## Preface

Grass Is Green (Except For When It's Not)
Posted originally on the Archive of Our Own at http://archiveofourown.org/works/23888188.

Rating:
  Not Rated
Archive Warning:
  Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Category:
  M/M
Fandom:
  僕のヒーローアカデミア | Boku no Hero Academia | My Hero Academia
Relationships:
  Dabi/Takami Keigo | Hawks, Dabi & Takami Keigo | Hawks, League of Villains & Takami Keigo | Hawks, Hero Public Safety Commission & Takami Keigo | Hawks
Characters:
  Takami Keigo | Hawks, Dabi (My Hero Academia), League of Villains (My Hero Academia), Kurogiri (My Hero Academia), Toga Himiko, Shigaraki Tomura | Shimura Tenko, Bubaigawara Jin | Twice, Iguchi Shuuichi | Spinner, Hero Public Safety Commission (My Hero Academia), Some creepy pedophile???
Additional Tags:
  Hawks gets deaged, Hurt Takami Keigo | Hawks, Kid Fic, Protective Dabi (My Hero Academia), Protective League of Villains (My Hero Academia), Takami Keigo | Hawks-centric, It Gets Worse Before It Gets Better, Age Regression/De-Aging, Hawks is baby, LITERALLY, He's also really sad, and too smart for his own good, Hurt/Comfort, Attempted Sexual Assault, brief though - Freeform, the guy gets stabbed so it's okay, raptor stress grip, hawks is a bird, Hawks has PTSD, why is that not a tag guys, Temporary Amnesia, Dabi is Todoroki Touya, It's heavily implied, so is, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Soft Takami Keigo | Hawks, POV Takami Keigo | Hawks, He's a kid though so bare with me, writing from a scared kids perspective is hard, hopefully this hasn't been done before?, Takami Keigo | Hawks is Bad At Feelings, Takami Keigo | Hawks is a Mess, my poor birb boy, Hes like twelve again, Panic Attacks, very mild but I don't want people to not be somewhat ready (again), chapter two tags lets go, Dissociation, It's bad, More - Freeform, and, Implied/Referenced Sexual Assault, and introducing - Freeform, Implied Childhood Sexual Abuse, Hawks Whump, what do you mean he has to do feelings, Ew, Dabi is smooth, and Hawks is oblivious, Kurogiri is the mom friend, and Mr. Compress is the dad friend, they're married i don't make the rules sorry, shock therapy mention, Implied/Referenced Torture, I guess????, League of Villains as Family (My Hero Academia), I FORGOT THIS IM SO SORRY, Implied/Referenced Suicide
Language:
  English
Series:
  Part 3 of Hawks Needs Help (And He Actually Gets It)
Collections:
  Bnha, Mha_Favs, Leo's Collection of Read MHA Shit, under penalty of death, Wolfis MyHeroAcademia Library
Stats:
  Published: 2020-05-13 Completed: 2020-05-14 Words: 17,287 Chapters: 2/2

# Grass Is Green (Except For When It's Not)

by Numanum

Summary

> When someone else walks through the door, the staring contest dissolved with his Handler as the winner after Hawks whirled around to assess the new threat in the room. Juice drips from where his grip had crushed the juice box, further staining his clothes and making a mess on the bar top. Hawks continues to blink owlishly at the newcomer. The person, who seems to be made of shadow, rather than it clinging to him, looks at him with mild interest, a towel and a bar glass in his hands. His eyes move to address Hawks’ Handler.

> “He’s very,” the man pauses, as if choosing his next words carefully, "small.”

> His Handler grunts in irritation, and Hawks almost chimes in that he's sorry, he knows he supposed to be bigger.

> A hesitant pause.

> “Was it-?”

> “Fuckin’ drop it,” his Handler spits out.

> “Ah, I see,” the other hums tactfully, and wisely drops the topic. Hawks thinks that his eyes are pretty, the color of a flower that grows in the part where he meets Touya sometimes, but he doesn’t tell him. He's not supposed to meet anyone, and he's not supposed to speak without permission.

> Or: Hawks get's de-aged and the league takes care of him

Notes

> Okay, please head the tags!!! Nothing really happens, but the sexual assault is heavily implied!!!!!!!! I don't want to trigger anyone! <3

See the end of the work for more notes

## I'm Not What You Think I Am (But I Don't Know What You Think)

Hawks doesn’t wake up, not really, and he doesn’t feel like he’s trying to blink sleep out of his eyes; he feels more aware than that. It’s more like when someone zones out on a car ride and everything blurs together and when they’re aware again they’re in a completely different area, they’re covered in blood, and there’s a dead body under them that they’re on top of with numb legs that can’t seem to function enough to move. Maybe their hands are still gripping the feather that’s buried in the body below them.

Hawks can feel the blood drain from his face the longer he stares, meeting dying eyes with his own and trying to understand why he did it. Why someone training to be a hero would kill someone in cold blood (the blood spreading across the concrete, soaking into his clothes and covering his hands, isn’t cold).

When he starts to pull himself up, the man’s right hand falls away from his inner thigh and he knows. Hawks has always been too smart for his age, his Handler tells him so, and the pieces of this puzzle are too simple. Any other explanation would be like trying to cram the triangle block into the circle hole. He knows that this man was going to hurt him.

Just like how he knows that the clothes he’s wearing are both too nice and too big, that the feather, a murder weapon, is clearly his but wouldn’t find a place in his too small wings.

He’s smaller than he should be, and he doesn’t remember anything from his older self. All he has to go off of is a dying man and a murder weapon that belongs to him but doesn’t fit him now, feeling too large in his small hands. Everything is too big and he’s not supposed to be, but he’s terrified. He can’t be scared, not if he’s going to be a hero. Hawks is going to be a great hero someday, he is, but right now he’s not Hawks.

He’s not really Keigo either, he hasn’t been since he was taken away.

The fingers still sitting on his other thigh, too high, a lover's touch, twitch against his skin,grabbing his attention and earning a high whine that he doesn’t mean to make.

Hawks frantically shoves at the man’s chest until his arms have the strength to push him up and off of the man and he can throw himself to his feet and stumble back. His legs are still numb, and they shake under his weight like they might give out any second.

He’s hurt someone, but the man isn’t dead.

He knows that the man won’t come after him when he’s been stabbed and he hasn’t made any movements to come closer- he knows that.

But it doesn’t stop him from ripping the too-large feather free, just to have a weapon, when the man twitches like he might try again.

(Try what? Nothing had even happened, but the places where his hands had been burn, and Hawks feels dirty.)

(He misses Touya. There’s no way that Touya wants to see him now, covered in blood and shaking like the baby that Touya always said he was.)

The man is bleeding a lot more now, the feather was the only thing keeping his blood inside of him.

(Does he really deserve to die if nothing happened?)

Hawks watches the blood spread so far that it runs into a crack in the floor and creates a river that branches into a million veins. It’s not stopping, or even slowing down a little bit, and it’s a lot of blood. The panic hits him even harder, rocketing to a high level, because Hawks knows that this man, with the feather no longer stopping him from bleeding out, is going to die if he doesn’t get help, but there’s nothing that Hawks can do. He can’t bring himself to touch the man, can’t bring himself to tear his own clothes (the thought of losing clothes makes him feel sick right now) to try to slow the flow of blood. A hand paws at his bare ankle and he brings the feather down again in reflex, where it buries itself into the man’s previous stab wound and pins him to the floor like a bug to a board. The man lets out a pained scream that Hawks echoes with a feeling of fear that he thought had been trained out of him by now.

And Hawks scrambles away from what he’s done like a cockroach from light.

(What has he done-)

He’s killed someone- Hero’s don’t kill, not if they’re going to be loved. Nobody cares about you if you kill someone, least of all the commission, and he’s already on thin ice with his stupid bird habits, and he can’t go back to before, he can’t go back because his parents don’t want him-

He waits in the corner, holding his bloody hands in front of him and trying not to think about the tight feeling of the blood drying on his face, and he counts. He counts the man’s gurgling breaths and his attempts to speak and gets to fifty seven before he can’t bring himself to focus on it anymore. So he counts the support beams in what he now knows is a warehouse (seventeen and a half, one is broken where the roof has partially caved in, but it holds stubbornly to the wall anyway), the doors (three), and anything else that he can see. His wings, his entire body is shaking too hard for flying to be an option right now, he’s gotta calm down. The counting helps.

("Heroes don’t need coping skills, Hawks, they act for the greater good and feel no remorse," his Handler tells him, staring at the results of his most recent training with a stern frown on his face. Another trainer is mentioning therapy to him, and the frown deepens with each word. Instead of responding to the trainer, his Handler looks down to him, "Good hero's don't need help, Hawks," he taps the chart again, "This isn't a good hero." His Handler leaves again, and training resumes.

This time, Hawks is sure to save the woman who he hadn't gotten to in time in the last run.)

He’s counted ninety six cracks in the cement floor when the door closest to him slams open, the rusted metal screeching against the concrete. It hits the wall and stays there, empty, before someone cautiously slinks in, seemingly without a care in the world but with the body language of someone who knows not to make a scene. They move like a shadow, even the light of the blue fire in their hand is not able to breach the darkness that clings to the bottom half of their face and to their limbs. He almost pulls himself forward, almost calls out, but he stops himself before he even manages to twitch.

Hawks can hear his sharpened feathers rattling against the metal walls he’s in the corner of, and he’s hit with the urge to just rip them out. They’re so loud, and he hates them more than anything right now. The vibrations that shoot up them hurt, and he clenches his jaw in pain. His hands, still tacky with blood, are on his arms as he tries to shy away from anything new.

The man, still standing in front of the door, doesn’t call out to the man on the floor to see if he's okay, but he does talk to himself.

“You weren’t worth recruiting anyway,” the new one sighs, lazily landing a harsh kick to the dying man’s ribs. The lack of response is horrifying, making him feel even colder than before, and Hawks wonders when the man had stopped breathing. His head is still turned, his dead eyes still staring and making Hawks’ skin crawl. They’re a dull brown color, made even duller by his death. There’s blood falling from the left corner of his mouth, but it’s his right hand, still splayed out in a desperate reach for him, that gives Hawks away like a flashing neon arrow that points to his location.

An arrow that blue eyes follow directly to him.

Even though Hawks knows that the new person, a man, sees him, he doesn’t come out. The man doesn’t come any closer. Hawks stares at him warily, clutching himself tighter. The man, Hawks realizes, isn’t covered by shadows, but by scars. Dark, painful looking scars, nothing like the ones that Hawks has, that his Handler tuts over because they’ll be hard to cover, Hawks, you need to be better and not get any more-

Staples glint in the light as the man shifts, catching his stupid bird brain’s attention. They look especially striking in the light of the blue fire, which also catches his eye. The fire is a near perfect match for the man’s eyes, which still stare at him with something like anger when they catch on the blood smears on his thighs.

Hawks folds his wings around him tightly to cover the stains, but the man still stares, like he can still see them. Hawks feels dirty. His eyebrows dip so low that his eyes are hardly visible, as he looks down at the cooling body next to his foot.

The anger in his expression, at the very least, is confirmed when the man stomps on the dead man’s chest and flames engulf the body so fast that Hawks barely has time to register the sharp crack that the bones had made before the softer crackling of fire covered it. The blue hits the body like it's acid, steadily eating away at it and burning brighter by the second. The concave chest fills with it, just as the air fills with the scent of burning flesh. Despite all of the destruction it’s causing, the fire is beautiful, the sort of beauty that you can’t touch, but is so obvious that it hurts. The fire chases after the blood on the floor, igniting even the crack like it’s gasoline. The embers still glow, moving through the air in slow motion. When they catch on his feather, Hawks feels it; it’s not his feather, not now, but it’s still connected to him and he feels every bit of the feather going up in flames and it hurts. It feels like he’s losing his wings, and he knows he's not, but that doesn’t stop the pain. It doesn’t stop his back from hitting the wall behind him in an attempt to put out a fire that isn’t touching him.

It takes less than a second for the feather to burn, but there’s a weird feeling left behind, like he’s missing something that’s supposed to be there.

(Hands rip at his feathers again, pulling then out at what feels like random. Hawks is crying, jerking against his restraints, but they don't stop until they're satisfied with how he looks. "Soon, we won't have to do this to you," he coos, moving to stand where Hawks can see him. The fulled feathers are thrown into a bag to be disposed of later, and Hawks knows that they know he'll feel it when they do.

"They'll stop growing, and you'll look better."

Hawks closes his eyes, and a hand taps at his cheek until he opens his teary eyes again. "What do you say when someone helps you like this, Hawks?"

"Thank you," he whispers.)

The body takes longer than the feather, and the stranger doesn’t look away from him the entire time.

Eventually, there’s nothing left to burn. The fire, so hot that it burns blue, has destroyed even the bones, leaving a sickening stench in the air and dusty ashes on the floor. Heavy boots step in the pile, leaving prints, as the stranger walks over to him. His face is scarred, the bits of metal glint on the light, and his eyes are blue. By the time that he’s pulled himself from smothering his wings against the wall, the man is staring at him consideringly. He lights up his hand again and this time Hawks scrambled away from it as best he can while still in a corner because he knows that it hurts now. His wings would be gone is seconds, and Hawks can’t be sure that he wouldn’t keep burning when all of his feathers were gone

Luckily, the man notices his reaction and quickly puts out the flames with a wave before he reaches out for Hawks, parting the barrier of red feathers and wrapping cold fingers around Hawks small wrist. Hawks snaps his wrists back and shakes, hating how scared he is of everything. If the man is surprised he doesn’t show it, just rocking back onto his heels and studying Hawks quietly while he almost vibrates from nerves. He releases a heavy sigh, “Come out of your feather hut, Birdie.”

It reminds him of the american story of the three little pigs.

Hawks shakes his head rapidly in a ‘no, absolutely not’ way. It’s childish, he knows, but even the idea of talking right now is too much. A flash of annoyance crosses the scarred face before it’s carefully wiped away. Then a sort of dawning realization takes its place. “You don’t know who I am.” It doesn’t sound like a question, or even like it’s directed at Hawks at all. It’s just a fact.

The sky is blue.

Hawks is a murderer.

Hawks doesn’t know who this man is.

Grass is green except for when it’s not.

Hawks feels like a bug under a magnifying glass, waiting for the sun to be at just the right angle to fry him. The man seems to decide a different approach is better when he softens his expression and relaxes his posture, even going so far as to leave his crouch in order to sit on the floor in front of Hawks. Eventually, he tries again, schooching closer for better access.

“I won’t grab you again,” he bargains, trying to peek through the feathers that shield Hawks from him.

Hawks shakes his head again.

The man’s hands drop back into his lap and he tilts his head up to stare at the partially gone ceiling. His elbows rest on his knees and when he looks back down at Hawks his hand catches his chin perfectly. He looks bored.

“Is this a ‘stranger danger’ thing?” He drawls, looking slightly impatient.

Hawks doesn’t deny it, but he doesn’t say why either.

“‘Cause technically,” the man waves his free hand flippantly between them, “I’m not a stranger.”

Hawks tries not to take comfort in that; there’s a lot of bad ways to not be a stranger.

The President of the commission isn’t a stranger.

His Handlers aren’t strangers.

His parents weren’t strangers.

“Hawks,” the man calls, trying to meet his eyes.

Hawks feels sick again, and he’s not really sure why he thought he'd be called something else. ‘Hawks’ is, and seemingly always will be, all that he is. If Hawks is all that he is, and he’s killed someone, then who is he now? He can’t be Hawks, he can’t be a hero, and when you really think about it, a hero is all that ‘Hawks’ is. He tries to tell himself that there’s nothing wrong with that. If this man only knows him as Hawks, and still calls him that after seeing what he’s done, even covering it up for him, then he must work for the commission. After all, this kind of thing has happened before, not to him, but he’s heard about it. Sometimes, the pressure of greatness is too much, and other assets snap. There one day and gone the next, and what happened never leaves the commissions records, if it even makes it there at all.

They usually aren’t seen again.

“A-are you a new Handler?” Hawks stutters, barely getting the words out. He’s not really supposed to question anything, he knows that, but when he weighs the cost of asking against the cost of getting kidnapped, there’s a winner somewhere in there. He knows that he's supposed to be bigger, but he assumes that he'll always have a Handler assigned to him, because he can't be trusted to be good all the time without someone to make him. He used to get angry about it, but he was left alone and he's killed someone, so he guesses that his Handler is right.

“Handler?” The man doesn’t sound confused, but he does quirk an eyebrow up in question, like he’s assessing Hawks’ knowledge of the subject. It’s what people at the commission do when he’s missing something obvious, something that a good hero would see right off the bat. Self doubt rushes through him in a wave, his wings wrapping even tighter around him. He doesn’t say anything else, locking his teeth together to make sure he doesn’t do anything bad. Silence stretches between them, only the sound of his wings brushing against the wall breaking it.

“I handle you a lot, I guess,” the guy says eventually with a lazy shrug. Hawks can’t even tell if the man is lying; his face, covered in scars, hardly gives off the natural tells, and he’s maintained eye contact. He’s acting like a hero does when they’re trying to comfort a scared victim. Hawks doesn’t think that he acts like a Handler should, and he looks even less like one. The Hero Public Safety Commission cares about looks and how things reflect back on to them; it’s why they pull his feathers out sometimes when they grow in ‘bad places’. He can’t be a hero if he doesn’t look presentable.

He can't be a hero if he’s killed someone either.

"I'm supposed to be bigger," Hawks tells him, like the man wouldn't already know. He just gets another eyebrow raise and a shrugged 'what can you do' expression from the man, but he doesn't seem irritated with Hawks about it.

Hawks has run out of things to not-say to the ‘possibly his Handler’ man, so he does his best impression of a brave hero in training and climbs to his feet, tucking his wings behind him even as they try to cover him again. The blood has fully dried, and it makes his skin feel too tight. The man looks mildly surprised when Hawks moves, but accepts that he’s gotten somewhere and hauls himself to his feet as well with a mutter that sounded a lot like ‘fucking finally’. Hawks remains quiet, but guilt settles in his chest. How is he supposed to be good enough to not get his older self in trouble if he's already annoying his Handler?

“Lets go,” he sighs, turning away like he expects Hawks to just follow him. He goes to follow, he takes that first step, before realization slams into him hard enough to make his breath catch in his throat, and he just looks at his Handler. He isn’t screaming about the body, doesn’t even look like it affected him all that much. He isn’t calling Hawks a monster, a murderer, like any good government employee would. Hawks tries not to think too hard about why that is, instead choosing to keep his head down and his mouth shut. But his mind whirls, combing over the sheer number of implications, of what having someone so heavily scarred taking him away could mean, and he has an idea of what he's walking into.

He knows why the man found him and disposed of the body so casually, why he’s here.

When the man turns back around with a raised eyebrow and gestures for him to follow again, Hawks scrambles to do so.

He is nothing if not obedient, even if he’s being marched to his own mysterious disappearance.

It’s bright when they leave the warehouse, and even though the caved-in roof had provided this knowledge, Hawks is still surprised by it.

Murders don’t happen in daylight, no matter how muted it may be by warehouse walls in a bad side of town.

His wings fluff up on his back, and his new Handler mutters something about keeping a low profile before shrugging out of his own jacket and laying it over Hawks' back. Guilt trips him up again. He should have thought of that and prepared for it instead of making his Handler give up his jacket.

( He reminds himself that he doesn’t technically exist until his debut, which will never happen if he disappears now, and if his body is discovered it would bring trouble down on the commission eventually as they scrambled to cover his mistakes. Then he remembers the small pile of ash that’s still scattered across the cement floor of the warehouse, and stops worrying about it. It’s likely that there won’t be a body to find.)

A few minutes later, his temporary Handler scoops up an empty soda from the sidewalk and chucks it at a man in a business suit in broad daylight without hesitation. The can, which was apparently not as empty as Hawks had hoped, hits the back of the man’s head with a comical ‘thunk’.

For someone who wants to keep a low profile, his Handler is very obvious, but he must have his reasons for it. If it was a test, Hawks isn’t sure that he passed it.

They duck into an alleyway just in time for the man to start yelling, and, while he doesn’t actually laugh, his Handler’s eyes glow with mirth. Hawks wonders, once again, why this one is so different from his other Handlers. Maybe he’ll change later and act as someone from the commission should but the expected icy silence that typically comes with that isn’t hanging between them. Hawks almost wishes that it was, just to avoid more change that he’s not ready for.

Aside from the can tossing escapade, the walk to wherever they’re going is silent. Hawks can’t bring himself to ask any questions, and no matter how many times the man looks down at him like he should be talking, he can’t bring himself to do it. He’s not supposed to address his Handlers unless they address him first, and going against that rule is a punishable offense. It doesn’t matter to him that he’s so deep in the hole that he can’t see the sky, because every time he does something right the hole doesn’t get deeper.

They pull to a stop outside of a rundown building with a dingy sign that labels it as a bar and his Handler turns to him. “Okay, just-” he begins, like Hawks is a kid who’s being told the rules. “Just stay close,” He sighs, and Hawks almost echos him in relief, because he’s still not sure what to do but it’s close enough to a command to be familiar. Then, without any more warnings or instructions, his Handler pulls the door open and steps inside to the dimly lit building, Hawks following him like a second shadow.

The next few hours are spent inside his own head as he follows the Handler, who mentioned that there were others here somewhere, around the deceptively large building. He’s waiting for the inevitable, for some form of punishment or some way that he’s going to disappear like all of those other assets. His Handler doesn’t kill him, though. Instead, he walks him over to the bar and opens a small refrigerator that was hidden under the bar top, while Hawks waits for the most likely outcome of this day.

His handler offers him a box of grape juice, and Hawks takes it but doesn’t drink it. He doesn't like grapes. Instead, he holds it with both hands and waits quietly.

When someone else walks through the door, the staring contest dissolved with his Handler as the winner after Hawks whirled around to assess the new threat in the room. Juice drips from where his grip had crushed the juice box, further staining his clothes and making a mess on the bar top. Hawks continues to blink owlishly at the newcomer. The person, who seems to be made of shadow, rather than it clinging to him, looks at him with mild interest, a towel and a bar glass in his hands. His eyes move to address Hawks’ Handler.

“He’s very,” the man pauses, as if choosing his next words carefully, "small.”

His Handler grunts in irritation, and Hawks almost chimes in that he's sorry, he knows he supposed to be bigger.

A hesitant pause.

“Was it-?”

“Fuckin’ drop it,” his Handler spits out.

“Ah, I see,” the other hums tactfully, and wisely drops the topic. Hawks thinks that his eyes are pretty, the color of a flower that grows in the part where he meets Touya sometimes, but he doesn’t tell him. He's not supposed to meet anyone, and he's not supposed to speak without permission.

“The child is making a mess,” the shadowed man notes distantly, moving closer to the juice spill with the hand holding the towel stretched out. Hawks doesn’t mean to, really he doesn’t, but he can’t help the way that he goes absolutely still. He doesn’t really notice that he’s not breathing until he feels the ache in his lungs. Even as his chest burns, he knows he can hold for longer, long enough for this new person to finish and not be so close. The towel runs over the smooth counter in small circles, each slow pass making it shine. He can’t hold his breath any longer, his chest hurts, and the grip he has on the busted juice box is only getting tighter with his heightened stress levels. When Hawks finally draws in a huge breath, his Handler looks at him cooly and the one with the towel looks up at him again.

“Child,” he begins, and Hawks wishes he could say that he didn’t flinch at the soothing tone.

“Would you like another one?”

Hawks rapidly shakes his head in denial, mouth clamped shut. Taking another would be greedy. Ungrateful. His first impression of making a mess and not even helping to clean it up was bad enough without demanding another.

The look that he gets is filled with disbelief, despite the eyes being the only thing to really convey emotion. Thankfully, the topic is dropped, and he’s left alone aside from the many looks that the others give him when they think he’s not looking. His hand cramps from his harsh grip on the empty juice box. He doesn’t let go of it for almost thirty minutes, at which point it drops from his relaxed fingers and hits the floor. He’s quick to dart down and pick it up, and nobody reprimands him for it. His hands still shake,and his skin still feels too tight.

He’s still bloody.

Later, when his Handler gestures for him to follow again, he does so without question. The walk through the hallways is silent. Hawks is led to a bathroom and told to ‘wash the goddamn blood off’, before being left alone with a sink, a cloth, and a spare shirt that would never in a million years fit him.

(He still likes it; he doesn’t own much, and it’s soft.)

Then he’s left alone, after being given clear orders for the first time since he was found, and he can’t even bring himself to turn the sink on. The cloth is trapped, balled up and caught in a stress grip that renders it useless until he calms down enough to relax and let it go. He stands there, staring at his face in the mirror, and wanting to scream because he’s killed someone-

And he doesn’t look any different.

He still looks like a tired kid, and even less like a hero than he ever has before, but he doesn’t look hardened by the murder at all. The blood, now a coppery brown, seems out of place on his face but between one blink and the next it’s almost like it was always there. The color clashes with the gold in his eyes and the fear in his expression, but it also makes his eyes look brighter. It’s a scary thought, and he shakes his head to get rid of it. It keeps coming back anyway.

Hawks isn’t sure how long he’d been in the bathroom, but his Handler is back, and he looks irritated when he sees that Hawks hasn’t followed his instructions. Hawks quietly watches him in the reflection of the mirror. He slowly meets his shockingly blue eyes in the mirror and watches the look soften into something uncomfortable and far too much like understanding. It’s a weird look for a Handler to have, he thinks. His Handler reaches past him to turn the sink on, and he flinches away. Still rooted to his spot, Hawks raises his small hand (the one that’s not clutching the cloth), runs his small hand under the water, and paws tentatively at the blood splattered under his eye. It doesn’t come off fast enough for him to calm down. Instead, his emotions finally spill over the jagged wall that had been holding them back. The light touch turns frantic in less than a second, and then he’s breaking down like he promised himself that he wouldn’t do after his parents sold him. His talons, dulled from the commission’s files but still sharp enough, dig into the baby-soft skin under them, ripping it open. Blood wells in the cuts, and he digs his nails in deeper. His Handler is quick to grab him, holding his small wrists in a bruising hold, but the man looks even more panicked when Hawks goes limp and lets out a small sob. The man doesn’t understand, this isn’t Hawks’ face, it’s not the face of a hero-

His Handler holds him, and he becomes something more than just a Handler.

There are others, aside from the man made of shadows and endless patience, who had been introduced as Kurogiri after the silence at the bar had seemingly been too much for his Handler to take. Hawks likes him well enough, even if he’s still scared of making him mad; Kurogiri is professional with him in a way that reminds him of the adults in the commission building, and the small taste of something normal is a bitter comfort. That being said, the others are the exact opposite and they threw his mind into overdrive the second that he could hear them from down the hall. The introduction of these others is rocky and anxiety inducing at best. Hawks is hyper aware of the way that his shirt is far too big, slipping down his shoulder, of the claw marks under his left eye, hiding under All Might themed bandages. He wonders if the others know, if they’d heard him when it happened.

He hadn't been quiet with his tantrum.

So he sits at the bar with Dabi and stays quiet. He tries his best to disappear into the background of the conversation, and he’s successful for the most part. Everyone still looks at him, like they can't believe he's not bigger, but nobody really tries to talk to him.

“He obviously doesn’t know who we are! Of course he does!” The man, Twice he thinks his Handler called him, speaks in riddles that Hawks is too nervous to pick apart, and he shouldn’t be listening anyway. The conversation being about him doesn’t mean that they want him to talk in it. The one with the hand on his face doesn’t even look up from his game,or seem like he cares about what’s going on around him. The girl, who’s the youngest of the group, keeps on making cooing noises at him and bouncing close before Dabi catches her doing it and sends her away. She keeps coming back. Hawks is sure to keep his distance without moving too much, so he doesn’t upset his Handler. Twice is still talking to himself, and the rising noise level makes Hawks want to hide. The one who look bored begins speaking over Twice

“We’re the League of Vil-”

The girl, Toga, makes another cooing-chirping noise at him, like the kind that he used to make before the commission called it ’ugly’ and taught him how to stop. He thinks that he understands now; it’s distracting.

His Handler notices and sends the man a look sharper than one of Hawks’ feathers and Twice makes an ‘abort mission’ gesture frantically with his hands.

“Villas. The League of Villas! We sell them,” a lizard man quickly corrects. Hawks knows that that wasn’t what the scary guy was going to say, but doesn’t want to risk upsetting his Handler, so he quickly nods and doesn’t say a word. They talk around him, like they’re water and he’s a rock in a stream, and he doesn’t mind. It gives him the perfect chance to gather information and learn who to avoid.

(His Handler’s name is Dabi, and while Hawks wouldn't call him that, he becomes ‘Dabi’ in Hawks’ mind. Handlers are cruel, and Dabis are not.)

Eventually the meeting ends, and everyone is dismissed to do whatever they want. ‘Whatever they want’ means ‘stare at Hawks and sometimes try to talk to him but give up and talk to each other about him instead’. He’s not sure what to do with all of the attention, so he keeps quiet and stays with Kurogiri and his Handler- Dabi by the bar. He gets another juice box, this one claiming to taste like banana, and this time he opens it. It tastes just like yellow laffy taffy, and he keeps it close to his chest, the straw never leaving his mouth, as he stares at the room around him. The conversation between Dabi and Kurogiri stops, and when he looks over they’re both staring at him. It couldn't be more clear that they were talking about him. Hawks shuffles a little, his wings giving a small nervous flap behind him. Dabi steps closer and points out at the room.

“Go mingle, Gremlin,” he orders, shoving lightly at Hawks’ back. He shuffles forwards a bit, and after a brief moment of hesitation, scrambles over to Toga, who’s sitting on a box and kicking her legs. Each of her hands is holding a small bird. She looks happy to see him, and she holds out a bird, still moving in her small hand, as an offering. After setting down his juice box, Hawks hesitates, but carefully takes it, trying his best to be gentle. The bird still flaps desperately, frantic chirps growing louder. He tries to sooth it, running his pointer finger over the feathers on its head, but it still thrashes in his gentle grip. Carefully looking around and finding none of the attention on him, he leans closer to it and coos softly. The bird stills, cocking its head, and chips back. Hawks feels his face split in a small grin as he copies the noise. The bird calms enough for Hawks to hold it more securely, not needing to pin it’s wings. It sits in his hand, relaxed and happy. He hears a chirp from the bird that Toga is still holding, and he turns around to chirp back.

Toga looks at him as she bites into her still struggling bird, and he screams. After that, Dabi is sure to stay with him at all times.

It quickly becomes clear that Dabi is not actually a Hero Public Safety Commission employee, that he’s never been one and he’ll never be one. Hawks wants to think he knew because of the location of the bar, or the way that he dresses, or even the way that he looks in general, but that’s not really it. Dabi has an amount of emotion in everything that he does, and it sets him apart from the commission, who only look polished and emotionless and professional. Dabi doesn’t have the coldness in his heart to work for the Hero Public Safety Commission.

So, Dabi doesn’t work for the commission.

They’re sitting at the bar with Kurogiri, everyone else relaxing around the room, when Hawks finally has the courage to ask him about what he’s been wondering.

“Did you buy me?” Asks Hawks quietly, not looking over at Dabi even when the other whips his head around to stare at him. The room, which had been filled with noise, quiets around them a little. Hawks isn't sure if he's imagining it or not.

“What the absolute fuck, kid.”

“My Handler always said that if I wasn’t good, they’d sell me again,” Hawks admits to him in a whisper, trying not to fold in on himself like he so desperately wants to. He hates admitting that he was bad, but he knows that you have to give information to receive it. His head snaps to the side when he hears a gasp, and he makes eye contact with Mr. Compress. Hawks doesn’t think too hard about it; the man is dramatic anyway. He turns back as Dabi mouths around the word ‘again’, looking mildly sick, and then he worries. “And I killed someone,” Hawks finishes quietly, ducking his head and trying to justify the question, to make everyone care a little less about him being bad. This time, Twice screams a loud “He wouldn't hurt a fly?! He’s a killer!” that makes Hawks hunch down in his seat. Toga slaps a hand over his mouth, but it’s too late, and it’s not hard for Hawks to know which one is Twice’s real opinion. Spinner, who’d been playing a game with Shigaraki, looks stunned, and Shigaraki has paused the game but hasn’t turned around to stare like the others. Silence stretches between them for a while, long enough that Hawks finally looks over to see what Dabi might be thinking. When he does, Dabi looks really mad, and he’s gritting his teeth like he’s trying to not make a mistake, like Hawks does when he gets hurt in training but has to keep going. Hawks looks away again at the thought.

“You killed a pedophile, birdie. We don’t really consider them human here,” Dabi corrects, and Hawks hears whispers spring up around him before Dabi barks out a sharp, “Shut. Up. I already took care of it.”

The others sound angry, and Toga’s hands are fisting her skirt like she’s trying to restrain herself. It doesn’t seem to work, because seconds later she’s wrapping herself around Hawks and hugging him close, nearly in tears. Hawks panics, “Sorry, I’m sorry,” he says frantically, not sure what’s going on. “Don’t be,” Spinner says quickly, still looking gobsmacked. “A player with bad traits brings down the party,” Shigaraki adds before turning around and unpausing the game. Spinner yells, caught off-guard, and turns back around. Toga lets him go,but grabs his face instead, squishing his face together and staring down at him. “I hated that guy,” she admits, looking just uncomfortable enough that Hawks has an idea of why. Twice bounds up to him and says, “We all did! Yeah, fuck that guy!” before he and Toga go back to the crate and their abandoned card game. Hawks watches them go.

The silence resumes between Hawks and Dabi, stretching between them like the laffy taffy that Touya brought for him that one time. It had been banana flavored, and tasted nothing like it, but Hawks had never had one, so he didn’t care. A harsh emptiness fills his chest, and he feels like letting out a small chirp of mourning.

(He really misses Touya.)

“I don’t have the funds to buy a kid, brat,” Dabi eventually says. He’s still staring, like he’s not sure what else to say, but Hawks doesn’t look at him again. His eyes look like Touya’s, and the reminder hurts a little bit. Still, he nods his head in understanding.

Dabi gestures around the room, ”Does it look like any of us have the funds to buy a child?” he asks with a small amount of forced humor.

Hawks wordlessly points to Kurogiri, standing behind the bar wearing a tailored suit, who looks pleased, then to Mr. Compress and his flashy outfit, who twirls happily to show it off.

He gets another banana juice box for it, and he wonders if it's that obvious that he likes them. When he asks, Dabi shoots him a look that says it absolutely is. "You make this stupid little face and your wings go all fluffy," he states before turning back to Kurogiri.

Hawks promises himself to work on that.

He wakes up screaming because Touya is gone, and he’s not coming back, and it feels like he’s lost a part of himself. Dabi flings the door open and stares, like he doesn’t know what to do, and Hawks is still sobbing hysterically, because even now those blue eyes hurt to look at. He misses him, gods, he misses him, but there’s nobody to miss, according to everyone else. Hawks knows what happened, he knows that Touya’s dad hurt him, but he can’t prove it. He can’t prove that Touya even existed, because he suddenly just doesn’t anymore, nobody knows who he is-

Dabi grabs him and awkwardly holds him, but he doesn't ask for Hawks to calm down or demand an explanation. He cries into Dabi’s shirt about it until he’s too exhausted to stay awake anymore. It's a far cry from how his other Handler reacts when this happens.

When Dabi asks him about it hours later, Hawks tells him that he doesn’t ever recall having met a ‘Touya’ before. He can’t look him in the eye, but he sends a blinding closed eyed smile in Dabi’s direction to make up for it. There's no use in crying over spilled milk, after all.

One day, Dabi isn’t there when Hawks wakes up, and he has to seek out the others. He's seen them since the murder-talk, yeah, but he was always with Dabi, and he’s a little scared to see them without that buffer. They had seemed fine with it at the time, but they may have changed their minds by now, and Hawks doesn't want to find out what that would mean for him. Still, he pulls the door open and makes his way to one of the only rooms he can get to on his own without getting a little lost on the way:

The bar.

Kurogiri and the banana juice boxes are there, so it’s the safest place he can think of to go.

When he gets there, Kurogiri is in his usual spot, cleaning glasses behind the bar until they shine.

Everyone else is in their usual spots too.

Toga is on the crate again, talking to Twice, while Spinner and Shigaraki yell at each other over whatever game they’re playing this time (last time this happened, Shigaraki destroyed a controller and almost destroyed Spinner too. Hawks hopes that that isn't where this gaming session is going.). Mr. Compress is talking to Kurogiri happily, idly doing magic tricks while he talks.

Hawks stops his hopping immediately, slinking back into the hallway and pressing himself against the wall. They don’t sound mad, not right now at least.

When he peeks back in, a juice box is sitting on the counter, and Kurogiri tilts his head at Hawks, who gets the impression that somewhere under all of the shadows, the man is smiling knowingly. Hawks cautiously steps back into the room before using his wings to propel himself over to the bar as fast as possible. Mr. Compress greets him and then resumes his card tricks. He even turns so that his body is slightly slanted towards Hawks, giving him a seat to the show alongside Kurogiri. Hawks’ eyes follow the cards as they fly through the air, slightly mesmerized by the flashy movements. Reaching behind him, he tugs a few feathers loose with a small wince, holding them gently, before turning back to watch. The next pattern of tricks begins, and he clumsily copies each motion with his feathers, which earns a fond laugh from Mr. Compress and another head tilt from Kurogiri. Soon enough, Twice, Toga, and Spinner were also watching the feathers and cards, ‘ooh’ing and ‘ahh’ing theatrically.

“He’s a brat,” Shigaraki chimes in sourly, upset that Spinner had paused their game to watch. Hawks can tell that he’s not really angry as his eyes follow the show as well.

“He’s far too well-behaved for that! A true delight and a wonderful magician!” Mr. Compress proudly says, catching his cards and bowing. Hawks can feel the beaming smile sent his way, despite the mask.

“A well trained brat, but he still needs to level up,” Shigaraki amends with a mutter, turning back to the screen as Spinner rejoins him.

Hawks stills at the mention of training, smile slipping off of his face. He knew that the bigger version of him was more useful, that having a kid around was probably annoying, but it still hurts because he wasn't prepared for it. Nobody says anything to defend him, they don't even seem to notice as they go back to what they were doing before. Hawks stretches his wings and yawns, before drooping and telling Kurogiri and Mr. Compress that he's tired. He leaves his mostly full juice box on the bar top and hops off of the stool, feeling slightly sick as he leaves the room and goes back to his own. He decides to stay there until Dabi gets back, and he curls under the blanket and tries not to cry.

Hours later, he wakes up to yelling.

Hawks pulls himself out of his little nest and slowly creeps out of the room again, following the noise to the bar. His feathers quiver in alarm when he realizes that it’s not happy yelling, or the yelling that Shigaraki and Spinner do when playing a game, but angry, shocked yelling. When he finally peaks into the room, feeling a sense of danger, his blood runs cold. This time, instead of a juice box, he sees Dabi and the others crowding around the bar.

Dabi is back, and he’s holding a commission file.

Specifically, he’s holding Hawks’ commission file.

He almost chirps in alarm, eyes wide and his wings shaking, watching as they read through the admittedly thick folder of incidents and treatments. He can see the highlighted sections of his training from where he stands, and he must make some sort of noise because everybody looks over at him, faces looking like they got caught doing something they shouldn't be. The silence rings in his ears, and the panic fills his lungs until he’s almost choking for air. He doesn’t know why he’s so upset, it’s just training and discipline files, it’s fine, normal even. But Touya’s dad used to train him the same way, and he’s called it ‘abuse’ when he described it. Hawks had never told him that he was trained like that too. But the training helps him, his Handler tells him so. He's gonna be a great hero, as long as he does what the commission says, they'll make him great.

Dabi, the only one who didn't look up at his entrance, flips another page.

“Don’t,” he pleads in a small voice, already knowing that he was too late, they already knew. They knew that something was wrong with him, and the term that Touya had used floods through his ears as he stands there, feeling too hot, too cold, and numb all at once.

Child Soldier.

But he's not a soldier, he's not-

He's a hero.

Hawks is a hero.

To his own horror, his eyes feels hot, and he sniffles.

“Dear child,” Kurogiri addresses him, trying to get his attention. The others stare at him, faces mixed between horror, sadness, and carefully blank. “Hawks,” Dabi says, staring at him. Hawks doesn’t even twitch, still feeling lost. Dabi tries again.

“Keigo Takami.”

Hawks flinches back as if Dabi hit him, eyes darting from face to face while tears cloud his vision. They all stare back, and Hawks turns around and runs as fast as he can. Voices call after him, but he doesn't turn back. Tears are blurring his vision so much that he clips his shoulder on the corner when he turns. He makes it back to his room, where he forces the broken window open and shoves himself through it. Air rushes past his ears as he falls, his wings automatically snapping out. They barely catch him, but they do, and he flies blindly until his wings are aching from the strain of the distance. It's too cold for him to fly much longer, but he doesn't stop until he finds an apartment building that feels just close enough to right for him to dive towards it. He lands on a balcony and the door is unlocked, so his small hands scrabble at it until he manages to finally pull it open and fall inside. It's blank, like nobody lives there, and it makes his chest feel cold because he knows someone does. He moves on autopilot, and the next time he’s aware again, he’s curled up on a huge bed that has a few red feathers on it already and he knows that they wouldn't find a place in his wings. That this is where he lives when he's older. It’s not home, it's not the bar, or even the commission, but it’s where he lives. He falls asleep slowly, everything too cold and quiet for him to sink into sleep easily. He still manages to do it, even if it's restless.

When Hawks blinks his eyes open, he feels like he got blackout drunk and just kept drinking. His head is pounding, everything hurts, and he’s so tired that he just wants to go back to sleep. His phone vibrates on his dresser, and he blearily stares at it before slowly reaching for it. When he pulls it to his face he’s blinded by the brightness and he has to turn the screen away and blink the spots out of his vision. He fumbles with his settings and puts his phone's brightness all the way down, which is still too bright for his sensitive eyes. He reads the new message. He re-reads it, rubbing his eyes, and checks the time. It’s noon.

Why the absolute fuck is Dabi asking to meet up at noon?

His phone vibrates again in his hand, demanding his attention.

Omw calm your tits, he types out, before pulling himself out of bed.

Then his eyes catch on all of the missed messages that he never replied to, and he knows that something is wrong.

where tf are you you chicken nugget (Monday 1:13)

whos the target (Monday 1:13)

dont ignore me u fuck (Monday 2:37)

i broke in and ur not home (Monday 3:17)

why (Monday 3:18)

hawks (Monday 3:18)

fucking answer (Monday 3:20)

There's a noticeable pause in messages, lasting for a few days.

meeting (Today 6:52)

now (Today 6:52)

whole league and mandatory (Today 6:53)

hurry up (Today 6:55)

It feels like he's missing something important.

## I'm A Big Kid Now

Chapter Summary

> “Just- give me five minutes!”

> “They deserve to know.”

> “To know what? That I can’t handle what it takes to be a hero? That I space out sometimes?” He adds air quotes around the words.

> “No-”

> “Oh, yeah, poor me! Sleeping in a bed every night and- and getting fed every day! What is that supposed to sound like to them?”

> “Like conditioning,” Dabi snaps at him, not stopping despite the way that Hawks is almost begging him to. “It sounds like you were told that you couldn’t complain because they gave you the bare minimum!”

> “The bare minimum is all I’ve ever had!”

> Dabi stops short, looking a little lost, looking panicked as Hawks gasps for air that he didn’t know that he was missing.

Chapter Notes

> So it gets worse??? Ummmm, implied childhood sexual abuse, dissociation happens (I tried to write it, it's not great, sorry), there's a heavy discussion and a panic attack so watch out for that?

See the end of the chapter for more notes

Hawks is dressed and almost out the balcony door before something clicks in his mind and he fishes his phone out of his pocket to re-read the text again. The text that calls for the league. The league that Hawks technically isn’t a part of.

Which means that he probably isn't supposed to go, and he's up for nothing.

Hawks spins on his heel, throwing his hands into the air in exasperation, falls forwards onto his couch so he doesn’t wreck his wings, and he screams into a decorative pillow to vent his frustration. Why the fuck was he up before noon on one of his few days off. The pillow is suffocating him and it’s little beads are pressing into his skin, and Hawks doesn’t want to but he props himself up on his elbows and lets his head hang to avoid dying. Death is a tempting idea, honestly. He’s up early, he feels like shit, and there’s no way that he’s getting back to sleep now, after he’s chugged an energy drink and moved around. He stays there, a miserable and awake lump on couch, until his stomach growls like he’s never fed it before.

Fuck it. Hawks is up, he’s got nowhere to be, and he wants food.

He’s gonna make the only thing he can while by himself without burning something.

Eggs.

He’s digging through his fridge, pushing all of his energy and coffee drink aside in search of milk because he popped the yellow part and now he’s making scrambled eggs, when his door slams open. Hawks jerks up, slams his head into the top of his fridge, and spins around with the milk clutched to his chest. There’s a figure wearing a winter jacket that's buttoned all the way up over the mouth with its hood up, sunglasses over their eyes, and they’re just standing in front of his door radiating more anger than a pissy chihuahua. Hawks slowly closes the still open fridge with his foot.

“You fuck,” it snarls in greeting, and oh, it’s just Dabi.

“Oh, it’s just you.”

Hawks relaxes slightly and lets out a light sigh of relief before moving back to the bowl of broken yolks. The bowl was only used because it’s easier to dig out shell, and there’s always a million little pieces of shell when Hawks is cracking eggs because he, according to everyone else, uses too much force. He’s grateful for it now, so he can mix the milk in easier. Bowls are pretty useful.

“Yeah, it’s just me,” Dabi grits out, pulling off the jacket and sunglasses that he wears so he’s not arrested on sight. He stops short when he hears the sizzle the eggs make as Hawks pours them into the pan. Hawks turns the temperature from a seven to a four before hesitantly moving it back up to eight. He’s hungry , and the higher the temp the faster the cooking time, right? Dabi watches him in what looks like disbelief as Hawks grabs a plastic spatula and starts pealing his eggs off of the bottom of the pan before quickly giving up and walking back to the fridge. He pulls the fridge back open to find butter and he grabs it quickly before returning to his burning eggs. Dabi watches him break off a part of the stick with his hands, staring blankly as Hawks adds it into the pan, hoping that it stops his eggs from sticking. The rest of the disfigured stick of butter is chucked back into the fridge, the door slamming shut behind it. The villain finally seems to find his voice.

“You’re cooking breakfast? I told you that there was a mandatory meeting, and you’re making eggs.”

Hawks glances between Dabi and the stove.

“Yeah? The meeting called for members, which I am not,” he points his spatula at Dabi, “and it probably has nothing to do with me anyway. What are you guys gonna do now, go after the same set of kids a third time? Wow, great meeting,” Hawks rambles, stabbing at the bottom of the pan moodily. The butter isn’t doing its job, slowly melting on top of his eggs as they continue to stick to the pan. Silence stretches between them like an old rubber band that’s about to snap from too much strain.

“Whatever, Birdie.”

And Dabi leaves, just like that. Hawks is tempted to run after him, because it’s never been that easy to get the villain to go away and he’s a little worried about him, but then his plastic spatula starts melting into his eggs and he has other things to worry about.

Specifically burning his apartment down, and the meeting with his Handler in an hour.

His Handler looks pissed when he gets there, even though he’s early. When she calls him into her office, it smells like smoke in a pleasant, almost artificially scented candle kind of way. He’s led over to her desk and behind it, which isn't a good place to be, because it's usually the spot where she treats him like a kid and points out obvious things that are happening. She points down at her desk. “What do you see?” she demands, and Hawks is sure that there’s a right answer to this, but he doesn’t know what it is. “An open drawer?” he tries, and her face takes on a sickly sweet smile that tells him he answered wrong.

She taps the desk with her dark blue acrylic nails, “and you don’t notice anything amiss?” she asks, her voice high and sugary sweet. Hawks glances back down into her open desk drawer and, when he sees nothing wrong with it, he examines the entire desk. There are scorch marks on the dark wood, hard to see, but obvious when you notice them.

“Oh, yikes . Did you leave a candle burning for too long?” he asks, before screwing his face up exaggeratedly. He pauses for comedic effect before pointing to himself and raising his eyebrows, “Did I leave a candle burning for too long?”

She doesn’t laugh. Instead, she activates her quirk, and he knows without even trying to speak that his voice is gone.

Hawks has one of the most genuine ‘oh shit’ moments of his life, right up there with that time that he ignored Dabi to sleep in. “Hawks,” she says, the sweetness from before so thick that he feels like he’s choking on it. She points inside of the drawer, “see anything missing?”

Hawks almost chokes on air because, yeah, he does.

His file is gone.

The file filled with all of his weaknesses is gone, and his Handler is asking about it, which means that it’s gone gone. Like, outside of the Hero Public Safety Commission’s hands, kind of gone.

“Well ?” She taps her heeled foot impatiently, returning his voice to him. She wants him to say it. Hawks is nothing if not obedient.

“My file is gone,” he says.

“Your file?” she questions, raining an eyebrow. The tapping gets faster.

“The Hero Public Safety Commission’s file on Pro-Hero Hawks is gone,” he quickly corrects himself with a small wince. His Handler nods at him in approval.

“Let’s chat, Hawks,” she says, her heels clacking as she turns and walks away. Hawks hurries to tidy her desk before following her out of the room and down the hallway. It’s silent between them for a bit before she sighs happily. “Walking encourages a higher rate of thinking,” she informs, looking up at him for a response. He nods, which she frowns at, but she doesn’t reprimand him for it like she usually would. It leaves a bad taste in his mouth. “Your mission was deemed a failure, Hawks,” she tells him, sounding disappointed but also resigned, like she’d expected this outcome.

“The man was never brought into custody, and he hasn’t been seen in days, almost a week,” she side-eyes him before speaking again. “You don’t happen to remember the past week, do you, Hawks.” It’s not a question, and his voice is gone again so he can’t answer like it is one.

“Anyway, the man hasn’t caused any more fuss, and no children have been harmed, so you’ve been pardoned from it, but,” she pauses meaningfully, “don’t let it happen again.”

Children, no children were harmed. The man’s type was children, and something ugly curls up in his gut while his mind tries to connect the dots. Hawks is missing a week of time, the same week that nobody has seen the man for. And his Handler has drawn a connection between the two. He’s floundering for something to say when a memory hits him like an iron ball to the chest, knocking the breath out of him.

The briefing of the man’s file, of his quirk: De-ageing. It’s touch activated, and it lasts as long as he plans to let it, but never more than a week . He remembers the confusion of reading the file, the lack of crimes on it, before he read the part of the man being fired from the commission. They used him to determine which forms of training would be best, and if something didn’t work the child wouldn’t even remember it happening and it wouldn't clog up their memory with faulty information. As far as Hawks knew, the man had never been used for his own training, but he likely had. It would explain his clean record, but it also gave Hawks even less of a lead, which had been frustrating.

The quirk lasted for a week .

A week that he can’t remember, that his Handler knows he can’t remember.

Hawks stops walking, his mind stuttering to a halt before kicking back up again, and confusion washes through him. “You knew,” he states, looking at the back of his Handlers head. “About what, Hawks? The man’s quirk? His proclivities for… younger ages? You’ll have to be more specific.” She doesn’t even turn her head to look at him, and Hawks feels a little empty at the slight dismissal. He tries again, “You knew that his quirk was perfect for him because he was a pedophile.”

His Handler smiles at him like he’s a child who got a math problem right.

“Very good, Hawks-”

“And you knew that he was obsessed with heroes.” Hawks says, staring her right in the eye. ”With me,” he adds in a whisper, looking at the blank wall to his right. His Handler, to his left, sighs.

“That’s why you were perfect for the job, Hawks. I shouldn’t have to explain this to you,” she sounds impatient, and his blood is still rushing in his ears. His eyes dart over to her, flickering between her face and the wall behind her. “What if something had happened to me?” he asks quietly.

She looks at him blankly, before rolling her eyes.

“How selfish can you be? You would have been fine. The man’s quirk erases the memory of whoever is caught under it for the entire duration. You wouldn’t have remembered a thing. Now,” she says, uncaring for the way that she just dropped a bomb on Hawks, “enough pointless questions. You are dismissed.”

Hawks nods and goes back to his apartment.

He’s absentmindedly scrubbing burnt egg residue off of his pan with the only sponge he has and hand soap when his phone vibrates from his jacket’s inner pocket. His hands are covered in suds, he reasons. He can’t check it now , he’s busy. It’s only a text, and he’s doing something right now. The clean pan gleams at him from the sink, the water still spilling over it. If it was important, whoever wanted him would call. He soaps up his sponge again and scrubs at the pan.

His phone vibrates repeatedly.

He doesn’t pick it up.

Instead, he busies himself with cleaning the kitchen, giving himself something to do aside from think. He vacuums, he scrubs his counters with the same sponge from before. He wipes down the stove, the outside of the fridge. He organizes his energy and coffee drinks into their own sections in said fridge. He’s in the middle of trying to salvage his half-melted spatula by holding it over the hot stove to re-melt it and tilting it to shape it, when his phone vibrates again. And again. And again.

He finally pulls it from his pocket and puts it on silent before tossing it in the general direction of the couch. He hardly twitches when he hears it hit the floor instead, finding it hard to care.

He’s back to trying to salvage his spatula, which had melted all of the way, when Dabi comes back. The door slams behind him and, even though he’s wearing the jacket and sunglasses again, Hawks can tell that he’s livid. Hawks turns back to his project.

“Where the absolute fuck is your phone, Hawks?” Dabi demands, pointing an accusing finger at him. The spatula is almost repaired. Hawks looks up from where he’s been trying to reform it, with limited success, it looks more like a ladle now, and blinks at the villain before shrugging like he has no idea what the other is talking about. Nothing feels important right now, not even Dabi showing up to his apartment twice in one day.

Dabi, deeming Hawks useless, disappears into the living room, seemingly to hunt down Hawks’ phone. When he comes back, he marches up to Hawks and shoves it under his nose, turning it on. The screen is shattered, and the screen itself flickers with bars of bright color, but in between the flickers Hawks can see the messages that he hadn’t answered. There’s over twenty, and only one is from his Handler. Some are from Dabi, others from Rumi about some new girl she likes. It's a really cute relationship, honestly. They get boba a lot together, and she makes his friend smile, so he approves.

“Stop playing with melted plastic and read your fucking messages.”

Hawks obediently takes the phone and swipes up. The shattered screen leaves a shallow cut across his finger, but he doesn’t even really notice. With Dabi watching from over his shoulder, he taps on the villain's contact.

Hottie with a fire body: another meeting (Today 5:42)

mandatory (Today 5:42)

Hottie with a fire body: league and you, you feather brained fuck (Today 5:43)

Hottie with a fire body: hawks (Today 5:57)

Hottie with a fire body: ill come over just to kick your ass (Today 6:01)

Hottie with a fire body: omw to kill you now (Today 6:14)

Hawks types out a quick response because Dabi seemed nervous, and it's almost six thirty now.

Me: okay (Today 6:27)

He's reminded that Dabi is behind him when he hears a chime from behind him. Without a word, he closes the conversation and clicks on the one from his Handler. Dabi is still reading over his shoulder.

Hawks, I hope you know that everything that happened was necessary, and that a good hero wouldn’t be hung up on it like this. Respond when you accept that I always have your best interest in mind. (Today 4:15)

Dabi grabs the phone back from his loose fingers, bringing it up to his face like he can’t believe what he’s reading. Hawks stares at where his spatula has melted into an unsalvageable puddle on the stove.

“What happened? You were happily burning eggs this morning, you were fine . What is she talking about?” Dabi demands, sounding confused and agitated and underwater to Hawks ears.

He watches the plastic bubble slowly, like it’s tar, and almost reaches out to touch it out of curiosity.

“Hawks?”

Thin fingers reach past him and turn the stove off before grabbing his shoulder and turning him around. The hand, freezing even through his jacket, grips his shoulder firmly, like it’s trying to ground him. Hawks didn’t realize that he’d been floating.

“Birdie?”

Slowly, Dabi leans down to catch his gaze, and Hawks avoids his eyes, choosing to stare at the phone instead. The blue in the others eyes hurts to look at right now, but Hawks isn’t sure why.

Dabi’s hand grabs his wrist, and something about that snaps him out of wherever he’d gone with a panic so sharp that it cuts him to the core. He has to be able to move, how else is he going to be safe? Hands that don’t exist brush against him, and he almost squirms away from them, despite knowing that there’s nothing to get away from. He can’t remember any reason why he would feel hands, but he can’t remember any part of this week, anything could have happened-

Dabi’s hand falls from his wrist and he tries not to be obvious about his relief. Hawks smiles shakily at Dabi and steps back to create distance. Still, he’s back, he’s not floating anymore, and Dabi is staring at him with something resembling angry concern, like he doesn’t know what to feel. Hawks brightens his smile to reassure him.

“Sorry, blonde moment,” he jokes, turning away, which leaves him looking at the stove. He almost, almost, recoils because what the ever loving fuck is stuck to his stove? It looks like plastic, and the air smells like burnt plastic, but what-

He peers down at it, and recognizes it as the spatula from this morning, when it was a lot less melted.

“Hawks.”

“Hey, do you think I can save this spatula? I melted it this morning ‘cause I can’t cook for shit, and I was trying to re-melt it like they did in a Five Minute Crafts video, but I guess I zoned out,” Hawks pokes at the semi-cooled plastic stuck to his stove, resolutely ignoring everything else.

Dabi looks at him like he’s an idiot, and Hawks shrugs at him. The villain takes one look at the mess on the stove and says, “no, but Hawks -”

Hawks laughs too hard at that little deadpan ‘no’, ignoring the rest of it, and smiles brightly.

“ Welp, it’s getting late-”

“It’s seven twenty .” Hawks tries not to whirl around in shock. He doesn't remember the time flying by. If he's being honest, he doesn't know when Dabi got here either.

Dabi sees right through him.

“I’m calling the league,” he mutters, pulling out his phone. Hawks reaches for it in panicky protest because no, Dabi is not calling the league, they wouldn't care anyway.

“Just- give me five minutes!”

“They deserve to know.”

“To know what? That I can’t handle what it takes to be a hero? That I space out sometimes?” He adds air quotes around the words.

“No-”

“Oh, yeah, poor me! Sleeping in a bed every night and- and getting fed every day! What is that supposed to sound like to them?”

“Like conditioning,” Dabi snaps at him, not stopping despite the way that Hawks is almost begging him to. “It sounds like you were told that you couldn’t complain because they gave you the bare minimum!”

“The bare minimum is all I’ve ever had and it's fine!”

Dabi stops short, looking lost, looking panicked even, as Hawks gasps for air that he didn’t know that he was missing. Everything is too much, it's too fast, and there isn’t enough air for him to breathe, he's going to die here, and nobody will care. He doesn’t have any family, not one that would care enough to go to his funeral. Cold fingers land on his shoulder, and he focuses on them as the chill seeps through his shirt. They almost help, almost make him more aware, he's calming down and it's going to be fine. And then everything gets worse. The second that they shift to move, they lose all comfort, and Hawks flinches away, hating something about the way that the touch made him feel trapped. The fingers try to grab his shoulder again and he flattens himself against the thing at his back and wraps his wings around himself. His sharpened feathers briefly catch on something, something that had been trying to reach through to him, and he hears a startled hiss of pain. Something knocks gently on his wings, like it's requesting entrance. He shakes his head and curls up tighter. Time feels fake, suddenly, like it's too fast and too slow and non-existent all at the same time and Hawks is expected to just breathe through it.

When he’s more aware, he realizes that he’s on the floor, and that Dabi is sitting across from him with his back against the fridge. Hawks distantly notes that his hand is bleeding.

He stutters through an attempt to breathe and he pulls himself up, steadfastly ignoring the fact that he just had a breakdown on his floor.

“You've probably got better places to be, people to see, things to do,” Hawks says quietly, walking around Dabi, still sitting on the floor, to grab paper towels. He drops them on the plastic goo and starts trying to pat it off of his stove as Dabi stares at him and seems to come to a decision. The heat seeps through the thin paper and stings his hands, and the blood from the cut on his finger smears across it. Something about the blood freaks him out, but he doesn’t look away.

He hears the door open and close as Dabi leaves.

His hands pull at the paper towel in the plastic, and the part that he’s holding rips off into his hand, the rest of it seemingly absorbed into the plastic. Hawks tries not to cry.

He leaves the mess on the stove for another day.

The next time he goes to see the league for team bonding (which has a lot more yelling that one would think for a bonding thing, but whatever) he swoops in with the food Toga demanded as they’re picking out a movie. The second that he shows up, movie choices are, for the first time ever, thrust under his nose as Toga and Twice chant that he should pick what they’re watching tonight. Nobody protests it, which is weird, because usually nobody can agree on anything. He selects one at random, some american Disney movie based in China, and nobody complains about his choice. Not even Shigaraki, even though he stares at the choice in disgust as the loading screen pops up on the TV. When Dabi walks in he raises an eyebrow at the choice, looking between the loading screen of Mulan and Hawks, who shrugs at him. They haven't talked since the kitchen incident.

“I panicked.”

Instead of being annoyed, Dabi looks faintly amused by his choice, which never happens. “I figured.”

Later, while they’re watching the movie, Dabi’s icy fingers start to pet his wings slowly, gaining confidence when Hawks doesn’t move away. Hawks desperately tries not to move at all, in case Dabi stops, but eventually Dabi just sighs at his stiffness and pulls him down so that he’s laying across Dabi’s lap and his wings are easier to get at. Shigaraki makes a face at them, but still keeps quiet. Toga, when she sees them, squeals loudly before being shushed by Twice, and Mulan dresses in drag to save China.

The league is suddenly just really nice to him, for no reason. With the movie, Hawks had just assumed that they’d seen him get his ass handed to him in the fight that had happened downtown earlier that day, but it just kept happening. For example:

Hawks walks into the bar and Mr. Compress is idly doing pretty impressive card tricks while he talks to Kurogiri (something has to be going on between those two, the mom and dad friend). Hawks watches for a while, but doesn’t want to intrude and just tosses a quick compliment at the magician, who then insists that his feathers would be perfect to do the trick with. Hawks laughs and says that, because Mr. Compress can’t control his feathers, it wouldn’t work, but the other just insists that Hawks do it himself. The cards spin out into another trick, and Hawks watches them fall from hand to hand before finally agreeing to try. His feathers fly in a similar way, falling through the air with just enough control to seem like they’re doing it by themselves. Mr. Compress asks for him to do another one and he looks like he might burst into tears when Hawks obliges. It's weird, having encouragement for something so small and easy to do, but Hawks appreciates it.

Kurogiri just keeps handing him banana juice boxes. At this point, Hawks isn’t even sure where the man is getting them, because it’s a lot, and he always seems to have one on hand on the off chance that they cross paths. Before now, Hawks can't remember ever having one before, but ever since Kurogiri offered him that first one and told him that he'd like it, he's been hooked. Hawks knows that he perks up like a dog whenever he sees the man now, and it’s embarrassing, but he always gets a juice box. Always. One time, He goes to the bar and asks for a drink, and a juice box is slid down the bar to him. He stares down at it, then up at Kurogiri, and asks specifically for an alcoholic drink. The juice box is taken back, and Hawks watches in mild disbelief as Kurogiri sugars the rim of a cocktail glass, pours the juice in, and adds vodka.

When he walks into a room and sees Toga holding a bird, and she sees him, he tries to backpedal immediately. It’s a little weird to watch her bite into something with wings, honestly, because he was wings, and he chirps sometimes. But she just holds it out to him, a live bird. He quickly reminds her that he doesn’t eat live birds, he likes fried chicken, but she just smiles and tells him it’s not for him to eat. Apparently, it’s for him to hold. It’s a weird experience, taking a live bird from someone who eats them, but the bird calms down as soon as it’s in his hands. It's like a very mild petting zoo. He glances at Toga, who’s not looking, and he lowly coos at it. He gets a small chirp back. Later, when he tries to let it go it just flies up to nest in his hair. Toga laughs, and it sounds a lot less crazed and a lot more genuine.

Twice is one of his favorite people to be around anyway, and that’s cemented when the man doesn’t pull a one-eighty in his personality or go out of his way to be nice. Though, to be fair, Twice is just nice in general.

Spinner starts trying, very awkwardly and with limited success, to ask about how he’s feeling. And Hawks is surprised every single time. Not because he thinks Spinner is a bad guy, they just don’t really talk. So it’s a little weird to be sought after by him, but it’s nice in a really awkward way because every conversation is pretty much the same. Hawks would be lying if he said he didn’t like it.

Shigaraki doesn’t look like he wants to kill him on sight, which is nice. He can walk into a room and not have to be quiet, and it was really weird when he found out that that had changed. He’d been laughing at something that Twice had said before he cut himself off and turned to look at Shigaraki, who was on the couch with a game held in front of his nose. The man had looked at him and told him that he 'didn’t care about Hawks and his stupid laugh' before turning his attention back to his game. They’re not best buddies, they don’t play games and talk about girls, but Hawks loves it.

Dabi becomes… softer. Where he used to grunt in mild annoyance, now he just huffs like a tired babysitter. The change is slight, but he almost seems more aware that Hawks is a person and not a verbal punching bag. Honestly, Hawks had expected to be made fun of endlessly for melting a spatula to his stove, or to at least have his kitchen-floor breakdown thrown back in his face, but Dabi doesn’t even bring it up. They don’t talk about that night, but they still talk. He calls Dabi ‘Hotstuff’ and ‘Fire Daddy’ (the last one was said once, just to get on his nerves, but Dabi had just said ‘whatever, Bottom’ and Hawks hasn’t done it since). Dabi calls him ‘Birdie’ and ‘Pretty Bird’, which makes some base instinct in Hawks puff up in pride. Dabi preens his wings, and doesn’t make fun of him when he accidentally chirps because those fingers are magic, he swears.

Despite all of the positivity, Hawks still has the shadow of his missing time haunting him, and he knows that everyone can tell.

Dabi breaks into his house again, even though he has a key.

“Tomorrow, we’re having a meeting. Early ,” Dabi says, like his idea of early isn't usually after three in the afternoon.

“Are you gonna go after those kids again -”

“Be there or we’ll be here,” he interrupts, pulling on his disguise and heading for the door. Hawks watches him go, feeling more than a little lost as the door starts to shut behind Dabi.

The thing is, Hawks had thought that Dabi was kidding about coming to him.

Which means that he’s in a halter top, not wearing any pants, shoveling cereal into his mouth, and woefully unprepared for Kurogiri’s portal to spring up in his living room. Dabi walks out, sees him, and looks like he wants to scream in frustration. “Why,” he grits out, staring up at the ceiling, “are you not ready for the meeting that I personally told you was happening?” Hawks looks down at himself. It’s not his hero outfit, yeah, but it’s not like he’s naked. “You said early. Your version of early is three in the afternoon at the earliest,” Hawks defends, sticking another spoonful of soggy cereal back into his mouth. Dabi sighs before sticking his arm back through the portal and waving it as some sort of signal. Hawks raises his eyebrows at the display.

“What’s that about?”

“Had to make sure they didn’t see you like I did the other day.”

“What, melting a spatula?”

Dabi is about to answer him when the rest of the league walks out, and he snaps his mouth shut but stares at Hawks like he should know what he’s talking about. Hawks ignores him to take in the others and their surprise at his living conditions. It’s not pleasant surprise, which is weird, but whatever.

“Do you like, really live here?” Toga asks, looking around with a frown.

Hawks furrows his eyebrows, feeling really confused by the question, “why wouldn’t I?”

Toga frowns harder, looking at the room, “it’s so not you! It’s cream,” she says, like it's the worst thing in the world.

“I expected a little flare as well,” Mr. Compress chimes in, staring at the decorative pillow and its white beading.

Twice chimes in with his own two-toned comment, “It’s not too bad. It’s shit!”

“I find the coloring soothing; however, the lack of personal touch is… concerning,” Kurogiri admits gently, holding hands behind his back respectfully as he looks around.

Shigaraki doesn’t offer anything other than a grunt, which Hawks is going to take as a positive thing because it’s not a complaint. It’s a low bar.

“You don’t have any games,” Spinner notes, and Hawks almost tells him it’s because he doesn’t have any downtime, that he opened this cereal this morning and it had been in his cabinet so long that it’s already stale, but he doesn’t.

“I think Rumi bought Disney Plus the last time she was here?” Hawks half-defends, not even really knowing if that’s true; she’d certainly bought something, but it could have been Hulu for all he knows. Toga and Twice are the only ones who look at least a little excited about Disney Plus, everyone else just looking at him in confusion (Kurogiri, Mr. Compress) or absolute disgust (Shigaraki, Spinner, Dabi).

“Okay, stop judging my stuff, it’s meeting time,” Hawks says with a bright grin. The room’s atmosphere plummets like he just suggested going to Tartarus as a field trip. Hawks looks around, taking in the suddenly serious expressions on everyone's faces.

“What?”

Nobody answers him, looking like they don’t know what to say. It feels more like an intervention than it does a meeting.

“This is a pants conversation, find some,” Shigaraki bitches loudly, staring him down like he doesn’t wear the same thing every day. Somehow, even his bitchiness doesn’t cut through the mounting tension in the room. Hawks looks at everyone in turn before clearing his throat.

“Right.”

He leaves, pulls on the first pair of pants he finds, shorts that he thinks Rumi left the last time she was here, and returns as fast as possible.

“Why?” Dabi asks no one, holding his head in his hands. Hawks ignores him and returns to his chair. Everyone else sits on the couch.

Hawks throws his hands up, “so? What’s up?”

His joking tone falls flat when nobody responds. Instead, Mr. Compress pulls out a marble and releases whatever was inside of it, his usual fanfare absent as something smacks down onto the coffee table.

A file.

Hawks’ file.

His blood runs cold, and the easygoing smile on his face falters.

“So, Keigo,” Shigaraki starts, sounding bored but looking tense. “Want to tell us what this is?”

Hawks laughs awkwardly, feeling confused and anxious with everyone’s eyes on him and the missing file in their hands.

“Who’re you calling ‘Keigo’?” he asks, his tongue trying to stutter around the name like he knows it.

Nobody else laughs with him, and he thinks that Dabi might start smoking out of rage that Hawks is sure he deserves, but can’t figure out why he would. Hawks isn’t the one who stole a personal file and (probably) read it. Kurogiri considers him for a moment before saying tonelessly, “it is your birth name.” And Hawks has to pretend that his entire world didn’t just crack down the middle because what-

“You’re not kidding,” he breathes, and everyone else looks confused when he leans forwards and snatches the file up. He stares down at it and there it is, his actual name. It’s almost like he’d never forgotten it. But he had; he hasn’t been Takami Keigo since his parents sold him. His fingers clench, creasing the file, and he carefully puts back what could have been.

“I, uh, I go by Hawks now.”

“By choice?” Shigaraki asks, looking skeptical and judgmental at the same time.

Hawks dodges the question, “it’s on my legal papers,” he beams. Nobody responds to him, instead, Twice says, “The commission sucks! They’re a pillar in an unjust society!”

The rest of them nod, like that’s not something that they already thought and formed a murderous resistance group for. Hawks takes the change in topic and runs with it, “they’re not great, yeah.”

Dabi stares at him incredulously.

“Not great- they threatened to sell you.”

He sounds like he’s trying not to burst into flames, and Hawks doesn’t know what to say, so he tries to laugh it off. “Doesn’t every organization threaten to sell someone?” He looks around imploringly, but nobody agrees with him. His wings twitch as Toga sinks her fingers into the one she’s been petting and mutters, “not good ones.” Hawks is fine with commission bashing for the sake of building trust, but this seems kind of excessive.

“How do you know this anyway,” Hawks protests, feeling lost and angry and scared, because everyone is so serious right now and this shit was supposed to be buried a long time ago. He’s expecting the answer to be something along the lines of ’the file, dumbass’, but nobody says it.

“You were a kid for a while,” Spinner says instead, and oh no, oh shit-

“We took care of you.”

No. No no no.

Toga tries to soothe him, running a small hand over the wing closest to her, “You were so cute, Keigo-”

“I’m not Keigo!” Hawks yells at her, shutting his eyes tightly like he can hide from it, “not anymore. You don't need to take care of me.” He snaps his wings around him and hides away for a bit, trying to block out the others. He’s not Keigo, they can’t call him that; Keigo is a scared little boy who died in the clinically white hallways of the Hero Public Safety Commission building. He’s gone, and Hawks refuses to be a ghost. He ignores the part of him that screams that Hawks is a ghost. He’s shaking, perched in a chair with his wings wrapped around him like a child, which he apparently was, so he guesses that it’s fitting. Oh, gods, he was a kid, he was right-

“Okay, enough of this shit.” Dabi stands up and marches over, snagging the file on his way. “Read this shit, and we’ll explain after why the commission. Is. Bad,” he snaps. Hawks dumbly takes the file. It’s hot where Dabi’s hands had been, like it just came out of the printer. He flips it open, and he reads.

The thing is, this kind of stuff, his own file, was never given to him for him to see before. It’s a special kind of tragedy to read about his life in such clinical terms, the fudged numbers that say he only trained twice a week, the lack of documentation for every pulled feather, every harsh punishment. It all stares up at him from the papers in his hands, and it hurts his eyes. He learns a lot about himself, but more about the commission. Like that the guy with the de-aging quirk had worked with him when he was younger, turning his age back by short hours to test the new training. One training method is so blacked out that he has to wonder what it was. Hawks reads about things that he remembers, and things that he doesn’t remember at all. For example, there are thirteen recorded incidents that are labeled as suicide attempts that are linked to the times that they were testing training methods, which almost make him drop the file. He wonders what the training had been like, how bad it had been to make a child try to kill themselves. His eyes flick back up to the blacked out training summary. Feeling empty, he pushes the file back into Dabi’s hands.

“I’ll just answer questions,” Hawks hears himself say, and he wants to scream that no, that’s a horrible idea, because they have the file, and he’s not even sure what else is in it-

But he can’t keep reading that. They have, he’s pretty sure, so they can ask and he can answer and Hawks doesn’t have to read anything else.

It’s a win-win situation.

Kurogiri asks the first question.

“What age were you at the time that this began?”

There’s no documentation of when he was sold in the file, just his birth-date. It’s an attempt to make it seem more legal, probably, because it can’t be proven that he was bought if there’s no record of a transaction.

“When I was seven, I was sold to the Hero Public Safety Commission by my parents for less than what the newest iPhone is worth,” Hawks says quietly, not looking up at anyone. “And I was trained to be a hero, a great one. All I had to do was listen and follow, and I would be able to save people like I’d always wanted to.”

Mr. Compress hums softly, “a truly noble wish.”

“What was the training? Probably easy!”

Hawks hesitates before answering, “nothing too bad.” Nobody believes him, it’s obvious, and Hawks doesn’t know why until Dabi taps the file loudly. They’ve all read it, just like he’d guessed. He takes a deep breath.

“The training was rough,” he admits, looking down at his hands. “Some didn’t make it through, they weren’t strong enough. I was the one who found the bodies,” he ends in a whisper. Toga and Spinner gasp, and everyone else seems mildly shocked. Hawks wonders if he was almost one of those bodies, how close he came, why he would even try. Shigaraki gestures for him to continue, only looking mildly disturbed.

“They blindfolded me so I’d have to use my feathers to see, and they’d leave it on for days sometimes. One time I, ah, I thought that they just forgot about it,” he chuckles humorlessly. “When I tried to take it off, they caught me, and I had to keep it on for a week as punishment.” It had been a hard week, but not one that he remembers well; there was nothing to mark the time, nothing to see to tell him anything significant. Just darkness and going about his day as best he could while blind to the world around him.

“They blinded a child for a week?” Shigaraki seethes, actually showing emotion and seeming genuinely angry for Hawks. “It was fine, really, I could still technically see-” Dabi scoffs at him, and Hawks stops trying to defend it.

“There’s no way that they only trained you twice a week, is there,” Spinner mutters sadly. He doesn’t seem to be asking for an answer, and Hawks doesn’t give him one.

Instead, Toga responds to that, “Isn’t that illegal? Lying on an official paper?” She frowns, looking around. Shigaraki leans forward to stare at her.

“What part of this character’s backstory seems even a little bit legal to you?” he hisses. Toga frowns harder.

“So, against your will-”

Hawks is quick to interject before Mr. Compress really starts talking.

“Oh, no, I agreed to it.”

The pause that he gets from the other man feels sympathetic, and it makes him squirm a little bit in his seat. “And that makes it acceptable?” Kurogiri asks, gently, like he’s trying to point something out that Hawks isn’t seeing.

“Legally? Yeah,” Hawks replies, rubbing the back of his neck.

“Nope, consent of a minor isn’t consent!” Mr. Compress chimes in, grabbing Hawks’ attention. He pauses before responding, “Well, my parents consented-”

“Trash can’t give consent! That still isn’t legal.”

“Nothing about this is following the rules,” Shigaraki mutters, scratching at his neck irritably.

Dabi had been oddly quiet, but he chooses that moment to speak up, “Who’s Touya?” he demands, and Hawks’ head spins at the sheer randomness of the question. He frowns, trying to remember if he’s even known a ‘Touya’ at any point in his life.

“Well?” Dabi pressures, his temper shorter than usual.

“I don’t think I know-”

“You do-”

“I don’t!” he yells, feeling his wings puff up in agitation and dislodging Toga’s hand. It comes back, just as gentle as before, but it feels like sandpaper against his feathers. He pulls it away from her to wrap around him more.

“Why is this so important to you? Why does it matter if I don’t know who Touya is?” Hawks snaps. Dabi is quiet, but his eyes burn holes into Hawks.

“Because you used to,” Spinner says. Hawks turns his head and stares at him in confusion, and is almost hit in the head by the file that Dabi when tosses it back to him. He barely manages to catch it, sending a few small feathers to grab the loose papers that had fallen out during the rough treatment, but it’s back in his hands again. A sense of dread fills him as he stares down at it. Still he opens it and scans through it for any mention of a ‘Touya’. He skims through the training reports, and he’s flipping through the daily schedule when he finds something highlighted in blue. It’s different from the ones before it, and it’s just labeled as ‘therapy’. He almost bypasses it, but Dabi stops him, his scarred hand reaching out a finger to tap at the blue.

“Read it."

Everyone else is either looking at him or looking like it would hurt them to see him right now. When he obediently flips to the results of ‘therapy’ his fingers clench into a stress grip when his eyes hit the bold worlds that sit at the top of the page.

‘SHOCK THERAPY’

His eyes flick down to the conclusion.

Result: Effective enough to induce amnesia, seemingly permanent.

Hawks feels his thoughts stutter to a halt, his grip on the thin papers threatening to tear them apart. Shock therapy. The commission had given a child shock therapy. His eyes keep reading, going back to the listed reasons for the therapy.

Hawks has been mourning the death of a ‘Touya’ and it has prevented his training from improving at the desired pace.

They used shock therapy on a grieving child.

And suddenly Hawks can remember being that grieving child, just a little bit. The initial ache in his chest when Touya didn’t show up to their meeting spot, like something was horribly wrong. The fear when he wasn’t there the day after that either. The way that his mind raced, the way that his Handler frowned, the way that his trainers grew more and more frustrated with his lack of improvement. Hawks hadn’t cared, he missed banana laffy taffy and Touya and the yellow flowers in the field that Touya would make fun of him for liking but would help him pick anyway because it made him happy-

He remembers, and when he looks into Dabi’s eyes he knows why it hurts.

They’re the same shade of blue.

“Oh,” he says softly, looking back down to stare at the page without really seeing it.

“You had a meeting with your Handler after I left you alone yesterday,” Dabi says, quickly changing the subject. “You were fucked up when I came back.”

The 'why?' is unsaid, but Hawks tells him anyway.

“I was called in because this,” he lifts the file, still clenched in his stress grip and blinks in surprise when a few papers fall out, “was missing.”

He eyes Dabi.

“There were scorch marks on her desk, not that you’d know anything about that,” he accuses under his breath. Dabi doesn’t even look remotely sorry.

“That’s not all,” the villain guesses, crossing his arms.

“No, it’s not,” Hawks sighs, trying to work out the best way to say it without sounding like a whiny child.

“I was told that the file was gone, and that I had failed my mission, which was to bring a former commission employee in. His file was squeaky clean, not even a recent parking ticket, but's how the commission works,” Hawks huffs, before quietly adding on, “and I wasn’t as careful as I was supposed to be.”

“Apparently, the man was a pedophile, living the dream with his de-aging quirk that has a side of amnesia for whoever is under it. His job had been to use it to test new types of training so they could see what training was the most effective without having it get all mixed up in someone’s head,” he taps his head for emphasis.

“He’d been fired, and I was supposed to go find him. Apparently, I didn’t bring him back.”

“Oh, you found him,” Dabi mutters. Hawks ignores the way that it makes his skin crawl, but he can’t stop his racing thoughts. He’d been deaged with a pedophile, he didn’t remember it, and everyone else had been really nice recently, like he would shatter if they weren't careful.

“My handler knew. She knew everything, and she knew that he was obsessed with heroes. With me,” he says, trying to breeze past the information like it’s no big deal even as he tries not to shake. Twice gapes at him before whipping his head around to stare at everyone else.

“What? That sick bitch!”

Hawks huffs in empty amusement.

“Yeah, she just said that his attraction to specifically me made me better for the job, and-” he has to look away from them, afraid to see their reactions to his teary eyes.

“She said, that if something had happened, that it didn’t matter because I wouldn’t remember it anyway. That it was fine,” his voice trails off. He needs to say it, to admit it to them, even if they think he’s weak because of it.

“And I don’t remember.”

Spinner jerks up from in between Mr. Compress and Shigaraki, waving his hands frantically.

“Oh, Gods no, nothing happened to you- you were fine-”

“Actually,” Dabi interjects quietly, cutting Spinner off, “I found you with him.”

Going off of the way that everybody turns to stare at him, this is also new information to them. Dabi smiles darkly, “you’d stabbed him, but you looked fine. Bloody and scared and way too small, but pretty good considering the circumstances.”

“I killed someone,” Hawks realizes, and he almost asks what dealing with that was like. Hawks has killed people now, yeah, but as a kid-

Yikes.

“This is why you’ve all been so nice, gotta butter me up somehow,” Hawks mutters, covering his face tiredly. Toga starts up a soft murder chant of 'one of us' before Twice slaps a hand over her mouth.

“While it is true that we have put forth an effort recently, we did not have the information that we do now,” Kurogiri defends, crossing his legs.

“I’m not the same kid that you took care of,” Hawks says, eyeing them. None of them look disappointed, some even look relieved at the reminder.

“I hate kids,” Shigaraki comments petulantly.

“You want attention, kids take it. It’s called jealousy, get over it,” Dabi shoots back, before turning back to Hawks and softening his expression.

“Look, Birdie, your life sucks-”

“Gee, thanks-”

“But if you let us stick around, it could get better.” Dabi shrugs, spreading his hands in a way that screams 'you might as well try, you feathered idiot'.

“And if I don’t want you around?” Hawks mutters testily, batting Toga's hand away from his wing again.

“Good luck getting rid of us! Fuck you too!”

Kurogiri hands him a juice box, Mr. Compress smiling at him from over the man's shoulder. Spinner sends him an awkward smile of his won as Twice and Toga fight over the remote and try to navigate Disney Plus.

Shigaraki sneakily dissolves the decorative pillow.

Hawks smiles at them, feeling emotionally drained but pretty happy. Dabi watches him hesitantly, like he’s not sure what he should be doing, but he eventually eases himself down next to Hawks and sighs gruffly, like he can’t believe this is happening.

“Pass me a wing,” he mutters. Hawks stretches one over his lap and watches Dabi pet it and relax, bit by bit.

“Aw, how cute. Get a fucking room!”

The league, minus Dabi, eventually leaves, and Hawks is so tired that he just curls up tighter in the spots of warmth that they had left on the couch. “Birdie,” Dabi calls, his tone just serious enough that Hawks pulls his eyes open to look at him.

“What do you want?”

Dabi doesn’t reply, just letting go of his wing and getting up. Hawks whines but brings it back to him, letting it drape on the floor. A hand settles in his hair, ruffling it, and Hawks forces himself up to a sitting position again.The hand slides from the top of his head to the back of it, and then Dabi gently slots their mouths together and Hawks is left staring at his very blue eyes in shock that this is even happening. When Dabi pulls away, Hawks feels his face go up in flames as the villain laughs at him like the ass that he is before smirking.

“We don’t have a no-dating policy in the league.”

Chapter End Notes

> Please please PLEASE leave a comment? I love hearing from you guys, you're all great, and your comments are always so nice! I respond to all of them (I try to anyway) and I just love them okay??? Please tell me about any mistakes, or anything that's too ooc because I want it to be sad but also accurate! <3

> Update: WoahNelly has made a wonderful tiktok for this story, and I absolutely adore it! Her account name is @W0ahNelly, so please go shower her with love!!!! <3

## Afterword

End Notes

> Okay, please head the tags!!! Nothing really happens, but the sexual assault is heavily implied!!!!!!!! I don't want to trigger anyone. Please leave a comment! I absolutely love getting feedback on what I can do better, and you guys are always so nice!!! If you want to give me prompts I'll definitely look at them and try to write something, but I can't make any promises! <3

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