Chapter Text
Some things are scary: his father’s furious disapproval of heroes most of all.
The scolding and punishment that follows. The shame that trickles in like sluggish poison.
But Tenko tries not to think of that, instead thinks of Hana-nee’s promise to cheer him on to be a hero.
The memory is fond, light and soft at the edges.
And Tenko knows, sometimes, there is warmth to be found.
Not the kind that smothers, but the sort that sits in the corners of a kitchen at dusk, clinging to the steam rising from a bowl of miso soup.
Hana-nee’s laughter, spilling out in bursts, sharp and quick, as she always finding her way to him.
A mother, bent over him to tie his shoes before school, her fingers gentle but quick; she’s done this a thousand times.
Small things. Soft things.
The kind of moments you don’t know are worth holding until they are gone.
(Even if resentment is thicker. Itching under the skin, tugging and twisting and nagging — why won’t anyone protect me?)
The dog, Mon, sleeps by his bed most nights, breathing slow and steady, a weight pressed against his hip.
In the garden, his mother kneels in the dirt, showing him how to coax sprouts up from the soil. She tells him, be gentle, and he is.
Yes. Childhood. A time to learn what gentleness feels like.
But gentleness has never been a word to describe Shimura Tenko.
(Or rather, Shigaraki Tomura.)
Warmth was a rare thing, you see. The house itself smelled old wood and the sharp tang of fear.
Tenko would press his small hands to his ears, trying to muffle the shouts, the heavy boots on the floor, the sharp snap of his father’s temper.
He hated them all; the raised voices, the pitying eyes, the way they never, ever saved him.
Anger roared inside him, curling and coiling, a sharp bitterness he could not fully understand.
Tears sometimes ran down his cheeks, unbidden, warm and salt-heavy, soaking the collar of his shirt.
Crybaby.
He hated that too — being weak, feeling trapped.
The itch in his skin, his allergies, grew day by day, subtle but persistent. And the tears kept coming, rolling down in helpless streams, as the seed of something dangerous settled quietly beneath his ribs.
It happens on a summer afternoon.
Hana-nee’s voice calling out for him.
(She is cautious though; the yelling from inside the home is warning enough to not draw attention.)
Tenko sits in the yard. Mon’s paws pad toward him, tail wagging in excitement. He reaches down, fingers curling into warm fur.
The itch persists, relentless as always, and he scratches, trying to drown out the muted noise coming from the house.
He thinks about how much he hates it all, every shout, every shove, all of it. He thinks about how he cannot take another second of it.
Mon’s warmth offers a small reprieve, but it cannot reach the coil of anger and fear twisting in his chest.
He hunches over, shoulders tight, the world outside reduced to noise and he whispers to himself that no one understands.
Mon whines softly beneath him, a small, tethering warmth, and for a second the world softens, but only barely.
The anger and fear do not loosen. They thrash quietly behind his eyes, behind his ribs.
He pets Mon distractedly, feeling its warmth, tracing the patches it like best. Mon’s tail wags harder, thrice as frantic under his touch.
— but something is wrong.
The fur gives under his hand in a way it should not.
It collapses, soft and hollow, slipping away like smoke through fingers. Terror spikes as the dog’s howl is cut abruptly short.
Tenko’s eyes widen, pupils dilating, as the warmth beneath his hand crumbles into nothing but dust. The sound dies in his ears.
Panic curls tight in his chest, and the world tilts around him.
Tenko screams. Cries. The sound cracks and splinters in his throat. He calls for help, but the horror swallows it whole.
A high, shrill wail tears past his ears, setting his teeth on edge.
Hana-nee—
He looks up.
Hana-nee screams and runs, and instinctively, he chases, desperate, heart hammering. His hands find hers, trembling, begging for some tether, some connection, some proof that this isn’t a nightmare.
But she crumbles in his grasp. Her skin flakes away like ash.
She is gone before he can make sense of it.
The shock strikes him in a wave, sharp and hollow. He claws at his own face, nails scraping skin, trying to wake himself from a reality that refuses to bend.
He sees figures in the doorway and he feels as though he has been struck but lightning: the thought coils tight in Tenko’s chest, they never did anything, did they?
They never lifted a hand to help, never said a word against his father, never shielded him from his father’s wrath. The backyard stretches out around him, warping.
Unthinkingly, his hands brush against it, and everything folds away under his touch.
Grass blackens and twists into brittle threads. Flowers shudder, petals curling inward, skin-like, as if recoiling from him, wilting to ash before they can fully wither. The soil softens and sags, sinking in slow, uneven folds, swallowing stones and toys in a quiet, greedy tremble.
The fence splinters first at the edges, the boards rotting from the inside out, peeling and curling in on themselves like paper scorched by fire. The swing set groans and buckles, metal joints corroding in an instant, paint blistering and flaking like thin skin.
Even the stone path forms cracks that spiderweb across slabs that crumble beneath his palm.
The air itself tastes different, acrid, heavy with dust and decay. It fills his lungs with the faint, bitter tang of rot.
Leaves curl and blacken midair, falling in slow, jagged arcs. Birds scatter.
Everything bends, sags, and fractures simultaneously. It is silent except for the low, grinding pulse beneath Tenko’s feet, the world dissolving around him.
His mother stumbles forward, tears streaking down her face. She calls his name in ragged gasps. She reaches him, arms outstretched.
She tries to hug him.
The motion is familiar, intimate, a gesture meant to protect, to soothe. But as her hands brush his shoulders, her skin flakes away beneath his fingers, tiny pieces scattering to the floor like powdered bone.
There is a noise wailing, swirling around in his skull, muffled and wrong. The world tilts further, the air thick, choking.
(His father comes out, then, of course, retaliates with pain and punishment.
Again, again, again, it’s always—
Tenko snaps.
And what does it say, that decaying that man bought relief to his bones rather than shame?
Ah. The itch.
At last, it stills.
Dust clings to his hands, light and weightless, even now, settling into the cracks between his fingers.
His chest feels hollow, like something inside him has been scooped out and thrown away.
(Hatred, he knows already. So intimately.
And yet.
His brain is screeching at him. Something is clawing at the edges of his psyche.
Remember, remember, remember.)
The wind cuts through Tenko’s thin clothing, tugging at his sleeves and tangling his dark hair.
Tenko hugs himself, knees pressed tight, shivering.
The cold gnaws at his bones, biting deep. Hunger pinches his gut, but he barely notices it.
Passersby drift past, faces fixed straight ahead, eyes never flicking to him. They step over puddles and cracks and the uneven curb, never noticing the small boy shivering against the wind.
Tenko glares at them with all the hatred he can summon.
He hates the way they look through him as if he were nothing, hates their warmth and certainty, their obliviousness.
They have families, homes, lives, families. And he? He has nothing.
He wants to scream, to claw at their indifference, to make them stop, to make them see him.
I’m right here! Look at me!
But it is as though he is invisible. Every person who passes by, who ignores him, twists the knife tighter.
He doesn’t hear the footsteps approaching at first, only feels the air thicken.
A presence so vast it presses against his ribs, makes the itch beneath his skin prickle sharper.
Tenko freezes, heart thrumming, knees weak. The boy who has known only fear and pain can barely register the figure before him, tall and impossibly calm.
“Nobody helped you, did they,” the voice murmurs, low, but it wraps around Tenko and settles in his chest soothingly all the same. “It hurt, didn’t it? You must have run, looking for someone to help.”
Tenko stares up with wide eyes. He wants to shrink away, wants to vanish into the cracks of the pavement, but something in the words stirs the thing beneath his ribs.
Recognition, though he doesn’t know why.
The figure kneels and stretches a hand toward him. Tenko hesitates, trembling, eyes wide. Comfort, offered so freely; Tenko can hardly believe it.
Slowly, he accepts the offered hug.
“What an awful thing …” the stranger murmurs, and he rests a hand against Tenko’s back soothingly. “‘A hero will…’, ‘sooner or later, surely a hero will…’, that’s what all those people thought when they pretended not to see you.”
Tenko’s eyes burn with unshed tears, a strange, twisted relief curling in his chest.
Someone finally sees him, understands, is helping—
“Who made the world as such, anyway?” The stranger’s voice carries weight; it is the kind of voice that you want to listen to.
(It is heavy with judgment, cold with intent. The stranger speaks as though the world itself is flawed, marred, imperfect.
It is the voice of someone willing to tear the world down and build it anew.
Ah.
It clicks, then. He … he has heard this before. He knows what’s coming.)
Tenko’s own voice is trapped, lodged in the back of his throat. He wants to speak but the words die before they form.
He wants to ask—
(He already knows the answer. It flickers before him in snapshots: a full moon, pale and cold. The chirping of a thousand birds. Rin collapsing to the earth, drenched in crimson. Mist shinobi, lifeless, twisted in grotesque angles.
Burning, ugly, volatile hatred that claws and gnaws beneath the bones like acid.)
—is this world hell?
He is surfacing from liquid fire and brimstone. Memories coil around him, sharp and unrelenting, spilling into awful clarity.
(He wishes he didn’t remember.
It is punishment being stitched into his bones. Limbs stinging with phantom pain, pressing into him from every angle.
Ash clings to his tongue. Dust settles into the hollows of his chest. He thinks of that goddess from the moon and shudders.
Ash and dust and decay. All that ruin he— Tenko— did (—when? how long has it been?) mirrors his own death. Isn’t that funny? He feels sick.)
His fingers curl. His hands are so impossibly small. His thumb moves across his fingers, and he finds his hands are smooth, unblemished by callouses, and unscarred from the boulder.
And he looks up at this man who holds him close, who offers reassurance, all the while murmuring about the wrongness of the world, and knows, with startling clarity, just how this story will end.
It seems even rebirth cannot spare Uchiha Obito from being given the same old script.