Ch. 10 Shigaraki's Mind

"Don't tie my hands and then tell me to relax. What the fuck is happening?" your eyes darted back and forth between the two men. "We are so done, Dabi. Like done, done. This is some serious bullshit –"

"Does she always talk this much?" Shigaraki interrupted.

"Kind of."

"Fuck you," you spat back at them. "Both of you. What is this?"

Dabi didn't answer and instead only tied the ropes tighter.

"So a mind reader, huh?" Shigaraki asked Dabi, as if you weren't even in the room. "Fascinating, It's like she has a cheat code to get into people's brains."

Dabi smirked. "Not to mention I'm sure she gets a front row seat to the perverted and evil side of people that they usually lock away."

"That's their best side."

Shigaraki walked over and picked up something large and metal – a pair of bulky handcuffs. "You're next. Hold out your hands, Dabi. I need insurance that you won't interfere."

"Oh, come on. This isn't necessary. I give you my word that I won't interrupt."

"Hold on just a second," you tried to say as you watched this exchange, but they completely ignored you.

"We both know your word means nothing. I think your pretty friend here is figuring that out right now. Anyway, you're the one who brought her, so now I need to make sure you behave too."

You watched in disbelief as Dabi reluctantly held out his wrists and Shigaraki locked the handcuffs on him. You'd heard about these things before.  They'll cancel his quirk, you realized. This meant that Dabi was practically helpless if something were to happen to you. Not that you were counting on him anymore anyway.

Shigaraki pointed to a chair and Dabi sat down, but he didn't take his eyes off you.

This was all so fucked up. You came here to supposedly hear about a job and now you were tied to a chair, by your boyfriend no less, and now he had quirk canceling handcuffs on. What the hell was going on?

Your mouth fell open as you watched Shigaraki stalk towards you. He lightly tapped furniture as he walked, each piece immediately disintegrating into a small pile of ash.

So he could turn things to ash. Great. This whole situation just kept getting better.

You knew this demonstration was meant to scare and intimidate you, and, yeah, it was working.

But on the outside you steeled your face, your eyes daring him to do his worst. If he wanted to intimidate you, then you were going to do your best to make sure that he was not going to see you squirm. Much.

Surprisingly, Shigaraki simply sat down in the chair across from you.

"This is going to be easy," he said. "Just show me what you can do."

You looked back and forth between him and Dabi. So this was the interview portion of the night?

He already knew that you could read minds, what else was there?

"And after my little demonstration, then what?" you asked. "I just walk out of here and we never speak of this again? What's the end goal?"

"If you're impressive enough, I'll let you join my team. If you're not, then we'll never speak of this again because you'll be a little pile of ash on the floor."

"Wow, what a bargain."

"Look. This doesn't have to be a big deal. Dabi told me that you needed work, so I can make that happen if I like what I see. Once you're with us, whatever you need, you got it. We take care of our own around here."

"And if I don't want to do that, if I don't want to work for you?"

"That's fine. Then I'll kill you."

Dabi squirmed against the handcuffs. "Damnit, Y/n, just do what he says."

"Like I'd listen to you right now, asshole," you shouted over at him.

"You can watch your boyfriend die first if you want, up to you."

"He is definitely not my boyfriend anymore, but I also think you're bluffing," you said, trying to sound braver than you felt.

Shigaraki shrugged. "He's annoying anyway." Before you could scream Shigaraki punched Dabi squarely in the face. Instantly Dabi's head hung down, the impact had knocked him out completely.

"What the fuck?" you shrieked.

"I don't like having an audience." He stood up and disintegrated the chair he had been sitting in before crouching down in front of you. 

"So let me repeat myself for the last time. Show me what you can do, and if you're good enough to be part of my team, I'll let you go," Shigaraki said. "Or you can die here."

"Is this how you do business?" you asked, trying to gain some control of the situation. "How much power do you really have if you have to threaten people to do what you want?"

"I don't care why my employees do something as long as they do it."

He walked over to check on Dabi, giving him a little shove to see if he was awake. He wasn't. While he was distracted, you tried to test the ropes that bound you, to see if there were any ties that you could pull on. But they were just too tight to do anything.

Apparently satisfied that Dabi was unconscious, Shigaraki turned his attention back to you.

Shigaraki's expression didn't change. It was as if he was studying you, trying to decide if you were worth keeping alive for a few more minutes.

"You're not scared of me?" he asked plainly.

"You're the one who had me tied up, so from where I'm sitting, it seems more like you're scared of me." 

He considered that. "One touch and you're nothing," he said, "but that doesn't frighten you?"

"Hell yeah it does. I just hate it when someone uses their abilities to fuck people over so pardon me if I'm not impressed by this little show you're putting on."

Was that a smile? Was this weirdo smiling at you?

"You think this is a show?" he asked. "That I'm performing for you?"

"I don't know what this is," you said, trying not to let him see you wiggle as you messed with the ropes. "Dabi said you had a job for me, but all of a sudden I'm tied to a chair with a psycho threatening me so I don't know anything anymore."

"You're kind of annoying, too."

"No shit."

Shigaraki reached in his pocket, and for a second you held your breath, but all he did was take out his phone.

"Y/n l/n," he said reading from his phone. He read aloud your birthday, your phone number, your address. Your parents' names, your childhood hometown.

"Sounds like fan behavior," you muttered.

"Consider it a background check by your future employer," he said before going back to reading. "Looks like you recently worked for one of those hero brats. How was that?"

"I was fired."

"Oh? What were you fired for?"

"Existing."

 "Sounds about right," Shigaraki said, looking back to his phone. "It also says you were once fired by the local hero commission for brainwashing criminals into confessions."

"Wait a second. That's not true."

"Oh yeah? Heroes lied on your record? Imagine that," he said, his voice dripping with sarcasm.

"I never did that. I never told anyone what to say."

"According to your record you did."

"I can't make anyone say anything. I promise you, that's not what I do," you protested.

He put away his phone. "Now we're getting somewhere. Then show me what you actually can do, and if it's impressive, I might keep you."

You gritted your teeth.

"Seriously. Y/n. Stop being such a pain in the ass. My patience is incredibly thin right now. Just tell me what I'm thinking and let's be done with it."

You took a deep breath. You'd been face to face with criminals and read their minds before, so that wasn't new. Of course back then you had heroes with you, guarding you, but essentially this was the same.

True, you were tied to a chair and being threatened this time, but that didn't change the fact that you'd essentially done this before.

Here goes nothing...

His mind wasn't easy to slip into. It felt like you had to wade through mud, but once in you weren't surprised by what he was thinking.

Shigaraki wanted to scare you, which you already knew. He had a lot of ideas about how to do that, some making you shiver. You expected him to take pleasure in these torturous ideas, but what you felt was something altogether different.

It was as if each thought was punctuated by something like a sharp knife. A sharp stabbing knife that seemed to dig in with each idea.

It was pain, you realized. An overwhelming sense of pain clouded any rational thoughts he was having and seemed to be pushing normal, more even, thoughts to the side.

You'd felt something similar when you had talked with other criminals; they'd often suffered trauma in their pasts that had led them to where they were today, but it was never on this scale.

In Shigaraki's mind there was only grief and sadness, remorse and hate, all funneled into one tidal wave of pain that crashed against everything else in his mind, obliterating any other thought in its path.

You stared at him, your face twisted in confusion. How could someone live and function when this much pain was always flowing so close to the surface? You had been in his mind for mere seconds but you felt like you were drowning in it already.

You hadn't realized that tears were streaming down your face.

"Tears won't help you," he scoffed, looking away.

"These tears aren't for me, asshole. They're for you."

His red eyes met yours. "What?"

You tried to stop, you tried to get out of his mind, but it was as if his ocean of pain had leaked into you as well and you couldn't hold it or your own tears back.

The longer you listened, the more it was starting to overwhelm your own emotions, and you could feel yourself starting to shake. Never before had you felt emotions completely demolish thoughts like this.

Before you knew it, your whole body was shaking as you sobbed. Despite the tidal wave of pain inside him, Shigaraki sat calmly in the chair across from you, looking at you as if you were insane.

"I'm so sorry. You were just a child," you mumbled between sobs. "Your sister..."

He immediately stood up.

"Shut up."

"And your parents..."

"I said shut up," he said, grabbing your face in his hand. Your tears flowed down your cheeks and onto his fingers. "Or I will kill you right now."

On some level, you didn't care what he did, you just wanted this pain to end; it kept pulling you deeper and deeper.

"I'm so sorry," you sobbed. "It didn't have to be like that. It wasn't your fault. I'm so..."

His grip on your face got tighter. Just when you thought that maybe this was it, that this was the moment when he was going to kill you, he laughed.

This monster fucking laughed.

And then he hit you across the face.