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Shigaraki could feel fire. He could smell cooling blood.
Shigaraki was sightless. Slipping down into obscurity.
He’d tried running from it. But how can you outrun death?
No, he wasn’t surviving this.
He’d died long before this, before the lab roof had collapsed, throwing him into the side of his test-tube, piercing his stomach deeply with shards of biting glass.
Died back in a dark garden, feeling warm dog fur and the cold bite of the wind. Another life. Now his corpse had been walking, killing, decaying. Rotting the reality he was trapped within.
Maybe, one day, if he decayed enough, he could break through this reality into another. Was death this reality? The one he had been searching for, as his skin cracked, and his brain shattered?
He didn’t want to go alone. He had always been alone.
“Dabi?” He wailed softly, groping through the empty air, the sad pipes of the corridor echoing his cry despondently.
Nothing.
He stumbled over something, and then his face was against the floor. Curling up, he wished he could change. Change this hopeless world, change his hopeless form.
A light laughter grazed his ears, caressing his brain with soothing breaths. Someone was calling him, her airy voice asking him to play with Mon-Chan. He wanted to play, feel the grass between his toes. Dad was happy, mother was happy, the house was content, calling him back home.
‘I’m tired.” He whispered to no one. How could he go to them if he couldn’t walk? Tears warmed his face wetly, and the sensation was calming, as if his bitter, fragmented mind was spilling out through his eyes, leaving his body a gentle husk.
When had he stopped feeling the pain? His stomach was no longer scorched, blackened nerves, crying out with agonising screeches. Now, as blood pooled. He only felt a dropping emptiness.
His skin prickled, the air finally blanketing him with weightlessness. They were going to help him; the silence and the dark. They were going to send him home, they murmured.
Sighing, Shigaraki let his eyes close, sinking. He wanted to wait for someone. Someone he loved. But they were calling him, and he had waited too long. Life had been waiting, death was a destination.
“…raki…?” Dabi’s voice floated through his mind, tugging on his mind, drawing him back from peacefulness. He could feel his family’s hands gently encircle his own.
Or was it…?
“Dabi?” He croaked, eyes fluttering open but seeing nothing. He sighed, letting them fall again, no point in searching for a sight that would only pain him.
“Yeah… ‘M here.” Dabi’s voice sounded strange. Like he was speaking though a fog, deafening his sounds.
But Shigaraki could still make out the thick emotion that strangled his words, an inevitable sadness.
“Hey…” Shiagraki breathed, running his thumb across Dabi’s palm in soothing circles. He heard Dabi give a choked sob, and the sound shattered what was left of his deteriorating heart. He felt a comforting smile grace his lips, wanting to tell Dabi that it was fine.
That it was Dabi he was truly worried about.
“It’s… clearing…” Shigaraki carefully, feeling his stomach clench numbly. “I… Everything feels… clear.”
The pain, the strangling throb that always wormed its way into his brain, the emotions that crushed and suffocated him, that warped his world beyond more than he can endure.
It was fading. He was waking up from his nightmare.
“Shig’s… Don’t-” Dabi sobbed, Shigaraki feeling warm tears drop onto his face. “Don’t…”
“It’s ok.” Shigaraki smiled again, throat opening, chest filling with air. “I’ll see you again.”
Shigaraki felt his body move, but no sensations followed. Dabi was pulling his body onto his lap, caressing his face, brushing his hair away from his eyes. He wanted to stare into Dabi’s eyes one last time, to keep those beautiful blue eyes with him forever.
But he just sighed, tilting his head until he could feel Dabi’s chest, feel every trembling breath leave Dabi’s lungs. It was comforting, like every night he’d spent with Dabi, every affectionate moment, every secret kiss, every tender word…
“I’ll see you again…” Shigaraki murmured. “I promise…”
He heard Dabi shudder. When he spoke, it was adoration and grief and longing and agony and acceptance. Everything Dabi was, followed him into the dim obscurity.
“I love you. I’ll follow you, always.”
Shigaraki smiled, stepped backwards over the ledge, and fell.