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Shigaraki had expected taking over for Sensei would be freeing. There would be no more lessons. No more babysitters. No one would tell him what to do because power meant authority, and authority meant he could do whatever he wanted without having to worry about the opinions of those beneath him.
The reality, he learned, was somewhat different.
Fear was not to be conflated with loyalty, which he reaffirmed every time a new spy was brought to light. Power helped, but leading was not nearly as simple as he’d imagined when he was younger. Shigaraki had never felt more tied-down than he did standing at the head of the MLA.
Most of the minutiae he left to Re-Destro, who was better accustomed to the job, but Shigaraki still had all final decisions go through him personally. As a result, Shigaraki found himself trapped behind a desk more often than not. He spent an inordinate amount of time listening to people who weren’t as smart as him drone on about strategies he’d already considered and sitting through unending debates over budgets. Most debriefings came second-hand from whichever general he’d assigned to it, and he listened to them slack-necked, usually as he tapped something against the desk—a fingernail or the end of a pen.
Today, they were discussing a raid on the Ibaraki branch of the Hero Commission. It was meant to distract the Commission while they covertly took what they really wanted from the branch in Saitama. Because Shigaraki couldn’t be in both places at once, he was in his office as usual, listening to Re-Destro.
“Things are going by the book,” Re-Destro told him, a wrinkle high on his forehead. “We’ve taken control of the building and successfully secured an escape route underground. Intel says they’re sending Gang Orca for backup.”
“Make sure we’re out before he gets there.”
“Of course.”
Back when Kurogiri was with them, travelling from Ibaraki to Saitama had been as simple as opening a door, and Shigaraki could’ve been at both raids without a problem.
A lot of things would have been easier if Kurogiri was still around.
“Losses so far?”
“No casualties. A few of Twice’s clones were captured, but they self-destructed shortly thereafter... Regrettably, our tank is no longer in useable condition.”
Shigaraki grunted, annoyed but not surprised. Tanks weren’t cheap. He wondered if it’d be smarter to look into stealing one.
“And, ah…” Re-Destro hesitated, rubbing his hands together, the shit-eating smile on his face fading for half a frame. “It seems that Twice has broken something again—his leg this time.” He said it inconsequentially, like it was barely worth mentioning. And maybe it wasn’t. It was hard to send Twice somewhere and expect him not to break something.
Once, while on an assignment, he’d tried breaking an arm out of desperation to use his quirk.
Fortunately for Dabi, it worked.
Less fortunately for Twice, it worked.
Breaking something whenever he needed to use his quirk had become habitual ever since. So Shigaraki nodded, scratching at his neck and not even dignifying it with a response.
Honestly, he didn’t really care what Twice did to his own body. Shigaraki wasn’t his mom, and it wouldn’t do either of them any favors by pretending like he was.
Even so, as Shigaraki watched him hobble down the hall a few weeks later, he couldn’t deny that something about the whole situation bothered him. It wasn’t the fresh sling on his neck or the limp that said he probably shouldn’t have abandoned his crutches so quickly, but rather the way looking at Twice made his skin prickle, as if he was allergic to the sight of him. Every time he saw Twice with a new cast, he swore he could hear the memory of bones breaking in his ears: splintering like twigs, grinding like gravel, burrowing under his skin.
Shigaraki watched Twice walk down the hall and thought, Enough is enough.
The doctor they generally went to was a man who had once been a part of the MLA and now fell under their umbrella. Shigaraki liked him because he always made time for them and never asked too many questions, and he’d proven himself loyal on more than one occasion when people had come snooping around for them. That didn’t necessarily mean Shigaraki trusted him, but he knew Twice did unconditionally, which was why he called the doctor that very night.
“Make him stop,” Shigaraki ordered.
“I am worried he won’t listen to me,” the doctor confessed, but he knew better than to refuse.
Just a few days later, Shigaraki got a report from Re-Destro that Twice was back in the hospital.
Their hospital rooms were always at the end of the hall, where it was easiest to make a quick escape if needed. Shigaraki marched through the sterile hospital corridor to Twice’s room, index finger hooked around a wicker basket of fruit, and didn’t bother looking at the pseudonym scrawled across the name card before sliding the door open. Twice was tucked into the hospital bed, a book in his lap and a bouquet that filled the entire room with the smell of flowers that made Shigaraki want to sneeze the second he stepped in. Twice’s left hand was splinted, the entire thing wrapped so thick with bandages it could’ve been comical if Shigaraki were more in the mood to laugh.
Twice’s head snapped up at the sound of the door, giving a big grin as soon as his eyes focused on Shigaraki. “Boss! Wasn’t expecting to see you here.” As Shigaraki realized it’d probably been months since they last talked about anything other than work, Twice eyed the basket. “That for me?”
“From Re-Destro. He says to get better soon and…” There had been more to the message, but once he took out all the formalities that was about the gist of it. “...all that.”
Flipping his book face-down onto his lap, Twice reached for the basket as Shigaraki offered it to him, wriggling his fingers as he looked it over. There were apples, bananas, and oranges, along with some imported-looking pears and, for some reason, an entire pineapple. Shigaraki had eyed it the car ride over, wondering how the hell Twice was going to eat an entire pineapple while he was in the hospital. With only one hand.
A letter was clipped to one of the pineapple’s fronds. Twice set the basket aside briefly so he could attempt to wrestle it open with his functional thumb and index finger. Apparently, Re-Destro hadn’t had the forethought to leave the envelope unglued either, although knowing him he’d probably delegated the job of preparing it to one of his assistants.
Shigaraki snatched it away from Twice and opened it without a word, then dropped it back down onto his lap. When Twice thanked him, he shrugged and looked out the window.
“What the fuck did you do to your hand, anyway?” Shigaraki asked after a tick.
“Oh, this?” Twice lifted his bandaged hand for a second before he started fishing the letter from inside the envelope. “Nothing much, just the usual. I had to use my quirk, so you know.” He shrugged. “Doc told me to stop breaking bones, so I thought I’d just do a finger this time.”
Shigaraki glanced away from the window to give him a sharp look. “Your entire hand is bandaged.”
Twice’s smile went pinched, almost guilty as he shrugged. “Yeah, well I kept thinking that maybe—what if I’m not real after all? I guess it took the whole hand ‘till I was satisfied.”
Shigaraki’s eyes locked on the splints and tape holding Twice’s hand together. In the back of his mind, a phantom-like memory of bones snapping played all the way up his spine: crack, crack, crack. Twice’s soft, ironic laughter overlayed behind it made him feel sick to his stomach.
“Guess it’s better just to break my arms after all,” he concluded.
“It’s not,” Shigaraki said, voice grainy and drawling, his fingers twitching with the urge to scratch. “You shouldn’t be breaking them at all.”
“What? You worried about me or something? Who the fuck do you think you are?” Twice slammed his good fist down on the bed next to him, enraged out of nowhere, but a second later he calmed, adding a tearful, “I’m touched.”
Shigaraki pushed past the theatrics dryly. “Waiting for you to heal takes too long. If you’re going to use your quirk, do it without hurting yourself. I’d rather you not use your quirk than have to wait however long it takes for you to recover.”
Twice’s shoulder sunk. “Right. ‘Course, boss. I’ll do my best.” He said it lightly, the smile never leaving his face. It looked as if he’d already given up on himself, which was not what Shigaraki had come all this way to hear.
“I’m not asking. I’m telling you. Stop.”
The humor drained from Twice at Shigaraki’s tone, his gaze slinking down to the wrinkled envelope on his lap. “Yes, sir.”
There was something stiff and unspoken in the air that Shigaraki didn’t like, sitting uncomfortably heavy in the muscles of his shoulders, but he’d said what he wanted and got his answer. Dragging the conversation out any longer would just be cruel. Turning to the door, he spared just one last look at Twice, who was still slumped in bed.
“Get well soon,” Shigaraki said over his shoulder, and then he was gone.
They decided to steal the tank.
It was a two-birds-one-stone sort of operation, targeting a military compound that had coincidentally taken root just outside of Deika City a few years ago and been a thorn in their side ever since. If they could get rid of them while landing a few tanks and possibly some assault choppers to sweeten the deal, Shigaraki saw no reason not to.
The whole thing would’ve been relatively simple if Kurogiri were here, but they had to make due. High risk, high rewards.
Shigaraki headed it personally for the first time in ages. It would be nice to let loose, he thought, until he heard the tell-tale wooden crack behind the grainy audio feedback connecting them to the other side of the military base. Compress’s voice seemed to fade into the background behind it as Shigaraki watched a line of black fill up the horizon. Twice’s clones duplicated, reached up, extended over the base like a wave of living tar—
The sound kept playing in Shigaraki’s ears. Logs thrown into the fireplace. His innards crawled like all his guts were desperate to escape from one another, something hot and bitter reaching up the back of his throat.
Twice had disobeyed him. Him.
Years ago, Shigaraki and Spinner had made a bet over a game of GTA about which of them would be better at flying a helicopter. In-game, Spinner was better, but Shigaraki had messed around with flight simulators in the past, and he was sure he’d be the better pilot in real life.
When he got to the choppers, he found himself no longer in the mood to test it out.
Shigaraki found Twice in the only place anyone ever found Twice anymore: the end of the long hall in the hospital, behind a closed door in a room that smelled too much like flowers. He didn’t look at the name card. There was no point, not when Twice spent more time in a hospital room than his home. Shigaraki threw open the door and marched in, making Twice jump and drop the crochet needles he’d been using onto the floor, a ball of pink yarn tumbling down along with them.
“Ah, boss,” he said, a nervous edge to his voice. His hand had mostly healed from the look of it, but he still had to wear a splint around his wrist, and now his leg was all wrapped up, too, held in a sling so it couldn’t move. “It’s been ages! Wasn’t expecting to see you so soon. Sorry, you think you could get that for me?”
Twice gestured to the needles and yarn that had fallen. Shigaraki’s eyes narrowed, temper stoked, but he bent to pluck them from the ground anyway.
“I owe ya one,” Twice said as he passed them over. “You’re probably wondering about this, right? You see, one of my clones—I think he was—he was probably … Was he?” Twice flinched, holding a hand to his forehead. “Someone taught me to knit. Since I’ll be cooped up in here for a little bit, I thought I’d make something for Toga. Only problem is I don’t remember how to make anything but a scarf, and she already…”
Twice trailed off as he saw the look on Shigaraki’s face.
“I guess you didn’t come here to talk about mittens, huh? Sorry about the leg thing. I know you told me not to, but—”
“No more missions until you can use your quirk normally.”
The words left Shigaraki’s mouth almost before he’d had time to think about them, only half-considered, hanging between the two of them like a bag of wet sand.
“B-but you need me. What’s a leg or two? If you don’t have my quirk, you’ll have to use real people! People die! Our friends will…” Twice’s voice quieted as Shigaraki remained unmoved, his good fist clenching his sheets. “You can’t just take me off the team. I’m a General!”
“Don’t tell me what I can’t do,” Shigaraki snapped. “If you don’t like it, then get better.”
Twice exploded. He shouted, only half-intelligible, gesturing wildly between the two of them and flailing his mobile limbs so much that the sling around his leg rocked precariously. He raged like it was the end, like telling him to value himself above other people was the worst thing that Shigaraki could’ve ordered him to do.
And Shigaraki rode it all out, scratching at his neck idly as he listened to Twice fight through his decision.
The screaming broke into sobs, and then hiccups, and eventually silence as he sat upright in bed, his entire mask soaked down to his shoulders. “Do you think I’m too broken to be here?” he asked, sounding strangely lucid.
If there was a right thing to say, Shigaraki didn’t know what it was. Instead, he answered, “If you weren’t broken, you wouldn’t be here.”
“You think I’m too crazy to go on missions anymore, don’t you? Now that you’ve got so many people—”
“Twice.”
When Twice stopped, he had that look on his face, eyes upturned and pleading, begging to be saved.
Too bad all he had was Shigaraki. He wasn’t made for this. Kurogiri was better with this sort of thing.
“We need you here,” Shigaraki told him slowly. “That’s why I’m taking you off. I need to make sure that you’ll still be here in the future.”
“Oh,” was all Twice said.
He didn’t say another word for the rest of the time Shigaraki spent at the hospital with him.
Twice saw him more after that. At first, he came to try and change Shigaraki’s mind. Sometimes, he complained and argued; other times, he came in already half-undone, begging him to let him go back out in the field. Shigaraki didn’t have the time to listen to him day in and day out, but it was hard to turn Twice down. And he found it often didn’t matter how closely he listened. The fact that he was there, listening, was apparently more important than how well he comprehended whatever Twice was trying to tell him.
The whole thing felt nostalgic in a way that he couldn’t place.
As time passed, the talks grew less pointed. One day Twice would whine about being cooped up on base, and then the next day he’d go off about what a person’s favorite pizza topping said about their personality. It was like he had a million things packed into his head that he needed to get out into the open before they ripped him apart.
“You don’t have to worry about Re-Destro,” Shigaraki told him once when his patience was particularly short. Twice only liked to talk when the two of them were alone, which was inefficient considering how often Re-Destro walked through the doors with news of one thing or another.
“I don’t wanna talk when he’s here,” Twice mumbled, and it was the petulance in his voice that did it, making Shigaraki feel dizzy with deja vu .
He’d had this exact same conversation once before with Kurogiri. The only difference was that, when he’d had it, he’d been on the opposite side, sitting right where Twice was.
“Why?” Shigaraki pressed, leaning forward.
Twice tilted his head, frowning. “I don’t trust him, I guess.”
Trust.
The word sat strangely in his mind, like glitched inventory. Impossible to remove.
“You trust me?” he asked, flatly, like it was a bad joke.
Twice raised an eyebrow, like it was the most obvious thing. “‘Course I do. We all do, or else you wouldn’t be the boss.”
It sounded so simple when Twice said it. Naturally, Shigaraki knew that power wasn’t the only reason he stood at the top. That was how he’d gotten there, but power alone wasn’t enough to ensure that he stayed there. It had never occurred to him that people would trust him—that anyone could trust someone like him. It was such a foreign concept. Ridiculous. No one in the world was trustworthy, least of all a self-proclaimed villain such as himself.
But then he thought, Hadn’t I trusted Kurogiri, too?
The realization swallowed him.
He had trusted Kurogiri.
Shigaraki stared at Twice, wide-eyed, and Twice stared back. Who else did he trust, Shigaraki wondered.