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He wakes up to grey.
As usual, the morning is silent, save for the rain beating an endless tattoo on the window. It’s cold this morning, even under the blankets he collected from around the hideout, before he went to bed last night. His fingers feel like ice, and he resists the instinctual urge to pull them under the blankets, where it’s warmer. He leaves them on top, palms facing up.
His back hurts.
Shigaraki is no stranger to mornings like these. He’s familiar with the grey feeling that seeps into his brain and takes over his body. He’s familiar with the exhausted restlessness that occasionally shakes his leg and makes him toss and turn. He’s familiar with days like these but it doesn’t make it any less frustrating.
He glances to his left, to his bedside table, where his DS lies, Pokémon Heart Gold still inside from last night. He doesn’t feel like playing.
He doesn’t feel like doing much of anything.
He wishes he had something to do.
Time passes quickly or slowly or not at all as the rain continues to fall and Shigaraki debates over going back to sleep. He still hopes- the only real emotion that doesn’t abandon him on these grey, grey days- that it might make the feeling go away, but experience proves the latter. He decides to try anyway.
Just as he gets comfortable, turning onto his side and pushing his grey, decaying face into his pillow, there is a knock on the door. He opens his eyes.
“It’s time to wake up, Shigaraki Tomura.” Kurogiri says from the other side, his voice drowning out the unending rain. His tone implies he knows Shigaraki is already awake, but it also implies he believes he’s being ignored. He’s wrong.
Even so, Shigaraki makes no move to get up. He’s meant to be the leader. What kind of leader gets told when to get up?
“I have errands to run today.” Kurogiri continues, and Shigaraki doesn’t know if the sudden twist in his stomach is happiness or worry at being left alone. He doesn’t know. He clutches the pillow tighter in his arms “Your breakfast is on the table. I wouldn’t advise you waste the day.”
Shigaraki stays in bed, curled up on his side until he knows he’s alone.
Listlessly, he uses the undersides of his wrists to push himself into a sitting position, noting the new marks of decay on the blankets, from accidents during sleep. He should have asked Kurogiri to get more.
There’s always tomorrow.
For a moment, he gets lost in watching the rain. His head feels stuffy. He wishes he had something planned for today. Maybe he could take a walk.
After all, he hasn’t been outside in over a week. It might elevate the grey feeling, at least.
He clings to that hope.
Shigaraki gets dressed with the same carelessness he does every morning- as long as it doesn’t smell bad, it’s fine- but forgoes socks and shoes. He’s too tired, too agitated, to even think about things he doesn’t need. And, despite the cold and the rain, he decides he doesn’t need socks.
He curses as something impales his foot but keeps going regardless. Father is still in the pocket of this hoodie, the one he wore yesterday (and the day before, and they day before, and he can’t remember how long for, but it doesn’t matter anyway) and he smiles as he grips him with four fingers, little finger raised and out of the way.
He’s never alone, he reminds himself, ripping open the door with accidental strength and continuing down the corridor. Never alone.
Breakfast is set out on the table and suddenly Shigaraki decides he isn’t hungry. He’s just empty and grey, not hungry.
Instead, he pours a cup of tea from the teapot set out for him and drinks it as he searches for something to do.
As usual on the grey days, nothing grabs his attention or pulls him in. Maybe he really should go on that walk.
Frowning, he picks up his supposed breakfast, keeping his little finger well out of the way, and unlocks the back door with the other hand, glowering as the lock refuses to click, no matter how far he twists the key.
He turns it the other way, and the lock gives easily.
The walled off patio that exists behind the hideout is even more pitiful to look at in the rain, but Shigaraki isn’t here to look at it. He gently places the bowl on the dirty paving stones that make up the tiny ‘garden’, sits in the doorway and waits.
He didn’t check the time, but this is a bad area, and there is an abundance of them around here, so he won’t be waiting long. He wishes they weren’t moving to a new hideout. He likes it here.
His bare feet, already stark white, turn icy under the never-ending rain. Shigaraki doesn’t bother to pull them back in.
He waits.
On top of the grey, cinderblock wall, a cat perches, eying his now soaked breakfast with wild eyes, ribs as obvious as Shigaraki’s. One of its ears is gone; the other stands straight up. Shigaraki refuses to make eye contact, staring resolutely at the wall until it springs down with feline grace and pads slowly towards the bowl and him.
Gracefully, it bends its head to eat, and Shigaraki can finally look at it. He doesn’t admire exactly, but he does take it in, takes in the way the cat’s eyes still dart around even while it eats, takes in its stance, ready to escape at any time, ready to run.
He decides, sat in the doorway, with his feet cold and grey, and his head tired and restless, that he never wants to be like this cat. He never wants to be out of control, scared to stop in one place for too long.
He wonders if that’s why they have to move.
When the cat finishes Shigaraki’s breakfast, and begins licking the bowl clean, Shigaraki flicks his foot at it, sending water droplets arcing into the sky and the cat darts away, jumping at the wall to escape from him. He takes some sort of muted enjoyment in watching it escape, before standing and stretching. His hoodie lifts up with his arms, revealing painful thinness, and Shigaraki tells himself to remind Korugiri to buy him a new one, refusing to acknowledge that writing it down would probably be a better idea. He doesn’t have the energy.
He decides to go on a walk.
It’s 7:22 when Shigaraki leaves the hideout, his hood covering his face and Father safe in his pocket, protected from the rain but with him still.
It’s 9:46 when Shigaraki finds himself half way up the hills he can see from his window, barefoot and covered in dirt.
It’s still raining.
He looks down at his feet, almost translucent again the black mud and numb from rain and rough paths.
He keeps walking.