ii.

Hawks is trying to pry info out of him. He knows. It's a quiet night, and maybe he's just paranoid, but Shutsu can feel it in the ways Hawk's eyes sharpen. Like something made of twine and gold. It's something that makes him ache; a dream that went sour too early into the night. Shutsu is stuck here, breath in his chest like a bad cough.

He can hear the water falling over his ear, he stuffs his stuff into a holder thing―shit what's it called it's just―akg! He doesn't have time for this he's going to be late if he doesn't make the train.

(That little part of his brain that he just can't kill of hisses that it's useless, he's never going to be Someru or Arakan again. He's not even Shutsu, just fucking Shigaraki. The only thing he wants gone is there like a noose.

He's choking on the expectations, on the fear in everyone's eyes. He's a monster, now. He's lonely, now.)

You're panicking, little brother.

He gets off the train and paces in the direction of school. He's cold, lips numb and nose runny, his eyes are dry and the world makes his bones ache. He's cold but winter isn't coming for a while. He's cold. He's tired. He's always tired these days. It makes his head hurt.

Shutsu wonders what they think of him. Aizawa must have known, on some level, that he had a relation with Tomura Shigaraki, it's everyone else he's worried about. He sucks it up, though. Walks into 1-A for history the day after the dorms are installed without a single break in his step.

"Now," He says to the class, they don't say a word. "I know I dun goofed, but I can explain―"

It's almost like they know―that there isn't really an explanation.

"What, that you're a traitor?" Bakugou hisses. He's still paranoid from it, eyes skittish, looking at the doors. Or maybe that's Shutsu. He wonders if he could survive the fall from the second floor down. Maybe broken bones aren't as bad as he remembers them. Ninth―Midoriya doesn't seem to mind all that much. He should go. Really. He should, he should go now―

You're panicking, little brother.

"I'm―not a traitor. I, uh, thought he was dead." Shutsu thinks back to his tombstone, next to nothing. There's a grave without a body and his name on it next to Shigaraki Hisashi is Shigaraki Yoichi becasue that's the only fucking thing Hisashi would call you in front of stangers when they asked. "He was supposed to be dead." He can't feel his lungs, they burn to breathe. "It's been three hundred seventy two years, four months, two weeks, three days, and nine hours, Bakugou he's supposed to be dead, people don't live that long―"

He glowers, all child like and traumatized as he is, hurt to the core. He's scared and nothing Shutsu does will stop that. "How the fuck are you alive then, hah?"

"I don't―didn't―I got hit with a quirk when I was nineteen and it sent me flying here. You think you had a shitty time in the three days we were both kidnapped?" Shutsu looks at him, Bakugou is all red eyes and loathing, but he always has been. "Tarturus looks like a fucking joke compared to living with him." He sighs, deep and heavy, like an iron on his chest. "Just. You're out, you're safe, he didn't turn you into a corpse puppet and he didn't kill you or put you in a vault..for the most part. You're okay." Shutsu closes his eyes and briefly hopes he never has to open them.

"A vault?" Some squeaky prepubescent teenage voice calls. Shutsu is too tired to put a voice to a face.

"When I was thirteen my brother, that's your kidnapper, got into a war with the Yakuza precinct he was working in, they banned him and put a bounty on his head, he got shot. It was barely there and he probably doesn't remember it, but he wouldn't let me leave the house." Shutsu smiles fondly. "It was this shitty place we ransacked after our mother kicked the bucket and our dad kicked us out. Apparently she thought we'd be good little boys and do everything for her with our meta's when we were older."

That's a lie. He remembers her, shit faced on the couch, holding him in her lap so he couldn't leave. Yer gonna be strong when yer big, gotta take the rebellion out of ya. (So he remembers almost drowning in a bathtub, as she tried her hardest to kill the rebellion.)

"You might've heard of my dear old dad, Shigaraki Hitoka, you all had to study his book in middle school." He says. "When you were learning about discrimination in the pre-quirk era."

Midoriya flinches, pulling on his fingers like it might take away the nausea.

"And being born with white hair in the twentieth century was a shitshow." He doesn't have the time or patience to throw off his cursing. "No high school would talk my brother in because he actually had a meta, which was a death sentence and a half, and I got into the worst one in the district." He thinks his smile might look eldritch like this, swollen eyes and―he thinks he might still be in bandages. "Flash forward to when he found out what his meta was, people were coming from everywhere to get rid of them, and he got away with charging them obscure amounts because, yeah." Shutsu looks up. "He was the cure for a disease, but that shits genetic and more people were being born with metas and―" Shutsu looks at Bakugou. "―it was a shitshow, you'd have been slaughtered 'cuz your eyes are red."

You're panicking, little brother.

There is no god where he grew up. No savior. He had his brother. And Hisashi could only last so long before the greed got to him. "You would've all been killed." He says again, they should know about it, the fear fear fear that swallowed him whole. "You think that was easy? I had to watch my classmates get dragged out to go to REFUGE," they look so confused and he so jealous for a second; so filled with rage and the fear fear fear he's kept in his chest he wants to cry. "a concentration camp for Meta User's."

Himura didn't deserve that, even if she tried to freeze him to death. She was a kid and her parents hated her so much more that Shutsu's parents hated him. She was twelve―

"The era I grew up in was a war time." He says. "And I didn't even hide it. I told everyone here that my brother was the OG villain and that he stuffed me in a vault when I was―" wait shit. How old was he? "―like, eighteen."

(Wait no, didn't Hisashi also lock him in that basement when they were kids? For four days?

Wait, shit. He doesn't want to think about it. It needs to go away go away go away―)

Yaoyurozu raises her hand and he nods at her. "Didn't the Hero Safety Commission try to put an end to the chaos?"

Ah, right. They don't know about the heavy seeded corruption in hero polocies. "Good one." He says, cheering. "I mean they bombed out the slums because that's where all the Meta's lived, but sure. They just loved mutants." He thinks back to the kids with stars for freckles, the boy with blue nails, the girl with teeth that didn't stop falling out and regrowing. "Sent out a whole campaign to wipe'em out and everything!"

She looks at her lap, like she was expecting it but hoped for the better; shame around her head. Good for her, questing for knowledge.

"It's not your fault," he says, softly. "you've been indoctrinated since you were young in one way or another."

You're panicking, little brother.

He shuts up the things he wants to spill out, butterfly stitches on the inseams of a gir ― SECOND'S mouth; dreams of ill fitted smiles and too sharp teeth and fingers pulling apart his ribs.

"You just need to unlearn it, is all."

Shut the fuck up, Hisashi.

_

There was a feather in his pocket. He knows that because he's holding it now while it pretends to be quiet, pliable like a real one.

There's a feather in his hand that he's seen on television, swooping through hands and savings civilians from death. There's a feather in his hand like a bad omen; it can pretend to be okay and dull all it wants but he knows it moves, can pick up civilians that Hawks' doesn't see so it must pick up the vibrations.

Shutsu really should have kept his mouth shut. He's forgotten that there are cameras everywhere now. In those walls that Hawks does not paint. There are tape recorders and monitors, he eondeds if they drug test his food. The commission doesn't seem all that different from his brother.

They probably tapped every feather on Hawks' back. There's probably trackers in his mouth, tapes in his ears. He's just a camera, watching from a distance for someone's security footage. He doesn't want to be a puppet again he doesn't he's not Hisashi's little brother he's Shutsu .

You're panicking, little brother.

You're panicking, little brother.

YOU'RE PANICKING, LITTLE BROTHER--

In, out. "Hawks we need to talk." He says to the feather, crushing it gently between his fingers. He breaks it down the spine and sets a match to it. He breathes in shallow, his heart is sinking into his stomach, acid burning through like a terminal illness different from the one he was born with. The one tied to his chest, like this. Spilling down SECONDS' throat. Shutsu is gone like some bad memory he can't put a name on. Or maybe he just won't, because if he names it, it's real, and real things can cut his lungs and lock him in vaults and bring him to the future. Real things hurt, real things bleed. So, he decides, he's not naming it.

That monster in his head it going to blur and fog like a night terror and he's not going to stop it.

Shutsu holds his breath and walks into 1-b.

He repeats everything again and again and again until he's on a train back to Fukuoka and the sky is half-gone. The stars are comin out when he gets off the train. He's cold, he's alone, kami he's just so―so.

Shutsu is tired. 

_

Hey, Sashi?

Yeah, 'Toto?

Mama loves us, right? She's gotta, right?

Hisashi doesn't smile. He doesn't frown, but he still looks sad. Sad in the was Papa looks when he's asleep on the floor, sad in the way Himura is when he brother stopped showing up. Sad like the sky when it's not quite raining yet. Hisashi looks sad, he's not frowning, though.

Maybe. He says, like he knows he's lying, but only to himself. Really deep down, she loves us. He lies. Maybe.

I'm glad, you say, that mama loves us, cuz you're the bestest big brother in the whole world, kay?

And then he smiled, and then he laughed. His eyes were sad but he was laughing and you didn't get it back then, how scared he was that you'd get sold out or snatched on the street for daring to be born like this. Aww, Shushu you're the best little brother I could ask for.

Really?

Yeah, the bestest, and I'll tell ya what?

What?

If mama loves anyone best, its you.

You laugh, then. Because it makes him happy, and you don't tell him about the rules and the lines and the kneeling, because you use them when you're sick at home instead of getting an education. Your lungs burn because you're wrong, and you should get and inhaler but you kind of like it, the loss of breathe, the wheeze in your throat. No, silly, you say. It's you!

Your brother just ends up laughing louder, though. 

_

When he gets off the train, its cold. Mind-numb, kind of cold. Head-fog, nose-red, swollen-lip, his ears hurt so much he can't feel them, kind of cold. Like he personally offended the sky. It was summer so early. Is it gone now?

The answer is no, but he's cold anyway.

Shutsu rushes his way through the streets and fumbles with his entry card into Hawks' building, his head is that kind of fuzzy that leaves him drained, but he wants to see if Hawks' heard him, he'll have to talk outside, there are cameras in the building Hawks' lives in, there are taps all over his feathers, but those are verbal and he can just write it down instead of speaking if his brain says so.

(why won't you say anything, little brother?)

(does your throat  hurt? I told you not to go outside—)

Sometimes it just turns off and he can't help it. Really, he can't (sorry niisan  sorry niisan sorry niisan—-), Shutsu is a half baked kid, really, he's so sure his pops would've executed him on the spot if they hadn't ran after—

After.

After.

Shutsu doesn't like thinking about it.

He opens the door. "Hawks?" He says. "Hawks, ya there?"

There's a crash and a fumbling, and.. an aggressive breaking. Hawks  stumbles into the entryway. "Uh.. Hey! Furukawa!" He says, awkwardly. "How're you doing?"

Shutsu squints at him suspiciously. "I found this new yakitori place, check it out with me," he says, there's a smile to his voice but not his face. "will you?"

There's a panicked flash in Hawks eyes. Shutsu ignores it so well that he convinces Hawks he hasn't realized.

"Uh, no thanks, I'm kinda busy, you know patrols―"

"You don't have patrols for another two hours, so you're good, right?"

He looks at Shutsu's eyes. "Yeah, I guess."

"Cool, it's this little hole in the wall place." Shutsu drops his bag. "Sakura's Soba."

"You said Yakitori, though."

"Served it. C'mon, it'll be fun."

Shutsu thinks that, maybe, Hawks' should work on his well he deceives people. Or maybe Shutsu's just better at it, maybe growing up with the liar to end all liars does that to you.

They leave the apartment.

_

It's awkward. Really awkward, but this is nothing on confronting Hisashi on working with terrorists.

"I brought you out here to talk," he says. Small talk takes too long, there's too much room for swaying. "why'd you wire tap me?"

He looks down. "Boss's orders."

"Cute, why didn't you use an actual wire tap, then? Why a feather, unless.. " Shutsu touches his neck to feel for a wire implant, his arms and legs, too. He feels around the back of his ear, and runs his teeth over his tongue to feel for bumps. 

"I didn't tap you." Hawks says, dully. "They wanted me to, but I've read the reports."

Shutsu slits his eyes and frowns. "Reports?"

"When you were in the hospital— after Kamino— they took blood tests and— asked you questions, I guess?"

"I don't remember that." Shutsu glares.

"Yeah, they know. You kept asking for Himura―but the only Himura they knew was off limits."

Shutsu blinks. "She's alive?"

(Did she get hit with the same quirk as him in the REFUGE? Is she okay? Is she okay?

The only Himura they knew was off limits.

Maybe not at all, but he's allowed to hope, isn't he?)

"I think so. Maybe." He says, like he's a puppet, and maybe he is, in the same way Shutsu is. In the same way Hisashi made him a puppet, maybe the Commission dragged him into a room. Maybe Hawks can't stand hospital lights, or fluorescents burning his teeth away. Maybe they're both fucked up. "I'm not really supposed to know, I don't."

Shutsu takes a napkin when the food comes in, and a pen. Are you tapped. He writes. 

Hawks looks at his hands, smiles. 

"Do you like sashimi?" Shutsu says, pointing to the napkin. 

Hawks nods, sadly. Bitterly. "Yeah, why?"

If I'm the villain of the story what are you?

"My brother used to give my sashimi. I hated it."

"Got used to it," Hawks says. "It's okay, when you get used to it."

"Still tastes awful, though."

"Yeah." Hawks grins, then. All arsenic and bile. "Yeah, it does."

"It's rotten work." Shutsu says. "Getting it right. Isn't it?" Shutsu takes out a match, takes the feather out of his shoe that Hawks put there.  It was itchy. "To be born in an era such as this?"

"Yeah, it is, and you know what?" Hawks says. "We're revolutionaries, aren't we?"

"I guess so."

Hawks does something, then, Shutsu doesn't know what, nor how. There's a shift, to the left, almost. Like something went in focus very fast. Hawks smiles at the server. "Thanks you!" Again, a shift, further away this time. "Taps are gone. Pop!" He says.

"Oh.. kay?" Shutsu says. "So what'd'ya wanna talk about?"

"More than anything?" Hawks takes a bite of his yakitori. Shutsu feels his stomach roll. He picks some rice out and nods. "How'd you know stabby and stove top burner?"

That's it? He can't help bet think. That's all you want?

"They were orphaned on the street when I found them," he scrunched his eyebrows. "seven years ago.. give or take a year. Dabi was unhinged as he is today, about batshit, helped me take down, like, six trafficking rings. Himiko was," Shutsu pauses. "is a child. She ran away when she was.. eh. Twelve? I think I made her feel bad, she stabbed Dabi before she left. I healed him up, he ran away to seek vengeance on someone."

Hawks blinks, slowly, tilts his head and groans. "Wait. Are you Ichi?"

Shutsu doesn't even flinch, that's not one of the worse ones. "One of my many, many lovely names. Yes."

"Wait, you're, you busted down the Himoto ring?" Hawks finishes his stick and folds his fingers with his elbows on the table.

"I.. think?" Shutsu scruncues his face up. "Man with six eyes, red hair, green eyes, really orange skin?"

"Yomano. He ran it." Hawks is holding his arms. "You busted it - I - there was a plan where I was going to have to infiltrate it." Hawks looks at him and grins off-center. Like he's regretted it. "I owe you one." He says.

Shutsu smiles at him, tired. He's always tired these days.