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Hawks was an exceptionally good liar. He’d been one since he was a child.
It was about little things back then – like if he brushed his teeth, made his bed before school, or stayed up until two in the morning watching cartoons instead of going to bed at nine on a school night. It came to him naturally. If he needed his mother’s signature on any school documents, he was quick to forge it. As far as he was concerned, if no one got hurt, it wasn’t a big deal.
Also, sometimes, lying was a good thing. His mother did it too. There were a few mornings when he got up for school that he caught her crying at the table. She was good about hiding how sad she was, but some days were harder than others. He’d usually make a noise, like using a feather to knock something over, to catch her attention before he walked into the room, and she would clean herself up quickly. She didn’t want him to know she was sad, but it was impossible to hide her red puffy eyes or blotchy cheeks.
If he asked her what was wrong, she would always smile, ruffle his hair fondly, and say, “Nothing, baby, nothing at all now that I’ve seen you. Did you sleep well?” It was like clockwork. He knew something was wrong, but she didn’t want to tell him.
When she did halfway admit to being sad, it was usually about “grown-up stuff” that she thought would go over his head. A lot of it did, like bills and her jobs and relationships, but he didn’t have to understand them perfectly to have an idea. He’d overhear an argument in the living room or her bedroom, find letters stuffed in the trash with the word “late” or “overdue” on them, watch her leave dressed up in her “nice” outfit, a glimpse bruise on her arm that hadn’t been there before, a near-empty fridge with a grocery list in red taped to the door.
She didn’t have to tell him everything for him to eventually figure things out. He was young, not stupid. She probably knew that too, always calling him her “clever little bird”, but she never stopped lying to him about everything going wrong in their life. She didn’t tell them about all the times she couldn’t pay rent and they almost got evicted, how she was forced to quit her job after refusing her boss’ advances on her, how one of her boyfriends punched her a few times until she finally kicked him out and had the locks changed, how she skipped meals so he wouldn’t miss one.
He didn’t blame or get mad at her in the end for it. Parents lied to their children all the time. That was what being a parent was about in the end: an assortment of lies meant to protect their child until it was time to let them go. Only, when she let him go, it was with the Hero Commission.
Now that he looked back on it, she hadn’t wanted to let him go with them, but the pressure had been immense. It had been impossible for him to see back then. The Commission liked to make it out as a good thing – and it was, as a lot of good had come out of it – but it had been a terribly selfish thing too, taking a young child away from their mother at such a young age to groom the perfect hero. It was almost cruel and certainly cold. He hadn’t known back then that he would rarely see her until she was no longer a normal part of his life.
“Sacrifices have to be made for the greater good.”
Imagine telling that to a seven-year-old boy curled up in bed sobbing that he wanted his mother.
If he’d known what his life would become, would he still have gone with them? He could barely remember if he’d ben eager to become a hero. He liked them. He liked the idea of saving people and bringing hope. He wanted to save his mother; he wanted her to be happy and hopeful. If he became a hero, maybe she would smile more often. It sounded nice. They promised food, a place to live, a proper education, money, a future. It was more than she could give him on her own no matter how many jobs she worked.
She hadn’t really had much of a choice. He might’ve been the one to say “yes”, but it had never been his, had it? The Hero Commission lied to him. That was what grown-ups did with children. They lied to make them more malleable and compliant. It worked out in the end. They couldn’t have asked for a better or more helpful hero. Whatever they asked of him, even if he didn’t like it, he usually did it. Maybe not to their exact liking, but he listened. He wanted to do good. He wanted to be good.
Surrounded by lying taught him to be good at it, but he supposed it had always been in his nature. He lied about knowing his mom was sad, about all the times he did little things to piss off her boyfriends that he didn’t like. (How many times had he used his feathers to hide keys, wallets, or phones?) He lied about his happy, perfect home life at school, although he genuinely loved his mother and missed her when he was taken away. He lied about his name, his birthday, his age, his dreams, everything and anything he could think of, even when the situation didn’t call for lying.
Sometimes, he lied just because he was bored or he could. And he was the Number Three Hero, so who wouldn’t believe him? Why would someone like him lie?
And sometimes, those lies came back to bite him in the ass.
They came to him so effortlessly that there were moments when he didn’t think about it. Heroes rarely considered how many times they lied to civilians in order to reassure them. No matter the situation, they had to be confident and optimistic, soothing and strong. Even if it was dire and everything was going wrong, they weren’t supposed to show that on their faces or in their voices.
So when he rescued a young girl from a burning apartment building, he didn’t hesitate to reassure her fears. She was sobbing horribly, her hands red from burning herself on a metal doorknob and face dirty from the smoke. He’d managed to pull her out of her nearly destroyed bedroom before the ceiling collapsed, jumping out of the building and dropping briefly before he could turn them around and carry her away. All she cried about was her mom and dad, if they were safe, if they were okay.
Without thinking, because he needed her to calm down and he had feathers seeking out other people in the building and he was trying to slowly guide them to the ground, he said, “Of course they’re fine. Heroes are on the scene. We save people, don’t we?”
The girl rubbed her sooty, snotty face in his shirt and whimpered out, “You-You’ll save them?”
“‘Course I will, kid.”
And he genuinely thought that too, even if he wasn’t entirely focused on her. There were a thousand other things he needed to do before this shitty apartment building collapsed. It hadn’t been up to code. It hadn’t even been the focus. Some two-bit criminal tried to rob a shop next door and his quirk got out of control and, boom, the shop and then the apartment caught on fire. But he was certain when he said those words that they were the truth. He’d forgotten that he could lie unintentionally too.
Because he didn’t save her parents. They were already dead.
“You can’t save everyone,” Rumi told him days later at a bar, patting him roughly on the back, though she was careful to avoid his wings.
Hawks tossed back the rest of his drink. “I can try.”
“And you did.” Rumi flagged down the bartender for another round. It wasn’t going to improve his mood, but he didn’t feel like thinking right now. He didn’t get drunk often – he hated the fuzziness and incoordination that came from it since it impaired his flying – but he just… He didn’t want to think about the hopeful look on that girl’s face. It felt like a knife twisting in his gut. He hadn’t seen her again after he set her down on the ground, but he could feel the betrayal that must’ve crushed her when she found out the truth.
When his second drink was set in front of him, he slid his hands around the cold glass. “I lied to her.”
“You didn’t know that at the time.”
“That won’t matter to her. I still lied.”
Rumi waved a hand. “Yeah, we lie all the time. That’s what heroes do in order to keep people’s spirits up – to keep ourselves from losing our damn minds.” She took her shot like a champ and slammed the glass down on the counter, letting out a sigh. “C’mon, you gotta quit moping.”
Hawks shot her sharp grin. “I’m not moping. I never mope. It doesn’t suit me.”
He was a good liar, even with himself, but one of these days, he had a feeling it was going to come back to haunt him.