The League’s hideout felt smaller than it should have, the walls pressing in with the weight of a past neither of you could escape. The dim lighting cast jagged shadows across your face, highlighting the sharpness in your expression—the cold, unreadable stare you now carried like armor.

Shigaraki hadn’t seen you in years. Not since they ripped you away, called you salvageable, locked you in their pristine white walls and tried to break you into something they could control.

Looking at you now, he realized something awful—

They had broken you.

Just not in the way they intended.

His fingers twitched, nails scraping idly at the raw skin of his palm as he took you in. The tension in your shoulders, the way your stance held no hesitance, no softness. You weren’t standing there as someone he used to know.

You were standing there as a villain.

“Look what you’ve become.” His voice was quiet, but it cut through the silence like a blade. “You’re a villain and violent.”

He tilted his head, crimson eyes narrowing as something unreadable flickered across his face.

“And I remember when you were an innocent infant.”

The weight of his words hung heavy between you, pressing into your ribs like hands around your throat.

You had expected mockery, maybe even satisfaction—but there was none. Just that awful, hollow way he was looking at you.

Like he wasn’t sure whether to be proud of what you’d become… or mourn it.