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I frown at my hands, flipping them over. This isn’t what they’re supposed to look like and it’s… it’s odd. I remember them looking normal, but I can’t even be sure they’re solid. It’s like… It’s like… I don’t know what to say or how to say it.
Everyone’s told me… that none of it is my fault, that I got body-snatched, mind-wiped, and manipulated. But I was going to become a hero. Instead… I’m a villain. Or was I a villain? Am I still…?
Looking in the mirror, I can’t recognize myself. I’m just a shadow. A shadow of who I used to be. And I’m confused. I frown. Or at least I think I do. I can’t actually tell. I don’t have a mouth, yet somehow I can still speak. My eyes have no pupils and are just glowing yellow slits… I’m pretty sure I don’t even have to breathe.
Am I supposed to take care of Shigaraki Tomura? Or am I training to be a hero? Do I run and clean a bar that’s empty except for my associates? Or am I interning with His Purple Majesty with Shouta?
Noise builds up in my mind, orders, voices, screaming.
Dropping my head into my hands but they aren’t hands they’re mist and- and! tears escape my eyes but I’m not crying, it’s not really tears dripping down my cheeks because I don’t have eyes, or a face, or cheeks. I’m just a shadow and I wail soundlessly because I don’t have a mouth, I’m not even sure I have lungs. There’s something hidden in my neck brace and it might be the only truly solid piece of me as my head passes through my hands and it hurts after all, heads and all the pieces inside aren’t meant to be touched, gone through.
Watering Eyes, Upset Heart
Shouta watched his friend from behind the glass. He hadn’t known, hadn’t realized, but it had been impossible. Or maybe he had been willfully blind. He didn’t think he had been. After all, Oboro’s Quirk had been nothing like Kurogiri’s. Maybe similar in appearance, but not in capabilities. Though maybe Shouta should be less surprised. Oboro’s Quirk use had always been very creative… He didn’t just use his clouds to hide himself or obscure others from view, he could ride them, was working out how to use his clouds to store things inside them by making them more dense…
Maybe Shouta should be less surprised that Kurogiri’s Quirk came from Oboro’s…
Maybe he should be less surprised about a lot of things. This past year, the world has been falling apart, and it seems that he’s at the center of it. His kids, his friends, his past, all of it is in jeopardy.
Oboro is only one piece of the puzzle. Oboro, who can barely remember him, who has changed so much and so little, isn’t the answer.
“Any progress?” Hizashi’s voice is measured, calm. Shouta’s known him long enough to see through the ruse, but it’s more convincing than it used to be. Perhaps an outsider would believe it.
“He’s no longer violent,” Shouta says. “They don’t want him to have visitors for awhile. But they think he’ll be able to remember more soon.”
It feels wrong, looking through the one way mirror at a dead man. They’ve grown up, moved on, and yet here he is, pale and shrouded in smoke, young despite his years. It’s the same face that would glow with excitement before the sports festival, the same voice that would shout, far too loud and far too often for Shouta’s taste.
He’s so quiet now. Shouta wishes, almost, that he would come to life again.
“Do you think he remembers us?”
Hizashi sounds more broken than Shouta has ever heard him. There is no good answer. Shouta stays silent, burying his face further in his capture weapon.
They don’t stay long, that day. They have students to get back to, and there’s not much else they can do for Oboro besides wait.
Hizashi can tell, every time they go back, that things are changing. When they’d first been called in, he hadn’t believed it – had so little reason to before Shouta managed to get through, push back the fog for just long enough to see Oboro behind the mist.
He wishes that could’ve been something more permanent. It’s one thing to know he’s Oboro, but it’s another to look at him – Hizashi can’t forget the USJ that easily, the part he’d had in that, even though he hadn’t known who he was.
He hadn’t known who Shouta or Hizashi were, either. He might still not. Shouta hadn’t answered him, after all, which he knows means there’s no way to know – not until Oboro himself says something, and he hasn’t said much.
They have to wait for something to change. The people watching over him at Tartarus had said they’d reach out if things changed – otherwise, they’d be back next week for the same usual visit, in hopes that their presence would help, somehow.
God, Hizashi hates waiting.
He hates that there isn’t anything else they can do more, though. They’re heroes, there should be something… more that they can do.
But there isn’t. This isn’t a fairytale, this is real life — there is no perfect solution to this, no miracle cure.
Oboro died. He was dead, and they had mourned him, and now… Now, he isn’t dead anymore, or perhaps only part of him isn’t and—
Hizashi can’t figure out what would be worse: if Oboro is truly dead and all that remains is his corpse, animated by some unholy science, or if something of their friend has survived, trapped inside of his own mind and body all this time?
He doesn’t know what to hope for.
(Or rather, he does. Of course he does. It’s the same thing he’s always hoped for, ever since that building came down and they had found Oboro and known he wouldn’t—
Of course he knows what to hope for.
He just also knows it’s not something he’ll ever get, and that this situation is closer to it than he ever dreamed they’d get is cruel irony at its finest.)
But really, it isn’t up to him, or even to Shouta, or any of the doctors studying Kurogiri’s case, it’s…
It’s up to Oboro himself.
And so, they wait.
Meant to be you ~ Meant to be me
You don’t know what to do anymore. You don’t know what to think.
They keep coming back, occasionally, whenever their current responsibilities allow. Shouta, Hizashi, even Nemuri.
You don’t know what to say to them.
Are they still your friends, after all those years? After all those attacks you were forced to carry out?
Forced was the wrong word to use there. You didn’t want to do that, sure, but at the same time… you did.
You didn’t know why you shouldn’t want to attack them. They were the enemy, after all, dead-set on hurting Tomura.
He was your responsibility. Arguably, he still is.
That was the only purpose of your new life; to help and protect Tomura.
You barely remembered anything that happened before your new life. And what you did remember, well… You barely had any time to ponder it.
Tomura had not been a very easy child to care for.
You barely had the time to do what was necessary to keep your body in working order, there wasn’t a moment of peace to allow you for some much needed introspection.
Now, however?
After getting arrested? The cell wasn’t that large. Not to mention, you spent the first few weeks completely immobile, tied up and drugged.
There was nothing you could do but think.
To try and remember. To bring all those buried memories back to the forefront of your mind.
To remember everything you could still access. Everything and anything that wasn’t corrupted by the long decades spent in a body that barely supported higher brain functions.
The stories Shouta and Hizashi and Nemuri told you… Helped. Somewhat.
You weren’t sure if it was all that good for you, though. Should you be trying to remember? Should you be trying to be the person you used to be, all those years ago?
They seemed to want you to be Oboro again.
You were certain, if Tomura managed to break you out -- he would be trying to, of course, you were too valuable of a resource to leave you rotting in a cell -- he would want you to be Kurogiri again.
To be exactly the same person you were before the heroes took you away.
But you weren’t.
You weren’t either of them, now. Not Shirakumo Oboro, not Kurogiri…
You were something new, something more, something different than either of them. A mixture. A hybrid of sorts, an even bigger mess than you already were, as the most autonomous Nomu in existence.
How were you supposed to figure out who you were now, if the only people who wanted to talk to you would pull you in two very different directions? Both the heroes and the villains had very different agendas, very different ideas as to who you should be.
A friend. A hero, or, at worst, hero-in-training. A kind person. A tool. A villain, or, at worst, an accessory to crime. A silent bystander.
How were you supposed to choose, when neither of those roles fit you anymore?
Burying your head in your hands, running your hands through the mist that makes up your hair, you’re confused. Who are you? Who are you meant to be? Or are you meant to be anyone at all? It hurts. It hurts to think about and there’s too much.
You were created to serve. But you loved to be free. You didn’t have a choice. They’re asking you to make one.
And honestly? You don’t know what to do. Those old memories were so faded and the programming you went through was so strong…
Yes , you know you used to be more than you are currently, you know there’s something not right with you anymore, that you’re not meant to be this way, but you also don’t know, can’t really remember what you used to be, before all of this or how you’re meant to be either. It’s weird. It’s like… like a kind of dissonance and Oboro… Oboro doesn’t know how to make that connection anymore.
Thinking about it, you’re not even sure what to call yourself anymore. Are you Oboro Shirakumo, the 2-A student that was best friends with Shouta Aizawa, Hizashi Yamada, and Tensei Iida? Or are you Kurogiri, the caretaker of Shigaraki Tomura?
Your head is a mess and you don’t feel like either anymore. Were you ever Kurogiri? Did Shirakumo Oboro die all those years ago? You didn’t have any answers and you didn’t think they’d be given to you because…well, you were the only one that could find them. And you had no idea where to start looking.
You want to cry but you’re not even sure if you have tear ducts anymore.
Confusion, Watching, Aching
From beyond the glass, on the other side, Nemuri watches her old kohai drop his head into his hands, or what’s supposed to pass as his hands, and break down. Her heart aches for him, for all her friends, and she pities them a little. It’s not fair and she knows it. But as heroes, sometimes… no, all of them go through times where they don’t know who they are anymore, what their purpose is, when they don’t feel right. When they don’t feel like themselves anymore and have to create themselves anew.
Nemuri remembers how she had to come to terms with the fact that her hero identity wasn’t her identity. How confused she’d been. How she had to work through that disconnect.
She had every faith that Oboro would work it out though. He was clever, bright, for all he wasn’t as solid as Shouta or steadfast as Hizashi as they moved through life.
Oboro or Kurogiri would figure out who they were and they would shine. Nemuri was sure of it.