salted soil.

IS EVEN

ii.

Hawks is trying to pry info out of him. He knows. It's a quiet night, and maybe he's just paranoid, but Shutsu can feel it in the ways Hawk's eyes sharpen. Like something made of twine and gold. It's something that makes him ache; a dream that went sour too early into the night. Shutsu is stuck here, breath in his chest like a bad cough.

He can hear the water falling over his ear, he stuffs his stuff into a holder thing―shit what's it called it's just―akg! He doesn't have time for this he's going to be late if he doesn't make the train.

(That little part of his brain that he just can't kill of hisses that it's useless, he's never going to be Someru or Arakan again. He's not even Shutsu, just fucking Shigaraki. The only thing he wants gone is there like a noose.

He's choking on the expectations, on the fear in everyone's eyes. He's a monster, now. He's lonely, now.)

You're panicking, little brother.

He gets off the train and paces in the direction of school. He's cold, lips numb and nose runny, his eyes are dry and the world makes his bones ache. He's cold but winter isn't coming for a while. He's cold. He's tired. He's always tired these days. It makes his head hurt.

Shutsu wonders what they think of him. Aizawa must have known, on some level, that he had a relation with Tomura Shigaraki, it's everyone else he's worried about. He sucks it up, though. Walks into 1-A for history the day after the dorms are installed without a single break in his step.

"Now," He says to the class, they don't say a word. "I know I dun goofed, but I can explain―"

It's almost like they know―that there isn't really an explanation.

"What, that you're a traitor?" Bakugou hisses. He's still paranoid from it, eyes skittish, looking at the doors. Or maybe that's Shutsu. He wonders if he could survive the fall from the second floor down. Maybe broken bones aren't as bad as he remembers them. Ninth―Midoriya doesn't seem to mind all that much. He should go. Really. He should, he should go now―

You're panicking, little brother.

"I'm―not a traitor. I, uh, thought he was dead." Shutsu thinks back to his tombstone, next to nothing. There's a grave without a body and his name on it next to Shigaraki Hisashi is Shigaraki Yoichi becasue that's the only fucking thing Hisashi would call you in front of stangers when they asked. "He was supposed to be dead." He can't feel his lungs, they burn to breathe. "It's been three hundred seventy two years, four months, two weeks, three days, and nine hours, Bakugou he's supposed to be dead, people don't live that long―"

He glowers, all child like and traumatized as he is, hurt to the core. He's scared and nothing Shutsu does will stop that. "How the fuck are you alive then, hah?"

"I don't―didn't―I got hit with a quirk when I was nineteen and it sent me flying here. You think you had a shitty time in the three days we were both kidnapped?" Shutsu looks at him, Bakugou is all red eyes and loathing, but he always has been. "Tarturus looks like a fucking joke compared to living with him." He sighs, deep and heavy, like an iron on his chest. "Just. You're out, you're safe, he didn't turn you into a corpse puppet and he didn't kill you or put you in a vault..for the most part. You're okay." Shutsu closes his eyes and briefly hopes he never has to open them.

"A vault?" Some squeaky prepubescent teenage voice calls. Shutsu is too tired to put a voice to a face.

"When I was thirteen my brother, that's your kidnapper, got into a war with the Yakuza precinct he was working in, they banned him and put a bounty on his head, he got shot. It was barely there and he probably doesn't remember it, but he wouldn't let me leave the house." Shutsu smiles fondly. "It was this shitty place we ransacked after our mother kicked the bucket and our dad kicked us out. Apparently she thought we'd be good little boys and do everything for her with our meta's when we were older."