his head, glancing back out of the corner of one eye.
Kurogiri (Ob - ) surges forward.
Shigaraki Tomura clings to him the moment he steps into view.
"Where were you?" the boy demands, looking up so that his chin digs into Kurogiri's stomach.
"Master had something he wanted from me." It is vague enough that it isn't a lie. "How long have I been gone?"
"Weeks," Tomura looks sullen, releasing his waist. Kurogiri can see he was terrified. He wonders what Tomura had been told, if he had been told anything at all.
He leans down to pick up one of the discarded game controllers.
"Then I have a lot of time to make up for. Have you managed to beat my level yet, Shigaraki Tomura?"
Tomura scowls, but there is relief in his eyes, and he sits down to take the other console.
For once, Kurogiri is grateful for the mist surrounding him. It hides the way his hands shake.
Protect Shigaraki Tomura.
Obey your master.
He spends more and more time in his head.
Protect Shigaraki Tomura is something that feels natural, that he would do without hesitation, but being robbed of a choice in the matter makes him feel sick and caged. But this feeling fades easily, and has no bearing on his actions.
The next time Tomura is attacked, Kurogiri is there. He stands aside.
The look Tomura gives him is one of pure betrayal, before the boy is forced to fight.
Later, when Kurogiri is patching up his wounds, the boy refuses to look at him at all.
That is alright. He doesn't understand yet, but he will grow into what Master wants. That is all that matters.
Obey your master.
Bandages wrapped, Kurogiri sends Tomura off for a shower.
He is covered in his attackers' ashes.
"What do you even care? You - You're nothing but Sensei's tool."
Tomura claps his hands over his mouth.
Kurogiri takes it in stride. Tomura is going through puberty, children tend to be temperamental at this age. He pulls the broom and scoop out and gets to work cleaning what remains of the table.
After a few moments, the boy comes over. He has to step onto the ashes to get near, smearing it further. Kurogiri tsks, trying to shoo him off to one of the tall chairs by the bar, but he grabs the broom handle instead.
"I'll - I'll do it, 'Giri."
He sweeps in silence. He misses several spots. Kurogiri will need to clean again after his charge is asleep, so Tomura will not think his efforts are undermined.
"I'm sorry, I didn't mean it."
"Hmm?"
"What I said, just now." Tomura refuses to look at him. The silence stretches, and red creeps onto his face, preemptive defensiveness into his voice. "I know you aren't - It's just that you sometimes don't do anything but what he tells you, even when you said you wouldn't and you - just, forget it. I shouldn't have said it. That's all."
Kurogiri tries to understand where this is coming from.
"You said nothing that isn't true, Shigaraki Tomura."
The boy's eyes snap to him, brows furrowed in distress, and this too, he doesn't understand.
"But you shouldn't shout," he adds. Maybe that's the problem. "That's rude."
Tomura is silent for so long that Kurogiri tugs the broom from his grip and gets back to sweeping the floor.
The hug makes him jump, but it's gone before he can react. Tomura turns away, rubbing at his eyes.
"Play video games with me," he demands.
"...Of course, Shigaraki Tomura."
The day the Doctor reveals his newest project, Tomura is sick for the first time in years.
Kurogiri rubs his back as vomit hits the insides of the porcelain bowl. He keeps one eye on the door.
Tomura had thankfully kept his composure throughout most of the scientist's... exhibition, finally leaving under the guise of a convincing temper tantrum when it became too much.
The Doctor wasn't normally one to notice details in human behavior, but there was always a chance he had and this would get back to their Master. When no one comes until Tomura stops heaving, Kurogiri makes him rinse his mouth out and warps him over to bed.
He started babbling at some point, and Kurogiri tuned it out until he realizes that Tomura's apologizing, over and over. I'm sorry repeated between hitched sobs and gags.
Tomura had developed quite the strong stomach and constitution as he grew older, something of a stoic, sneering disposition, and could fake apathy at the best of times. This throws Kurogiri back years, to the six-year-old who clung to him in the wake of nightmares.
"There is nothing to apologize for. You did not show any averse reaction until you left. The Doctor did not notice." He's relatively sure of that.
Tomura sits up and stares at Kurogiri with wild eyes. "That didn't bother you?"
"I have seen worse." And so has Tomura. But maybe it was the exposed brains that distressed him.
"He made them do -"
Ah. So that was the problem. The Doctor's orders to his creations to tear each other apart in a show of power. He thinks back and realizes it is probably the first time Tomura has seen this particular brand of the Doctor's control.
(Kurogiri's own horror is old hat, written in his bones, and largely ignorable.)
"Why are you so calm? They hurt you."
Oh. This he doesn't remember. He knows in the past, Master and the Doctor had pitted him against other Nomu- as a test of his strength and later theirs. But it has not happened in some time - or has it? He flexes his fingers experimentally, feeling nothing - no drag, no break. But there have been days he's been made to fall apart without feeling a single thing.
He has lost time before, but not in front of Tomura, and the old horror grows stronger before it is swallowed by the constant buzz of orders in his mind, dropping back down to negligible.
Protect Shigaraki Tomura. Reassure him. What does or does not happen to Kurogiri is inconsequential.
"I am fine."
"'Giri. Are you..."
Kurogiri tilts his head and waits. What ever it is, Tomura loses his nerve and sinks back into bed.
"I'm sorry," he repeats softly.
He turns on his side, facing away from Kurogiri, and murmurs something so soft Kurogiri has to strain to hear.
"We should have run when you said."
And then -
"It's time to take the next step in your training," Master tells Tomura.
"Kurogiri."
He realizes what's about to happen a split second before it does.
"Attack."
He loses time.
Tomura grows angry, and Kurogiri doesn't know why.
It's just puberty, he thinks as the door is slammed in his face. He can easily get through any lock, but that won't exactly help matters.
I wasn't like this at his age.
The thought flits in and out with no real substance, no recollection as to what Kurogiri's childhood had been like, just that it was different from Tomura's.
"You're nothing but what he made you," Tomura spits, knocking over the tray of food Kurogiri offers him.
"Yes," Kurogiri agrees as he warps away the shattered pieces, because there is nothing wrong about that statement, and he finds shorter responses are less likely to draw ire out of the teenager. It is still the wrong thing to say, and Tomura glares at him with venom.
He shoves past him to his room to play one-player games.
Tomura comes back with less and less injuries. But there is always ash coating his clothes.
Over the years, Kurogiri learns almost everything there is to learn about Shigaraki Tomura.
He was once Shimura Tenko. He had an older sister, his father hit him, his mother and grandparents were complicit in silence. They had a dog. His apprenticeship to All for One was not coincidental.
The last one is a strong suspicion.
He pieces these things together through casual conversations between Master and the Doctor (they never care that Kurogiri is there), through screaming nightmares that Tomura always forgets in the morning.
Kurogiri comes to know more about Shigaraki Tomura than Tomura himself remembers.
Sometimes the missing memories clearly frustrate and frighten him, but he knows better than to ask, and so Kurogiri never brings it up.
He wonders if it works the other way around, if Tomura knows things about Kurogiri that he himself cannot remember.
He knows better than to ask.
(He wakes once, bearing down on Shigaraki Tomura, who is curled away defensively on the ground.
Hours later it is Tomura who stops him from destroying his own body. If he is scattered across the world in enough pieces, perhaps that will finally do the trick.
"Don't!" Tomura snaps, all five fingers briefly on his arm, and Kurogiri is forced to stop.
Tomura stares at him for a long moment.
"Can you leave?" he says, hushed. "I...order you to leave. As far away from here as possible. Where Sensei will never find you."
Kurogiri doesn't move. The mist swells.
Obey your Master.
"I cannot."
"Okay," Tomura closes his eyes. "Okay."
"If anyone is a threat to you," he hates how his voice is still smooth and unruffled, the undead way his muscles never strain no matter how hard he works them, how much he screams. "Don't hesitate to eliminate them. Even me."
Tomura doesn't open his eyes, his fingers rest lightly on Kurogiri's wrist.
"Don't be ridiculous. How am I supposed to beat a teleporter? You're too OP to die."
In the morning, Kurogiri does not remember why his best suit is missing a sleeve, and Tomura stays locked in his room until late afternoon. )
Tomura’s smiles twist into sneers, his orders coming sharp and frequent and designed to insult, he plays one-player games instead of the two they always shared.
But Kurogiri still remembers the smiles. The shackle has never loosened.
At the USJ, Kurogiri is distracted.
Something about the environment doesn't feel foreign, and something about the teacher, Pro-Hero Eraserhead, makes his head pound. He misses Ingenium's brother escaping.
Tomura says, "If you can't be a proper tool, then our plans have crumbled."
It doesn't hurt, but Kurogiri suspects it should.
Then comes Dabi and Toga Himiko. And later Twice, Mr. Compress, Magne, Spinner, and others.
They are powerful allies, no doubt. Yet Kurogiri finds himself appreciating other things. The way Toga inquires after Tomura's rashes, and later quietly slips ointment into his pocket. How Compress asks after anyone who isn't at a given meeting, and occasionally brings enough takeout for everyone. The way Twice tries to get to know everyone, asking Tomura and Kurogiri questions about themselves that neither has thought of in years. Kurogiri always brushes his questions aside, discomfited; Tomura answers in a baffled sort of way, but he never ignores Twice.
Spinner, in particular, is of the same age as Tomura and enjoys the same games. Kurogiri has to find and dust off Tomura's unused two-person consoles.
Dabi is standoffish, but he has a sound grasp on strategy, and has earned enough respect that Kurogiri's charge listens to him on occasion.
Kurogiri is proud. The other part of him is crying at these unfortunate children, but he has long since learned to ignore that voice.
Then All Might takes down Master.
Tomura blossoms into his own person, even with his Sensei's hooks attached, which is something both Kurogiri and Master want.
It's not forever, of course.
Tartarus won't hold him unless he wants to be there. If the heroes want to do a thorough job, they should kill him while they have the chance.
The thought enters and mires in his mind without resistance; Kurogiri has long since realized that he hates Master. Equally, he has realized he can do nothing about it.
Obey your master. Protect Shigaraki Tomura.
Tomura has his new friends.
Things are good.
And then Kurogiri is arrested.
There is someone with familiar goggles and someone with a distinctive voice, and that All for One is just down the hall. Kurogiri doesn't have a sensor type quirk, but he somehow knows this, can feel it.
The tether between them is weaker than it has ever been.
Protect Shigaraki Tomura.
The man with the goggles calls him by something (they’d screamed a name at him but he doesn’t remember and his head is splitting in two from the -) There is a woman with skintight clothing that makes his chest tighten, the man with the distinctive voice has hair that seems impossibly tall, the man with the goggles, and Kurogiri is drowning.
Nothing makes sense.
Obey your master is faint in the back of his mind.
Then -
Kayama is dead, the man with goggles tells him, except he has no goggles and he's missing an eye and a leg.
Ku - Shir - he is drowning, drowning, drowning.
Kurogiri, someone screams.
Shirakumo, someone else screams, loud enough to damage his eardrums. They heal immediately.
Let's save Shigaraki, the first voice says, and he is still fractured, still suffocating, and he does not know his name.
But none of that matters.
I am the one who protects Shigaraki Tomura.