i.

It's a little odd, FIRST thinks, watching ALL FOR ONE get pulled into the van. He can stop a smile from working it's way on his face. There are a group of heroes about five meters ahead of him, and NINTH and his friends are hidden behind the wall. It's a little odd.

One of the heroes―Best Jeans or something―walks up to him slowly, like he's feral. He guess he is, was, maybe he will be, too. He wonders, blankly, if they'll stuff him into that four-white-walls nightmare his brother had called s sanctuary. To keep him in and everyone else out. Shutsu doesn't really think about it, his head hurts, he might be bleeding.

RUN FIRST, RUN, YOU HAVE TO―

He can't move, he's too tired. His thumbs hurt, he lost a tooth, he thinks. One in the back. FIRST wonders if something is wrong with him, if his body is his. He can't quite feel it, his head is fuzzier than it was when he was nine一when he一

ALL FOR ONE haunts him, he thinks. It makes his throat hurt and his nose sting. His arm is throbbing, but that could be because of the hand holding his arm一it hurts, he thinks. It hurts; his arm may be broken, like NINTH, NINTH keeps using ONE FOR ALL too harshly, THIRD can't keep him safe forever and SECOND is a blurry thing with sharp eyes and sharper teeth. FIRST thinks, FIRST wonders why一the throbbing in his arms are gone, the hands are gone, too. Placed with this strips of metal, tied to a table. FIRST thinks something is wrong, nobody has ever chained him literally一except for his father, but his father is no person at all.

"Hello, my name is一"

"Tsucuachi Noamasa." He says, and he doesn't know where he's heard that name before, but he knows it well, like he's said it in a diffrent life. "Tsucuachi Noamasa."

"Yes. What's your name?"

"First." FIRST says. "My name is First."

"Truth." Noamasa―Tsucuachi? FIRST isn't quite sure, his head is pounding. Sweat pads under his palms, pours out―

―he wonders again, again―

―what was he wondering about?

"How do you know the villain at Kamino?"

"He's," FIRST―or is he someone else? He went by a different name, once, didn't he? "my brother. He's my brother."

"Truth." Tsucauchi Noamasa says, why does he keep saying it? "Do you know his name?"

"Yes." Not-FIRST says, he's stuck in the wrong body. Like second, maybe, he wonders―

"Shigaraki nii-chan, Hi-sa-shi. Ōnii-kun." Tsucuachi Noamasa says something, Not-FIRST wonders what it is he's talking to. "D'ya think I'll be allowed to punch nii-chan?"

"What?" Tsucuachi Noamasa says.

"Can I punch nii-chan?" Not-FIRST returns.

"No, your brother won't be available for you to punch." Tsucuachi Noamasa says, pinching up nose. "He's in Tarturus."

Not-FIRST thinks about it, Aizawa-san said that Tarturus was only for the criminals that high-end prisons can't hold, they'd break out too easy. Not-FIRST blinks. Then, he laughs. Loud. Loud and clear, sharp like a bullet.

"Oh kami," He says, a laugh in his voice; loud and shrill and taunting, a mockery of what he's almost sure it's supposed to sounds like. "you vaulted him."

Tsucuachi Noamasa pales and presses a button. Not-FIRST wonders what for. Though, he supposes it must be in the ordinary. Tsucauchi Noamasa seems to know it second handed.

Not-FIRST does not remember going to sleep, and Shigaraki Shutsu does not remember waking up. But it happens, like many things in his life, without his consent.

_

It's warm when he wakes up. Sticky, like summer has stuck it's hand to his shoulders and burned away any semblance of comfort from the winner before. Ew. Shutsu remembers this, vaguely. He's been in a hospital before, not often enough that he hates it, but three times too many for him to qualify as an abnormally sick civilian. He knows how many times that is―he was the sick civilian. For seventeen years. 

It was awful, but he isn't sick anymre―it left when he spilled himself down the throat of that girl-boy-SECOND all those years ago. 

The door opens and a nurse walks in. Her hair is this lovely shade of white― tinted blue, lighter than his brother-ALL FOR ONE's successor-SEVENTH's grandson―but not too harsh on the eyes. She reminds him of his brother's boss from way back when―when they were kids. 

"Hello, First-san―" She says.

"It's Furukawa Arakan. 'S'on my papers." He made sure, too. Sometimes Giran forgot, he smoked too much and drank his brain out and he's forget to do it―Shutsu kept tabs on his stuff, scribbled them on coffee-stained paper with pens that blotched their ink and pencils that were always out of led. "If it isn't than y'can jus' call me Someru."

"Furukawa-san―your name is.. you. I just need to inform your emergency contact that your awake." She says, like a liar. 

(Shutsu doesn't have a contact, besides for Giran that is.)

To his dazed surprise, it actually is Giran that walks into the room, headstrong with the remnants of a cigarette between his yellowed teeth. Shutsu doesn't even think before he speaks. "The fuck."

"The fuck is right Furukawa Arakan, Someru, Ichi, whatever the hell you go by." Giran spits. "You took time from my loaded schedule for your bullshit."

"That," Shutsu says, dully, "is a lie. If you were busy you wouldn't have shown up."

"Yeah." He blinks first, probably too tired to put up a fight. Or hungover, its hard to tell through those stupid glasses of his. "Cops're after you. Y'know the rules?"

It's an oldy but a goody.

"Don't say incriminating shit." Shutsu repeats. The nurse finds it best to leave, and really, Shutsu can't fault her for that. Best decision a civilian's ever made, in Shutsu's experience at least.

Giran wheezes out a cough. They don't speak often―the last time they actually exchanged words was about two years ago. Shutsu marvels at how he missed it. Giran is such an asshole, he grins. He kind of missed the bastard.

"Yeah. On a side note, I woulda never guessed you were related to the boogeyman."

Shutsu blinks, slowly. "Oh, you mean Hisashi, he's kind of a dick."

Giran snorts, "A dick." He wheezes, smoke slipping from his throat, to the roof, "The king of the underworld, a dick."

"Yeah, they vaulted him. Serves the bastard right."

This confuses Giran. "Oh, shit." Giran takes out a smoke, lights the tip like he's allowed to in a hospital. Dumbass. "You were serious about yer brother kicking you to a vault. Like, an actually bank vault."

"Yeah?"

(He knows people though he was joking, but Giran, he though, would have taken him the slightest bit serious.

Shutsu was also a paranoid vigilante, so it's kind of understandable that Giran didn't trust him with a batshit backstory like that.)

"Thats fucked up." Giran confesses, and wow, even get agrees that getting locked in a vault is messed up. "And a dick move, yer right."

"Sure is." Shutsu smiles sweetly. "I'm going to try to visit him, purely for homicidal purposes."

Giran, laughs, but he's getting twitchy, in that way that means that he wants a smoke or wants to punch a wall. Who knows. He takes put a pen and signs the papers by Shutsu's nightstand and turns tail. "Yer signed out." And then he's gone.

(He wants to disappear like that too. Why isn't he allows to go away like that? Turn to smoke like a washed up dream?)

Shutsu let's the smile drop as he collects himself from the hospital bed. He's wearing quirk-proof handcuffs.

The thought makes him laugh.

_

Aizawa meets him at the gate, and Shutsu is so drowsy his feet catch on dust and he feels like his mind is inside out. Aizawa is so fucking quiet, like Shutsu is a traitor. The thought itself almost damnable.

"It's worse, y'know." Shutsu says. Aizawa flinches before he whirls to the side to look Shutsu right in the eye. "Him. He's worse than we were when we were little." Like it's not obvious that villains are made, not born. "I mean, sure, he was a supervillain then, too. Same penchant for monologues and everything. I just.. I think he tried to keep the murder and cataclysmic events to a minimum. So I'd hate him less."

(His brother would have given him galaxies, would have destroyed worlds for him, he knows. But Shutsu did not want burnt out universes, he wanted Hisashi to be happy. He wanted to be happy. He wanted everyone to be happy.

Hisashi just didn't get it.)

Maybe now, something might've happened. In another universe. Where he's hailed as a hero instead of a villain's brother. That's all he is in the end, though, isn't it? His niisan's little brother.

It shouldn't hurt this much to finally have it revealed. He always knew it, deep down.

"Of couse, y'know, he used to get hit with bottled. My tousan—he uh. He was bad."

"The professor," Aizawa says, voice dull dull dull like he talks to his newest students. "he was your father."

Shutsu smiles, he wonders if he looks fond, like a sick sort of grief. "Yeah." there's a whistle in his voice. "He was a bastard, tried to kill some fuckhead to talking to my kaasan. Not us, though. Didn't give two shits about us." There's a memory in there, somewhere. His kaasan looking at him coughing up blood, there's so much pity and disgust welling in her eyes that he closes his. She walks away. "My brother is bad, but he had to learn it to survive. There's no going back. We couldn't go home, not with the way we looked then."

Shutsu knows it must've been a nightmare. He knows that his brother went days without eating so he could get Shutsu medicine. He knows that his brothers downfall is also on his shoulders. Caring for him is an endless job, hungry work for nobody but himself. Maybe Shutsu's just selfish. Does it matter?

(Can heroes be selfish? Every hero he's ever known is a martyr at the end, killing themselves for humanity and―Shutsu was willing, really. But it hurts to know that's what it would take to be anything good compared to his brother.)

Aizawa turns to the front of the gate. He passes Shutsu his key. "Go on," he says, like he's forgiven himself. "go get some sleep."

_

It's a cold day in hell when he wakes up. A hollow kind of yellow falls over the blinds - it's a bitter kind of sunlight. Shutsu brings it all together in his chest, he locks it in a box and now―

It's all gone. All gone. He can forget about Himiko and strawberry pocky and watching bad romcoms too early in the morning, saving up for vanilla ice cream, when he didn't have a job. He can forget Dabi stealing food for him back when he couldn't leave the house. He was so scared.

Fear was closing his brain off and he tore the wallpaper off looking for cameras― Shutsu wasn't in a good place, is all.

(He didn't really rescue them, he only gave them a chance, one that they didn't take, ultimately. He gets it, really, because his brother saved him too and he left, regardless. Maybe it was just the nostalgia. Dabi did always remind him of someone―when he was younger. This Himura girl's brother. His eyes are round and soft and his skin, whatever is left of it, was pale. Like snow. Washed out, hailed, sheets of ice.)

He takes a deep breath. He smiles in front of the mirror. It looks wrong, so he does it again. "Okay," he says. "everything is okay."

(He doesn't want to start peeling his skin to look for monitors.)

He says it again. And again. And again. At some point he's too tired to refute it. He takes all the little fires and he pours an ocean on top of them.

_

There's a staff meeting, they need to talk about the consequences of what happened at Kamino. Shutsu knows this is going to be awkward.

Everything is okay. He smiles, wide wide wide. Until it fits all across his face.

Everyone is in the boardroom. They stare at him like he's his brother, like he isn't quirkless and―well, everyone except Yagi and Aizawa. He wonders what it means if everyone but the man who tried to kill his brother and the man who almost list an eye to his brother's protege hates him.

"So, am I fired, cuz like, I need to pack my suitcase if your gonna kick me out." He says, smiling the same, like his brother, like his mother in that courtroom, like the man-THIRD had in a back alley he can't find anymore. Like All Might. "Also please don't fire me."

Nedzu just smiles, as wide as Shutsu must be smiling. "Oh no!" He says. "You're far too valuable to get rid of! Even with the risk of you becoming like your brother."

He tilts his head. "If I became like my brother I'm putting in the request to kill me."

(Shutsu thinks about it, that possessiveness that only comes when you've lost everything else, but Shutsu didn't have anything to begin with. He didn't make a promise to protect Hisashi, like Hisashi did. Hell, Shutsu was too out of it most of the time to crave anything but relief.)

"I'll think about it." Says Nedzu. "Though this is about your brother. The HPSC has made it abundantly clear that our partnership will dry should you run free. They say you need a watcher to make sure you do not deviate from―"

Oh.

"You got me a babysitter." Shutsu corrects.

Nedzu smile turns awkward. For the first time ever. He would have taken a picture if he wasn't the victim of this shit again. "Essentially, yes."

(Love that trauma rerun, he's been watched his whole like by his older brother, obsessively, and now he's being watched by someone because of Hisashi.)

"Okay. Who? Who'm I rooming with."

He hopes to kami it's someone he knows. He's going to explode if its―

"Ah.. the hero Hawks."

― someone well known.

Record scratch. Shutsu takes in a breath. Everything is okay. Nothing is wrong. His brother is in an inescapable vault, he still has his job.

"With no disrespect, am I getting a new room?" He keeps his voice even and his eyes cold. He's not going to throw a tantrum. He's not going to explode. He's keeping all of his emotions right there and one day he'll die.

Nedzu is visibly sweating. "You'll be moving in with him."

"Great, another control freak under heavy supervision. Kami kill me I should have starved."

"I deeply apologize, but you would have been in Tarturus otherwise for close relations with the Boogeymen of the Underworld."

Shutsu smiles. "I get it."

Eat shit and die Hisashi I'm not getting vaulted again.

"Wonderful, this is his address and key, pack your things tonight." Nedzu says, he looks sharp like this. Shutsu wonder how he got the scar, if it's the reason he's such a dick. "Next is the dorm situation and what we will do to migate the―"

_

Putting his whole life in a box is absurdly depressing when he realized it all fits in half a suitcase. Nedzu gave him one of those fancy ones with a second half. Shutsu doesn't need it. He has two pairs of jeans, two hoodies, and four tee-shirt.

(He learned way back when to pack light. He's going to need to get pajamas now. Shit.)

His heads in the wrong place like this. He feels like this is the end. He should've really expected it―his brother always ends up ruining everything for him, huh? Shit―

He's crying, he knows. His face is probably all blotched up, everything is too blurry and his hair is itching him. This is the end of it all and he tried so hard to be good and Hisashi ruined it all. He tried to be the best little brother and that got him in the back too. He should have stayed in that vault, should have locked himself in a room after Kero died and hung himself. She wouldn't have known, and Ayū would have been doomed to the same fate regardless―

Maybe it's his fault. If he was never born that Hisashi wouldn't be absolutely batshit―

He takes a deep breath in, he smiles. "Everything is okay," he says. "it's okay."

He walks to the bathroom, opens the sink. Washes his face. He wasn't fired. Hisashi is in a glorified vault. Everything is fine. He's just going to have to prove his innocence again. He isn't the guilty one, surely they'll see it. He'll explain it to his students if they ask.

_

So, Hanks lives in Fukuoka, which is way too far away from Yuuei. He's going to wake up so early. Well, whatever. It's not like he's going to be sleeping or anything. Not for the next few weeks anyway.

Unless Hawks drugs him. Unless they HPSC is trying to drag him to Tarturus with his brother and he'll be trapped in four-white-walls and everyone is in on it but him. He already knows Hawks is monitored, nobody smiles that much unless someone is forcing them too.

(Last year, Hawks had an incident where his gloves got ripped off, the footage was erased, his smile doesn't reach his eyes, he kept missing things, like her was used too longer fingers.)

Shutsu holds his breath. He let's it go. Purchases a ticket. He should stop wondering about how bad things get, they're always worse.

He sleeps the ride to Fukuoka.