Chapter Text
Dabi doesn’t wake for a long time. Long enough for Keigo to consider calling in a doctor from the HPSC to come look him over. It’s just after seven in the morning, and Keigo hasn’t showered, hasn’t eaten, and hasn’t taken his eyes off Dabi’s still form, passed out on his couch.
With a proper first aid kit in his house, Keigo had swapped feathers for bandages, sleeves for an actual brace, and had checked the villain over for other injuries without finding any.
That’d been a weird experience - cutting the villain out of his clothes. Even if it’d been necessary. No point in worrying about a head wound if Dabi was bleeding out from a stab wound elsewhere, after all.
Still, the exercise revealed a lot about the villain without Keigo really wanting it to.
Like the fact that Dabi’s scars didn’t end at his forearms and face, for instance. Of course, Keigo knew they extended down the villain’s chest thanks to his overly loose shirt, but he’d never seen Dabi’s back. His legs. Hell, even the soles of Dabi’s feet bore burn marks and staples, making the hero wonder just how the fuck Dabi could walk.
Somewhere in the back of his mind, Keigo decides to be a little more forgiving of the villain’s constant grouchiness. He’d be grouchy too if he walked around with staples in his feet all day.
He’s grouchy anyway, really, with how little sleep he’s gotten. Perturbed too, because the scars and staples weren’t the only discoveries he’d made.
Keigo had watched Dabi closely. He’d studied the villain, both in person and through surveillance videos. If there’s an expert on the island in “Dabi”, it’s Keigo. So he’s not sure how he missed the fact that Dabi dyed his hair.
There’s a sparse trail of white low on Dabi’s abdomen, below the line of his belt but above his boxers. There are also smatterings of white along the villain’s thighs and a tiny patch of white on both of the villain’s big toes.
Which means Dabi dyes his hair, including his eyebrows and eyelashes. It’s time consuming to maintain for a villain on the run. Keigo has to wonder why the villain cares.
It also calls to mind a boy with white hair and a flame quirk that Keigo has tried very hard to forget. And it bothers him to compare the two. To even have the passing thought that ‘ if Touya had survived, he’d be about Dabi’s age now.’
Keigo shakes his head vigorously, banishing the memories, dismissing the comparisons as his overstressed mind looking for something that just isn’t there. Touya is dead, buried, gone. End of story.
“All you do is cause me trouble,” he mutters at the still form on his couch, rubbing his eyes wearily. Over his head, his clock chimes the half-hour, and he sighs when his stomach grumbles.
“You’re also in serious danger at this point,” Keigo continues. “Most people are only unconscious from a blow to the head for a few seconds. Ten minutes tops. If you were anyone else, I would have flown you to the hospital immediately. And I’m thinking if you don’t wake up in the next few minutes, I’m gonna have to do it anyway. Four hours is just… excessive.”
He snorts to himself, running an anxious hand through his hair, his head dropping between his knees. “Not that you ever do anything by halves.”
“...eh-go?”
Keigo’s head shoots up, his eyes darting to Dabi’s face, where the villain’s face is scrunching with discomfort, eyes squeezed shut.
Right. Light is a thing for concussed people.
A feather slips from his back to dim the lights, and Keigo pitches his voice low when he says, “Dabi? You with me, man?”
The villain blinks, though his eyes are still squinted into slits.
“Wher’m I?” he mumbles, pressing a hand to his forehead. Gently, Hawks catches the hand with his feather, trying to prevent Dabi from poking his head wound.
“You’re in my apartment,” the hero answers. “Do you remember what happened?”
This, at least, he remembers from first aid training. Ask basic questions that the patient should remember the answer to. Easy enough way to determine how bad the damage is.
Dabi doesn’t answer though. He’s too busy staring at the feather wrapped around his wrist.
Then he shifts his eyes slowly, ever so slowly, toward Keigo. Both pupils are far too wide, and even without a penlight, Keigo can see that the left is larger than the right. Concussion, for sure.
A chance to get information that Dabi wouldn’t normally give, his militant training points out. Keigo straightens slightly, his wings flaring out at his back, trying not to feel guilty when Dabi’s eyes widen and his lips part in evident surprise.
This might be the only chance he has to get information from his recalcitrant partner.
“Do you remember what happened?” Keigo repeats slowly, pointing a finger at the bandages wrapped around Dabi’s head. “You got hit. Can you tell me how?”
Dabi’s eyes are flicking back and forth between Keigo’s own, almost like he’s searching for something. Slowly, he gives the barest shake of his head.
“Don’ remember,” he whispers hoarsely.
Keigo purses his lips. “That’s okay, it’s pretty common to lose a few minutes. Can you tell me how old you are? What year it is?”
“I -” Dabi starts, blinking a couple of times. “‘M twenty.”
Keigo is careful to hide his surprise. Twenty? Their reports hadn’t indicated that Dabi was so young, and he certainly didn’t act twenty. More like a crotchety asshole trapped in a mid-twenty body.
Still, that’s not really something to get hung up on. Not when Dabi might just be disoriented enough to let slip some juicier intel.
“What’s your name?” he asks as casually as he can. If Dabi gives his alias, that’s fine, but if he’s addled enough to reveal his true identity?
C’mon, c’mon, he thinks as Dabi stares at him somewhat forlornly.
“D’you not rec’gnize me?” he asks, blue eyes wide and sad before they fall to his scarred wrist that’s still wrapped up in a red feather. “Guess I did look a lil diff’rent last time you saw me…”
Keigo smiles as kindly as he’s able, not sure what Dabi’s talking about.
“Just going through standard procedure here, bud,” he soothes. “Wanna make sure you’re okay.”
Normal Dabi would have scoffed. Possibly spit a bit of fire. This new, vulnerable Dabi, though. He simply blinks again, tilting his head as if he wants to nod. When he remains quiet, like he’s lost the thread of conversation, Keigo pushes again.
“Your name?”
The villain sighs.
“S’Touya, Keigo. Todoroki Touya.”
----
Touya’s vision is kinda shitty even on a good day, but it’s swimming now - throbbing in and out of focus like someone’s got a strobe effect going with the room’s clarity. Still, he’d recognize Keigo anywhere, even if the stiff expression on his old friend’s face is rather new.
“Keigo?” he rasps, tired brain trying to make sense of his situation. Keigo had said they were in his apartment, but why? How? Touya got hit? By who?
He looks like he’s gonna throw up, Touya thinks vaguely, mind finally processing how pale his friend has gone. How his mouth tightens with distress.
“You okay?” he manages, his face feeling stiff and painful, the throbbing making itself known across the left side of his skull. God, what the fuck hit him? All Might?
“What did you just say?”
The words are quiet and so icy that Touya almost shivers. Nothing in Keigo’s posture has changed, but his demeanor has flipped entirely from solicitous to murderous, and Touya feels his heart beat faster - echoing in the side of his head in a way that would normally bring tears to his eyes.
“Asked if you’re a’right,” Touya whispers slowly. “Th’ fuck, Keigo?”
Air rustles as Keigo’s wings beat behind him, lifting the man to his feet in a single motion. Touya watches as Keigo takes one last look at him, golden eyes narrowed to mere pinpoints, before he spins away, wings snapping wide at his back.
He’s out the window before Touya can protest, and the sudden departure sets something ugly loose inside Touya’s chest.
It’d been seven years since they last saw each other. After the disaster of the Commission training program, Keigo went on to hit the top ten in his first year as a hero. Even now, a year later, Keigo maintained his crown. And Touya, a dead man, had simply watched with the masses as his old friend climbed even higher. One day, Keigo might even do what Touya couldn’t and unseat All Might as the number one hero.
Touya groans at the thought, trying to push it - and the pounding headache - away.
It’s not Keigo’s fault that Touya was such a fucking failure. It’s not.
The rejection hurts though. Touya’s not even sure what happened, but friends didn’t up and fly away when they reunited after so long.
“Did I do somethin’?” Touya wonders aloud, his voice thready with pain as he stares up at the tasteful cream of the ceiling. “He said I might’a lost a few minutes…”
There’s any number of things Keigo might have found Touya doing to survive. Petty crime. Money laundering. Arson. With the way Touya’s head hurts, he’s wondering if maybe some job for Giran went sour and he’s just fuzzy on the details.
Maybe he found me under a bridge or somethin’...
Touya doesn’t think Keigo would be disgusted by Touya’s living situation - or rather, his lack thereof. Keigo had told him enough of his origins for him to know that his friend didn’t have a leg to stand on when it came to being homeless.
Might be the scars, some part of his brain points out. They ain’t pretty, and you know it.
Of all the people Touya had ever expected to run into while being legally dead, he’d have thought Keigo would have cared the least about his disfigurement. Or the most, depending on how you looked at it. Bright-eyed Keigo, who cried when Touya got hurt, but was the only one who understood Touya’s drive to become a hero against the odds. The only one who believed Touya could do it, even when his family had given up on him.
Oh. Oh, fuck.
Is he going to tell them?
Blinking aching, burning eyes, Touya struggles against the pain in his body - the absolute agony in his head. Keigo can’t tell his family that he’s alive. He can’t bring them into this. Can’t let them see Touya so low.
He gets an elbow under him, even with his neck and shoulders sheathed in a brace that makes maneuvering difficult. Sweat pops out on Touya’s brow as he shakily pushes himself into an upright position, and his vision spins in a truly nauseating way. Touya pauses just to avoid throwing up all over Keigo’s couch.
“Fuck,” he hisses, raising a trembling hand to his eyes, pressing against the lids in an attempt at steadiness. The world spins anyway, taking Keigo, and any chance Touya had at lying low, with it. There’s no way he can catch one of the fastest heroes alive in this state.
This is his worst nightmare, come to life. Years of drifting to survive, hating his father, remaking his purpose in this world. All at risk because of the one boy Touya ever let himself get close to.
And he can’t do a damn thing about it except hope that Keigo comes back.
----
“S’Touya, Keigo. Todoroki Touya.”
Keigo’s first thought is: No.
No, it can’t be him, Touya is dead. He’s gone, and it’s all my fault.
Except he’s not dead. He’s Dabi.
It’s like hitting a wall at high speed. The full stop, body-check of the truth, slamming into Keigo with all the ruthlessness as brick and mortar.
Because suddenly it’s so clear. That white hair, the fire quirk, and those blue, blue eyes.
What he’d thought were just echoes of his old friend suddenly reverberate like thunder inside Keigo’s mind.
Touya?
Dabi’s still talking, looking up at Keigo with oddly-dilated eyes that somehow still swim with concern. Keigo hears his own name fall from the villain’s - Dabi’s, Touya’s - lips once more, and his whole being snaps back into place for one brief moment.
“What did you just say?”
His voice doesn’t sound like his own. It’s soft. Almost angry. A hiss of air escaping before the waves of understanding crash over him, forcing what’s left of the oxygen from his lungs.
No, no, no, no.
It can’t be.
Dabi asks again if Keigo is alright, but he can’t answer. His breath is the sandy swill of the ocean floor, his veins like glass, ready to shatter and tear him apart at the slightest movement.
Defense mechanisms kick in, and his whirling thoughts simply shut down. Leaving his mind blank of everything but the need for self-preservation. Fight or flight impulses light up his nerves from scalp to heels, and Keigo feels his wings lifting him up without any sort of conscious command.
Dabi, he might have fought. Touya, however…
No, no, no.
Keigo’s feet carry him to the window, urging him to flee until he can breathe again. But he risks one glance back at the couch where Dabi watches him with wide, uncertain eyes.
Where Touya gazes back at him, asking without words for him to stay.
He’s out the window before he even knows it.
----
Keigo ends up sitting atop a temple near the river, his ankles crossed on the warm ceramic tiles while he perches precariously on the spine of the roof. Below him, he can hear an actual ceremony of some sort going on, full Buddhist chanting and all.
Good, he thinks, mind finally freeing itself from its absolute lockdown. Could use the prayers.
Birds flutter by his spot from a nearby tree, and Keigo startles, watching them wing their way to the river. It occurs to him that he’s thirsty. That he hasn’t stopped to eat or drink at all since he found Dabi last night.
“Not Dabi,” he reminds himself, his voice sounding cracked. “Touya. Todoroki Touya.”
Saying it aloud lets something in his chest unbind, spilling out old grief and new horror in equal measures.
“He’s alive,” Keigo croaks, staring down into his lap, at his hands, covered in the supple leather gloves of his uniform. Resting on the heavy cargo pants that are both knife and bullet resistant, specially made for the number two hero.
That’s who he is. Pro Hero: Hawks. Winged Hero: Hawks. Fierce Winged: Hawks.
Not Keigo. Keigo is gone like Touya is gone.
But he’s not gone. He’s not, he’s not, he’s not.
He’s not gone, but is him being alive much better, considering what he became?
Keigo recoils from that thought like it’s a viper snapping at his fingertips.
Touya is alive, and he’s Dabi, and Dabi is in Keigo’s apartment, alone and concussed and confused, because he’s Touya and he just watched his old friend fly out a window rather than talk to him.
Oh.
He wills himself to move, but his gaze is frozen on his half-clenched hands, his mind racing so fast there’s no energy left for his body.
How did Keigo not know that Touya had survived? How had such a violent and certain death been misreported? Everyone and the papers had said Touya went up in flames. They’d found a fragment of his jawbone for fuck’s sake. How could something like that happen and it not be real?
Maybe he’s lying.
Keigo’s breath rattles in his chest, brittle and shaky like it’s being dragged over cobblestones. He knows. He knows deep down in his marrow that Dabi-Touya-Dabi isn’t lying. The villain may be a liar, but he’s not lying about this. Not with a fire quirk that he can barely control, white hair, and those blue, blue eyes.
The hero lets his face fall into his hands, ribs shuddering against the constriction in his lungs.
How did I not realize? He wonders in abject horror.
Because he was dead. The Commission said so. His family said so. The papers said so. He was dead and gone and it was all my fault. No one knew it, but I did. Touya died and Dabi was the mockery of him come back to haunt me.
Except Dabi wasn’t a mockery. Unless…
Keigo sucks in a sharp breath.
Unless he is.
Quirks were flexible things. So varied and strange and infinitely powerful in ways that humanity didn’t yet understand. It was entirely possible that Touya did die, and - like a phoenix - Dabi was what arose from the ashes. Almost literally, if a regeneration quirk like Overhaul’s was at play. Or he could be a grotesque recreation of Touya born out of a lab like the High End Noumu that Keigo had fought only a few weeks prior.
Maybe Touya was gone, and Dabi was just the body that remembered him.
It’s the only reason Keigo can think of for Touya to exist in this world and not be at his side. It’s the only thing that makes sense.
Fists clench in Keigo’s lap, hard and unyielding.
He’s not Touya. Not really. He’s something else, and I need to find out what.
The chanting in the temple below ceases, the baritones of the monks echoing out of the halls like ripples from a stone striking water. It feels like an omen that Keigo has found enlightenment at the moment the prayers cease.
Standing on much steadier legs than he landed on, Keigo rises to his feet and takes off into the air, flying back toward his apartment. Ready to confront the villain in his home.
Ready to face the monster wearing his old friend’s skin.