Chapter Text
Tomura met his Death coming down King's Street.
He didn't know how he recognized it. It –he– looked exactly like a man, walked exactly like a man, except that every bone in Tomura's body went cold with the knowing: this was his Death. Tomura rounded the corner from Butcher's Row and his Death rounded the corner from Weaver's, and they stood a block apart and face to face with not a lie to soften the space between them.
“No,” Tomura snarled. “The game's not over yet. I am not in checkmate!” His skin was on fire. He needed to scratch, needed to kill, needed to destroy...
And a very compelling target had just presented itself.
It was impossible to kill one's own Death, but Tomura had no way of knowing that.
His daggers passed through the man at the block's midpoint, in front of a smithy. Closed for the evening, now, not that Tomura was ever stopped by paltry little things like locked doors.
But the more he struck, the more blows just passed through, like the man was made of nothing but mist, and the more his Death just stood there, looking down at him in that same judgement-filled way as--
“Stop looking at me like that!” Tomura snarled. “I killed him. I killed him. And now I'm going to kill you.”
“You'd have better luck,” his Death said, “trying to kill a rockslide. Follow me.”
His Death turned his back, and began to go up King's Street, the same way Tomura had been headed.
Tomura did not move. “I'm done following orders.”
His death sighed, as if Tomura was a particularly difficult child and not Tomura Shigaraki. “Either you die tonight, or you die some other day. Personally, I would prefer it if you died tonight, but, circumstances being what they are, you are being given a chance to delay the inevitable. If you don't want to consider that option, please do stay where you are.”
“I hate you,” Tomura spat. But he followed.
There was a body on the floor of the alley he'd been living in the past few nights. And it looked rather like––
“Me.” Tomura swallowed, looking to his Death for confirmation. “He looks like me.”
“That is precisely what got him killed, yes,” a new voice said. One that sent Tomura dodging back, knife slipping into his palm with practiced ease.
The new speaker looked at Tomura and his knife, and smiled. “Oh, you don't have to worry about me,” He tilted his head towards Tomura's Death. “that one wants you all to himself.”
“He's mine,” Tomura's Death snarled, “and you will leave him to me.”
It was not reassuring. Nor was it meant to be.
The new voice was Death as well, but not Tomura's. The man's own charge was at their feet, a dagger slipped into his back, cutting through things that a boy needed to live. It had the looks of a swift death. The knife had been left as a message; the only reason to leave a perfectly good blade behind. Its hilt was wrapped in red leather, wound through with a scrap of violet fabric.
The colors of Shie Hassaikai.
Tomura's own knives were still done up in gray and red, far past the time when he should have taken the scraps off and tossed them. That was a dangerous pair of colors, these days. Dangerous in the sort of way that ended with a cool edge slipped between ribs, so sharp that at first it was only hard to breathe, and it would be a gasp or two before the reason why caught up.
It was a lot cleaner than the methods Tomura preferred. A lot cleaner than he deserved. Someone had wanted to show Tomura the closest thing to mercy that existed down in Twokins.
Only he was never there to receive it.
“So, I was supposed to die tonight,” Tomura said. “Checkmate, game over. But this brat got my losing hand instead.”
“Well,” Tomura's Death eyed him with a certain appraising look that made Tomura's skin crawl. This entire night was making Tomura's skin crawl. “I see you have a base capacity for intelligent reasoning. It will not be enough. Let me settle this. You know it is the only way.”
“It's not,” the other boy's Death said.
Tomura's Death waved a dissmisive hand. “Fine, a matter of semantics: not the only way, but you know it is the best way.”
“Izuku would have hated to know that somebody else died just so he could keep on living.”
“Would have,” Tomura's Death said.
Izuku. So that was the dead boy's name, then. Tomura crouched down next to the body and traced it over with experienced fingers. The clothes were exceedingly plain. Not unlike his own, especially in the dark. But definitely finer. The dead boy's pale hair was short in a street urchin's style, but it was curly, not matted or snarled. He might have been an inch or so shorter than Tomura and a bit more well-fed, but his face, his eyes–
“May his soul not wander.” Tomura shut the dead boy's eyes and stood.
The boy looked like him. Eerily so, especially in the dark. Especially to those who needed to do their work and be gone. The upper town took note of murders in a way the caves of Twokins never would.
He'd missed part of the Deaths' conversation. His own was talking.
“...Right, of course. Because it's such a simple substitution, just a rat for a child. Who's to notice?”
He was growing loud enough to attract attention. Loud enough that he should attract attention, but not a single window on the shophomes around them was unshuttered as the Death shouted, and gesticulated, and generally made his displeasure plain.
Nobody else could see or hear them, but Tomura could. Because he was already supposed to be dead.
“Izuku is gone,” the other Death said.
Tomura's Death scoffed. “That didn't stop you the last time. This trade would be no different than the last one.”
“It will,” the other Death insisted, “Because Izuku is gone. I know you can kill your charge whenever you like now,” Tomura wished he had never heard the Death say that. He scratched the skin at the back of his neck until it bled. “But all that would leave us with is two corpses where there should only be one.”
His own Death's red eyes lit up with fire as he charged at Izuku's Death.. “You tricked me.”
Izuku's death vanished, and reappeared next to Tomura.
“Not intentionally,” the Death said, “I think his soul is just too stubborn to die. So, Tomura.” He smiled down at him, “Would you like to try my plan?”
Tomura Shigaraki did not want to die. Not here, and not tonight.
“Fine.”
All the cards were returned, and the deck was being re-shuffled. All Tomura had to do was figure out what sort of hand he was being dealt.