Chapter Text
A name is not just a word.
It is tether, anchor, chain.
Shimura Tenko. 志村転孤。
The kanji always taste bitter in his mouth, as though they belong to someone else.
(They belong to a little boy who cried too much. Who was weak. Who waited and waited for someone to listen to him, hear him, help him, see him. Yet no one did.
Worst of all, the name reminds him of Uchiha Obito, the younger one. The crybaby. The idiot. The dead last. Loud in all the wrong ways, forever grasping for attention with bloodied hands and scraped knees, trying to make himself impossible to ignore.
Obito’s life had always been divided into stages. Before and After. Before Kannabi Bridge. After Rin. Before Madara. After Madara.
It is the same for Tenko.)
Sensei kneels before him. A shadow blotting out the world, voice smooth as silk drawn over a knife.
“Tenko,” he says. Then he shakes his head, gentle, almost indulgent. “No. That name belongs to the one who was abandoned. You need something new, don’t you? I see how you truly despise that name. Would you like me to give you a new one?”
Sensei is offering a gift. Sensei is offering salvation. Sensei listens. Sensei hears him. Sensei helped him when no Hero ever did. Sensei saw him shaking and itching and furious and did not look away.
Sensei knows him best.
Tenko’s hands curl tightly in his lap. The skin around his nails is raw, bitten down to pink.
(Obito knows how this goes. He has lived it before. He has worn another man’s face like skin stretched too tightly over bone, carved another man’s legend into his own ribs until he could no longer remember where the performance ended and he began.
The cycle repeats.
Tenko knows it too, somewhere deep down. But he is young, and Sensei is everything to him. Shelter. Food. Warmth. Understanding. Even as the voice at the back of his head recoils, sour and sharp with dread, Tenko leans toward him anyway like a flower straining for sunlight.)
Sensei’s hand settles onto his shoulder, firm and heavy.
(Inescapable.)
“You will be Shigaraki Tomura. ‘Shigaraki’ — for me. It was my family name, you know.” His voice carries that same terrible certainty, calm and absolute. “And ‘Tomura’ — to mourn, to grieve. Your sorrow … your hatred … will become your strength.”
The words settle over him and Tomura is honoured. Sensei has given him his family name. He feels like he is part of something great. Something that will save the world from the Heroes.
Shigaraki Tomura.
Something inside him twists violently, withers black at the edges, screaming loud enough to split him apart. Yet beneath the horror is exhilaration, dizzying and bright. His pulse stutters. His skin prickles. The itch flares hot beneath his ribs, crawling through his veins like something alive.
Sensei knows him best.
(This is wrong, this is wrong, this is wrong, Obito seethes from somewhere deep inside him, frantic now, clawing at the confides of his skull.
But Sensei has never been wrong before.
That terrible itch that refused to settle for so long — Sensei understood it when no one else did. When Tenko screamed and scratched and cried until his skin split open, Sensei had explained it gently, patiently, as though it were the most natural thing in the world.
He is destruction. He is decay.
He can’t touch anything. Everything he touches dies.
“Replace that sadness with anger, Tomura and you will go much farther.”)
The boy nods slowly, lips parting around the name as he sounds it out, syllable by syllable, like fitting himself into new skin.
“Thank you, Sensei.” Shigaraki Tomura says.
And for the first time in a very, very long while, the itching in his chest stills.
The voice at the back of his head goes quiet.
Shimura Tenko hated most adults.
Shigaraki Tomura hates most Heroes.
Their quiet disdain for the things they choose not to see. Their refusal to look underneath the underneath, to trace suffering back to its source instead of pretending it appeared from nowhere at all.
Heroes arrive after the damage is done and call themselves saviours for cleaning blood from the pavement, but don’t check where the blood comes from in the first place.
Though, the Underground Heroes are at least interesting, maybe. Closer to the shinobi Obito remembers. More willing to see the dirtier side of the world.
Still too moral, though. Still too convinced the world can be divided neatly into good and evil. In the end, even if they do partake in the shades of grey in the Underworld, they are, in the end, Heroes.
And Heroes never ask the right questions.
Or perhaps they simply do not want the answers.
Their inability to see, to protect, to understand causality being a result of their actions — say, their too quick desire for fame and glory, so they ignore asking themselves ’why is this ‘villain’ doing this?’ is sickening. But not that surprising.
But maybe it is just easier to flatten people into monsters than confront the ugliness that created them. Easier to smile for cameras and speak about justice while ignoring starving children in alleyways begging for help.
Tomura still hates adults.
And yet, sometimes, he thinks like them. Worse than them, perhaps. Obito’s bitterness crawls up from somewhere deep inside him, slick and venomous, until suddenly Tomura is no longer a child at all but something exhausted and sharp-edged, staring at the world with the weary calculation of a spiteful man who waged war against an entire world.
It is a mentality far too heavy for a child’s body.
Already, Tomura knows grief the way elders do: in the hollowness of mornings, in the ache left behind by silence, in the slow gnawing itch beneath his skin that never truly settles no matter how hard he scratches.
Sometimes, when the ache grows too sharp, he stops speaking entirely. Stops moving. He stares blankly at ceilings, at cracked asphalt, at the bruised stretch of sky above the city.
(At night is worst.
Tomura sneaks outside whenever he can, slipping quietly through corridors while Kurogiri pretends not to notice. He sits beneath the open sky and stares at the full moon until his eyes burn.
The moonlight always makes the part of him that remembers being Obito calm down.)
He waits for the ghosts to pass. Waits for the itch to recede. Waits for a peace he suspects does not exist for people like him.
Usually, Kurogiri shadows him before too long, appearing with that low curl of fog and gentle reprimands. Tomura is rarely allowed outside alone anymore. Sensei worries. Sensei says Heroes would lock him up him if they found him.
Tomura believes him.
But one night, it is not Kurogiri who joins him beneath the moon.
It is Sensei.
The city hums far below them, neon bleeding across wet pavement, distant sirens threading through the dark. Sensei stands beside him in silence at first, coat stirring faintly in the wind.
Tomura spies it, then. A tension. Something jittery hangs around Sensei tonight, taut beneath the surface of his calm. Excitement, almost. Anticipation.
Tomura tilts his head. “What’s happening?” he asks quietly.
Sensei glances down at him. Then chuckles, low and pleased, as though Tomura has passed some invisible test.
“You really do notice everything, don’t you, Tomura? Ah, you’re shaping to be quite the smart one.”
Tomura shrugs, scratching absently at his neck. Though he’s pleased by the praise. He’s smart. He’s a strategist. He knows how to plan. And he is getting better at catching the finer details. “You always answer me.”
And Sensei does. That is the wonderful thing about him. Sensei always answers when Tomura asks.
“It is time,” Sensei says softly, gazing out over the city lights, “for me to face an old enemy once more. All Might.”
Even hearing the name makes irritation crawl beneath Tomura’s skin. All Might. The Symbol of Peace. A Hero built to be loved.
(Blonde hair like Minato’s. Like Naruto’s. He shoves the thought away with a hiss.)
Though, something in Sensei’s voice twists strangely around his words. He sounds wistful. Excited.
(And suddenly Tomura finds himself thinking of damp stone walls and the sound of water dripping endlessly in the dark. An old man sitting in shadow, speaking of Senju Hashirama with equal parts bitterness and reverence, hatred tangled so tightly with admiration that one could no longer exist without the other.
Madara had come alive when he spoke of Hashirama.
Obito remembers his own hatred during that time. After Rin had died. After the world had fractured around him and become something unreal. How grief had curdled slowly into anger, anger into loathing, loathing into something unbearable and endless. A cycle swallowing itself whole.
How he had hated and loved Kakashi in the same breath. Needed Kakashi to live, to suffer, to make it through so Obito could gift him with a world free of all the agony they shared.
Tomura looks up at Sensei now and sees that same terrible contradiction living in him too.)
Sensei leaves the next morning.
Tomura waits. And waits.
The tension inside the bar continues to curdle the longer Sensei takes. Then Kurogiri disappears in a swirl of purple mist.
Something is wrong.
Something is very wrong.
When Kurogiri finally returns, Sensei is there.
And he’s—
No.
Sensei is—
Sensei is hurt.
The sight punches the breath from Tomura’s lungs.
Sensei is ushered into another room. Tomura follows after instinctively, swallowing down the sound of his footsteps so Kurogiri does not notice and send him away.
His heart feels trapped somewhere inside his chest. He breathes in. Out. In again. It hurts. The air burns all the way down, like fire slithering through his throat.
Blood stains Sensei’s clothes. Tomura cannot make out the colour beneath the harsh lights, but the smell of it hangs thick in the room regardless.
Machines hiss softly nearby. Someone prepares life support while another hangs an IV bag with trembling hands.
Tomura breathes.
Sensei doesn’t. Or maybe he does, somewhere beneath the noise of the machines and Tomura’s own pulse roaring in his ears, but Tomura cannot hear it. And that alone is enough to make him antsy.
He stares at Sensei’s eyes wide and horrified.
Sensei had been fine just hours ago. Voice full of certainty and that strange, wistful excitement. Untouchable. Larger than life itself.
Now his body looks wrong. Mangled in ways Tomura’s mind refuses to fully process. Flesh torn apart. Breathing shallow — or absent — enough to make panic claw violently at his ribs.
Tomura steps closer before he can stop himself.
His hand lifts instinctively, reaching—
He freezes.
Because he cannot touch him.
Tomura Shigaraki is cursed to destroy everything he touches.
He itches. Everything itches. His fingers rip into his neck. Blood flows down his throat as he scratches, desperately trying to make sense of this.
“Tomura,” Sensei wheezes, the word breaking apart halfway through, and Tomura snaps upright immediately, eyes widening.
Sensei’s head shifts slightly toward him. Even now, mangled and bloodied and barely breathing, his presence fills the room whole.
“Tomura,” he says again, voice strained thin beneath the hiss of machinery. “You … now it’s your turn …”
Oh.
Oh.
Tomura’s pulse stutters violently in his chest.
(Successor, his heart sings. Sensei is entrusting everything to him. Sensei wants him to take control while he recovers. Sensei wants Tomura to continue forward in his place.
Sensei has chosen him.
The thought leaves him breathless. Sick. Reverent.)
And then the Doctor appears at his side, abrupt enough to make irritation immediately crawl beneath Tomura’s skin.
Still — if Sensei is as hurt as he looks, then at least he is in competent hands. The Doctor always knows what to do.
Even so, Tomura bristles when gloved hands guide him backwards.
“Move aside now,” the Doctor says briskly, already turning his attention toward Sensei while others flood the room in controlled urgency.
Machines start to whine louder in the background. Someone barks out instructions. Metal clatters sharply against metal as someone begins to to organise surgical tools.
The demand in the Doctor's voice grates on him. He feels it run over his skin like ants and burrow into his skin.
“Sorry Doctor.” Tomura says, gritting his teeth. He is, for a moment, incandescently furious. With Sensei. With the Doctor. With his entire life. A breath, in and out. He is in control.
“We’ll make him better,” the Doctor says, and to Tomura’s indignation, he guides and shuts Tomura out of the room.
Kurogiri leads him back to his quarters, Warp Gate cutting any attempts Tomura makes at decaying the door, or running back. Seething, he enters his room.
He can feel the spiders crawling along his skin. He itches. He wants to scratch. He wants to dust everything in sight. Fear settles all around him, an old, timeless friend.
(Is this what happens?
Does everyone eventually leave?
Rin. Minato-sensei. Kakashi, broken and bleeding beneath moonlight.
Now Sensei.)
Something furious and helpless twists inside his chest.
Heroes did this.
… All Might did this.
The itch beneath his skin flares hot enough to burn.
Tomura shakes violently. Is it anger? Is it terror? Rage or fear. Fear or rage. The two blur together until he can no longer separate them, spiralling wildly through his chest like something rabid and starving.
He is so very afraid. He is so very angry.
His hands slam over his ears and he squeezes his eyes shut, trying desperately to focus.
Tomura’s breath stutters violently. He reaches for his chest instinctively, fingers curling against fabric as he gasps sharply for air.
He cannot breathe. Tears slip hot down his cheeks before he even realises he is crying. No. No, he is not supposed to cry. Sensei said so. He is not a crybaby! Tenko cried. Tomura does not. Tomura is not weak enough to cry.
And yet the tears keep coming anyway, horrible and unstoppable, blurring his vision until the hallway melts into streaks of light and shadow. He feels his knees give out beneath him.
“No.” he chokes out immediately. Then louder, sharper, desperate enough to split his throat apart. “No!”
Acid closes around his throat. Fire blazes through his chest.
The itch becomes unbearable, like an infestation. Ants crawling frantically beneath his skin. Spiders skittering across his eyes, down his neck, biting and biting and biting until he thinks he might tear himself apart trying to get them out.
He needs to breathe.
The fire only spreads. Sensei tried to kill All Might. But All Might was too strong.
No. Sensei is strong too. Stronger than anyone. Sensei refuses to die. He cannot die. And yet—
There had been life support inside that room. Machines breathing for him. Blood soaking through cloth. Sensei’s face looked half torn apart, skin ruined beyond recognition. His ruined eyes had wept blood down pale flesh.
Tomura’s stomach twists so violently he thinks he might throw up.
This means it falls to him now.
Tomura has to kill All Might in Sensei’s stead.
But how? How could anyone kill All Might? He is the Symbol of Peace. The Hero who smiles through any obstacle. The man who crushed Sensei bad enough to leave him breathing through machines.
Panic surges again, white-hot and suffocating. No. No, he needs to calm down. He needs to think. He is smart. Sensei says he is smart.
Breathe in. Breathe out.
The air burns him alive on the way down. He chokes again. Fire clogs his throat. His lungs feel molten. But beneath the terror, beneath the grief clawing chunks out of his chest, something else slowly begins to unfurl.
Determination. Cold and ugly.
He can do this.
Breathe in. Breathe out.
Tomura pushes himself shakily onto his knees. His whole body trembles with the effort.
He cannot be pathetic. He is not some crying child anymore. He needs to be a leader. The boss.
He needs to be strong enough to tear this rotten world apart. He will create a League against the Heroes. He will be the force that will destroy the system trapping everyone inside endless cycles; heroes and villains, good and bad, black and white, real and not real — it all needs to go.
It needs to be destroyed.
His teeth grit. He forces the sobs back down his throat. Something like this will not break him.
Sensei trusts him. Sensei entrusted everything to him.
Tomura forces himself upright.
He is powerful. He is not afraid.
Tomura is destruction. Tomura is decay.
There is no one better suited for this than him.