Terror races through his veins as the class falls apart, the alarms vibrating through the room with an urgent roar of RUN RUN RUN RUN. Bakugo stands carefully, his legs shaking from the adrenaline, eyes narrowing. Kaminari's hands shake.
Shit.
How had Shigaraki figured out so quickly?
There was no way.
UA was too closely guarded....
An explosion echoes from somewhere nearby, shaking him down the core. Bakugo's lips peel into a snarl, and Midoriya races out the door despite Aizawa's yells to stop. Bakugo starts to run after him, and Kirishima grabs him by the arm. Kaminari is relieved for exactly one second before Kirishima nods at him, an indecipherable look in his eyes, and let's go.
Were they insane???
Aizawa let out a long-suffering sigh as the two of them race across the hallway like the devil himself is chasing after them. The entire building is caked in red, the alarms turning all of their skin red with warning.
The alarms are deafening, and Kaminari can't hear a single thing anybody is saying, but somehow, the rest of the class seems to understand whatever words are pouring out of Aizawa's mouth. The world is moving along too fast, and Kaminari feels as if he is stuck in an alternate timeline. The next thing he knows is that everybody is gone, running out the door and towards where the sounds of fighting are only getting even louder yet.
Mina screams something at him, grabbing onto his arms desperately, eyes wide with determination, panic, and a strange glint of something he'd only seen a long time ago in the arms of his family. Sero stares down at him, his eyes hard, and says something that is lost in the din. He can barely make out the words over all of the screaming and yelling and explosions happening who knows where.
What he hears, he is so sure he has heard wrong.
We'll protect you.
Before he can even open his mouth, the two of them are gone, and he is left mouthing a voiceless, noiseless WHAT in the middle of an empty classroom.
As the red of the alarm washes over him, his entire body trembles with fear. They'd gone to fight for him. Shigaraki and the others were strong, what if they died? What if they got hurt? What if Shigaraki got hurt? Despite everything, Kaminari still couldn't help but still feel conflicted. He cared about both sides, and he knew that both sides cared about him.
He knew that what he was doing right now was right, but he still remembered all of the times that Shigaraki had helped him. Villains were never born as villains after all. That implied for all villains, even Shigaraki.
He felt useless, standing there, contemplating who he fought for while his friends were fighting for their lives just down the hall. His legs were jelly, and his mind pounded with a million thoughts, all at once. A couple of tears dripped from his tired eyes and he felt lost within the chaos. He knew that even if he turned himself in now, he wouldn't be forgiven for everything he'd done, all those people he murdered, in the eyes of the police. He would be locked in a cell to atone for his crimes for years.
Still, all he could remember were the hopes he'd had as a child, the naive thoughts that someone would come to rescue him. No one had come then, but perhaps his prayers were only just now being heard.
Life had been far from fair to him, but perhaps he could pull off just one more sacrifice so that others could have a chance.
Perhaps this would be enough for atonement.
He runs.
The hallway is awash in red, and his hands are clammy with sweat. His head pounds with the heavy beat of the alarm, but he isn't quite sure if it's because of the alarm or the roaring of his heart as it punches furiously against his chest. His legs feels shaky as the rumble and shouts of the fight sounds from somewhere in front of him, the building shaking with tremors. Everything feels strangely muffled, as if he is underwater, and perhaps he has somehow acquired a time quirk because everything seems to stretch and rebound off of the walls.
He feels shaky.
He isn't ready for this.
He isn't ready for this.
It's with that thought, that Kaminari Denki runs into the gunfire.
...
It hadn't taken much effort to break into UA.
Sure the walls were thick. It didn't matter how thick they were, however. He just needed to be stronger, didn't he?
The wall crumbled at his touch.
The alarms wailed.
Shigaraki had only scratched at his neck harder.
It hadn't taken long for those 1A brats to come running down to meet them like glorified children-heroes. They just poured out of those doors like a mini sea while all of the other brats he could see in the windows looked like they were ready to pee their pants. Screams echoed from inside the building distracting those damn brats for a millisecond.
Ah, the sweet sound of chaos.
The green-haired one, (Shigaraki decides to call him Broken Bones) is the first to arrive.
Ah, how annoying.
The spiky-haired blonde is next to arrive, with his sidekick Spiky Number 2 right behind him, and then, Shigaraki only has to blink before the entire freaking class, including Eraserhead, is all clamoring onto the front steps of UA with that annoying gleam in their eyes.
As if they have something to prove.
Something to save.
As if they are heroes.
Shigaraki wants to disintegrate their faces into ash.
Denki's not there.
And Shigaraki is so, so, so annoyed with the amount of anxiety that washes over him like an ocean, rippling across his conscious and dragging him under the surface until his fingers start to shake subtly. He scratches even harder.
(Weak, something hisses in the back of his brain. Weak.)
At least, this time he isn't drawing blood with the fingernails.
If he was, Denki would have-
Denki's not here.
Denki betrayed them.
Denki is only misguided.
Denki can be saved.
They fight.
The field explodes into color, and they are fighting within a palette of red, the alarms still blaring inside of that blasted school of theirs. The students fight and scream and win. They're strong, and Eraserhead is somehow everywhere, stopping every quirk that might have harmed his students with a whirl of white and gleaming red eyes. His men are failing and struggling and the Nomu are punching and punching but they just keep coming-
(They're useless, useless, useless-)
A growl wrenches up from his throat, and suddenly rage bubbles up from every surface of his being. The ocean of anxiety slowly stealing all of the air from his lungs turns burning hot with the familiar, acid taste of fury. Sometime long, long ago, he knew what he was angry at, he hated the world, for taking his parents, hated his parents, for leaving him, hated the adults, for treating him like trash, hated the other children, because they were weak, weak, weak- they all died.
Now, however.
Now, he didn't know.
Who he was, who he was meant to be, what he wanted to do.
He just wanted-
He wanted- something.
For the rage to go away.
For the fight to drain out and the swirling emptiness to be filled up like dirt in a hole (Mud on a grave, his mind hisses. Shut up, he grunts back.).
He fights.
He fights and fights and fights until everything blurs and breaks and the world turns into face after face, and everything he touches to-
Ash.
And then lightning crashing between him and Broken Bones before he can break him, just like he broke his parents, just like he broke his friends, just like he broke everything, and it's Denki. Denki is standing there, panting, just a few feet away- and Shigaraki feels everything at once- the anxiety, the rage, the sadness, the fear, the weakness.
Because Shigaraki had promised himself he would never care again, years and years and years ago, sitting in that dingy old cardboard box with a single, stringy blanket, half-starved to death in a world that hated him.
But that promise had cracked.
Snapped in half, five years ago, when that dingy, broken kid had wandered back with their Sensei, and something in his eyes had reminded him so much of- so much of himself, that he'd- that he'd-
He'd started to do the one thing that was forbidden in villainy.
Care.
He cares for Kaminari Denki.
And he is so, so, nervous- what if he doesn't want me anymore? What if those heroes have tainted him? So angry- how could he? How could he, how could he, how could he? So sad- don't leave me, don't leave me, don't leave me- so scared. So, so, scared- you wouldn't chose them over me, right? Don't chose them over me, don't leave me-
He is weak.
Denki walks over to Broken Bones.
Every eye is on Denki, and the fighting has all stopped, and half of his crew is lying on the ground, unconscious, but Shigaraki cannot bring himself to care.
"Denki...?" Toga lets out a confused sounding whisper behind him, but everything sounds- muffled.
"You're betraying us?!" Dabi exclaims, his tone accusatory, and Denki flinches, and Shigaraki wants to tell Dabi off for doing that to Denki except- except that is what Denki is doing, isn't it?
He's betraying them.
He choosing them over him.
He's choosing them.
Over him.
And it feels like he's killed his parents again, their ashes dripping from his shaking hands, as he stares down, horrified, into their dead, shocked eyes.
Except now it feels like Denki is holding the gun, and he is the one being shot through.
"I-" Denki starts, but Shigaraki doesn't want to listen- he doesn't want to listen, but of course, he does anyway. He always does. "I'm sorry." He says finally, and no, that's not what Shigaraki wants to hear, he wants to hear something more like "Just kidding!" or "What, you really thought I would actually betray you?" but-
But.
But.
Dabi moves forwards, and Shigaraki can feel the barely concealed rage inside of him- that someone that he had trusted would betray him- again, and Shigaraki knows that he should feel that familiar, red-hot fury, knows that he should beat that brat to a pulp for doing this to him-
But.
But it's all-
Empty.
He holds out a hand, and Dabi is forced to a stop, lest he be disintegrated to ash.
Dabi shakes, his hands clenching into fists, a vein popping in his head with how much blood roar through his bloodstream.
"Let me go, Shigaraki." He growls, but Shigaraki feels nothing. He feels nothing, nothing, nothing.
"No." He says hollowly, and now even Toga is eyeing them nervously, Twice twitching in the corner of his eyes.
"No." He says again as Dabi opens his mouth, and Dabi's lips crumble upon the words that he was going to say, swallowing them down, even as they burn with the fury of a thousand stars and instead lets out-
"FUCK!" He swears. He swears and swears and swears, and Shigaraki lets him keep going, uncaring of how the brats in the hero course stare at them as if they will suddenly rain down missiles from the sky, one of them- Spiky 1- is holding Denki's shoulder.
Empty.
It's all empty.
"C'mon," He says when Dabi has finally quieted down enough to stew in anger by himself, eyes burning lasers into the destroyed field of UA. "We're leaving."
Kurogiri glances at 1A and Denki, exchanging a nervous glance with Spinner.
"I said," He says again, and Dabi twitches. "We're leaving."
This time, Kurogiri listens, and a portal open up behind him. Slowly, one by one, they step through the swirling lines of purple. Shigaraki doesn't move. Neither does Dabi.
Something snaps inside of him.
"We are leaving right now, Dabi." He says, and there must be something in his tone, something in his voice, because Broken Bones flinches behind him and Denki is staring resolutely at the cracked ground. Dabi glared at him for a total of five seconds before he huffs and leaves.
He throws a murderous glared over his shoulder at the class now huddled around Denki before he disappears into the void.
And Shigaraki-
Shigaraki feels the anger drain out of him just as quickly as it had come.
He's tired.
So, so, tired.
He walks towards the portal. But before he can walk through, something holds him back. He peers over his shoulder, and Denki is staring up at him, just like he had all those years ago when he had first been dragged in with the rain, soaking wet and with eyes as dark as the shadows that danced in their bar.
The emptiness in his chest widens, before it gives way beneath his feet.
Suddenly, he is falling.
He is lost.
"Goodbye, Denki." He says, taking a look at that face one last time, before he closes his eyes,
and lets the purple darkness
wash him
away.
oof! Guys I'm so, so, sorry about the long wait for this update! Even just this chapter was hard to write for me, but I'm also done with the epilogue so... you guys get two uploads today and I can finally, finally end this story! Thank you guys so, so much for sticking with me so far and god am I glad I decided not to give up on this so long ago! I hope that this story was at least decent and managed to give you guys feelings (tm).
As always, thank you for reading! <3333