Chapter Text
HEAVEN AND EARTH, contrary to popular belief, do not collide in supernovas and blinding white lights, nor do they meet with burning fire or trailing comets.
Rather, their meeting is less of a collision, more of a soft touch—a caress; the brush of a lover’s hand against a cheek, the rosy tint of sunlight against clouds. It’s the tentative warmth of winter morning sunlight and the gossamer of butterfly wings, fleeting and momentary and gone in a second.
He still remembers falling.
It’s not gentle. The wind rips the feathers from his wings, and the air below him is empty, nothing to support him, nothing to catch him. The breath is snatched from his lungs.
And then is the impact. That’s not gentle either; it jars his bones and sends pain shooting through his body.
A life for a life.
Angels are not meant to fall, but when they’re so high up in the sky, where else is there to go but down?
* * *
His memories start fading first. What he remembers is the reason why he was cast down from Heaven, and his conditions for getting back, which are easy enough to understand.
What’s harder to understand is why vending machines are so damn hard to use .
They shouldn’t be that complicated—press a button, push a few coins into a slot, then collect your canned coffee from the bottom—and yet , because apparently whoever is up above seems hellbent on making Hawks’ life even more difficult, the vending machine keeps spitting out his payment.
“You do know that the vending machine doesn’t accept five-yen coins, right?” a voice drawls from behind him, and Hawks spins around to meet eyes the colour of the ocean and midnight hair.
“Of course,” he says automatically. A five-yen coin tumbles out of the vending machine with a cheerful tinkle.
Neither of them say anything. Hawks fumbles around his pockets for any more coins, and to his dismay, his hands are met only by a crumpled train ticket and a convenience store voucher.
The man in front of him waits as Hawks pats down all his pockets and comes up with nothing. He sighs. “How much do you need?”
Hawks wrings his hands. “Ten?”
The stranger steps in front of him to slot a coppery coin into the machine, and a can of coffee falls out with a rattle. He hands it to Hawks.
When his hand brushes against Hawks’ skin, a jolt runs through his body.
Infernal blood .
He’d recognise it anywhere, memories or none.
And by the looks of it, the stranger recognises his blood as well.
Still, he cracks a smile, the expression teasing and melancholic and somehow so, so bitter.
“So you’re my guardian angel.”
* * *
The wind sings in Heaven.
It whistles through marble buildings and scoops up sunshine in lilting melodies, weaving through silk and feathers alike, and it stops for no one, slows for no one. It is as gentle as it is ferocious, capable of sending angels plummeting to Earth or lifting them ever higher, and thus, no one dares to anger it. Some believe that the deity above expresses himself through the winds.
Keigo does not fear the wind.
It urges him forward at hurtling speeds, and maybe the reason why he’s the swiftest angel is because he’s the only one who dares to harness the wind rather than fearing it.
But with the entirety of Heaven stretching out before him, glinting gold and glowing in the sunlight, is there really anything for him to fear?
When he’s up so high, everything is within his sight, and everything is within his reach. The stars are adornments for his wings, his clothes are woven from moonlight, and his eyes are trapped sunlight itself. Everything is within his reach—
And that includes the Earth below.
He watches the exchange with the wind battering his wings from below; a warning, and one that Keigo isn’t able to interpret until it’s too late. Angels, divine beings as they may be, are not meant to trifle with the affairs of gods, and the balance of life and death is not a matter that should be taken into their hands.
Keigo does it anyway.
The boy is only a child, eyes blazing with a determination to protect and hands far too deft at bandaging wounds. The Hellfire trapped within his body burns greedily and unceasingly, always taking more than it should, never satisfied with what it has—and more often than not, the fuel that it chooses to consume is the boy’s body itself, leaving behind burned skin and the echoes of screaming.
It happens on a Monday night.
Monday nights are quiet, as he learns, with people tired from the toils of the day and more able to turn a blind eye to matters that don’t concern them. Keigo does not have a blind eye. He watches.
He watches as the boy’s father, fire burning around his body, pushes the boy to release the heat within him yet again, uncaring for how it scorches his skin. The boy hates his flames, Keigo comes to realise, but not as much as he hates his father.
There’s another boy, one with red and white hair split evenly down the middle, who has a bandage around his eye, now asleep. Another woman, one with white hair and eyes as grey as winter skies, has been moved out of the house.
As all flames do, it starts with a spark.
The boy’s fire is white, as white as angel wings, but the core is a faint, pulsing blue that grows with each passing second.
The father’s expression never shifts. It’s as unforgiving as stone, unwavering, unchanging, and the flickering white flame is reflected against orange flames that jump and pulse.
White changes to blue, an accelerated sunrise, and the flames leap .
They consume the boy’s hands, the cobalt so blinding that even Keigo has to shield his eyes. Hellfire, as he knows, is different from regular fire, and it comes in a flurry that’s either snuffed out by an external factor or is left to burn itself out.
Flesh starts to smoulder.
The boy doesn’t cry out. He used to, when he was younger, and his eyes were still bright with innocence and tears. Now, he endures silently, the sizzle of flesh the only sound piercing the silence, so different from the singing winds in Heaven, and just as vengeful.
And then everything burns .
It happens at a speed that even Keigo barely reacts to—a quicksilver flash, and then everything is alight. Blue flames race over every available surface, scorching the air, embers flying, smoke staining the night sky.
He moves.
The boy’s body burns against his skin. Blue eyes closed, pale skin scarred along every surface—Keigo can’t hear a heartbeat, but his senses tell him that the boy is still alive. He holds him more securely. His wings are already singeing from the heat, but a single beat lifts him up, out of the smoke choking the air and the fire licking at his heels.
In his hands, the boy weighs nothing. Angels are not meant to interfere with the matters of mortal lives, and the boy may be light, but the dread in his chest is heavy.
He deposits the boy in an alleyway, out of the light. If he dies here, Keigo won’t technically have done anything wrong, and if he lives—
Keigo hopes he lives. Unlike angels, mortals have limited lifespans, and childhood is a blink of an eye, passing so quickly it leaves him wondering whether it had really happened. The boy in front of him has had an even shorter childhood than most.
His skin is still burning, but above, rain starts trickling down, tentative at first, then building to a storm. Keigo takes a step backwards.
The blue flames die, and he spreads his wings and takes to the sky.
Around him, the wind howls.
* * *
“I’m not—a guardian angel.”
It’s true. He’s not, he remembers that much. He never was, even when he had his wings, but now, without them, he’s not even an angel, and though he may call out to the sky, it won’t answer him any longer.
“My bad. You’re human,” the man in front of him says, tone not apologetic in the slightest. “The heavenly blood in you is fading, isn’t it?”
Hawks tightens his grip around the coffee in his hands, the cold metal biting into his skin. The feather at the end of his pendant, the only remaining part of who he used to be, suddenly grows heavy against his chest.
The street around them is silent, hushed. There’s no wind here. It’s that haunting hour just before dusk, the moment just after the dip of the sun below the horizon, but the sky is still lit by fading light, almost like an afterimage of the day that has passed. Above them, the streetlights flicker.
The stranger regards him, expression unreadable. His body is a mess of scars, dark purple against pale skin, a tapestry woven from pain, and it’s a tapestry that Hawks shouldn’t want to unravel, but is all the same drawn to.
“You’re new,” the stranger finally decides.
Hawks narrows his eyes in a silent demand for explanation, and the stranger shrugs.
“Look, coffee is great and all, but no one drinks a double shot at this time of the day.”
Hawks would disagree. Heaven has ambrosia, Earth has coffee, and ambrosia is safe to be consumed at any time of the day. Out of sheer pettiness, he makes a show of opening the can and downing the entire drink right there.
The stranger raises an unimpressed eyebrow, eyes flitting from Hawks’ face to the now empty coffee can. “Definitely an angel. That pride is solid proof.”
“How do you know?” he says, the words rushing out unbidden.
He knows the answer. Just as he recognises the infernal blood instantly, heavenly blood isn’t something that’s easily missed either, and if the magnetic pull that seems to be drawing him to the stranger is any indication, there’s got to be some kind of connection between them.
The stranger in front of him looks less than impressed. “Look,” he says lazily, sticking his hands into his pockets, “if the pretty face wasn’t already a dead giveaway, angelic blood glows . You’re a freaking lantern, angel.”
Hawks frowns, looking down at his arms. They’re decidedly not glowing. He has, however, heard rumours about demons being able to sense angels, and this must be one of the abilities they have, coupled alongside dangerously entrancing eyes and a carefully blasé voice.
He keeps his own voice similarly neutral.
“I’d prefer it if you called me Hawks , not angel,” he says, tossing the empty can into the bin. “I told you, I’m not an angel.” Not anymore.
“And I’m not Dabi,” the demon says sarcastically. “I’m just a person who has infernal blood and a knack for sensing angels.”
Dabi . The remark is weirdly nostalgic, but more than that, the name triggers something in him. He sifts through his rapidly fading memories, but they elude him, darting away like fish in a pond, and the closer he gets, the further they slip away. Frustration bubbles up inside him.
“Tell me, what’s it like in Heaven?”
The question is sharp. It’s not just the tone in which it’s asked; it’s also the fact that the kingdom above the clouds is something he can’t remember anymore, the splendour of it too bright for a mortal brain to comprehend. He remembers that it’s beautiful. He remembers that the light is as solid as gold, and just as untarnished.
The minutes drag on, and Hawks can’t answer, and something in the demon’s face changes. Hardens.
“So they took your memories,” he murmurs, almost too softly to hear.
Hawks does not answer.
His stomach chooses that exact moment to start growling— is that hunger? —and Dabi glances at him with thinly veiled contempt.
“Have you eaten anything since you fell?”
“Coffee,” he mumbles, stomach letting out another horrifyingly weird noise. “Two cans.”
An incredulous look from the demon. “Coffee isn’t food.”
“Isn’t it?”
Dabi sighs frustratedly, running a hand through his hair and making the spikes stand up even more. “No, angel. It’s not.”
* * *
For all the calm and serenity associated with the moon, Rumi is anything but.
“Are you actually stupid?”
Keigo frowns and flips his wings back indignantly. “That’s rich, coming from you.”
Rumi swats him on the arm. Hard. Her silvery wings ripple as they move, catching the starlight in tiny little flashes and reflecting them with a soft glow.
“You know we don’t have any control over stuff like that,” she says. “Life and death? That’s all up to whoever’s above. If there’s anyone even up there.”
Keigo raises an eyebrow. “You don’t think there’s anyone up there?”
“I didn’t say that.”
They’re silent for a minute, and Keigo shifts slightly, wondering how he’s going to break the next part to her. How he saved a human life. How the Hellfire had burned against his skin.
“Anyway, what’s with all the philosophical questions? Something’s up, isn’t it.”
Keigo tries for innocence, widening his eyes and fluffing out his wings. “Nothing’s up.”
“Right, and I’m not the moon angel.”
“You shouldn’t be,” he mutters, earning himself another swat on the arm. Really, the moon angel should be gentler, maybe the type to listen to troubled people at midnight and wrap soft wings around crying children. Rumi is more the type to tell them to suck it up, and then maybe pummel whoever was the cause of the tears.
He sighs. “I was just wondering,” he says, absentmindedly running a hand over his wings. “What would happen if we actually tried to interfere with life and death?”
Rumi considers him for a moment. Then she rolls her eyes, leans closer, and settles her wings against her back. Her hair falls over her shoulder.
“You didn’t hear this from me,” she says, voice hushed, like the air itself is listening. Given the nature of the air, it’s an entirely reasonable precaution. “But have you heard of The Fallen?”
A prickle runs up Keigo’s spine.
“Only mentions,” he admits. “Aren’t they kind of taboo to talk about?”
Rumi’s eyes glint scarlet in the soft moonlight. “They are,” she says, “which is why you didn’t hear anything from me.” She flicks her hair back. “They’re the ones who defied His will, or the ones who let the Earth tempt them… or the ones who interfered with the matters of life and death.”
Against his will, Keigo shivers.
“The Fallen,” Rumi continues, pretending not to notice the tremor he shakes out of his arms, “roam the Earth as demons. Some of them—the worst—are sentenced to hell, but Earth is honestly a bad enough punishment.”
“Why?”
Rumi spreads her silvery wings, a cage around them that shields them from the wind and the penetrating gaze of the stars.
“The Fallen can never return,” she says, and for the first time, Keigo hears a hint of fear in her voice. “They’re cursed to wander the Earth forever, longing for a home that has rejected them, and the ones with the cruellest punishments keep their memories, so that they always remember the pain of falling.”
Keigo’s own wings twinge, and he doesn’t know whether it’s in pain or sympathy, but when Rumi lowers her wings, suddenly the whistle of wind through his feathers seems like something to be warier of.
He takes a deep breath.
“I have something to tell you.”
* * *
“You mean this isn’t ‘McDonald’s’ house?”
They’re sitting at a booth, and the air smells slightly of something old and fatty, which Dabi informs him is the smell of deep-fryer grease and stale chips. When Hawks feels his stomach turn, he isn’t sure whether it’s out of hunger or disgust.
Dabi rolls his eyes, setting a tray of food down on the table. “ No —why the hell do you think there are so many?”
“McDonald might be someone rich,” he says, which he thinks is a perfectly reasonable point, but Dabi just looks mildly irritated.
He scoffs and sits down, pulling paper off something that the receipt announces is a burger . “Shut up and eat your chicken nuggets.”
Hawks eats.
On his first bite, he has to make sure he’s not back in Heaven.
“Oh my god ,” he says, dangerously close to having an emotional meltdown. He reaches for another, and incapable of finding words to describe the absolute culinary bliss he’s in, manages only another “oh my god, ” around a mouthful of food. “You guys aren’t supposed to have ambrosia.”
Dabi gives him an odd look. “It’s a fucking nugget.”
Hawks opts to ignore this.
Setting his burger aside and propping his elbows up on the table, Dabi regards him with eyes that should be washed out under the harsh fluorescent glare of lights, but somehow remain just as vividly blue as the fire—
Whoa .
A bout of dizziness slams through his head, and for a second, his mind goes completely blank. He shakes his head to reorient himself, only to meet Dabi’s less than impressed gaze. “I’m fine,” he says, reaching for another nugget.
“I didn’t ask.” Still, Dabi pushes the box of nuggets towards him and passes him a tub of something red labelled ‘ketchup’. Hawks dips a nugget in. He ascends to a higher astral plane.
“You still remember ambrosia,” Dabi muses, and Hawks doesn’t see a need to answer, so he stuffs another nugget into his face. They’re dangerously addicting. Straight up sinful . “That’ll probably fade soon, though. Unless you get back.”
At that, Hawks looks up. He pauses.
“There’s a way back?” he asks. The words are vulnerable in the air, so open, so easy to shoot back down, but the demon in front of him does nothing of the sort. Instead, he leans back, a contemplative look on his face, like he’s searching for something and can’t find it.
“There is,” he says, and if Hawks wasn’t listening so carefully, he would’ve thought Dabi sounded almost bored. “There’s always a way back to Heaven.”
“What is it?”
Every fibre of his being strains to listen, and at the cocky half-smile on Dabi’s face, he knows he’s exactly where the demon wants him. So be it.
Dabi takes his time, picking his burger back up and biting into it with a slow satisfaction that sends Hawks’ teeth grinding. Just to prove that this doesn’t affect him, he finishes the rest of his nuggets, matching Dabi’s snail-paced bites.
As the only one out of them both who has money, Dabi is also forced to pay for their meal, which Hawks thinks is another win for him. It really doesn’t give much cause for Dabi to be looking this smug when he’s just scored himself ten yen off his coffee and a free meal.
“So tell me,” he says, stretching his arms above his head and trying to ignore the jolt in his stomach when he leans too far forward, without the reassuring weight of his wings behind his back, “how do angels get back to Heaven?”
The look Dabi gives him is tinged with pain, bittersweet and melancholic and longing; too many emotions for Hawks to decipher all at once.
“It’s obvious, isn’t it?” he says, and he steps out of the glow cast by the streetlights. “You kill a demon.”
The feather against Hawks’ chest burns .
* * *
“Tell me you’re lying.”
Keigo winces, instinctively curling his wings a little tighter around his body, but he keeps his mouth shut. Rumi stands up, wings flaring, eyes blazing with anger and—fear? It’s not a tinge of it this time, it’s definite fear; angels have nothing to fear, and Rumi, with her confidence and reckless determination, fears even less than other angels.
The look in her eyes can’t be described by any other word, though.
“Keigo,” she says, and her voice is urgent, serious. “Why?”
He closes his eyes for a moment, and the sear of blue fire glows against his eyelids. He exhales.
“He was just a kid, Rumi,” he says quietly, uncaring now if the wind hears him. Let it. If he’s going to be punished anyway, let the air hear his reasoning behind his actions. “You know how Hellfire works. It was burning him from the inside out, and he had three younger siblings to protect—you should have seen the scars on his arms. His father kept pushing him to release it, and I think he just—snapped. He was desperate. He was willing to send himself up in flames to burn his father and protect his family.”
It’s the first time the words have come out of his mouth, and he feels so much lighter and so much heavier at the same time. Rumi doesn’t respond immediately.
“So you saved him,” she says finally, and there’s no blame in her voice. “He was meant to die, but you saved him?”
The melody of the air around them drops to a lilting hum, one that sets his nerves on edge with how gentle it is. “Surely He made a mistake. He was only a child, Rumi.”
“ He doesn’t make mistakes,” is Rumi’s automatic response, but she sits back down next to him, a little closer than before, and sighs. Her voice is soft. “The kid must not have had it easy, though. Hellfire is a curse—it’s possible that he was always destined to burn.”
Keigo tilts his head. “Explain.”
“So now I’m the smart one.” Rumi smiles teasingly, but it fades quickly, squashed by the weight of the situation. “Hellfire doesn’t just exist, you know. It’s a demon fire. Only The Fallen can wield it.” She tilts her head upwards, towards the sky, and the stars reflect in her eyes like crushed diamond on velvet. “The kid you saved—did he have infernal blood?”
Keigo tries to remember, but all that comes to mind is the burning against his skin. “The Hellfire was too much. I couldn’t tell.”
Rumi makes a sound of contemplation.
“Either way,” she says quietly, “you still interfered. Let’s just hope that when you fall, He’ll be kind enough to take your memories away, too.”
They stay silent, watching as the first tinge of the dawn paints the sky with sunlight.