i was an atheist.

@sheracomplex

“Yo.” Shigaraki introduced himself undramatically as possible as he suddenly appeared in her doorway. “It’s your friendly neighborhood serial killer.” 

He definitely looked the part, the red stains had failed to wash out of his black hoodie, a hood was pulled over his head, and his smile looked like it was hiding a mouth full of knives. If you were walking alone at night and saw someone looking like him, ten out of ten people would cross the street and they would be right for doing so. His bleached hair fell in front of his eyes, making his expression difficult to read. 

“I got bored so I thought I’d come by to introduce myself.” 

That was the only reason he needed. He was just a child seeking amusement. Shigaraki knew he was an eyesore and relished it. He smiled, like an amused cat with its paw on the tail of a mouse mulling over whether it wanted to let it go or finish its meal right now, perhaps he was reminding her of someone else. 

“You’re catra’s fuckbuddy, right? Sup. Name’s Shigaraki.” 

At the sight of him suddenly appearing, Adora almost screamed– out of shock, out of fear, out of anger all wrapped up into one undignified shriek. Yet, she held back, although it was quite obvious that she forced herself to do so.

All she had wanted was a comfortable, easy day of training. Things were so much easier to deal with when she didn’t have to think about anything other than hitting something. Yet, the sight of someone entirely unwelcome in her way as soon as she opened her door was more than enough to startle her.

“You…!”

She would have asked him what it was he wanted– as well as making a point of explaining that she already knew his name– but his mention of Catra (and their relationship) threw Adora’s line of thought off completely. She sputtered, unable to form a few coherent words together, let alone a sentence. If Shigaraki himself had been totally unexpected, the words that came out of his mouth were something she couldn’t ever think of herself. The shriek she had held back earlier finally seemed to sneak out by the time Adora could finally speak.

"I want to kill everything you love."

Shigaraki said, before biting his already ruined lips. It was all he could do to hold back his laughter.

"Nahhhh, I'm just fucking with ya."

He was at the same time a dangerous man standing in front of her, and an overgrown child, completely unpredictable either way. Shigaraki usually avoided touching others out of disgust, but when he heard her shriek he saddled up right next to her and slid an arm around her shoulder. Whenever he got this close to someone he felt temptation. It was akin to seeing someone standing on the top of a staircase and knowing you could push them when no one was looking and get away with it. All it would take was one small touch to her back and she would be broken.

It was only the barest threads of sanity that held him back from doing so. Instead he played the rambunctious teenager, just goofing off with a friend. He started acting a little too cozy, leaning his head on her shoulder.

“I was an unwanted child. Now I’m an unwanted manchild. I like to show where I’m not wanted, just out of spite.” 

Shigaraki looked in that moment to be a ghost haunting her kitchen. He had barely dressed himself with clothes that had been lying on the floor for three days, the collar of his button up shirt was wrinkled, and his hair was still wet from the quick shower he had taken causing it to lose some of its usual fluffiness. 

Wrinkled eyes watched her. At that moment Shigaraki was playing a game of testing his limits, and it greatly enertained him. As far as he figured it, if Eto turned into a monster and ate him, he would win. Well, he would die, but he would still win. 

There was no depths to which one evil little brat would not sink. “You’ve got time, because unlike me you’re a loser with no friends.” Shigaraki never learned how to talk to adults, but that was because every adult in his life had ignored him, turning him into the underdeveloped and starved child that was sitting in front of Eto. 

“Come on don’t be shy. You need somebody to talk to. Let’s talk about something. I know. Murder. Let’s talk about murder. What’s the best way to get rid of a body?” 

At his unnecessarily dramatic statement, Eto resisted the urge to roll her eyes too hard, and for two reasons; one, they might pop out of her skull if she did so, and two, she refused to give this brat even the smallest amount of satisfaction.

She did want to contest the notion that she did not have any friends, but it was painfully obvious how true his claim was. So, Eto just snipped back, tired and uncaring as she was.

“You say you have no friends, but you reek of teenagers.”

Ooh, how scathing.

She seemed irritated by his very presence, which made Shigaraki enjoy loitering in her room and being a general waste of space all the more. There was an open scab on his neck, and he picked at it with dirty fingernails, until it fell off and onto the floor. Gross.

"You know sensei we've known each other for a long time, but we've never really talked. I'm starting to think you don't like me or something."

He chewed on the longest nail on his left hand as she spoke. His uncombed hair fell in front of his eyes, and the only thing visible underneath his hood were cracked lips parted into a small smile.

"Like, why do you eat people?"

@chuketsu​

Shigaraki knocked outside of Himiko’s door. Unlike Himiko he didn’t think it was his god given right to barge into her room at all hours of the day. He was a murderer but at least he wasn’t a stalker. 

“Do you want to go to the stupid festival or not?” 

Shigaraki could be lying on the floor in a diabetic coma due to the amount of mountain dew he had consumed, while super smash brothers brawl asked him if he wanted to play again in the tv he left on, but no Toga wanted to hang out which meant he had to come back from the dead and drag himself through his routine so he looked like less of an unstable serial killer while they were in public. 

Shigaraki even bothered to wear a freshly cleaned hoodie. Which was pure luck that laundry day once every two months and the festival happened awithin the same week. It was also pure luck that they managed to clean their clothes this time without doing that thing where you put too much soap in and the whole laundry room floods, which Shigaraki only thought happened in cartoons. Anyway, he was all clean, and he didn’t even have a single blood stain on him which meant that he was ready to go. It was just Himiko. 

“I will leave without you. Fuck you. Fuck me. Fuck life. Fuck everyone and everything, I’m gonna kill someone if I have to keep waiting. Can we just fucking go already?” 

As soon as Shigaraki stopped cursing, Himiko burst out of her room, nearly tackling her beloved leader down in the process. If drinking copious amounts of soda could put Shigaraki in a vegetative state, it only made Himiko hyper. That was what happened when the only thing in their entire mansion was junk food and carbonated, sugar filled beverages. Everyone living in the mansion was of age, yet, not a single one of them acted like an adult.

“Let’s goooo!”

Himiko was bouncing around Shigaraki in circles, somehow doing so while alternatively hooking her arms with his one after the other.

“We gotta’ go to the skating rink, the treasure hunt, that maze, the tea party, the fireworks show, and swimming, too, and, and, and–!”

The blonde could hardly catch her breath as she prattled on and on about all the fun activities the two of them could enjoy. Despite her sugar-induced buzz, she had clearly put time and thought into her own appearance by donning a clean outfit, and even a hit of make up on her face. Even her rambling showed how much research she had done into planning for today.

"You're such an easy to please baby, what are you going to ask for next a fucking balloon?"

Shigaraki had taken one step out the door and already he was complaining. He promised her he would at least try to have a good time today, but what did you know, villains lied. He watched her with red eyes underneath his hood, and wondered how one person could have so much energy.

He saw himself getting through maybe one of those activities before he keeled over and died. It was the drawback of looking like a corpse, with white hair, and ashen skin, his constitution barely higher than that of a zombie. If this were dungeons and dragons, Toga's massive levels of powerful energy would be doing lethal amounts of damage to him right now.

He briefly considered offering her his hand, but then he remembered that would fucking kill her so he shoved both hands in his pockets. Instead, he elbowed her in the side as hard as he could.

“You’re not evil. You’re just a normal, awful, little girl. Haven’t you noticed that by now normal people all suck? They smile, laugh, and actually like others instead of just hating them. I hate normies so much. Trip on a land mine and die.“

Buried underneath Shigaraki’s ranting there was probably some form of attachment. As much as a broken creature like himself could attach himself to others.

He would let Himiko stab him as many times as she’d like. He’d easily spill his blood for her. Because while he didn’t understand the feeling of liking others, he at least knew causing people pain. He knew other people’s pain so well, sometimes he even felt like he was experiencing with them. He’d endure any sort of pain to be just a little bit closer.

However, he drew the line at seeing her hurt.

“Hmm, Himiko is being really annoying right now, how do I get her to take the hint already and stop following me around everywhere? Maybe I should tell her that all her stalker shit isn’t as fucking cute as she thinks it is.”

Himiko was smart enough, empathetic enough, and delusional enough to know that Shigaraki was lashing out. She knew he cared for her, and he cared for all the League members, too. He simply showed it in his own way, just like she did. So long as the two of them were together, she didn’t mind at all.

She flopped until she came to his side again, sitting up in the same rolling motion. His words did the same, rolling off of her…

“Hey, hey, hey. What are you talking about?”

Suddenly, Himiko frowned.

“I’m cute. Super cute. I’m the cutest.”

With one hand, Himiko poked at her own cheek, then poked at Shigaraki’s side with her other hand.

"I really don't understand what's so good about me that you all won't let go." Shigaraki suddenly felt hands. They clenched his body tight enough to leave bruises in his skin. They were the hands of the people who loved him, the people he killed.

That was what they both did though. They killed the people they loved. It was what made them villains.

People like them should not have a family. They should not even have friends. They would be better off dead and yet here they were alive. Shigaraki was trying to curl up his emaciated to the point of starvation body up for a little warmth, and Toga was still clinging to his back.

He really didn't know what to do with her.

“You’re so annoying. Haven’t you figured out that I’m evil, yet?”

Shigaraki would probably have to kill her to stop her from being so clingy, and that was the exact opposite of what he wanted to do. No matter how many times he pushed her away, she would keep coming back.

What was this, friendship? If that was so she had a pretty twisted definition of friendship.

“You’re just… you’re just stupid…”

Shigaraki was tired of enduring Toga’s tantrum, that’s why he decided he was going to throw his own tantrum. He thought that was mature of him. He picked up the chair he was sitting on and threw it, just so he could make a mess.

“You need to realize that nothing good is ever going to come from being around me, or else, you’re going to get hurt. When that finally happens. I won’t cry. I won’t. I’ll just laugh… at how stupid you are!”

Himiko paused, slowly blinking as she watched him throw his own tantrum. She may have been annoying, or so he claimed, but out of the two of them, he was far better at lashing out. 

“I don’t understand,” she finally blurted out, looking up at him from where she lay on the floor. “Aren’t I supposed to be evil, too?”

That poor chair, she thought.

“When I’m with you, when I got to be with the League… I was more happy than, uhm…”

“Than I’ve ever been in my whole life.” A pause. “Being with you made me happy for the first time… like, ever.”

She rolled over, avoiding the remains of the broken chair.

“You're not evil. You're just a normal, awful, little girl. Haven't you noticed that by now normal people all suck? They smile, laugh, and actually like others instead of just hating them. I hate normies so much. Trip on a land mine and die."

Buried underneath Shigaraki's ranting there was probably some form of attachment. As much as a broken creature like himself could attach himself to others.

He would let Himiko stab him as many times as she'd like. He'd easily spill his blood for her. Because while he didn't understand the feeling of liking others, he at least knew causing people pain. He knew other people's pain so well, sometimes he even felt like he was experiencing with them. He'd endure any sort of pain to be just a little bit closer.

However, he drew the line at seeing her hurt.

A smile on dry and cracked lips. 

“You’re the most selfish and evil bastard I’ve ever met. Ah, I meant that in a good way.”

Shigaraki did not know what it was like to have a family that loved him. That household he remembered only gently smothered him in his sleep. It was like he took his first breath, he cried for the first time, when that house crumbled to pieces. He was born in the midst of that destruction. He tried to put into words what he was feeling in his shattered mind, but it was as difficult as chewing on glass. 

“Wow, you’re a really positive thinker Judar. You’re right, no one ever loved me.” 

His eyes were bloodshot red, his veins pulsing, the whites of his eyes bulging in their sockets, as he felt his heart begin to beat faster. Something about being around Judar, made him feel truly alive even when they were at each other’s throats trying to kill each other. 

“That means there’s nothing holding me back.”

Shigaraki started to laugh.  An evil laugh. The laugh of a child. 

“Try not to fall in love with me ya bastard, fuck you, I’ll kill you.” He was just joking around though. 

“I’m sure I am,” Judar agreed to the compliment. 

“It means your life back there must’ve been horribly boring, eh?” 

Snow had started to fall upon them. Slowly and in silence. The bar had been reduced to a messy pile of debris, shattered glass and powdered ice. 

A common landscape when Judar was involved in a fight.

“Love, you say? You see, powerful people intrigue me. There was this guy, with the largest… amount of magoi ever. I wanted him, mine or dead. Maybe both.” And his grin grew wider. “I used to say I’d marry a hag too. She was so strong, I didn’t care. Still, I hate her, too.” He shrugged, still resting on the pile of debris, a few pebbles rolling into the snow below.

"I'll be fine. It's just a little internal hemorrhaging. Don't be such a pussy."

Shigaraki stood up then. His body seemed to be fighting against it, but what was a little more pain to somebody who always felt like they were dying? Shigaraki stood up on two feets, swayed back and forth until he spread both arms wide to balance.

"See. Fucking fantastic."

Shigaraki let out a laugh that was actually painful. He coughed up blood and phlegm right into Judar's face. It was not very attractive. He swayed a few more times, before grabbing onto Judar's pony tail with four fingers just to balance. Judar would probably be mad at him for that one, but Shigaraki didn't find himself caring at the moment.

"I was just thinking, why do people think love and hate are so different?" Shigaraki was leaning a little too close to Judar now. "Obsessing over someone, to the point that they're all you think about. . Wanting to be the only one for them, to the point where you'd kill everyone else. That's the same as love, isn't it? Loving someone is like... wanting to cause them pain."

“Quit following me around already, damn stalker.”

Shigaraki said ruffled by her attempts to get close. With the league in its fractured state on this island, Toga was practically his right hand, but he was always tempted to cut off his hands at the wrist. He truly hated, himself, his hands, those hands that killed other people. Almost as much as he hated others. Probably moreso.

Shigaraki growled from the back of his throat.

“I’d rather be alone then watch you get hurt. God, how long are you going to clinging to me? I’d kill myself just to get away from you.”

Shigaraki was just throwing a tantrum. He barely knew what he was saying, the words all came out at once. The closer she attempted to get, the more he wanted to kill her. The itchier he felt. The more irritation. A person’s touch never soothed him, it bothered him, it was like fire on his dry skin.

Shigaraki immediately thought of the worst thing he could do to hurt her at the moment. He dug his hand into the pocket of her sweater, and drew out her cellphone with three fingers. He closed his hand around it and melted it.

“And stop taking pictures of me while I’m asleep!”

Himiko found all the forms of Shigaraki’s tantrums to be either amusing or hilarious (or both in some situations), so at his growled tone and nasty words she simply giggled. It was so much easier to lean in and laugh things off, especially when she knew he would despise it so.

Of course, it was a dangerous game, one she never expected to lose. It wasn’t until she watched her cell phone reduced to dust did she recoil.

“Noooooooooo!”

Himiko immediately made a show of tumbling back on the floor, flailing around like a child amid the previously-cellphone-now-dust-mess. Of course, she was over-reacting, and did so entirely on purpose. Both of them knew she had backups of all her photos. The dramatic cries of woe were just to try and annoy him by being loud.

“How could youuuuuu…”

She flopped down at his feet, soon coming to poke and prod at his sneakers. With her free hand, she even dared to drape it over her forehead.

"You're so annoying. Haven't you figured out that I'm evil, yet?"

Shigaraki would probably have to kill her to stop her from being so clingy, and that was the exact opposite of what he wanted to do. No matter how many times he pushed her away, she would keep coming back.

What was this, friendship? If that was so she had a pretty twisted definition of friendship.

"You're just... you're just stupid..."

Shigaraki was tired of enduring Toga's tantrum, that's why he decided he was going to throw his own tantrum. He thought that was mature of him. He picked up the chair he was sitting on and threw it, just so he could make a mess.