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“Hello.” Enji speaks into the open air and his breath frosts over. The ground is cold where he sits, crossed-legged on gravel, stones pressing indents into the fabric of his trousers. He is smartly dressed; black trousers, white shirt, black tie. It is exactly how he would have wanted it and therefore Enji hates it. These clothes itch against his skin, wrap themselves around him until he is ready to tear them all off to find release he will never experience again.
“I haven’t been here in a while.”
Silence greets him. That’s fine, because Enji knows that’s a lie; he hasn’t been here at all.
“It wasn’t supposed to be like this.”
It really wasn’t. Enji isn’t supposed to be sitting here, speaking into the cold night air, because the day brings fans who litter this place with cameras and flowers and sympathies that enrage him with their insincerity. But most of all, more than anything, he does not want them to see him; all these months and he is a coward after all, terrified of showing his face.
“You weren’t supposed to be here.”
But there are a lot of ‘wasn’ts’ and ‘weren’ts’ that happened anyway because wishes are for dreamers and Enji has only ever been good at crushing them. Speaking of what-ifs won’t make a difference, Enji is speaking to a specter now; a visage that hovers at the edges of his vision, just out of reach. He looks at the angel’s wings in front of him, static and smaller than the ones Enji remembers, and curses himself for imagining that they are red, red like the way his cheeks blossomed when Enji said yes, red like his lips when they kissed under the patterning of rain, red like the blood that dribbled down the corner of his mouth until it ran down his chin.
Red the way Enji’s fire roared. Spiked. Died.
Red the way they aren’t anymore; alive.
‘Takami Keigo,’ it reads in sharp, stiff letters. ‘A hero who gave his life in service of others.’
Enji lets out a shuddering breath.
“They made you number one.” The air feels like water. He gulps and gasps, tries to swallow it whole and only ends up choking on his own spit. “They made — Fuck, Keigo. I was undeserving, you deserved that spot, you—”
But Keigo won’t hear him.
Because it is Hawks who is dead.
...
It wasn’t meant to happen like this. Enji sits on a stiff wooden bench, legs numb and tingly, listening to a Buddhist priest speak words of comfort about a stranger. Enji could forgive a priest that mistake, but he is not alone. One by one they come up to the stage, blurry unfamiliar faces with tear tracks running down, people Hawks must have known at one point. The moment they speak, Enji realises that no one truly knew Hawks at all. They talk of bravery, they speak of happiness and joy, they constantly talk about his service to the public; what a good boy, what a good good boy. Enji sits at the back and he starts to rise, sick of it; sick of listening to them talk as though they shared a connection, but Fuyumi, her hand trembling, takes his elbow and gently shakes her head.
Neither of his sons had wanted to accompany him.
Natsuo outright refused, offered condolences that, though sincere, had felt empty for he had not known the depth of their relationship; there was no way he would have understood even if he had.
Shouto had felt uncomfortable with the idea; intruding on a guy’s funeral service that he hadn’t really known, offering sympathies to family members he had never even met.
But none of these people know Hawks either. Every single face inside this building is either a hero, a paper pusher of the Hero Public Safety Commission, or random onlookers who could not wait to see a hero’s death aired out so publicly. There is a small woman at the front, sobbing into her hands, and Enji feels a hate so bone-deep that even Fuyumi recoils from the heat blazing through his skin.
“My mom?” Hawks had told him and his smile had been a thousand different cuts spread out over thirty-two white teeth. “I never saw her again after they took me, but she got a better life instead.”
She delivers the eulogy that is full of empty words about a hero she has only heard about and a son she never knew. Enji wonders why funerals do not have the same option as weddings do; speak now or forever hold your peace.
As Enji walks out while the priest chants a sutra, a wrong wrong choice for a boy who has never subscribed to any Buddhist custom, he decides that he will hold his peace after all.
He’s not sure whether it’s the right choice but it doesn’t matter.
Hawks is dead.
...
He remembers that day. There is no way that he could forget; a bright day in July, Gion Matsuri in full swing and the city of Kyoto had exploded in shades of red and gold. They were the perfect colours for him, they were as bright as he was, screaming festivities in your face. Endeavor had been called away elsewhere but Hawks had wanted to enjoy that day, said it was his favourite festival. He had pleaded with Enji for a day off, said he had been tired, just one day Enji, please please.
“I’m not your father." He’d scoffed, but there was fondness in his tone. He had grown so ridiculously fond of him. “You’ll regret the paperwork tomorrow.”
The League of Villains had seized their chance.
It was not enough for Hawks to rush citizens out of the streets. It was not enough for him to fight the numerous Noumu.
By the time Endeavor got the call, Hawks was already worlds away from him. By the time he’d arrived, blood was running down Hawks’ chin, blood was running everywhere and now they were surrounded by just red with the absence of gold; as though Hawks’ very light had been dimmed. When Hawks opened his eyes, Enji watched the gold bleed out of them as he smiled at him and whispered ‘Enji’.
Hawks died with a smile on his lips painted with red.
He killed three villains that day. Their bodies had to be scraped off the pavement, charred into oblivion, no funeral to be held when a cremation had already taken place.
One of them had only been a seventeen-year-old girl. The others, these could have been forgiven, but a teenage girl was unforgivable, no matter the death count on her name. A reprimand did not even begin to cover it. They threatened to take his hero license away, they threatened his image, they threatened his position as the number one; they threatened what they thought he cared about but they had never realised that the one thing he’d cared about the most had already been taken away from him.
In the end, they never did his hero license away.
In the end, he had never felt remorse.
...
Hawks becomes the number one hero two days after his death. He is the youngest hero to gain that position; the number one at only twenty-three years old.
(Dead at only twenty-three years old.)
Enji cracks open a beer at home and toasts to his image. His house has smelled like incense for days and no one has asked. No one dares to.
“You were far more deserving of that spot than me.”
He never calls him by his name. It is too painful.
...
December comes. Hawks has been dead for five months now and Enji drinks himself stupid the moment Christmas passes and slips straight into his birthday. Enji does not visit his grave. He pretends he doesn't want to deal with the sympathisers and parasites, but the truth is that Enji is simply afraid. Afraid of being assaulted by memories that are more painful the longer time passes, because the longer he thinks about it, the more that gold glint dims, the more Hawks’ image fades.
So Enji doesn’t go.
He laments the number twenty-four, the age Hawks never gets to see, the age Enji has lived nearly twice over and only thinks of how ridiculously unfair this world is that kills its children and pretends their ghosts will be happy with a medal. Hawks would have wanted to rub it in his face, gloat until Enji would be tired of it, so sick of it that he’d tell him to leave. He’d always regret it.
Like how he regrets it now.
Shouto finds him passed out in the morning, smelling of beer and wishes that went unfulfilled, but neither of them speak of it. His son passes him an aspirin, tells him to drink some coffee, and disappears into his room.
...
Six months and Enji is back at his grave.
The flowers have dwindled, the few that remain cannot withstand the cold and those that can must be counted as weeds. Enji stands in front of the grave, looks at the angel’s wings adorning the gravestone, and lights the incense. Hawks’ headstone is so nontraditional and fuck, it feels as though the boy is mocking him from beyond the grave.
“I’m forgetting your face.”
He was wrong; saying it out loud does not bring relief.
It brings him grief instead.
Why did he never insist on receiving the photos Hawks took? Why did he insist he delete them? He regrets having no evidence of him left, hates how he makes due with old hero magazines like a teenager collecting pictures of his idol. He has one photo of the both of them together, fingers intertwined, Hawks’ face flush against his. He still has not been able to look at it.
“I never got to tell you.” He says and his voice carries so heavy that his body sags with it, a dead-weight thrown into the sea. “I don’t think I ever will. You’re dead, you can’t hear me.”
There is only silence.
Hawks might be dead, but it is Enji who has stopped living.
...
He finds Hawks in cornerstones interwoven with gold and coffee shops with red doors. He notices him in his favourite drink; a matcha frappuccino carried by a teenaged girl with ribbons in her hair. Enji finds Hawks in the holes cut into an old shirt; pretends as though he can still sniff out his scent, as though it will bring back his image.
The worst is that no one knew. Yet still, no one knows about the extent of his grief.
There is no sympathy for the number four, because yes, Keigo, isn’t it funny how you climbed over him and left him out to dry? The number four position is not something he has experienced for a very long time, yet Enji finds it isn’t in him to care about arbitrary numbers. It is trivial in comparison to the gap left between this life and the one before Hawks disappeared from it.
...
Six and a half months.
Enji throws himself into work.
It is the worst mistake he has made out of all of them. He slowly climbs back into the rankings and knocks a dead man out of its rightful place. Finally, the people cry, we have a real hero back. All he wants is for Hawks to take up his spot beside him on the stage, mocking him as he did, asking him for a better speech.
“I’ll do right by our number one.” He says. He can imagine the sound of Hawks gagging, how he’d laugh at him for how incredibly sincere that must have sounded in his head, but reaches short of what he wants to convey.
They applaud him. The sound is deafening and undeserved, but he stands there like a wooden puppet that bows because its master tells it to; mechanic and wrong, never real because he can’t be. He hates it but he nods to please them, to have it over with already, to pretend he possesses the bare minimum of proper decorum. Lines are etched into his skin and people laugh that Endeavor must be getting older after all. They do not recognise grief even as it stares them in the face. They do not need to; they have their number one hero back.
The other lies dead and buried.
...
It becomes too much, too much. He is back at work, he is trying to get his damned life together again, apprehending villains and putting the past behind him; his ugly hideous past where a teenage girl got caught in the crossfire of his temper. Try as he might, he still does not regret killing her. He works until the day bleeds into the night, until he won’t see the red and gold of the fucking sun anymore, so that it doesn’t remind him of blood-red wings and bloody lips, golden eyes and golden hair, sunsets that end in darkness because that’s what happens to all the pretty things.
But then Enji ruins it all.
On that day, nearly seven months ago to date, Enji knows of two villains who escaped the carnage of his anger. It doesn’t take much effort to find them, if you know just where to look.
Enji finds Twice exactly as he means to find him, tucked away in some desolate corner of Deika city; a ghost town since the decimation of the Liberation Army. The moment Twice sees him, Enji is prepared to fight until his dying breath but Twice only looks at him and speaks with a voice so hollow that it echoes;
“Care to burn me to ashes too?”
“No.”
“You took Toga-chan away from me.”
“Yes.”
He is uncomfortable for the first time. The grief in Twice’ voice is familiar, it rings in the same tune as his, even though Enji has throttled the emotion the minute he felt it. It is a wound so deep that it has left a chasm inside the both of them, but whereas Twice’ grief leaks out of him, Enji’s emotions have all but dried up.
“But we took Hawks away from you too.”
Twice cared about Hawks. It is bizarre, nothing short of being painful, and the anger flares through his chest. Then why did you let them kill him?
“I don’t give a damn about what happened to you. I don’t care what you felt about that girl or about Hawks.” He wields that anger like a weapon, comfortable with its familiarity; it is the first of his emotions that he manages to conjure up. “I need your Quirk.”
He can’t deal with it anymore, Keigo.
“My Quirk?” Twice seems taken aback. A switch flips and then his other personality takes the stage. “What do you want with my Quirk huh? Haven’t you done enough damage? Well?”
Enji hasn’t the time for this. “You’ll fucking do it.” He snarls. “You’ll join them in hell if you refuse. You’ve already taken too much away from me.”
It is the first time he speaks those words out loud and Enji is disappointed that he can only be honest with a villain. He should have spoken up sooner, he’s had so many opportunities to.
Twice shrinks back. “What do you want from me? Haven’t you done enough?”
“Give him back to me!”
The chasm in his chest rips further upward and his heart comes dropping down; heavy enough to bring him to his knees, looking at Twice with such hatred, such desperation, because he is the only one who can fix it.
“They will—” Twice shudders and curls up inside of himself. “It’s… I dunno, they will…”
“Do it.” Enji barks and he advances on him and the heat that licks up his body has Twice flinching back. “I will burn you Twice, I will incinerate you—” His voice picks up and it’s as though he is twenty-four again, twenty-four like Hawks has never been, yelling at his son to try harder, to pick up the slack, to do —
“Stop yelling at Twice, Enji.”
Enji stops his onslaught and his fire sizzles out like rain.
That’s his voice.
“Let’s go.”
Twice cowers on the ground, crawls away from him as though he is the villain here, but Enji doesn’t care, he got him back. He got him back. But Hawks’ eyes do not look kind, they are gold but wrong somehow, as though—
“What?!” Enji snaps before he can think better of it. “Is that all you have to say? After all the effort that I’ve gone through?!”
Hawks only looks at him; he carries that exact displeased curl of his mouth when he’s unhappy, he counts the exact freckle down the side of his neck and finally there’s the wings that blaze out in red behind him, raised as though he means to defend himself. He feels much too real to be a copy, he feels too human to be a dead man’s image.
“Stop yelling at me, shit.” Hawks runs a hand through his hair. “I didn’t come here to argue, okay?”
His words are strange. Is it possible that he’s aware of his death? When Enji tries to find Twice, he is nowhere to be found. He thinks of Twice’s derangement, wonders whether this clone will be different too, whether Hawks will talk to himself; the dead counterpart he never got to meet. He’s an imposter but Enji will make due; it has been seven long months and at least this ghost talks back.
“Come home with me.” Enji says, brusque. “I have some things I need to discuss with you.”
“Can we?” Hawks rocks back on his heels, pulls his hands behind his head. His smile is melancholy. “Aren’t I supposed to be dead?”
Enji’s heart stops.
“You’re here aren’t you?!” He yells. “What business it of yours anyway? You’re not real so do as I say!”
“So you brought me back to yell at me? That’s kinda cold, Enji.”
“Stop it.”
“Stop what? Not saying it won’t make it less true.”
“Hawks.”
It was a mistake, he knew it was a mistake; looking at him, standing there as he does, when Enji has seen him with blood on his face and with eyes shut in a fucking casket . He sinks to the ground, presses his hands to his face and tries to block these memories out.
“Enji.” Hawks’ voice says right next to him. He has a hand on his shoulder and his kindness feels so real that Enji shudders. “I’m dead, Enji.” His voice tremors and Enji can only imagine how his lip must wobble, being bitten red, how those golden eyes gloss over, and fuck he can’t. “Please, you can’t do this to yourself.”
A hand tilts his chin and Enji is looking into those sharp eyes, those kind warm eyes, and what he finds in them feels suspiciously like pity. “Don't look at me like that.”
Hawks smiles and it’s a liar’s smile, one Enji has become so familiar with, one Hawks has worn too often. “How did I die?”
Enji doesn’t know why, but he tells him. He feels compelled to fill this clone, this double that will never be Hawks; never be his Keigo, in on the gaps of his artificial memory. He talks about the festival, the attack, the last act of sacrifice. “You have always been stupidly self-sacrificing,” Enji scolds him as though it was a misdemeanour, not a fatal mistake. “You only care about other people, did you ever stop to think about yourself?”
“I don’t know,” says the clone carrying Hawks’ face. “But I must have thought of you.”
“Don’t you dare—” He tries in vain to get him to shut up.
“I’m dead Enji.” His words are so soft and Enji lets him climb right into his lap, just like he used to. His hands find the dip in his waist, how they fit nearly all the way around him, and Hawks’ chin rests on his shoulder. “This body won’t exist forever.”
“Stop.”
Hawks’ hands come up to his shoulders, running circles over his skin just like he used to.
“You’re full of knots Enji. Let me make it better.” He hates how Hawks’ voice always finds itself into his head and when the clone speaks, it’s as though he hears an echo.
“You’re so stiff.”
They sit in silence for a while. Hawks keeps massaging his shoulders, pressing their bodies flush together and Enji can only hold onto him for however long he is given to him. He never held him enough, never did tell him how much he cared. Hawks simply showed up late nights at the office, ever persistent, squeezing into whatever sliver of time he could get.
When did Enji do the same for him?
Enji squeezes the clone’s skin so close it might bruise and he only gives a small noise of protest. “I wasn’t there for you.” It comes out of his mouth like a sin; hushed and barely legible. “You were barely conscious.” He can’t say it, even now. You were nearly dead when I found you. I didn't even have the chance to say goodbye.
“Would it help you if you were there for me now?” Hawks moves back. There is no escaping his gaze; it is so sharp that Enji wants to turn away from it. “There are painless ways. I can jump off a cliff and land in the water. It will be beautiful Enji, it will be peaceful.”
Something inside Enji curls up, tightly and hot.
“No.” He snarls. “What is wrong with you?!” He moves to stand up and Hawks all but scrambles to get off of him. He starts walking away from him, this abomination speaking such awful lies; lies that Enji knows would have come exactly out of Hawks’ mouth, but there is another body that presses flush against his back before he can slip away.
“Enji.” His voice is shaking again. “You gotta forgive yourself.”
I can’t.
“You wouldn’t have been able to prevent it.”
I would.
“Do you wish to be the one to kill me?”
At that, he breaks. He turns around and grips Hawks hard by the shoulders, who flinches back from the force until Enji is breathing hard and erratic into his neck. The tears will never come, dried up with the chasm inside of him, and he has never wanted the emotion more. This boy, this boy that never got to live to grow into a man, is the only one deserving of it. Hawks stands perfectly still, carrying all this weight on top of his small shoulders like he always has.
Enji has been so undeserving.
“I want to keep you forever.”
“Tell me again.” Hawks’ voice sounds unstable too.
“I love you.”
He doesn’t notice he’s crying until he tastes the salt on his tongue. One year of tiptoeing around it, twenty-something dates, kissing in late-night offices, fucking Hawks in a too-small bed of his apartment. Seven months since he last heard the name Enji, dying on his lips, seven months since a funeral where all the red and gold had been replaced by black. He has never told him and it is that truth that opened up the chasm in his heart. Enji is never allowed to love again.
“I love you, Keigo.”
Keigo pulls his chin up and his eyes glitter with gold, tears running down his face as he tries to wipe away Enji’s, lips bitten-red, bitten-bloody. He looks so beautiful, he has always looked so beautiful.
“I know I would have loved you too.” He says and his voice carries heavy with it, choking on a sob stuck down pretty slender throats because what is beauty without pain? Enji kisses him and feels his mouth move just like it used to; a hint of desperation that opens him open from the inside out. The tears never quite stop, all of their kisses taste of salt, of a shared pain even if only Enji is forced to carry it onward.
“It’s time Enji.” Keigo’s voice is the sweetest thing he has ever heard.
He puts the clone to rest. He closes Keigo’s eyes like he never got to, kisses his forehead like he never got to, and once more confesses the love that had been so sacred between them, a love he never got to share.
The clone melts away into the ground and Enji gets one last look of Keigo’s smile. Goodbye hurts worse than anything, carves him open from the inside out, until he is left raw and bleeding. The wound will never close; each memory will tear the scab off until finally he is numb to the scar.
Golden boys sat in golden cages, with pretty smiles and pretty faces, and Enji knows that there won’t be a next time they meet again.
Goodbye feels much like ‘I love you’.
Enji never gets to say it again.