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Kurogiri’s birth—if, in fact, his coming to being can be referred to as such—is slow. The process spans over days and weeks, months and years, starting right from the day he’s first stitched together in his odd womb of a test tube. In the beginning, it’s pure blackness, inky and infinite, like all the cosmos have been spread out before him. Calling it peaceful would be a lie, because it’s nothing. An overwhelming expanse of nothingness, like conscious sleep, interrupted only by the occasional ripple, the barest hint of something. Not a thought or even a feeling, but an awareness.
He is.
The sensation of being passes through him, the sudden awareness of his body, the fact that he can control it if he wishes. He wills it and the darkness swirls around him, and he knows that it is a part of him, and that he is the darkness itself.
But, with nothing to cling to, the ripple soon settles. His awareness fades back into slumber within the inky void.
Until, one day, he’s taken out of the tube.
He still doesn’t understand himself. Not what. Not who. But a voice tells him to walk, and he knows that he can, so he does. He stops when it tells him to. Sits. Waits. The voice tells him to open his eyes, and so he does, and the world unfolds around him.
The first thing he ever sees is cold chrome and rows of giant, glistening tubes. He sees pipes and wires, flashing screens and twitching, fetal creatures, half-formed and floating in liquid. In front of him, the floor is steep, a ramp on one side, the other carved into stairs. At the top stands a man dressed in a suit, a wide smile on his face.
He spreads his arms and says, “Welcome back to life.”
It’s not an order. With nothing to do, Kurogiri stares up at the man. He feels a flicker of something within him, a small and warm—the first emotion he ever experiences.
Gratitude.
The man introduces himself as All For One. He gives Kurogiri a name, as well as tasks, which he completes succinctly. Things like moving. Memorizing. Creating black-and-purple swirling vortexes out of himself, which are apparently very impressive, because All For One compliments him whenever he’s successful. He says that Kurogiri shows promise. Kurogiri likes the feeling of All For One’s words when he’s pleased, so he does his best to always fulfill the man’s expectations.
This is very easy at first, when the tasks are simple, thoughtless things.
This stops being the case as All For One’s expectations for him rise.
Learning to talk is their first hurdle. Essentially, speaking is easy. When asked to, Kurogiri can make sounds. He can repeat the sounds and words he’s heard. He knows the meaning of the words he hears, which he demonstrates every time he completes a new task. The next step should, naturally, be using them on his own, but this proves much more difficult. A question is different from an order.
All For One asks him, “What’s the weather today?” and Kurogiri freezes. It’s a simple question with a simple answer, but there are too many variables. He’s unable to process how he’s supposed to respond.
He stands here, frozen, trying to process until All For One sighs and shakes his head.
“It’s fine,” he says. “I’ll just look for myself.”
He walks away without ordering Kurogiri to come along, so Kurogiri stands in place, watching him go. Something vile squirms in his core, the same as when he looks in a mirror, or when his appearance frightens someone on the street. Shame, but he’s never felt it this acutely. It feels like there's a hand around his heart, clenching tight.
“Don’t worry about it,” All For One tells him once he gets back. “If anything, it’s a good thing. It means you’re a blank slate, like the doctor said. We just need to start from the beginning.”
The beginning, apparently, means “yes” and “no”. All For One explains them both in detail: that “yes” is used when agreeing, or when confirming that what the other party has said is true; that “no” is the opposite, used when disagreeing or when someone has said something false. And they practice them, All For One giving him basic questions that he can use the two words to answer.
“Is this red?” he’ll ask, holding up his wine.
And Kurogiri will pause.
Think.
Answer, “Yes.”
One day, All For One tells Kurogiri he is to answer “Yes, sir” to him, and only to him. It’s the first in a seemingly endless list of clauses and conditions he then, over the course of the months they spend together, explains to Kurogiri. That’s how Kurogiri learns to speak: as a sequence of rules that he must memorize and obey. The method is effective, but also somewhat lacking, in Kurogiri's opinion. There are times when he wishes to speak unbidden, unnecessary thoughts and ideas that fall just outside of the rules All For One has set up for him.
When he sees a particularly flashy advertisement. When All For One buys a new suit and it fits him well. When an animal is abandoned on the pavement. When a child is. There are words that he can’t quite grasp attached to them, feelings that he can’t entirely understand.
He’s still trying to figure them out when All For One gives Shigaraki Tomura to him.
Stored in Kurogiri’s core is a collection of information. All For One has told him as much. He has a basis of information from his previous existences, which is why he came to life with a general understanding of the world around him. It’s why he knows, essentially, what a child is and how a child should be, and also how he understands that Shigaraki Tomura is different from what might be considered normal for a child, even without All For One telling him.
He’s closer to an animal than a human, Kurogiri thinks when he first meets him—like a small creature, backed into a corner. Through shaggy, white hair, his eyes shine red and angry, as if threatening Kurogiri for the mere sin of existing.
“I want you to care for him,” All For One tells him. “Ensure all of his needs are met. I’ll be giving him more assignments from now on, so make sure he’s always at the location I need him to be.”
As naturally as breathing, as if there’s no other answer, Kurogiri responds, “Yes, sir.”
A child needs three meals a day. It will need to be cleaned and cleaned after. Given refreshments. Provided education and entertainment. Although Kurogiri is aware of this on some basic level, All For One reminds him. He does this more than once, over the course of the remainder of the day that they spend together. “There will be times when you have to make a decision,” All For One says. “If you need help, you have permission to ask for it, but the reason I’m handing him over to you is because I don’t have the time to look after him myself. I want you to think carefully and use your own judgement.”
Kurogiri’s response comes delayed this time, almost hesitant. “...Yes, sir.”
All For One pats Kurogiri on the part of himself that resembles a shoulder. “Well, don’t worry too hard. I expect there will be some mistakes along the way.” All For One grins, giving a hearty laugh. “Just make sure he doesn’t die. Anything else, we can fix.”
Shigaraki Tomura is taught similarly to how Kurogiri was. All For One starts with small, easy-to-accomplish tasks, the completion of which leads to slightly more difficult ones, creating a staircase of smaller goals that end, eventually, in the lesson that One For All has placed them there to teach.
Go to the park without
attracting attention.
Observe the children
playing at the park.
Learn the groups they form.
Isolate and befriend one
group of children.
Play with them every
day for two weeks.
Follow them all home
without being detected.
Memorize where they live.
Decide which child is
the happiest.
Kill their family.
Like Kurogiri, the boy does everything asked of him. Not exactly willingly, always, but even on the days he complains that he’s too tired, or that it’s a waste of time, or puts his feet down and refuses outright, in the end he always, always does the things that All For One asks of him. He’ll come back with a grim expression, sometimes. Cuts and bruises. A limp that makes him barely able to stagger through the door. And, still, once the next day comes, he pushes himself back to his feet and sets out on his next assignment.
Kurogiri completes his own tasks completely and perfectly, stitching the boy’s wounds with the same simple efficiency that he does his torn clothes. He washes the blood off of him and buys him whatever All For One’s budget will allow. He feeds him. He puts him to bed. He wakes him up in the morning. He transports him to all the places that All For One needs him, all over the country, spreading out the murders so that no one can connect them and find Shigaraki Tomura before he’s ready.
He does everything.
And, for some reason, it doesn’t feel like enough.
It’s like when he sees something abandoned on the sidewalk—like pity, almost, but sharper, mixed with the same squirming, gut-wrenching feeling that failing gives him. Usually, it remains in the background, like an itch that he can ignore, but there are times when it grows stabbing, too. Some days Kurogiri has trouble even looking at the boy.
He finds himself thinking that there must be something more he can do. There must be.
But he doesn’t know what it is, so he does nothing. He does everything and he does nothing, and he stews in his own unintelligible emotions.
After a particularly difficult assignment, Kurogiri finds the boy in his room. He has a cut on his arm that needs mending. This isn’t unusual by any means, nor is the sound of him crying. But the way he does it on this day, curled in on himself, makes something in Kurogiri stir. The boy cradles his wound as he clutches the hand of his dead father to his face, and he cries into it, pressing the palm flat over his mouth as if to stifle the sound.
Kurogiri freezes in the doorway as panic overtakes him. The emotion is wild, savaging him and filling him with the frenzied reminder that what he’s doing is not enough.
Full, round tears roll through the gaps between Father’s fingers, down onto Shigaraki Tomura’s sleeves, forming little, discolored circles on his clothes. He sniffles, his nose making an awful sound like he has a cold, and in a sudden bout of clarity Kurogiri tells himself, Tea! He can make tea with honey and lemon like he had when the boy had a cold, like All For One had told him to do to soothe his throat.
That had made the boy feel better then. But it won’t now, he realizes half a second later. The problem is not a sore throat. He doesn’t know what it is, exactly, but it’s not a cold. The boy was healthy when he left. He seemed relatively healthy when he came back.
There is no sore throat. There is nothing to soothe. There is no solution he can find to the problem that he sees, so he stands there, feeling useless. Frustrated.
Until something occurs to him.
It seems to come out of nowhere in the same way that all his other knowledge has, an idea born of the depths of the black inkiness swirling inside—deep, deep within tiny patches of himself sewn together at his core.
No one tells him to, but he steps into the room. His footsteps are awkward and halting, unsure as he continues forward, over to Shigaraki Tomura. This is wrong, he thinks. He’s doing something meaningless. Something nonsensical. But All For One had instructed him to use his own judgement, so when the boy looks up at him and startles, backing away, Kurogiri only leans in, pulling him closer. He wraps his arms around him tight so he can’t squirm away, and he stands there like that. The boy tries to attack, reaching for Kurogiri’s core, and Kurogiri quietly makes portals around his wrists so he can’t fight his way out, either.
The two of them stay like that for a time. Kurogiri doesn’t know how long, but, gradually, Shigaraki Tomura calms down. The way he leans into the embrace is as stiff and awkward as Kurogiri had been initiating it. He presses his forehead into the hard mass of metal under Kurogiri’s clothes cautiously, as if expecting retaliation, before sniffling again. He doesn’t let out a single sob, but his breath gets ragged and inconsistent. His shoulders shake.
As he cries, he rubs his forehead into the fabric of Kurogiri’s suit, and he whimpers a single word in a tiny voice, so high and muffled that Kurogiri only barely makes it out.
Dad.
He is not Shigaraki Tomura’s father by any means, but the word overwhelms him. He doesn’t know why. The concept of a father to Kurogiri is just that: a concept. Something without form or reason.
And, yet, the single word seems to push everything else aside. He stares at the boy, motionless, and he can’t process, and he doesn’t understand, but something claws at him, scratching at his insides like it’s dying to get out. It’s all he can do to contain it.
Desire, he realizes slowly. It’s followed by something sweltering that makes him hold the boy closer, the pieces of himself practically vibrating in their shell. Protect.
Just like a shirt. Just like a wound. Kurogiri sews the fragmented thoughts together, searching for the ends that are meant to stick together and mending them into a single, flawless idea, which stands at the forefront of his mind like an exclamation.
He must not allow harm to fall to this child.
The thought dyes him, coloring him something warm that mixes in with the cloudy blackness, parting it like heavy rain clouds for something sunny and fierce. It’s not the way he was made. It’s not how he’s supposed to be. Kurogiri was made a blank slate, unmarred by unnecessary thoughts. An impeccable servant who will complete any task to perfection, without asking questions.
But he was created flawed. He is broken.
Kurogiri knows this, because, in that moment, as he holds Shigaraki Tomura in his arms, there is nothing else in the world. Not All For One, not his orders nor his plans. Everything disappears.
Shigaraki Tomura.
Kurogiri holds the boy closer.
Right or wrong, he doesn’t care. Kurogiri swears he will do everything within his power to keep Shigaraki Tomura safe.
Nothing else matters.