Archive of Our Own

Skittering along the forest floor, Dabi cackles to himself. The edges of leaves burn in his wake, not enough to start a full fire but enough to leave tracks of his presence. Warm air follows, drifting up to rustle the boughs of the trees linked above.

Dabi pauses at the base of a gnarled hawthorn. It’s one of his favorite trees because it’s ugly, knobby and gouged and blackened in its ancientness. The thing still blooms without fail, its flowers dropping too soon compared to other hawthorn trees, but even when its naked, Dabi loves it. Something about its scars inspired him to tentatively call it home. As a wisp, he doesn’t need to rest, but it’s nice to sit in the hawthorn’s hollow and watch the way his fire lights it up from the inside, never burning.

It’s not in bloom now, not with the shift from summer to autumn a mere moment away. No, no—instead, change is potent in each passing second, like something horrific is going to happen at each turn.

How delightful.

It only fuels Dabi more, makes him restless for it. He wants to play tricks on travelers passing through, lead them astray with his teasing and watch them struggle. Sure, he’ll get them where they’re going eventually—it is his whole reason for existing—but still. He doesn’t see the problem in wanting to have a little fun.

The only actual problem?

No one ever passes through his forest.

He vaguely knows it covers a swath of land bordering two countries—the only border—and it’s a narrow, sharp thing, like a blade. A peak rises in the exact middle, forcing any paths that someone might have taken to skirt around its base or risk any passage that might lead through it.

Dabi’s strange sense of time pushes that it’s been several summers since someone visited his forest. Even then, that traveler wasn’t very exciting. Nothing like he thought the man was going to be. He didn’t speak to Dabi or scream at his light. No, he was quiet the entire time, eyes wide and darting at every sound.

Dabi tried to take the traveler on the scenic route: across the rushing river, among the prickly honey locust stand, through the open field with the strange watchers out of the corner of one’s eye, betwixt the pixie groves snarling with teeth and clutching vines—all and more very amusing to Dabi, some of his favorite things to go see in his everyday patter across the forest floor, but alas. It wasn’t to be.

The traveler followed Dabi willingly, the blue light of Dabi’s body a comfort. As it should be.

Dabi lost him somewhere in the field. At least, he thinks that’s where he lost him. The watchers watched, still and shadowed with their wide, white eyes unblinking. But then one of them moved out of the corner of Dabi’s eye, just a flicker.

And his traveler was gone.

Dabi railed at the watchers, flitting between their limbs and casting embers and plumes of smoke. They watched his light as watchers do and didn’t flinch at the burns he inflicted on them. Chewing them out brought only minor satisfaction once he exhausted himself.

Instead, Dabi traced the path he took with his one traveler for a long time after, bemoaning the loss of entertainment and the unfamiliar crack of human tongue in his forest plagued with wind and birdsong alone. Eventually, he forgets why, exactly, he takes this exact path, confused by his own actions and hazy in a way that tells him he’s forgotten something important.

Dabi knows this is his punishment—his father, Lord Endeavor, cast Dabi to this forest many, many seasons ago. For what? Dabi finds it hard to recall; something about his light, his burning compared to the other, obedient, perfect wisps Endeavor cultivated. Dabi was deemed unworthy of the forest frequently traveled by important humans, and so he was cast away.

There are other will-o-wisps in this forest. No more than a handful, but their lights are strange. They try to beckon Dabi closer, to draw him into their little circle of laughter and dancing up in the hills and that terrifying peak, but Dabi resists. He doesn’t know exactly what holds him back, but their grouping makes him ache, and so he stays away.

He wanders and burns and laughs to himself over the things he sees; squirrels fighting with each other, the rabbits playing chase, the deer with sharp teeth and red eyes between the trunks of trees that sway a bit too much to be anything other than intentional. He messes with the pixies, drawing their hordes on an always-entertaining game of chase. He chatters at the watchers in the field, who never respond or move their gaze to the burning blue wisp at what may be their feet. No, no, no, they always look north, up at the impossible stars that circle and circle, and the dark things that lurk between each one. Constellation’s leap, abound in their freedom from this realm, and the watchers never waiver. Dabi watches with them, sometimes, but the stars make him dizzy, make his edges unravel and an ancient screaming sound in his very core. Dabi moves on and soon enough, it fades and he’s once again whole.

He exists, and he makes the best of it.

Until, one day in this turn of summer, a traveler appears.

Dabi is in his other form, the secret one he was born in. He’s up a tree, peering into a bird’s nest to watch the eggs. The mother doesn’t mind his presence—she knows he won’t mess with them, much as he might find it fun. Something in him prevents the loss of life in his forest; perhaps it’s his ties to it, or maybe he’s not that kind of wisp. Dabi knows of wisps that intentionally lead travelers to their deaths.

He could do that. Some days, it’s all he can imagine, excitement alighting each root he passes in little pops of fire. It would be fun—the best trick he’s ever played, but he would also lose his traveler. So few and far between as they are, it’s not worth the momentary joy.

The forest shudders as the traveler’s foot passes the invisible boundary line.

Like a shot, Dabi is off, turning into his wisp form and screeching through the forest with unbridled glee. Animals and creatures scatter, terrified of the traveler through sheer unknowing.

Dabi sees the other wisps as well, feels them coming to the draw of a traveler in need of direction. It’s an almost tangible thing in all wisps, Dabi is the one in control of this forest, though. He’s the one with the direct tie to Lord Endeavor, and so his fire burns hotter, pushing him faster to beat the strangely-colored wisps and set his gaze upon the traveler first.

Dabi hides behind a tree trunk, peering around it as the traveler walks. He’s—different. Dabi has never seen a traveler like this, even when he was a coveted disciple of Lord Endeavor. Massive red wings sprout from his back. Matching tailfeathers drape over the back of his hips and thighs, twitching with each noise he hears. Blonde hair glimmers when he passes beneath a break in the boughs, burnished gold with sunlight. His skin is warm, a bridge of freckles passing over his nose and connecting to each cheek. Talons curve from his fingers gripping the over-sized backpack that looks to be specially made for his wings. Dabi spies open-toed shoes with similar talons and a hint of scaley feet.

He tries to place the man, long thought-to-be-forgotten knowledge coming back about each kingdom. He remembers a tiny one to the east, right at the edge of the world. The name escapes him, but the people there had a distinctive magic about them, taking on bird-like qualities and coveting shiny, beautiful things.

Dabi can’t blame them—this man is shiny and beautiful himself. A fine woven shirt lies open at the chest, the strings loosened against the heat. High-waisted black traveling pants draw over toned legs. Gold and silver drip from his ears; they nestle at the base of each finger as well, glinting with a bit of color. And behind it all are the rich, red feathers, flexing here and there as he walks.

He’s the best thing Dabi has seen in a long, long time.

Greatest of all, he looks like a traveler in need of some fun.

With late-afternoon nigh, Dabi zips along, tree to tree as the traveler wanders. He whistles to himself occasionally or chirps just like the birds Dabi knows so well. Sometimes, he sings, and Dabi shivers in delight at the unfamiliar sound of a human voice in his forest. It’s pleasant to Dabi, warm and rich with a pretty timbre he’s desperate to hear more of.

Once Dabi is satisfied with his observations, he sprints ahead of the traveler’s path he’s chosen, waiting for the perfect moment.

One.

Two…

Three—

Dabi darts across the traveler’s path, skating right over his taloned toes and making the traveler jump back with a shout. Dabi shoves himself behind a tree, laughing to himself as the yells turn to curses and questions.

“What the hell was that? Did I—am I hallucinating?”

Well. That’s just rude. Can’t have that.

Dabi shifts around the trunk until he’s visible to the traveler. Wonderful golden eyes latch onto Dabi’s blue light and shapeless form, the pupils pinning just like the warblers or the robins. Black marks at the corners of his eyes make him look that much sharper, that much more perfectly strange to Dabi’s gaze.

“Oh,” breathes the traveler. “Oh, you’re a wisp.”

Dabi lets his light flicker in acknowledgement.

The traveler sucks in a sharp breath. “Was that a yes?”

Dabi does it again, laughing to himself. Didn’t he know how to read wisps? It’s not like his kind are uncommon. A bit shyer, yes, but common all the same.

Something in the traveler relaxes, a smile crawling over his face. “I suppose you’re here to guide me through your forest?”

Dabi darts closer, making the traveler take a step back. He wiggles his light in another ‘yes.’

“You’re…quite bright for a wisp. And much more forward than the others I’ve encountered.” The traveler’s eyes turn studying, pupils still pinning a bit as he looks at Dabi.

Dabi studies him right back, though he doesn’t know what he’s looking for. His glee is bursting at his very form, making his light fluctuate and cast the traveler’s face in blue-white relief against the darkening of the forest. This traveler is talking to him, and best of all, he’s listening to Dabi’s responses. The only thing that stops him from transforming into his birthed form is some echo of warning in his bones never to reveal it to the travelers in his forest.

Then, the traveler does the strangest thing.

He bends at the waist, sweeping one wing out in front of him like it’s an arm. Behind him, his tailfeathers flare wide. His eyes close, head dipping with the full-body bow he offers Dabi like he’s…worth that respect.

“My name is Hawks. I’m a traveling jeweler seeking passage through your forest so I may explore for hidden gems and metals to use in my craft. Will you guide me, dear wisp?”

Dabi is so shocked his light almost snuffs itself out. A traveler that talked to him and sought permission? As if he, Dabi, of all wisps, is a being laudable of such a thing? Especially when Lord Endeavor thinks him so low, so unworthy as to shackle him to such an unwanted place?

Hawks straightens, watching Dabi’s light flicker in thought. Dabi wishes he could ask why—what is on the other side of his forest that is so precious as to risk traveling it? Sure, gems and metals are one answer, but literally no one dares to come here. There must be something more. He knows there are rumors of his forest, of the appalling, wicked things that Dabi so delights in and the strange lights that dance in the shadows of the trees—it’s why he was given this forest in the first place—but for a traveler to risk it with no apparent fear Dabi can see?

Granted, he’s not the best at seeing emotion in human faces since it’s been so long, but still. He’s not completely lost.

Besides, fear is known to every creature. Dabi is no exception.

Dabi laughs, more at himself than anything.

Hawks’ head cocks to the side at the whispered noise. “Are you laughing at me?” Hawks asks, his mouth twitching into a smile.

Dabi laughs again.

Hawks’ smile grows.

“What? Was I too serious?”

Dabi’s light flickers, ‘Yes.’

“I see, I’ll make note of it. I’m still hoping you’ll guide me, though. No one has a map of your forest to assist me.”

Dabi’s whisper-laughs again. He zooms around Hawks’ ankles, trying to decide what to show him first and ignoring the way Hawks almost trips over himself at the sudden movement.

Finally, Dabi decides. He darts to the left, determined to show Hawks everything he can.

Hawks watches Dabi move. “Am I to follow now?”

Dabi says, ‘Yes.’

“Are you going to lead me to my death if I follow?” Hawks sounds almost bemused at the idea.

Irritation flickers through Dabi. He snaps his light twice.

“Is that a no?”

Dabi confirms it.

Hawks nods. “All right then, I’m trusting you to help me out, dear wisp. Don’t let me down, okay?”

Dabi doesn’t plan on it. He cackles, rocketing ahead of Hawks impatiently and waiting for his new traveler to catch up.

***

It’s night, the shadows long and deep between the trees. Dabi has been leading Hawks around and around, showing him every queer, wonderful thing he can and leaping in excitement when Hawks would exclaim over it. That always ended in Hawks laughing at Dabi’s lack of control over his form, the way Hawks learned quickly how to read Dabi’s fire like it is a book and not a language of light. If Dabi burned holes in Hawks’ shirt for the laughter and the way it made his blue fire spark purple in embarrassment, well; hopefully, Hawks couldn’t pick up on that particular bit of it.

Now, Hawks pauses his steady walking. His wings draw tight around himself, tailfeathers pressed flat. A shiver runs through them. “It’s cold and dark, dear wisp. I must eat and sleep before I continue. Can you find me a place to start a fire?”

Dabi hesitates, considering the request. He doesn’t want to stop or slow down. He doesn’t want to risk Hawks no longer speaking with him or asking Dabi questions. He doesn’t want the things in the shadows to get him the moment he pauses because Dabi knows they’re waiting. Much as he would like to keep them away, he’s one wisp against them all. The respect he’s cultivated through his ties to Lord Endeavor and the way he never backs down from them can only go so far.

They’re not malicious things, but they are beasts. Full of instinct and instinct alone. If Hawks stops, Dabi doesn’t know that he’ll be able to keep his traveler safe.

The idea of it hurts him, his light wavering.

“Hey, what’s wrong? Don’t be sad. I’m not going anywhere,” Hawks says, taking a step closer to Dabi.

But how will he protect him? Dabi hems and haws over it, his whispers growing until it’s almost speaking volume. Hawks watches and waits, minding the agitated flicker of Dabi’s light.

Finally, seeing no good options, Dabi beckons Hawks to follow and leads him closer to the hills, to the mountain peaking in the center of his forest. At least there, with the mountain at their backs, it’s one less angle for Dabi to try and cover. He doesn’t know exactly what he’ll be able to do, but he will sure as hell try for his traveler.

Dabi finds a decent spot in the cupping of two hills back by the mountain. Foliage covers the area, extending shelter to keep Hawks hidden from view; a fallen tree offers something to prop against. Fireflies flash in the clearing, inviting in their song only the wisps could ever understand.

Once Dabi stops, Hawks looks around, nods his head in agreement, and begins setting up for the night.

He drops his heavy backpack against the log, stretching his wings and back, tailfeathers flexing. Once finished, he clears away a patch of leaves and debris, leaving it bare. Scouring around the area Dabi picked, Hawks returns with branches and stones. He makes a few trips to get enough of them. He rings the cleared area with the stones and builds a funny little shape with the branches, piling more off to the side. Dabi sits nearby, watching curiously at his traveler’s actions.

None of them have ever lasted long enough for Dabi to see this nighttime routine.

Hawks pauses, looking to Dabi. “Help me out, little wisp? I could use some fire here.” He points at the shape of the wood in the pit.

Cautiously, Dabi approaches. He flicks his fire against the wood, leaping back when it ignites immediately. Of course, Dabi has seen fire. He’s created it many times with his burning brightness, but he’s never seen fire like this: fire that’s contained.

Hawks beams at Dabi. “Thanks a lot, you’re most helpful for me today.”

His traveler shuffles closer to the warmth, spreading his red wings and sitting himself on the ground before it. He extends his hands towards it, rubbing them occasionally. The orange fire, so different than Dabi’s blue, casts everything in a beauty he didn’t realize he was missing. He aches, sharp and deep.

Dabi retreats from the ring of light, watching Hawks from the shadows. He can feel the beasts beginning to awaken just as he can feel Hawks’ eyes on him. Dabi ignores Hawks for the moment, concentrating on what lurks.

He feels them draw closer, lured by the light of the fire and the traveler. They’re curious, and hungry, snuffling along the trails Hawks left of his scent through the leaves and brush. A pack of black dogs howl somewhere, catching a lead on their prey. Dabi’s light shivers. The dogs don’t listen to him—don’t listen to anyone unless it’s in the language of violence.

Closer still they come, Hawks completely oblivious to it. Dabi draws himself in tight, coalescing his form into a single, blue-white star of fire.

Closer and closer. Tighter and tighter. Brilliant beyond comprehension.

Hawks shuts his eyes against the light, saying, “What—"

Closer.

Dabi is ready to explode as eyes peer at the fire behind Dabi, at the bird-like traveler shielding his eyes against Dabi’s light, his pack half-emptied in the quest for food. The curiosity turns to hunger, ancient and deep. Dabi draws tighter still, his form so compressed, so hot, the earth wilts around him.

As the beasts prepare to leap, there’s a bought of laughter. Familiar in the worst way.

Dabi loses his grip on his fire and turns, seeing the other wisps in his forest burst into the ring where Hawks waits. Tomura and Toga, Compress and Spinner, Magne and Kurogiri—Dabi knows them all through a series of introductions and beckoning when he was first sentenced to be keeper of this forest.

They pour in, flitting to Hawks for only a moment before spreading to the edges of the clearing, taking a stand in seven points with Dabi as if—

“Woah, uh. Hi,” Hawks says, waving at the group of wisps and blinking against the change now that Dabi’s no longer ready to explode.

Each wisp flickers their hello, whispered laughter and chatter echoing around the clearing. Dabi watches as the beasts take heed of the multitude of wisps—never to be angered, never to be crossed with their volatile magic—and leave.

Dabi’s form relaxes, releasing the tension inch by inch he’d been drawing into himself. He turns.

Hawks watches him, wings pressed against his back and eyes flicking to the other wisps like he’s trying to tell if he’s in danger.

Dabi draws closer, trying to be reassuring with his softening flames.

“Is there—is there something wrong?” Hawks asks. Howls rise in the distance, fading as the pack of dogs catch a new scent, one not protected by seven will-o-wisps.

‘No,’ Dabi’s light answers.

“Am I still safe here?”

‘Yes.’ Dabi would allow nothing less for his traveler.

“Are these your friends?”

Dabi hesitates over that. He feels more than sees the attention the other wisps turn on him at that, waiting for his answer. It’s not like he’s never spoken with them, but Dabi wouldn’t push to answer one way or the other.

The other wisps answer for him, flickering in the now-universal sign for ‘yes.’

Hawks laughs at the dance of light. “I see. Pleasure to meet you all. I’m Hawks.”

Their mingling, hissed laughter fills the space, accented by Hawks’ own delight. Toga, a blood red wisp, draws closer to Hawks out of curiosity.

Dabi rushes over and inserts himself between them, flaring wide. Toga backs off, but Dabi can tell she’s circling, looking for a moment to jump on. She always was the over-eager wisp of the group, prone to jump-scaring Dabi at every opportunity despite the way he rages at her for it.

Hawks laughs some more as Dabi attempts to keep the other wisps away. Spinner and Magne try, green and orange respectively, but Dabi gives them the same treatment. Compress, Tomura, and Kurogiri stay at the outskirts, watching both the shenanigans and the forest at the same time. For their silence and distance, Dabi utters a ‘thank you’ before he’s once again interrupting the other wisps trying to get close to his traveler.

“You’re all so energetic,” Hawks says, tossing on more branches to keep the fire going. All the wisps in the clearing flash brighter with the fire before settling once more, mirroring it. “I don’t know how I’m going to sleep. I don’t want to miss any of it.”

Dabi pauses, his form wavering near Hawks.

“I didn’t expect such a welcoming reception in this forest. People say the most awful things about it, you know? I can’t even tell you the amount of people that wished me a quick death when I told them about passing through here. They said I was crazy.” Hawks grins at Dabi, lop-sided and genuine. “Now who’s the crazy one?”

Dabi’s form unravels in delight, extending in curling loops that belay the joy he can’t even describe. It’s more than he’s ever hoped for, ever dared to dream for. He would think and think about the travelers passing through, how he could play with them, lead them to special, secret places Dabi covets, keep them safe and guide them to their destination with all the praises on their tongue for a wisp that excelled on all fronts. He wants their words to travel far and wide—to reach the ears of Lord Endeavor and know Dabi has turned this curse into a blessing. Even if he can’t remember what, exactly, he did to deserve it, Dabi knows throwing it back on him would be the most satisfying thing he could possibly do.

Hawks chuckles at Dabi. “Like that, hmm?”

Dabi’s form trails again, falling apart with every word Hawks utters. He flares purple, trying to shove it back down to blue.

“I’ll have to tell everyone about this place,” Hawks continues. “About the pretty blue wisp that guided me safely through this treacherous forest.”

 And oh, if that’s not the best thing Dabi’s ever heard.

He moves towards Hawks, leaping upon him, dancing over the spread of his wings, the line of his shoulders, and the crown of golden hair on his head. Blue sparks fall from him, harmless and dazzling. Like a halo, like a veil. Dabi skirts the length of Hawks’ arms, looping beneath them and brushing over his torso until Hawks is laughing. He twirls between his calves a few times before perching on Hawks’ knee, mindful of his temperature. Dabi knows how flammable humans are; he can’t remember how he knows, but he knows nonetheless. He has no wish to leave even a scorched hair on this one. Not at all.

Hawks’ laughter quiets. He doesn’t move, watching Dabi sit on his knee and shine with crescendoing words and laughter humans can’t understand.

“You’re something else,” he says to Dabi. Dabi looks right into Hawks’ eyes, seeing his burning blue reflection in the pools of his pinning pupils. “I’ve never met a wisp like you. Any of you, really. What strange little things you are. In a good way, mind you, but strange nonetheless.”

Dabi doesn’t mind. He can be strange, stranger still. The temptation to transform grips him once more, but still he resists. The other wisps don’t seem bothered by similar feelings, twirling around the little clearing in obvious happiness at Hawks’ kind words and mimicking the leap of the orange fire keeping Hawks warm.

They continue, leaving trails of multicolored sparks wherever they go. Dabi joins them eventually when Hawks whispers to him that he should. Since his traveler said it so nicely and with such a pretty, sleepy flush to his face, Dabi didn’t fight against the urge too much.

It’s—nice. Nicer than Dabi thought it would be. He’s never danced with them despite the many summers he’s been in this forest. Usually, they stay in those hills, beckoning to him always in a welcoming way that is so, so tempting, but so painful at the same time.

Perhaps it wouldn’t be so bad to join them more often.

Hawks watches and watches, settling down on a sleeping pallet he unraveled from his pack. His wings cover him like blankets, his drowsy golden eyes blinking occasionally with near-childish wonder. Eventually, the blinks take longer and longer to come, his eyelids heavy in the way they slip.

“Watch over me, dear wisps?” he murmurs.

Each wisp lights up in promise. ‘Yes.’

Sleep comes easy for Hawks.

The rest of them keep guard, dancing the night away among whispered laughter and the flash of fireflies.

***

Dabi hovers near the edge of the forest, watching Hawks catch up to him for the last time.

He’d prodded Hawks awake that morning with showers of warm sparks, watching in bemusement as the traveler grumped at him and tried to hide in his feathers.

Dabi just singed the ends of his tailfeathers for it, prompting Hawks to finally get moving.

He’d helped Hawks restart the fire for an hour or two to eat and warm himself back up. The other wisps and fireflies had scattered with the morning sun, leaving just Hawks and Dabi once more.

Once Hawks was ready, Dabi led him around much like yesterday, avoiding going up the mountain; instead, Dabi was showing off the lightning-struck tree with the strange moss that grew on it, the pixie hollows, and the field with the watchers. Hawks didn’t really like the pixies, but he was fascinated by the watchers. Dabi stuck close to him the whole time, watching them right back to be sure none of them took his traveler.

Finally, at Hawks’ flagging enthusiasm around midday, Dabi forlornly led him to the edge of the forest where Hawks was aiming for in the first place.

His traveler finally caught up to him, looking to Dabi and then at the break of trees ahead of him.

“Another field, dear wisp?”

‘No,’ Dabi answers in fire.

Hawks frowns. “Then what is it?”

Dabi waits. Hawks shuffles forward, then ahead of Dabi’s position near a tree. He looks back at Dabi, surprise plain on his face to find him still and waiting.

“Is this—is this the other side?”

‘Yes,’ Dabi answers.

Hawks smiles, slow and growing into something beaming. “You did not lead me astray, dear wisp. And for that, and all the wonders you’ve shown me, I thank you.” He bows once more, eagerness pulling at his wings, making them fluff in anticipation of what precious jewels he may find.

Sadness pulls at Dabi. He should have led him somewhere else. He should have kept him stuck in his forest, endlessly pulling him around and around so he couldn’t leave. He should have let the beasts have him. At least then, Dabi would have bones to remember him by.

Dabi is afraid the traveler will not return to him. He’d heard of travelers never returning, never retracing their paths back to wherever home lies. It was familiar in that it was fact and nothing more. It may happen; it may not. The fear remains.

The worst fear of all, though, is Dabi being afraid he will forget about Hawks.

Something about his light must key Hawks in because his smile fades. “Are you sad to see me go?” he asks. “Do you not have other travelers to guide? I know this forest’s reputation, but I cannot be the only one.”

‘No,’ Dabi answers. He wishes he had a tongue and teeth, a voice box to say, ‘You’re the only one.’

Instead, Hawks smiles at him once more. “Then I will be sure to return to you, dear wisp. I’ll bring you something from my travels as thanks for your services. I’ll make sure it’s something beautiful, something no one else in the entire world will ever have. And when I return, can you guide me back home, to the other side once more?”

Eager and hopeful but trying to hide it, Dabi answers in pale fire. ‘Yes.’

“Then I shall do so as quickly as I possibly can. And I am one of the fastest people I know, so no need to worry your pretty head on my part. I’ll be back before you know it. Not even enough time to miss me,” Hawks says with a wink and a flex of his big wings. “May I ask you one more thing?”

Dabi waits.

Hawks’ head cocks to the side. Dabi’s seen birds do the same, over and over. “Do you have a name?”

‘Yes.’ It feels wrong to admit it—after all, he’s just a wisp, just a lonely light in a forest full of terrible things.

“Is there a way for you to tell me?”

Dabi hesitates. He could transform, try out that mouth that hasn’t uttered a word in what feels like decades. Now that he thinks about it, it might have been decades. But no, he cannot transform. Not yet, not allowed.

An idea comes to him.

Dabi turns to the tree at his back and lights up the edge of a flame. He sears characters into the bark, spelling out “Dabi” as best he can remember. It’s been a long, long time since he’s done such a thing, even pictured the characters as he once learned them as a little boy.

Hawks walks forward and peers at it, pupils pinning in apparent interest. He grabs for his pack, pulling out a stick of charcoal and a piece of paper and copying the characters. “I don’t know this language you write in,” Hawks says, “but I will figure it out. And when I come back, I’ll call your name, okay?”

With that, Hawks departs the forest, stepping over the boundary line with a cheery goodbye and a mighty flap of his wings. Dabi watches until he’s out of sight.

***

After Hawks, Dabi is…well, there isn’t a word he’s willing to use to describe the riot of feelings suddenly very present.

Instead, he burns.

Dabi becomes the wicked things he protected Hawks from that night, scorching paths in the earth and setting brush ablaze with each pass. The creatures in his forest cow at his rampaging, staying far away from Dabi as best they can. A few get burned in the process, but they learn.

They always learn.

The other wisps try to calm him, try to reassure him with flickering lights and beckoning trails of flames, but Dabi scorns them. He builds himself up as big as he can, a flaming demon with a gaping maw, and screams his hatred. For Hawks, for Lord Endeavor, and for himself. Never has he yearned so acutely, wanted so completely.

Wisps are not supposed to want. They are supposed to serve and guide and play tricks. They are supposed to accept the passing of each soul through their forest like each traveler is sacred, and then let them go.

Dabi’s never been good at letting go.

As the days pass, Dabi’s temper keeps flaring. He exercises each spark of it on the world around him. Some dim part of him knows it’s wrong, but he doesn’t care. He doesn’t, doesn’t, doesn’t.

Dabi blazes and bolts through the honey locust grove, his fire searing the thorns on each branch and trunk he passes. The strange forms of beasts just slightly wrong slink away from the grove, heads down and necks bared. Above him, a bird cries warning of his presence.

He pauses and stares up at the fleeing form. Something in him shudders, something about the bird and wings. Dabi remembers red, but nothing more.

Why is he upset again? Why is he harming his forest?

Was there even a reason in the first place?

It had to be something important. Dabi’s light dims as he considers, trying and trying to remember what drove him to such lengths.

Nothing comes. Just red, and the niggling of feathers just out of reach.

Dabi settles, taking his time to weave through the grove. He brushes harmlessly past the trees he left marks on, a wordless apology.

He follows his own destruction, his flickering form small and meek. While he doesn’t have the magic to fix what he’s done, this slowing, this care and the shade of light he casts conveys his message well enough for the denizens of his forest:

I’m sorry.

He goes to the other wisps with the same message, up in the hills and watching Dabi’s destruction play out. He doesn’t know why he does—some vague flicker of a night spent dancing around a fire fading with each moment—but it feels right to him.

They accept him easily, gathering close to him and speaking their worry and relief in the language of fire. He allows it for as long as he can bear before he has to leave, to run and trace some random path that has no meaning to him.

He wanders. Explores and befriends the beasts all over again until they no longer hide from him. Over and over he ends up in a clearing, staring at the scuffed dirt in the middle and wondering what did it. It’s like something important is just out of reach, something he needs to remember—

He forgets about it soon enough. Dabi waits. He watches.

A traveler will surely come soon.

Surely.

***

In the first week of winter, a traveler enters Dabi’s forest.

He’s off as soon as a foot crosses the boundary line, skidding over fallen leaves and wilting branches. The sky is gray today, clouded over with the inevitable snow gathering to fall. It shouldn’t be much longer before his forest is blanketed in white, the trees like fingers of giants sleeping beneath the earth clutching close against the cold. Boughs will bend and some may snap, but the horror of winter’s time will fade as soon as spring arrives once more.

Dabi hurries himself towards the traveler, noting the swarm of the other wisps following just behind. He pays them no attention, his being centered on the new traveler and what wonderful things Dabi may be able to show him, what delicious little tricks he might play.

A strange, clicking whistle breaks from the trees ahead of him, right where the traveler should be. It makes him pause, something within him tugging hard.

The other wisps pass him, trailing over the roots to greet the traveler while Dabi tries to put himself together.

“Wisps!” says a cheery voice. “Happy to see you all once more. But where is the pretty blue one?”

Dabi creeps forward, still off-kilter, his flames trembling as he peers around a tree trunk.

At the sight of red, it all comes rushing back.

Hawks.

Dabi bursts from behind the tree, scaring Hawks for all of a moment before he’s grinning over the high edge of his coat collar, his face full of a light not even the wisps would be able to replicate with their fire.

“My dear wisp!” he greets. “You’ve no idea how happy I am to see your light once more.”

Dabi’s form rebels against the punch of emotion he feels, happiness and delight warring with frustration, with anger and above all a mourning sorrow. How could he have forgotten such an important person? How could he have forgotten such a smile? Such brightness?

“I see you’re happy to see me as well,” Hawks says, “I hope you haven’t been leading anyone astray while I was on the other side.”

He honestly can’t remember if he did or not. He says, ‘No.’ Just to be safe. And avoid any negative judgement in those golden eyes.

Hawks smiles even more. “Good. Is there anyone else in this forest today? Just me?”

The other wisps all shake with their forms.

“Even better. I get you all to myself. I confess, I thought about the lot of you many, many times on my journey on the other side. Say, can you all hold onto things?”

The abrupt question has Dabi’s fire flickering in confusion.

“Like a stone? I’ve brought you all gifts for leading me so carefully through the forest my first time around.”

Oh.

At the idea of gifts, the wisps explode.

They move that much faster, leap that much higher, burn that much brighter. Every form falls apart on itself, spilling over the earth and dead branches like they just can’t hold themselves together, like the idea of appreciation in this small form is the most cherished, unattainable idea they’ve ever had. They are stars untangled, unraveling to show each inch of themselves before such a kindness.

Dabi is among them, his form burning white hot and making Hawks cover his eyes for protection. A gift, chants them all. A gift, a gift, a gift.

It takes a moment to calm down. Hawks lowers his hand from his eyes when the light fades, warily watching the wisps like they could blind him at any moment. Dabi’s edges snap, drawing Hawks’ gaze.

“That was…dramatic.”

Hawks pauses.

“I like it. You guys are so odd. I didn’t even know will-o-wisps could do that, hey?” Hawks takes a breath as if he’s gathering himself, straightening his shoulders and glancing around the area curiously. Dabi cautions himself to be patient for his traveler despite the way he wants to explode again and again.

“So? Can you hold things?”

Forlorn at that question, Dabi says, ‘No.’

“Ah, that’s quite all right. Lead me to a safe place and I will leave them for you so you can come back and look at them whenever you please. How about that, huh?”

Dabi coasts towards Hawks, curling about his golden locks like a crown of blue fire. Hawks laughs. The movement jostles Dabi, his vibrant, blue sparks sliding over the bridge of Hawks’ freckled nose.

“I’m assuming that’s a yes?”

After the wisps confirm it, Dabi takes point and leads Hawks on their trail. Over and under, around and around. Occasionally, one of the wisps pause and urgently pull Hawks’ attention where they want him to drop his gift for them. The rest of the wisps try to peek over Hawks’ wings or from behind his ankles. He shoos them away.

“Don’t ruin the surprise now,” he chastises, but it’s soft.

As each wisp receives their gift, they stay with it instead of continuing on. Soon enough, it’s just Dabi, Tomura, and Hawks trundling through Dabi’s forest.

Once they near the center of the forest where the mountain lies, Dabi starts to skirt around it like he always does. Tomura, however, breaks away, pulling at Hawks’ attention with snaps of his silvery flames that Dabi does not appreciate whatsoever.

“What? Up the mountain?” Hawks gestures.

‘Yes,’ Tomura answers.

Dabi drifts between them, trying to keep Hawks away. He doesn’t know why he tries to do so—he’s never been up on the mountain, but something primal keeps him firmly at the base, always looking up to a peak that is as unfamiliar as the world outside of his forest.

Hawks shrugs like it’s no big deal and tries to walk around Dabi.

Dabi cuts him off, stuttering Hawks’ steps by running in front of his feet.

“Oh, crap—” Hawks regains his footing, peering down at Dabi. “What was that for?”

Dabi’s fire flickers angrily, the lilting of his voice lost in a sudden gust of wind.

“What’re you pissed about? I don’t understand.”

Tomura shoves himself at Dabi, his fire rising to meet the agitated swirl of Dabi’s. Never one to be cowed, especially not by Tomura’s sour attitude, Dabi ignites himself brighter, hotter, growing into a bigger size that engulfs Tomura’s steady silvery burn.

“Shit,” Hawks curses, stepping back from the sudden heat.

Tomura backs off after a tense second, but he doesn’t waiver from his position near the mountain, his light flickering impatiently.

“I don’t know what’s going on, but it’s no big deal to go a little ways up the mountain,” Hawks says, hands held placatingly before himself. Dabi veritably hisses at him. “It’ll be all right. You’ll guide me back down, yeah?”

Dabi pulls away from Hawks, from the mountain.

Hawks’ eyebrows bunch in confusion. “What? Not coming with?”

Dabi remains where he is, watchful. He can’t go up the mountain. He can’t.

Hawks watches Dabi back for all of three seconds before he turns to follow Tomura. “I’ll be right back, then. Can’t be anything too scary with all the other stuff in this forest. Meet me back here?”

He doesn’t wait for Dabi’s answer, already fording a path up the mountain following the lure of Tomura’s light.

Dabi waits and waits. While he can feel when travelers enter his forest, his awareness of them fades after that initial moment. He has no idea how far up Tomura is taking Hawks—if he’s on his way back down or still climbing—and he can’t help but itch with nervous energy.

He doesn’t know how long he waits there. Enough for his awareness to zone out, just enough for him to forget the red feathers in his eyeline or the voice calling—

“Dear wisp! I’m back.”

Hawks pops up in front of Dabi, grin on his face and completely unruffled. Dabi’s form jolts in surprise, but soon enough he’s skating between Hawks’ ankles happily, urging him away from the mountain.

Hawks laughs at him. “Oh dear, it’s only been about ten minutes and you missed me that much? You spoil me with your attention.”

Dabi shakes his flame. ‘No.’

“You say that, but I don’t believe you. I mean, here I am following around a little group of wisps and giving you all priceless gifts you can’t even hold.” Hawks shakes his head. “I don’t know what it is about you, but you’ve got me wrapped around your light.”

Dabi blooms purple, deep and rich. Hawks laughs again before falling into easy chatter. Dabi notes, happily, Hawks didn’t chatter with the other wisps like he did with Dabi. Not as loosely, not as easily, and not as truthfully.

“I’ve seen so many wonderful things,” Hawks says. “So many mysteries we didn’t know about because of the reputation of this forest and all the wicked beasts that guard it. Something about it seems to draw magical creatures of the vicious variety. No one has ever been able to make it through, but you helped me. I made so many notes, I ran out of paper.

“Not to mention the metals and stones I picked up. I wasn’t able to bring much of the metals because they’re so heavy, and I’m just one bird, but I have so many beautiful new things to work with, to sell to whoever will take them. It’ll be my best work yet, all thanks to you, dear wisp.”

Dabi peers at Hawks and catches his genuine smile, lop-sided and so warm.

“Oh!” Hawks snaps his taloned fingers. “I almost forgot—I haven’t been able to figure that language out quiet yet, the one you wrote your name in? However, I believe I know a particular library back in my home country that may have some answers to start with. Don’t think I’ve forgotten that promise of mine.”

Dabi whispers, ‘Thank you.’ He says it a thousand times over as he continues leading Hawks on, his voice ghostly and indistinguishable amongst the gray wind driving through the bare trees.

Hawks flits over the river Dabi crosses, his red wings spread wide in flight. Up the path with the sycamore, through a series of pocket meadows now dead with winter’s touch, Dabi finally stops at his ugly, twisted hawthorn tree.

Hawks whistles, staring up at the stabbing branches contorted in agony against the cloudy sky. “That’s one old tree,” he says.

Dabi lights himself up, racing up the trunk and folding himself into the hollow at its center. He long ago chased off the birds trying to make a nest in it. This is his tree—his home—and no silly blackbird or sparrow is going to take it no matter how much attitude they gave him over it.

“Is that where you want me to place your gift?” Hawks asks.

‘Yes,’ Dabi says in fire.

Hawks reaches into his pack like he did for the others, grabbing something small enough to hide in the palm of his hand. He spreads his wings and flaps them a few times, lifting himself up just high enough to reach the hollow where Dabi waits.

Grabbing onto the edge, Hawks hooks his elbows over it, keeping his face and upper torso pressed inside with Dabi.

“I’m going to set it down. You can’t blind me though, okay? I don’t feel like losing my eyesight and falling out of a tree if you decide to light up.”

Dabi readily agrees, eagerly licking his flames over Hawks’ clenched fist. They don’t scorch or blister, just warm.

So carefully, Hawks places Dabi’s gift inside the hollow, releasing it to rest in the cupping of wood.

Dabi peers at the stone, about as big as a knucklebone but much, much prettier. Even if Dabi is partial to the white jut of them in the rotting leaves, this stone with its near-glowing ember of a heart fading into fractals of green and blue and pink. It’s like this stone is burning, burning just like Dabi.

With the cast of his blue light darkening into purple, the stone mimics the changes, revealing threads of orange and red as Dabi darts to the side. He peers into the stone, almost mesmerized by it.

“Do you like it?” Hawks asks.

‘Yes.’ Dabi’s hissing voice rises in the small hollow.

Hawks’ eyes flick to him. He smiles. “I’m delighted to hear it. I’ve never seen a stone such as this one. They’re softer than I thought they would be, and I definitely mangled a few trying to understand their properties. I think that’s one of my best ones I’ve polished, though, so treat it kindly, okay?”

Dabi curls his ambient form around the stone like it’s his heart, sure to moderate his temperature so he doesn’t cause any damage. Hawks watches him for a moment longer, golden eyes almost as bright as the stone.

“Are you going to guide me home now?” Hawks asks.

And oh, what a terrible thing that is. He doesn’t want to leave this gift, but the thought of leaving Hawks to wander this forest alone without him is much, much worse. Reluctantly, Dabi pulls away from the stone, again watching in wonder as its colors flicker and change with the different angle and tone of his fire. He knows he’ll get lost in it for hours once Hawks is on his way back to his country.

Hawks follows his lead, dropping from the hawthorn tree and waiting for Dabi to skirt down the trunk and back into the leaky gray afternoon.

Once more, Dabi leads Hawks all around his forest, conveniently ending up in the same clearing—now he remembers—Hawks slept in before just as it is getting dark.

“If I didn’t know better, I would say you’re trying to keep me here,” Hawks says, bemused when they break through the tree line to reveal the little clearing.

Dabi gives away nothing, settling in to watch as Hawks scrapes away a spot for a fire and begins scrounging for wood. He starts the fire once Hawks gives him the go ahead, leaping through the funny shape of the wood and watching it catch.

With nothing more to do, Hawks collapses against the fallen tree trunk, hunching into the dead bark and pulling his wings tight around him. Dabi observes the shiver run through them, the way Hawks tugs at the edges of his thick coat and his breath starts to fog the rapidly cooling air. The only salvation Dabi can think of is that the trees around them break the bitter, on-the-verge-of-snowing breeze.

Hawks grunts. “Tonight is going to be hell.”

Dabi wanders around the clearing, paying half a mind to the wandering beasts that avoid the clearing like it’s sickened. Some of them bravely approach, the crunch of dry leaves and branches beneath their heavy tread catching Hawks’ patient ear and making his eyes flick to the darkening woods around him. None of them breach the invisible line Dabi has drawn.

“Wisp,” Hawks whispers when it happens for the third time. His body is utterly still, ratcheted tight against the fear most likely in his veins. “Am I safe here?”

‘Yes,’ Dabi answers. ‘I won’t allow anything less for my traveler.’

Of course, Hawks cannot understand the cadence of his words beside the affirmation, but it’s enough for Hawks’ shoulders to relax just a hair.

Dabi comes closer to him, flaring his body along with the leap of flames in Hawks’ little fire. Hawks watches him, his face unreadable where it’s buried in his coat.

“I know we cannot converse, not truly,” he begins, “but for some reason, I feel compelled to speak with you. Do you have any idea why that may be?”

Dabi halts about three feet away, warming himself as best he can. His flames remain ambivalent, just as watchful as Hawks’ sharp, golden eyes.

“Have you beguiled me?” Hawks wonders, softer than before. “Bewitched me?”

The tension in the clearing winches itself tighter. Dabi wants to transform so bad—wants to fumble through the unfamiliarity of teeth and tongue until all his pent up words spill—but he can’t. He can’t.

“I wondered about you the entire time I was on the other side. Even when I passed through towns with the strangest people and contraptions. Even when I found the most intriguing mineral deposits and spent hours hunched over one, hammering away at them myself. Even when I was buying supplies to come back through and reach my workshop to turn what I found into jewelry to sell.

“Of course, I love strange things.” Hawks huffs. “Who doesn’t in a world like this? It’s part of why I got into jewelry making. Turning bits of metal and stone into something unique, letting them shine on a person and uplift them, bring a smile to their faces—it’s more rewarding than I could ever articulate. But you—you don’t act like any wisp I’ve ever met. And I’ve met plenty in my travels for gems in my craft. You’re talkative, in your own way, and brighter than you should be. Sometimes, when I look at you, it’s like I can see a face in the flames. And out of the corner of my eye, you look…different. Different in a way that suggests you are not all that you seem. I don’t see it or feel it with the other wisps.”

Hawks pauses, chewing his words.

“I commend you for being unique in a world made strange by magic of all shades, but I’m left wondering at what you really are, dear wisp. Because you most certainly are not a traditional wisp in any sense of the word.”

Dabi remains where he is, wondering the same. He doesn’t know how Hawks got to the core of Dabi’s circumstances so easily, sliding like a blade through the gap of a rib cage, but he doesn’t find himself unnerved.

Okay, perhaps a bit.

His flames crawl a bit higher. Compared to the other wisps in the forest, Dabi has always felt different. He attributed it to his ties to Lord Endeavor, tracing that line of power into the fog of his head. Dabi could never think too much on it, else he tipped into the worst, most pain-fueled rages through his forest. Worse even than his most recent one that left such terrible scars on his trees and his beasts.

He doesn’t act like the other wisps. He doesn’t dance like them in the hills. He doesn’t seek out their companionship in his lonely forest. He can’t go up the mountain like them. Only Tomura could come close to him in sheer power if he applied himself. Is that really because of his ties to Lord Endeavor, or is it something else? Aren’t all wisps sent here by Lord Endeavor, now that he thinks about it?

Dabi’s fire twists in invisible wind, drifting with reaching arms towards Hawks.

Now that he really thinks about it, who is Lord Endeavor? The only thing that comes to mind is grinning flames and icy blue eyes. Dabi believes him to be ‘father’—but what does that mean?

The thing about this world is nothing is as it seems. That’s the kicker with magic, with curses and blessings and all manner of thins in-between. Dabi knows that from his forest, from all the secrets hidden in the grooves of bark, cradled in a budding blossom and buried deep in soil that never relinquishes its dead.

He can’t help but wonder what it means. What it all means, when nothing is ever what he thinks it is. Suffocation gutters his flames, invisible hands clutching at Dabi’s form and keeping him shackled, hidden, alone.

Always alone, alone, alone.

“It’s quite all right,” Hawks says. Dabi pivots his attention to his traveler. He didn’t even notice it wandering. “Whether you have answers or not, there’s nothing that can be done about it. You cannot speak. Even if you could, I doubt I would be able to understand you. Forget about it.”

The damning swell of wanting knocks the air from Dabi’s fire. He flickers out for a moment, overwhelmed with that behemoth of an emotion alongside this sense of a manacle around him. Dabi avoids that confrontation with each pass of the sun and moon through his wandering and his tricks and his laughter, but right now, with just the fire between him and Hawks and all of a couple feet, he can’t help but acknowledge it. Not when he has the power to change it, to transform into something approximating Hawks’ form.

Temptation slides honey thick into the bitter air. Hawks watches him intently, studying the pattern of Dabi’s flames. The edge of possibility draws them both tight, lit by orange fire and dancing shadow.

But no.

Dabi shies from it, like he always does. This revelation is not right, his being screams. The word ‘wrong’ clatters in him, ‘wrong’ and ‘disappointment’ and ‘sin’ swirling through him.

The anger comes. That old one, the familiar one that always hurts. He lights up the clearing like the paltry orange flames could only wish to. Hawks groans and covers his eyes, shielding himself from Dabi’s anger.

That only makes him angrier.

His temperature control shatters, heating the air too hot too fast. It shimmers with it, blanketing the clearing and poor Hawks, who must be sweating with it.

“What’s wrong?” Hawks calls out to him, still shielded from Dabi’s light.

Dabi’s answering, ‘Everything,’ is drowned out by the screeching of heating air and moisture boiling on tree trunks and dead leaves. The warmth rises and rises, but Dabi burns too hot even now—

“Ouch! Ah—wisp! Wisp, please! Stop this,” Hawks calls. “My feathers—they’ll burn!”

Good, Dabi’s fire says. Devouring and absolute, it lunges for those pretty red feathers.

He feels Lord Endeavor’s smile behind him, just out of sight. It’s more of a memory than something in the now, in this moment of righteous justification.

As soon as the anger started, it stops. Hot and heavy, it lingers before a cool winter breeze slips between the boughs and bores it aloft, allowing Dabi’s flames to shrink back to normal size, his temperature control suddenly restored.

That terrible sense of wrong pervades him, but he will not willingly harm his traveler. Not Hawks.

It takes a moment for Hawks to look at him, unscrewing his eyes to peer at Dabi through pupils that are nothing more than tiny pinpricks.

Dabi draws closer, trying to inspect the damage he’s done, to whisper his cooling apology. ‘I’m sorry.’

The rank of singed feathers, oil, and hair pervades the small clearing. Thankfully, none of it reeks of flesh. Dabi doesn’t think he could handle it if he inflicted burns on Hawks.

Hawks leans away when a tendril of Dabi’s flame licks out to caress the soft point of his wrist where his coat has rucked up. Veritably snatches his hand away, body canted and wings quivering.

The rejection stings. Burns, like he almost did to Hawks.

Dabi supposes he deserves that.

Deserves far worse, judging by the fear in Hawks’ eyes.

‘I’m sorry,’ Dabi says again in fire.

‘I’m sorry,’ he says when Hawks won’t speak to him.

‘I’m sorry,’ he says when Hawks puts distance between them, oriented with his wings away from Dabi’s flames.

‘I’m sorry,’ he says when Hawks hunkers down for the night, quiet and safe in Dabi’s bubble of heat that he doesn’t acknowledge.

‘I’m sorry.’

There’s no one around to hear it.

***

Hawks acts as if nothing is amiss the next morning. He chatters to Dabi about his plans for the stones he picked up, how he’s going to hole himself up in his tiny workshop back in his home country for the winter and turn out the most beautiful jewelry anyone has ever seen. He claims he’ll go traveling in the spring, selling to nobility or peasantry alike for the social season.

“Never a better time to be a jeweler!” Hawks exclaims, happy grin on his face.

Dabi flickers every now and then in acknowledgement, but it’s not his usual level of engagement with Hawks. If he notices, Hawks doesn’t say or do anything about it.

The only indication something is wrong is when, predictably, Toga comes barreling at Hawks as Dabi is leading him through his forest.

Her red and pink light startles Dabi enough that he’s not fast enough to stop her from dancing on the toe of one of Hawks’ boots, her laughter high-pitched and screeching in the otherwise quiet forest.

The surprise of her appearance is enough to piss Dabi off.

He barrels towards her like he would any other time.

Hawks stumbles away from Dabi, one hand thrown out as if to shield himself.

Toga darts off, back into the brush she flew from.

Dabi stops himself, a few hands away. Enough to give space, enough to draw Hawks’ terrified attention to Dabi’s waiting form instead of the fiery monstrosity he thinks Dabi is in this moment.

Would he really be so wrong to think so?

Dabi thought himself a simple wisp, attentive to his travelers and tricks.

Now, because of one winged man and his words, Dabi isn’t so sure that’s his truth anymore.

Hawks rights himself, brushing off invisible dust from his jacket so he doesn’t have to look at Dabi.

“Well? Let’s get going, dear wisp. I’ve a lot of work to do back home.”

Hawks turns himself east, marching a few steps forward.

Dabi follows.

Their goodbye this time is different than the first.

Hawks tumbles out some words about Dabi’s name, promising to continue working on it. He reminds him to keep watch over his beautiful gift, to guide his travelers truthfully, and wait for him at the end of spring.

“That’s when I shall return to you, dear wisp. Try and stay out of trouble.”

‘I’m sorry,’ Dabi says again with fire.

Hawks frowns, head tilting. “I don’t know that turn of fire yet.”

‘I’m sorry,’ he says once more.

Hawks shrugs, swivels on his boot heel, and rushes off, past the boundary line where Dabi cannot follow.

He tries. Sure, he does. He tries as a wisp, and then in the that other form when Hawks is long gone from his sight. The trees curl inward, a cradle.

Don’t follow, they whisper to him.

Don’t follow.

***

Being away from the wretched old hawthorn tree and Hawks’ gift for any longer than a full turn of the sun leaves Dabi a forgetful mess.

He’s never felt such whiplash in his indeterminable life as the first time it happened.

Dabi went out on his usual stroll, seeking everything and nothing in his forest. It’s his first time out of the hollow of the hawthorn after Hawks left, perhaps ten turns of the sun passing between. He finally bores himself with watching the wind blow sharper, much colder than it was before. The stone holds his interest constantly, challenging Dabi to adjust his flames over and over to see how the stone may change in its coloring, but he feels the need to wander.

He comes across his usual menagerie of strange things—the shift of the winter beasts now alive with cold as the summer ones weave themselves into tree trunks or burrow beneath the chilled earth, the tumble of ice sprites coating the dead grass in frost, the fanged, red-eyed deer blending with the weather change with their now-white coats and stark, black antlers. Their eyes are still red, but more like the deep, rich blood of a human than the bright, near-pinkish tinge they usually are.

With no robin’s nests to watch, no beasts to play with—the winter things don’t like Dabi and his fire much—Dabi finds himself once again in the field with the watchers.

They never change, always the same with their eyes angled up and north. Even when the murk of winter clouds rolled in, obscuring the watcher’s precious stars, they never moved.

Dabi lurked between the ends of them closest to the earth, mindful of his licking flames.

He settles himself in a spot between some of them, as close to the middle of the clearing as he can get.

Just as he looks up to mimic them for a few, potentially interesting hours, the winter clouds threatening snow for weeks on end now finally release.

Relentless, harsh and stinging, the fat, wet flakes start piling almost immediately, even with the lingering warmth of the ground temperature. It picks up and up, the wind joining it and slanting it sideways. Dabi thinks nothing of it, idle in his spot and wondering if the storm will reach Hawks on his journey.

Dabi doesn’t realize how long he’s been with the watchers until the howling wind calms. The draw of the sky, of that lost northern point being observed by hundreds expectantly, had ensnared him. Even with the constellations obscured by the clouds during that entire day, the tangle of whatever lies beyond is strong enough for Dabi to relinquish his grip on reality for a while, allowing his being to unravel.

When he finally pulls himself away, it’s still snowing, soft but relentless.

It’s night now.

Dabi is the only light for miles. The other wisps retreated to their separate spaces in his forest. Beneath this black hole of a sky, daubed with gray clouds like the careless smear of fingers across a canvas—what is a canvas, and why does he know it?—Dabi looks to the hollow forms of the watchers. At this time of night, they are void. Parallel lines of absence across the field enhanced by the piles of snow. He can’t even see their eyes, usually so bright and gouging. No, it’s like they’re no longer the watchers he’s come to know.

With his blue light, he’s like a beacon. An announcement of an unwanted, unwelcome presence.

Prey before the eyes of predators.

Fear is slow to coil, slow to bind his light dimmer, shrinking himself small. What happened in the time that has passed? What has he done? It’s as if the watchers have withdrawn from him, have shoved him away even though he joined their unending watch. Even with his enhanced sense of knowing in his forest, he cannot pick out the watchers.

One of them stands about three feet from him, and still it’s nothing.

Something about this rejection makes Dabi run.

Through the snow, past the edge of the field, faster and faster he runs. He feels like he’s being chased, like if he dares to look behind him the looming shadow of something will be at his fiery heels. Faster and faster, beneath the clutching boughs scratching at the sky. Winged things that are nothing like his birds—nothing like red, red, red, and why does he remember red of all things right now?—screech and dive, brought to life by his fear, by the wicked presence behind him.

His forest no longer feels like his.

That is infinitely more terrifying than anything Dabi could have ever faced.

When he finds his hawthorn, Dabi hurtles himself into the hollow of its ugly trunk. For a good, long while, he huddles against the back of it, small and curled in on himself, clawing at the wood like he could draw it over himself in a comforting blanket.

All he succeeds in doing is leaving a blackened singe on it.

***

He does not sleep. Wisps don’t sleep, but he does fall into some kind of sucking hole, blurring his vision and numbing his being.

By the time he manages to tear himself out of that horrible hole of fear, it’s a new sun and the few winter birds remaining are chirping at him to wake up.

Dabi tries to remember why he was borderline burnt out. He tries to remember where the hollowness came from.

He has no answers.

Dabi turns, prepared to zoom out for a stroll.

He stops when he spots his heart.

Like a wall, like a stone hammer, memories crack and pour over him. Dabi rocks back where he is, flames curling. Hawks and red wings and a visceral, hateful anger; a sour goodbye, gamey and lingering on the tongue; the night with the watchers turned against him, and a desperate, solitary run through a cold, cold wood that despised him as sweetly as it adored him only a night before.

What changed?

Why? Why, why, why?

Why does he forget?

It must be a curse. It must be from Lord Endeavor, from this only part of his past that Dabi is allowed—because at this point, that’s what it is—to remember. But Dabi has nowhere to go for answers, no one on his side. Not—

The other wisps?

Dabi pauses in his breakdown, staring at Hawks’ gift—when had it become his heart again?—and wondering about the only tangible connection he has to Lord Endeavor besides his faded memories and his link to this forest.

The other wisps were sent here by Lord Endeavor as well. Different from Dabi, but the same.

Determination settles Dabi. He lingers near his heart until he feels confident enough to leave it. Dabi pointedly reminds himself to return before he can forget again.

He considers his options. Spinner and Toga are off the potential list of answers. Tomura, too. If he’s still holed up on the mountain, Dabi can’t go to him. Besides, Tomura likely wouldn’t answer him anyway, not after Dabi overpowered Tomura. The two of them are constantly at each other as it is. Whenever Tomura crossed Dabi’s path, they were butting flames like rivals.

Magne would be possible, she’s nice enough to him. Kurogiri, too. But Dabi thinks Compress would be his best bet. That wisp is a lurker, hard to find and harder to pin down into conversation. Sure, he gets along with the rest of the ilk, but Compress is flighty even with them. He observes and hides and amasses information. If the wisps could write, Dabi is sure Compress would have volumes of secrets at his disposal.

Dabi bolts out of the hawthorn tree, heading for Compress’ usual haunts. He searches them high and low, ignoring the melting snow around him from the gray winter sun. With the gathering of clouds above him, he’s sure the forest is in for another heavy snow.

Eventually, Dabi tracks down Compress hidden within a particularly nasty pixie grove. Dabi has to fight his way through the hoards, but he finds Compress at ease among them, watching their glowing, flitting masses upon a perch of stone.

‘Compress,’ Dabi says, drawing the wisp’s attention.

‘Dabi,’ Compress replies, his yellow light flickering.

‘I have questions.’

Humor tinges Compress’ flames. ‘I’m aware. I don’t know that I have answers.’

‘Will you answer, if I ask? Or will you talk me in circles before running?’

‘I’ve no interest in running,’ Compress says. His attention waivers to the hoards, watching them duck and weave amongst their groves.

But Dabi knows this game. ‘That’s not an answer.’

‘Perhaps you’ve asked the wrong question.’

‘Perhaps you should just shut the fuck up and answer me,’ Dabi snarks back, blue flames snapping out around him.

Compress laughs at him. ‘Perhaps, perhaps not. That is the magic of the word “perhaps,” I suppose.’ He pauses. Dabi dodges a diving brigade of pixie warriors. ‘What would I get out of this, if I do answer your questions?’

‘What makes you think this is a negotiation?’

Once more, Compress laughs. ‘You could smite me out of existence if you so desired. But your precious answers may burn along with me. Could you handle that? The possibility of knowing slipping from you because of your temper? Tut tut, Dabi.’

Curse the wisp, he’s right and Dabi knows it.

‘Will you answer or are you done with me?’ Dabi asks.

‘It may be entertaining, to say the least.’ Compress leans back on his rocky perch. ‘I’ll answer. But if I don’t like the question, I’m not guaranteeing anything.’

‘Fair enough,’ Dabi hisses. ‘To start, who is Lord Endeavor?’

Compress’ fire tilts to the side. ‘That question has an impossible answer. Impossible in the sense that I, and the others, are bound from divulging that information.’

‘Did he bind you to this forest?’ Dabi tries.

‘I believe so, but I’m not absolutely sure. Not in the same way you are, I think.’

‘And the others? The same thing?’ Seems like Compress is not giving him anything for free today.

‘Yes.’

Dabi thinks for a moment. ‘Were…were we something different before we were wisps?’

Compress’ attention sharpens, his fire flaring bright. ‘Yes,’ he hisses.

‘What were we?’

‘Different things,’ Compress muses. ‘Not one of us was the same. I believe I was a sorcerer of sorts, but it’s hard to tell.’

‘How can you tell?’

‘Snippets of memory. A general feeling. Some strange knowledge I have to reason to know besides that.’ Compress comes down from his perch, drawing closer to Dabi. ‘What do you remember of yourself, Dabi? From before?’

‘Nothing,’ he snaps. ‘That’s the problem. I forget. Travelers and creatures and events—none of it stays. I only remember because of Hawks’ gift.’

‘Has this always been?’

Dabi nods.

‘I see. How long does it take until you forget?’

Dabi scowls through fire. ‘I thought I was the one asking questions.’

‘Apologies,’ Compress says, keeping closer than before. ‘I cannot help but be intrigued by everything around me. Including your strangeness, Dabi.’

‘Hawks said the same thing.’

Compress says nothing to that, though the cast of his light becomes thoughtful.

‘Why can’t I remember things?’

‘Best guess?’ Compress shrugs. ‘Something about the spellwork binding you here. To me, it suggests there’s something someone wanted to keep you from remembering. Or, maybe they wanted to stop you from gaining momentum. You know how dangerous thoughts can be. Questions asked at the wrong time can result in death as often as they may result in triumph.’

‘How do you know all this? You’re a wisp. This should be impossible.’

Compress thinks over his next words carefully. Dabi can tell from the slight shifting of his light, the way Compress pulls his yellow flames a little closer like he’s readying for flight.

‘The mountain holds many secrets, Dabi.’

Of course. That damnable mountain.

‘You should visit one day. You may learn more about yourself than these half-guesses I’m providing.’

‘I can’t.’

Calm, Compress replies, ‘You can.’

‘No, I physically can’t.’ Dabi’s fire grows with a trickle of frustration.

‘Yes, you can. You choose not to.’

‘That’s not—’

‘You don’t believe me.’ A new hoard of pixies emerge from an opening in the earth, spiraling up into the air. ‘It’s okay. But I think there is where you’ll understand more of what’s going on.’

Compress moves as if to leave, done with the conversation. Dabi has more questions than ever. He darts in front of Compress.

‘Help me figure this out,’ Dabi says. ‘I don’t want—I can’t keep forgetting.’ He wants to tell Compress about the watchers last night, how they turned on him so brutally and left him a quivering mess in his hawthorn tree. Something holds him back, though. Not some rotten spellwork or curse, but his own fear.

‘After you go to the mountain,’ Compress says. ‘That’s when I will help. That’s when you’ll need me—need us—most, I think.’

With that, Compress flits away.

He remains in the pixie groves until it’s night and more snow has started falling. The forest doesn’t turn against him as Dabi wanders back to his hawthorn tree and precious heart within. No, the forest is quiet, as contemplative as Dabi feels.

With his light throwing his heart into dancing color, Dabi curls about it like a cat might. He thinks.

Outside, beyond Dabi’s line of sight, shadows twitch to life.

***

The winter is long and harsh. Every day Dabi goes adventuring, and every night he returns to his hawthorn before he can forget Hawks and Compress and the night with the watchers and every other instance of the forest revolting against Dabi’s presence.

It happens a few other times, utterly terrifying Dabi at each instance. First, the watchers. Then, the deer, cornering him one day with their blood-red stares and salivating, sharp-toothed mouths. The pixie hoards turned against him more viciously than ever, daring to nearly tear the hawthorn tree from the earth. The honey locust grove started biting into his flames, stealing his sparks into their spiney trunks like they’re trying to get drunk on his fire and fear.

Each time, he finds himself at the foot of the mountain, wondering.

One time, he tried to take a step up, remembering Compress’ words about how Dabi was the one limiting himself.

He ended up raging for three turns of the sun after, forgetting all about his life until he returned to the hawthorn tree.

Dabi tried going to the other wisps he trusted to give him information—Kurogiri and Magne, then Toga and Spinner, and finally Tomura. None of them had the answers he wanted. The ones he needed.

It’s in the crook of spring’s elbow that something finally gives.

It comes in the form of a certain red-winged traveler whistling a jaunty tune.

Dabi is upon Hawks in an instant, close enough to find his dear traveler in a few human blinks.

“Wisp! Oh, how I’ve missed you,” Hawks cheers, crouching to Dabi’s level. “I’ve so much to tell you, I think you’ll be right sick of me soon enough. Perhaps you’ll finally lead me to my death, eh?”

‘Never,’ Dabi says. ‘Never, never, never.’

“Oh, so emphatic. You’ll change your mind.” Hawks looks around. “Where’s the rest of your little cohort?”

‘Busy,’ Dabi says. ‘Besides, I don’t want them here. I want you all to myself.’ It’s not like Hawks will understand him.

Hawks raises one eyebrow. “You know, I found a book back home that broke down the language of wisps a lot better than what my grasp of it was before. All to yourself, huh?”

Dabi freezes, immediately going an intense shade of purple.

Grinning, Hawks says, “Aww, don’t be embarrassed. I’m glad you like me so much. Better than getting on your bad side. Now, c’mon. Let’s walk. I’ll tell you all about what’s happened on the way.”

True to his word, Hawks chatters.

He tells Dabi of how he created his new jewelry with the stones he found in the neighboring country, how he would go to the local taverns at night and drink and tell wonderful, fantastic stories of Dabi’s forest and the peculiar things he found on the other side of it. He reflects on each amazing piece he made, pulling out a small leatherbound journal with intricate sketches of what he made. He speaks of the mighty sum the nobility were willing to pay for such beautiful, one-of-a-kind thing for the upcoming social season, how he sold out so fast his head almost spun right off his shoulders.

Hawks whispers how he squirreled away some for his personal collection. He made a ring for his teacher, some famous jeweler named Nagant. A few others he sold to peasant women trying to lift their children into better lives by catching the eye of wealthy suitors. With how much coin he made, Hawks had no worries about reducing prices or bartering for those that needed it.

“Besides,” Hawks adds, “seeing their beautiful children stop by my shop on their way to a social gathering—sons and daughters in their best and wearing a pair of my earrings or a lovely pendant—well, it couldn’t help but warm my selfish little heart.”

Dabi thought that word—selfish—to be a strange one to assign to Hawks. Nothing about him suggests such a thing.

He tries to tell Hawks that, but something about the way Dabi words it stumps Hawks. They quickly found out how far Hawks’ new knowledge went, and while it is much farther than what it was, it still misses some of it.

Dabi takes Hawks on a new path through the forest that day, avoiding the watchers’ field and the pixie groves and the honey locusts. He skirts the grazing areas of the deer and pulls Hawks around the base of the mountain, as always.

Around late evening, with the sun almost set, Dabi brings Hawks to the now-familiar little clearing. Dabi vaguely registers three new travelers entering his forest—four! At one time!—but he feels the other wisps racing for them, so Dabi chooses to stay with Hawks instead, even if his being urges him to greet the new travelers.

“At least there’s no risk of me freezing to death this time,” Hawks jokes as he drops his heavy pack.

If he is still upset about the incident with Dabi’s heat and his feathers, Hawks doesn’t show him any indication of it.

Still, something about the statement makes Dabi want to apologize.

“Let me ask, dear wisp. Have you been taking care of your gift?” Hawks starts setting up his fire, stacking the wood he’s gathered in that funny shape Dabi so adores.

‘Yes,’ Dabi answers. He wants to tell Hawks he thinks of it has his heart, but the idea of Hawks picking up on that tender word—heart—makes Dabi hot and purple all over.

“And have you led your travelers faithfully in my absence?”

‘No travelers have come,’ Dabi protests. ‘It’s only you.’

Hawks hums. “Not even from the other side?”

‘No. No one willingly comes into this forest,’ Dabi reminds him.

“Tell me, is it truly cursed?” Hawks’ head cocks to the side, his golden eyes pinning as he looks at Dabi.

He flickers in thought, a touch amused. ‘Perhaps? It’s hard to tell, somedays.’

Hawks laughs. “That’s fair enough, I suppose. It is certainly more magical than any other forest I’ve traveled. Hell, I couldn’t even fly over it if I wanted. The very clouds are so infested with wind and storm spirits, my wings would have been torn to shreds.”

‘It is a mystery.’ Dabi avoids looking at Hawks when he says it.

“Even to you?”

Dabi nods. He runs through the wood, lighting it so Hawks can cook himself something for dinner and settle in for the night.

With a small pot over the fire bubbling merrily away in a matter of minutes, Hawks perches on the log and looks to Dabi. He nibbles a bit of bread. “I have some information for you.”

Dabi perks up.

“In addition to my job, I visited the famous library in my country several times. I talked to so many librarians trying to figure out what language it was you wrote your name in last year. I’m sure they were sick of me, but I think you turned me into a right scholar. Between looking up everything I could about wisps and searching for this language, I almost spent more time there than my own workshop.” Hawks laughs, delighted by himself.

“I figured it out, though. Some dead language from about five hundred years ago. I guess it’s called Astridium. Some old lady told me all about how it was derived from star charts and the movement of the constellations and imbued with magic from the stars themselves. Apparently, it could have been universal because of it, but it faded from time because only a select few used it for a variety of reasons. Firstly, the language came about at the same time a war started between All Might and some priest. All Might was centered on peace with all creatures, but the priest didn’t like it, called peace blasphemy when this world was riddled with magic that didn’t belong. He said Astridium was the language of demons, blighted things that were nothing more than predators intent on taking over this world. That’s where the second reason for Astridium’s disappearance comes in. I guess only certain beings could use the language without burning up right then and there, including reading, writing, or speaking it. The power of the words was enough to kill the weak.”

Hawks pauses, thoughtfulness written into the purse of his lips. “I think that priest was moving more for a cultural thing, though,” Hawks adds, standing up to stir his soup. “I guess this priest was pretty power hungry and sought to subjugate a lot of people and get recognized for his power. I don’t know if he was trying to rule so much as be acknowledged. But his actions were at odds with the ruler at the time, All Might, the one with all the real power. The two of them clashed several times over this difference in ideals and started the famous war that we are nothing but a product of. The ruler wanted freedom and a lack of judgement, while the priest was rigid in the way he conducted everything. At least, that’s what I gathered from the research I did.” He sits back down. Stares at Dabi. “Anything familiar in that?”

Astridium. The language of the stars.

Something painful tugs at Dabi, coiling his fire smaller than usual.

He searches and searches himself for what it is, trying to drag that hurt into the light of Hawks’ campfire and blinding smile. Something—something—what is it? What is it?

Hawks asks him another question, but Dabi ignores it. He waves at him, flaps his wings, pouts; Dabi, again, ignores it. He must figure this out. It feels—important. Astridium. The language of the stars. Each word bursting with magic so potent it could kill those not strong enough to withstand its burn.

He’s so deep in thought, he fails to hear the miniscule crackle of leaves and grass underfoot as the three other travelers draw closer to Hawks’ clearing.

He doesn’t note how still they become, just outside the ring of trees. He doesn’t feel the scrape of their greedy eyes over Hawks’ form as he ladles soup into a bowl and sits on the ground, his back pressed carefully against the log and his wings fully relaxed. He doesn’t feel their deliberation as they notice Dabi’s presence about fifteen feet away. Doesn’t feel their judgements as they assess him as a threat in their mission.

He doesn’t notice, until it’s too late.

Three cloaked figures rush from the woods, surrounding Hawks in an instant. Without hesitation, the soup is kicked from his fingers, spilling over the dirt, and they descend.

Hawks screeches, high and piercing like a bird’s cry until it’s cut off by a hand clamping over his mouth. Dabi catches the flash of a blade against Hawks’ throat, the snarl of his attacker’s teeth whispering terrible words to what is certainly meant to be an execution. The other two attackers grab at Hawks’ wings and arms, pinning him where he lies.

Dabi, so startled by it and its interruption of his thoughts, freezes for one terrible second.

It’s long enough for an attacker to draw a healthy line of blood along Hawks’ neck when Hawks startles and flaps his wings.

Long enough for him to try and fight back, only for his poor arm to snap under a sudden change in pressure and angle.

Long enough for Dabi to remember his rage.

His traveler. No one else’s.

Dabi doesn’t hesitate this time, shifting in an instant to the human-like form he’s kept so secret. He flashes across the small distance, bodily slamming into one of the attackers and flinging the person away from Hawks with hands that burn blue and skin that melts so beautifully under his touch. Something snaps when they hit a tree trunk. They crumple where they fall, but Dabi doesn’t care about that.

No, all he cares about is the fear in those golden eyes. The tight lines of pain between his drawn brows and the desperation hastening his breath.

All he knows is the power in this form, the hum of forbidden action in his blood, and how goddamn worth it this will be, to ensure his traveler is safe.

Dabi grabs at the person with the blade to Hawks’ throat, twisting it away at the last possible moment. The person grunts and fights back, trying to gut Dabi with one assured movement. It’s obvious this person knows themselves much better, rolling with the surprise of Dabi’s appearance.

Behind him, there’s a scuffle. Something heavy smacks into bone. A whimper, then a groan. Dabi is too intent on dodging the knife to turn and look.

“Interfering on official Commission business?” the person with the blade hisses. “The Queen will have your head for it. I hope he’s worth it.”

Dabi can’t respond to that, not with an unfamiliar tongue, but he can show his teeth. He’s studied it often enough with the beasts in his forest. Growling, too. Growling he can do.

Dabi rushes in; he slams his forehead into the opponent’s skull, teeth bared and a growl ripping from his chest. The person cries out. The knife sails away. Dabi’s burning hand finds the exposed throat of this particular attacker, his temperature boiling as his sharp-tipped fingers swipe through skin, tissue, vein, and bone as if through mud. Burning flesh meets his nostrils. A half-melted mess of vertebra drop from the suddenly very-still individual, their head wobbling at the loss of support in what used to be a neck. Their mouth is open in shocked pain.

They drop. Dabi swivels, finding the last person with the same knife Dabi just got away from Hawks pressed back against Hawks’ throat. The person has a hold of Hawks’ broken wrist, twisting it to hold Hawks to his chest, back to front.

There are tears in Hawks’ eyes. His wings flutter, fallen limp. Blood pumps down his face from a new wound on his forehead. Another has torn a jagged line through his shirt over his chest, blood staining the fabric darker and darker.

Hawks looks at Dabi, fear a glaze, a mask on his beautiful face.

“Now, now,” the attacker says. “Let me finish the job, okay? All we’re doing is…accompanying dear Hawks to his special mine for those stones of his. Nothing more. I’ll be on my way with him in a moment. The Queen will reward you handsomely for not interfering any more than you already have.”

Dabi takes a step forward.

Flames lick from his shoulders, stream from the corners of his mouth. He can feel the central flame burning on his forehead, drifting back over his hair like its own, twisting crown. More flickers over his bare skin, steam rising. Grass curls under his bare feet, burnt to nothing more than ash.

He doesn’t think he has the control to send a fireball at the attacker and not burn Hawks in the process, not with how close they’re pressed together. Dabi can do nothing more than take another threatening step and shake his head.

“That’s a poor choice to make, whatever you are.” The person’s shadowed eyes dart to the mangled mess of vertebrae at Dabi’s feet. “You don’t want more enemies.”

“Release him,” Dabi manages to say.

The person cocks their head. “What did you say?”

Dabi chews on it this time. Globs of blue fire spit from his mouth. “Release him.”

They shift. “I don’t know that language. Whatever. I have a job to do, and nothing—”

Dabi lunges at the same time the other wisps burst into the clearing. They swarm Hawks and the attacker, burning the attacker’s legs and drawing attention to them so Dabi can sweep forward, catching Hawks with one arm around his chest while the other raises, fingers spread and palm exploding outward with blue flames between blinks of unfamiliar eyelids.

Annihilation is left. Scorched earth and cinders, peripheral blue flames winking out with the clearing of smoke.

Hawks sags into Dabi, trembling hard, and Dabi follows him down. His knees creak.

“Take care of the others,” Dabi says to the wisps. “Make sure they don’t wake up.”

They flit off, only Toga remaining to hover anxiously near Dabi’s shoulder as he maneuvers Hawks carefully into a comfortable position.

“Hawks,” Dabi murmurs. He’s learning as he goes, and the tone of his voice feels soft to his ears. Good enough for what he’s trying to do. “Hawks, tell me where you’re hurt.”

Hawks stares blankly ahead, not even seeing Dabi. Toga nudges Hawks’ thigh, trying to help. Blood trickles down his throat from the knife wound. More pumps from the wound on his chest and the graze near his hairline.

Dabi hisses at Toga but refrains from shooing her away like he wishes.

“Hawks,” Dabi says again.

When he still doesn’t get a response, Dabi carefully grabs Hawks’ broken wrist.

Hawks’ scream is just as terrible as the first. Worse since Dabi’s the one causing it.

But it works.

Hawks’ eyes snap to Dabi, to that source of hurt. He freezes, golden eyes scanning over Dabi’s form. They pause when they catch sight of familiar blue fire.

“Wisp?” Hawks asks, his voice absolutely wretched with tears and pain. “Is that you?”

Dabi bobs his head, watching.

“You’re…what are you?” Despite what he just went through, Hawks’ head tilts curiously.

“I don’t know,” Dabi answers.

Hawks’ head tips further. “What language are you speaking? I’ve never heard it.”

Dabi shakes his head, holding his hands up in confusion.

“What happened to you?” Hawks asks. It has an edge of hysteria to it. Hawks sits up, reaching for Dabi’s face with both hands.

“Oh,” Hawks says. “Ow.” His arms drop.

“What do you mean, what happened to me? What happened to you, you idiot?” Dabi hisses. “Stop trying to help me and help yourself first.”

Hawks blinks at his own hands before looking at Dabi. “I don’t know what you’re saying but I think I got the gist of that.” Hawks huffs a laugh. “I’m not the best at looking after myself, okay? Leave me be, I’ll…figure something out. But you…you look like you’ve walked through every layer of hell and come back out.”

Hawks’ good hand reaches once more for Dabi’s face, trailing a taloned fingertip over Dabi’s cheek. Dabi jumps at the intensity of the sensation until it dulls when Hawks moves lower on his face.

Strangely enough, Hawks looks like he’s going to cry again. “My dear wisp,” he whispers.

Something about it is heartbreaking. Dabi doesn’t know why, but he leans into Hawks’ touch, meeting his eyes and searching for a benediction to calm the racing beat of blood in his veins. Even with his fire, even with death, something makes him want to pull Hawks even closer, to curl around him until nothing can ever touch him again.

“You don’t know,” Hawks says after a moment. His hand remains on Dabi’s face, caressing over whatever skin he can reach. “Dear gods, you don’t know, do you? Do you know anything about yourself?”

Dabi shakes his head, reaching out with one hand to grab Hawks’ knee.

Just you. Just this.

Hawks gives him a shaky smile. “I guess that’s enough.”

Dabi is trying to figure out how he can communicate with Hawks in this form that only seems to know a strange language when Compress approaches, purposefully moving himself in Dabi’s line of sight the whole time.

‘So this is what you are,’ Compress says.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Dabi answers. “Can’t all of you do this?” He gestures to his body.

‘No, Dabi. None of us can do that.’

“Then what are you?”

Hawks’ hand slips from Dabi’s face. Dabi glances at him just in time to see shock catch up with Hawks, making him slump into unconsciousness.

Once more, Dabi holds him, pulls him into something as comfortable as he can manage, close enough to feel Hawks’ breath against his skin.

‘We are wisps,’ Compress answers. ‘You, Dabi, are not. It’s as simple as that.’

“Then what am I? You can understand me, right? Why you and not him?” He jerks his chin to Hawks.

‘I think it’s because we are very old. He’s but a young thing, Dabi. His world is…small. As for the question of what you are, well. The mountain still holds the answers you seek.’

Dabi bares his teeth. That small motion is going to become his new favorite thing.

“I can’t go up the mountain.”

‘Just like you couldn’t shift in front of anyone?’ Compress asks innocently.

Dabi swipes at the yellow wisp, but Compress bolts away, laughing.

‘Your traveler will need somewhere to rest and heal, Dabi, before he can move on from the forest. There is a safe place, with a roof and a fireplace, up the mountain. Shall I lead you there?’

Dabi glances at the other wisps, still busily burning away the bodies of the three dead assailants. The stench of cooking, cloying meat fills the air.

Even in his shock-induced sleep, Hawks’ face contorts in pain and slight disgust.

‘If not for yourself,’ Compress whispers, suddenly much closer to Dabi, ‘then at least for him. It’s quite a fright for a young jeweler to be attacked with intent to be murdered. He needs safety, Dabi, and security.’

Curse him, Compress is right and Dabi can’t argue. Not with the way Hawks looks, throat bloody like a hummingbird or a grosbeak. Besides, Dabi doesn’t have anything to clean or patch Hawks up with.

Dabi goes to Hawks’ special backpack. He figures out the latches on it after a tense struggle before riffling through the contents, trying to find something—anything—to avoid Compress’ suggestion.

He finds a few small potions with labels he can’t read and a single role of bandages. Dabi takes a moment to scowl at Hawks over his shoulder. For a traveling jeweler, he’s surprisingly bad at packing for travel.

Sighing, Dabi stomps out the fire with his own burning feet. He can’t carry Hawks and the pot of soup, so the soup stays. Likely, the beasts will eat it later tonight.

He manages to secure Hawks’ backpack to his own body, pointedly avoiding looking at bits and parts of himself as they flash around in movement. Once that’s secure, Dabi crouches and bundles Hawks to his chest, mindful of his broken wrist and lolling head. He ends up pinning Hawks’ wings to his back with one arm under his shoulders, the other pressing his tailfeathers flat to the backs of his thighs as it hooks beneath his knees.

“Lead the way,” Dabi grunts to Compress.

Compress doesn’t reply to him, instead turning and bolting into the woods. Dabi follows, the other wisps bringing up the rear as the bodies of the attackers burn merrily away.

Closer and closer Dabi draws to the dreaded mountain.

With each moment that passes, the less and less familiar the forest feels at his back.

Vines slither and snap around Dabi’s ankles, trying to trip him up. One makes a grab for Hawks, but Dabi incinerates it so quickly it doesn’t dare get even the tip of a leaf on his traveler. Small critters and creatures flee at his passing where before they wouldn’t care. The trees bundle closer together, choking the waning light of the evening.

Oddly enough, it doesn’t feel malicious. More…desperate. It’s hard to understand among the sensations of a body.

When the sun slips below the horizon and true dusk rears its impermanent head, Hawk stirs in Dabi’s arms.

His waking is slow, gradual. Dabi doesn’t soften his paces or ease the jostle of his arms. He’s too focused on keeping himself calm as every familiar, welcoming part of his forest turns against him.

The beasts watch him with hungry eyes, darting across his path or howling their bloodlust with the rising moon. Nothing feels safe, not even the flutter of the birds above his head or the swaying wildflowers.

“Wisp?” Hawks asks.

Dabi grunts but doesn’t look at him.

“Wisp, where are we going?”

“The mountain,” Dabi rasps.

The base of the peak approaches quickly enough. As always, it’s daunting for Dabi, something in his blood turning him away from it. Like instinct.

This time, he ignores it. At least, he tries to.

Dabi’s steps slow. Hawks looks forward, blinking against the dried blood on his face and trying to understand. Compress’ yellow glow begins the trek up.

Dabi stills at the invisible boundary he’s never crossed.

‘Dabi,’ Compress says. ‘Come.’

He looks down at Hawks in his arms. Hawks meets his gaze, blinking in confusion. “I thought you couldn’t go up the mountain. Or something like that,” Hawks says.

Dabi nods, shifting a bit.

“Is there…something up there?”

Dabi pointedly tightens his grip around Hawks.

“Oh. For me? You don’t have to do that. I’ll be okay.” Hawks tries to squirm out of Dabi’s grip, his wings flexing where they’re crushed against Dabi’s arm, but he just growls at Hawks.

“Be still.” Dabi’s fire flares with the words, but none of them dare to brush Hawks’ fragile skin or feathers.

“All right, but you better get moving,” Hawks says. “I think I’m going to pass out again.”

Adjusting once more, Dabi takes the first step.

The air coalesces in front of him, trying to push him back, keep him out. A chorus of noise breaks from the forest behind him, plaintive cries and warnings for Dabi to stop. Some are full of hatred and rage; some are already in mourning.

He can’t go back, after this. He knows this in the otherworldly way of magic.

Dabi, determined now, pushes forward another step, arching his neck until he can see the bright moon rising steadily in the corner of his eye.

Compress carves an easy, unlabored path up the mountain. A few miles up, the dense spread of forest gives way to scorched earth and stone. Old ash blows with a faint wind. Here, the trees are nothing more than hunks of deadened charcoal. The stones are scraped bare of lichen or moss, covered with burn marks where they’re not half-melted. It speaks of terrible destruction, of unknowable suffering and anger.

A holy sort of silence rings in his ears.

The ground he covers is more of a cemetery. He can’t feel the familiar press of spirits, something he knows, but all the same; something dead lies here, and Dabi is determined not to anger it.

Compress, unwavering, keeps heading up the mountain. Soon enough, the other wisps catch up to them, much faster than Dabi’s human-like form. They drop behind Compress, a multi-colored procession across a bleak, blackened expanse of stone rising into the sky.

Up and up they go. Dabi can’t tell how high they are or how much more of the mountain remains. His lungs billow with exertion, blue sparks dropping from his parted lips. His arms and legs ache, a novel sensation, but he can’t stop now. Not yet.

Compress starts leading them around the peak, bearing hard right to—yes, the northern side. It takes a moment for Dabi to tell with the swirl of constellations above his head so much closer than usual.

Treacherous stones try to trip Dabi up. Behind and below, he can feel the seethe of the forest, the betrayal. He doesn’t understand, not yet, but hopefully, this place Compress speaks of will leave him with more answers than questions.

He doesn’t know what would happen otherwise.

Would the forest tear him to pieces? Snuff out his light, destroy his hawthorn, shatter his heart? Would it do the same to Hawks? Pluck each feather from his wings and tail? Smash his beautiful jewels and pluck out those golden eyes as a keepsake?

Dabi shoves those thoughts away, intent on following and counting each breath making Hawks’ injured chest rise and fall.

Eventually, they draw near the supposed safe place.

The wisps pause, halting their progress to watch Dabi take each step. Compress is a little ahead of them, watching with calm, yellow flames for Dabi to approach with Hawks.

‘It’s just ahead,’ Compress says.

“You’re not coming?” Rage flickers just below the surface of the words. “What games of Fate are you playing, Compress?”

‘No games, Dabi. No one plays games with Fate. I’m just…expediting something that’s been a long time coming. Besides, even if you’re different,’ Compress’ light warms into softness, ‘you’re still one of us. Now, go.’

Dabi stares at the wisp for another minute, concern and fear and anger rising like some heady cocktail pouring down his throat. His fire flares with it, hot and bright.

Hawks presses his face into Dabi’s neck.

The fire relaxes.

“I should curse you for this,” Dabi says to Hawks. “Making me come all the way up here when I’ve never stepped foot on this mountain in the entire time I’ve been here.”

Hawks doesn’t respond.

“I hardly know a thing about you,” Dabi adds. “But you’re my traveler and I’m…your will-o-wisp. I can’t just leave you.”

Dabi continues on, alone save for the sleeping, bloody bird in his arms.

Rounding a solid juncture of stone, Dabi has a flash of smoldering ruins, of hollow screams and a man’s bellowing voice layered with power. He remembers fire locking around his wrists, searing his skin, embedding deep into the bone.

He blinks, and it’s gone.

Before him sits a moment of perfection, of peace. A tiny shrine of an old, forgotten god sits to his right, an overgrown path leading up to a small building. He waits for the recognition, the bolt of knowledge, but nothing yet comes.

Things grow here. The trees have leaves and heavy, spring blooms. The grass sways with the light breeze that’s kept Dabi company the entire way up. There’s a small sign the closer he comes to the building.

It takes him a moment for some part of his mind to kick in, but the lines and whorls of letters shape themselves into words, words he knows: Sekoto Peak.

Something deep in him tugs him forward. Dread pools in his gut. Curiosity hastens his steps.

Flinging open the door, Dabi comes upon an open sitting room.

The floor is well-worn wood. A small fireplace sits against the far wall. Dabi quickly moves over to it, eyeing the well-stocked wood stacked in a neat pile next to it with an iron fire poker. His silent questions of who and why fall short when Hawks makes a pitiful noise in his arms.

He sets Hawks down before and attends to the room around him.

Dabi mimics what he saw Hawks do a handful of times, stacking the wood in that funny shape and then flicking a fireball into its depths. Without conscious thought, Dabi reaches into a cupboard nearby and grabs a heavy pot. He fills it with water from a well near the outdoor shrine, then moves into the kitchen to fill a little steeper with leaves he pulls from a wooden box.

Dabi doesn’t question how he knows this. Doesn’t question why.

Not yet.

He sets the tea to boil over the fire, choosing to explore the rest of the building.

He finds a few small bedrooms. Musty pillows and blankets he airs out before shifting Hawks onto them. Dabi finds another wooden box full of bandages and dry poultices. Thankfully, each of them have a small label he’s able to parse out, even if he can’t name the language.

The one labeled ‘For Cuts’ gets taken with him, along with a heap of clean bandages. After wiping away the blood on Hawks’ face, neck, and chest, he gets to work taking care of the actual wounds. He takes some water and mixes it with the dry poultice, fingering the gummy mixture until it seems right and slathering it on the wounds with as much care as he can manage.

Once they’re on, Dabi wraps them in the bandages and moves onto Hawks’ broken wrist.

Moving it is difficult, making Hawks squirm and flex his wings at the pain even in sleep. Dabi wraps it stiffly, using a couple of flat pieces of wood he rips apart to fit Hawks’ slim wrist with the bandages to set the bone.

He doesn’t question how he knows to do this.

Not yet.

Only once Hawks is settled beneath the blankets and deeply asleep does Dabi allow himself to wander the small building.

It’s not quite a house, the majority of the space dedicated to an elaborate shrine in the back. Strangely enough, books line one wall while the rest of that particular room is open and airy, practice dummies and training equipment scattered throughout. Dabi walks to everything, examining it with new hands and eyes, trying to put all the pieces together in his head with no real answers for the puzzle of it.

The kettle interrupts him, hollering for attention and to be removed from the heat of the fire.

Dabi hurries to it, trying to keep the noise from waking Hawks.

Unfortunately for him, Hawks is awake when he slips back into that first room.

And ready to ask questions, if the gleam in his eyes is anything to go by.

***

Hawks’ waking is surprisingly gentle for the circumstances that knocked him out in the first place.

The first thing he registers is the dull pain radiating from his broken wrist. When he attempts to move it, he expects to feel the bones grind against each other. He’s broken plenty of bones in his day. Instead, his fingers brush the edge of a bandage and some wood secured to his wrist.

Hawks sits up in surprise, looking down at his splinted wrist. He’s bare chested, more bandages wrapped over the nasty wound on his chest from the scrape of blade and stone when he hit the ground. His free hand crawls over his throat—more bandages closing that dangerous cut.

Even the bite of the wounds isn’t so bad. Sure, he hurts. Deeply. He’s never endured pain like that before, not with knives and brutal knuckles. Hawks is a soft man, a jeweler who hunches over his workstation with ten thousand half-drunk teacups around him and his eyes on sparkling stones. He works to make people more beautiful than they already are, to lift them up. Besides, his people are not meant to be warriors. Their bones are light, easily breakable unless put on a vastly different diet and trained extensively.

Hawks never had any interest in fighting, even with his unusual propensity for speed with his perfect, red wings. No, he chose to be a jeweler who excelled into notoriety.

He’s contracted with the Commission, that high, political power that rules the continent. He brings them jewelry for their debutantes, for the Queen and her commanders. He’s favored at court, when he goes. He’s the only one with wings ever in attendance, but that made him special. With his skills and the intrigue he’s gained with his new stones from the other side of the wisps’ forest, that made him indispensable.

That is, indispensable until the Queen decided to single-handedly corner the market on his special stones. He remembers the attackers’ words, how they wanted him to take them to the mineral deposits. How easily they confessed to working for her. Surely, they would have killed him after he took them to the other side.

He didn’t know the Queen could be such an envious bitch, but the surprise still chills him.

Hawks shoves those thoughts away for the moment in favor of looking at his…savior as he reenters the room Hawks lays in.

The wisp looks nothing like a savior. While his anatomy is similar enough to that of a human—perhaps a bit too long in the arms, too jagged in the hips and backwards knees—that is where the likeness ends. The wisp’s hair is pitch black. A single lock of blue flame centers on his forehead, drawing back over his head like a proud mane along with the jut of two black horns. His fingers and toes end in tipped points with no nails to be seen. His mouth is full of sharp teeth behind chapped lips, the tips of his pointed ears sticking out from his head. A tail swishes behind him, tipped in silver. Brilliant, painfully blue eyes watch Hawks. He has no whites in them, only the ring of blue in a sea of black.

The most jarring part of his wisp, though, is his skin.

Some of it is the color of starlight, bright and pale, but most of it is mangled scar tissue, purple and deep and dragging over his body in patterns of shackles and flames. His wrists are manacled with this, as are his ankles. A collar of the scars rings his neck, dragging over his chest and obliterating one peck. More shivers down his abdomen, ringing his left hip and thigh while the right is subject to smaller patches. Bits of living wood edge the line between scar tissue and unblemished skin, pulling them together like stitches might pull a wound together.

“Wisp,” Hawks rasps. The tea kettle shrieking behind him almost drowns it out.

Without a word, the wisp moves to the fire, carefully removing the scalding hot kettle with a bare hand and nary a flinch. He sets it on a separate hook to cool and steep a bit longer.

Then, once that’s set, the wisp swivels and crouches beside Hawks, alarmingly close with that fire and those eyes and a reaching hand going right for Hawks’ head.

Hawks barely controls a flinch. The sharp hand presses against Hawks’ forehead, palm first then flipping over to the back of it. Ah. Checking for fever.

“I don’t have a fever,” Hawks says. The only reason he trembles is because of the unknown and his body still unraveling from the attack. “I’m all right.”

The wisp nods but slides his hand beneath Hawks’ armpit anyway, double checking himself, apparently. Hawks resists the urge to laugh at the gentle press.

“Where are we?” Hawks asks.

The wisp hesitates, eyes flicking around the small room. The hesitance is enough to put Hawks on a bit of an edge.

“Are we safe?”

The wisp nods. No hesitation there.

“What about the people that attacked me? Are they—?” Hawks cuts himself off, his gut churning at the memories.

Blue eyes narrowing, the wisp shakes his head and pats Hawks’ knee reassuringly.

“Did you…kill them?”

The wisp nods. He holds up his free hand, blue fire dancing over his fingertips.

Hawks…should definitely feel bad, but he remembers how they wanted to strip him of his livelihood. He thinks of the Queen, her thin smile always on her perfect face, her careful compliments of his work as he slid rings onto her fingers and tangled jewels around her pretty throat. Hawks helped her curate pieces for her, called in on her whims to evaluate novel items she acquired as gifts. His work, his watchful eye, always put her name and reputation in people’s mouths, only solidifying her image and the presentation she made for the Commission as a whole.

How had all that work become so replaceable?

Any blossoming guilt dies under that idea. The wisp squeezes at Hawks’ knee again, drawing his gaze.

He tries to say something to Hawks, his face serious, but none of the garbled, lilting words makes sense in Hawks’ head. Besides that, the wisp’s voice is doubled, underlaid with an essence that makes him think there’s someone with their mouth pressed to Hawks’ ear, whispering to him.

“I’m sorry, wisp. I don’t understand.”

He just shakes his head, getting up to pour Hawks a cup of tea now that it’s cooled a bit.

Hawks welcomes the warmth from the old, chipped cup the wisp delicately hands him. He didn’t realize how chilled he was until it hits the cold skin of his fingertips. Hawks shivers, sipping at it despite the way it half scalds his tongue.

“Thank you,” he says with a shaky exhale. “I’m sorry to be infringing on you so. I did not expect the Commission to turn against me over some gems. It’s…frankly ridiculous. I don’t know that I’ll be able to return without her coming for me again.”

The wisp pats his knee this time, his lips twisting crookedly.

“Are you—are you trying to smile?” Hawks asks, watching.

The look drops from the wisp’s face. He scowls and turns his face away. A delightfully strange blue flush colors the unblemished parts of his cheeks.

“You are!” Hawks exclaims. He sets down his tea in favor of reaching for the wisp. “Do it again.”

The wisp keeps his face turned away.

“Come on, dear wisp. I could use a bit of light after such a horrid ending to the day.”

The wisp lights up his fingers.

Hawks scoffs, pushing carefully at the wisp’s shoulder. “No need for the attitude. That’s not what I meant and you know it.”

The wisp remains stubborn.

“Come on. Try again, I’ll help you.”

Hawks knows he should be afraid. With those strange limbs and his fire and uncanny eyes, the wisp is not all he seems. Hells, he shouldn’t be asking to literally see the mouthful of sharp teeth, his good hand going to the wisp’s cheek once more and tugging lightly at unblemished skin. But Hawks has known the wisp is different for a while now. He forgets every instance of when the wisp flared too hot and too bright, when a few of his feathers were singed in the process.

It doesn’t matter to something so endearing.

Reluctantly, the wisp follows the draw of Hawks’ hand, staring down at Hawks for a moment in silent evaluation before his lips twitch.

Hawks grins, excitement making his wings flap. “That’s it. Let’s see those teeth.”

He cajoles and jokes until the wisp is close enough to smiling for Hawks to exclaim over him. A nugget of warmth lingers in Hawks’ chest, making him grin right back. Laughter spills from his chest. The wisp looks more like he’s in pain than delight, but that doesn’t matter.

The wisp drinks it in, odd black and blue eyes locked on Hawks. His head tips when Hawks’ does, mirroring his mannerisms. He should be upset by, probably a bit chilled with the idea of this wisp—this creature—that has obviously never spent time around people like him learning how to do something as basic as smile. In all his travels, Hawks has never come across something like him. Never seen a being with horns like his, or fire so blue. And that language—whatever that is sounds like the whisper of gods.

Perhaps he’s loopy from the pain. Perhaps he’s already dead and this is the afterlife. Perhaps he’s burning with fever and none of this is real.

Hawks doesn’t care.

Carefully, the wisp removes Hawks’ hands from his face and tucks them back in his lap, pushing gently at Hawks’ shoulders.

“You want me to lie back down?” Hawks asks.

The wisp nods.

“I don’t know if I’ll be able to sleep,” Hawks confesses.

Still, the wisp presses, light but urging.

Hawks sighs and relents, tucking his curiosity in his pocket like a stone to worry over until he can satisfy it. The pallet he lies on makes him sneeze from the bit of dust clinging to it, but with how close it is to the fire along with the perching wisp on his other side throwing off heat, Hawks is cocooned in warmth. His steaming teacup sits on the floor near his head, but he can’t bring himself to reach for it and finish it. Not with the sudden, heavy drag of his eyelids and his relaxing muscles.

Pain still lingers like a fog. He tries to fight the exhaustion crashing through him, to keep his bleary eyes on the wisp’s form.

With a quiet sigh, Hawks sleeps.

***

Dabi haunts while he awaits Hawks’ next wakening. He moves from room to room, rifling through every cranny he finds for these supposed answers Compress said would be here.

All he finds are a lot of books in a language he can’t read and meaningless bits and baubles. Some stones on a shelf. A stuffed horse. Some carved wooden symbol of something he doesn’t understand.

Over and over, he looks. Perhaps he missed something?

Whatever secrets this place holds, it will not yield them to Dabi’s explorations.

He checks on Hawks periodically, taking his temperature from his face and armpit over and over. There’s no food, so he rifles through Hawks’ pack again to pull out his rations and organize them on a table where Hawks can point out what he wants. He reapplies the poultice after several hours have passed; rewraps them, too. Hawks doesn’t stir. His body is in a deep, healing sleep. A necessary one, Dabi knows.

It doesn’t stop the impatience.

Tail lashing the floorboards, Dabi sits beside Hawks and watches him. He practices smiling with his strange muscles he never used much. He runs his fingers over his teeth, tapping them against the sharp points. He doesn’t remember Hawks’ teeth having points like his.

When afternoon the next day finally hits, Hawks wakes. A slat of sunlight through a small window lands right on his face, making him scrunch his eyes and groan, covering himself with the blanket.

Dabi laughs. He shifts closer and tugs at the blanket.

Hawks makes a muffled noise of surprise, shooting upright before Dabi has time to react.

Their heads collide, Hawks’ crown with Dabi’s poor nose. Pain blooms behind Dabi’s eyes, radiating down his jaw and into his teeth. Both of them groan.

“Wisp!” Hawks cries, grabbing for his head with his bad arm. “Ow, shit! What—”

Irritated already, Dabi covers his nose and forces Hawks’ bad arm away from his head.

“You’re an idiot,” Dabi says.

“Why do I feel like you just called me something horrible?” Hawks grumbles.

“Because I did.”

Hawks ignores him. “I was trying to ask you if all of what happened yesterday actually happened, but with the pain in my head and everywhere else, it can’t be a dream.”

Dabi shakes his head. He doesn’t know what it’s like to dream, since he’s never slept, but he knows the concept. How he knows it, well…

That’s the mystery.

Something of his irritation must show because Hawks leans towards him. “Wisp? Are you all right?”

Dabi rumbles deep in his chest, words failing him. His sharp fingers dig into the wooden floors. He wants Hawks to understand, so Dabi himself can understand.

“You’re upset about something, that’s obvious. What can I do?” Hawks asks.

He stares at Hawks, trying to understand how Hawks could even want to help him. Here he lays with a broken wrist and nasty cuts, and all he can ask about is Dabi’s well-being.

Something hot tightens Dabi’s chest. He looks away from Hawks, grumbling under his breath at and waving away Hawks’ concern.

Instead, he swivels and stands smoothly, taking a couple of steps towards the rest of the house. Dabi pauses, looking back at Hawks.

He stares at Dabi, red wings flexing and a frown drawing his eyebrows together. “You want me to follow?”

Dabi nods, tail flicking.

Hawks wobbles to his feet, unsteady for a few moments. His wings and tailfeathers shuffle to help with his balance before he makes it to Dabi’s side, golden eyes wide and curious despite the slight pain in the lines around his mouth.

When did Dabi become so good at reading Hawks?

He dismisses the thought, just like he dismisses all the thoughts. Dabi grabs Hawks by the arm and leads him down the short hallway to the big room with the shrine and the training equipment, two sides of the mystery he cannot solve by himself.

Hawks’ steps slow. Dabi lets him look, heading over to the bookshelf to wait.

Once Hawks has finished taking everything in, he comes back to Dabi’s side—Dabi definitely warms at the unhesitating nature of Hawks’ steps and the way he looks at him, like he’s trustworthy—eyes zeroing in on the books.

Dabi pulls one off the shelf and hands it to Hawks, tapping the indecipherable writing on the front cover.

“Journal twenty-four,” Hawks reads aloud. “By Enji Todoroki.”

 Dabi jumps a little in surprise. He thought for sure Hawks wouldn’t be able to read it.

Hawks physically stills after he reads it. He mouths the name ‘Enji Todoroki’ over and over, blood draining from his face.

“That’s not possible,” he whispers.

Dabi moves in front of Hawks, staring at him.

“This—Enji Todoroki has been dead for a long, long time,” Hawks says. “He’s—he was the priest I was telling you about before. This book, it’s authored by him, but I’ve never seen his works chronicled before. They were lost, according to the librarians I spoke with. He was the one that went against that famous ruler, All Might.” Hawks’ sharp eyes slice through Dabi. “Do you know the name?”

Dabi shakes his head. Nothing stirs his body when Hawks utters those syllables.

“Perhaps you know the moniker he went by. Lord Endeavor, I believe it was?”

Sound drops. Silence so absolute, it could devour the world whole.

Something unfamiliar twists in Dabi’s chest, a complicated knot of emotion lodging in his throat. Firelight flashes over his skin, curls about his knuckles.

Hawks exhales. “You do know him.”

Dabi barely hears him. Beneath all the sensation rioting in his blood is hatred. Ancient in its rust, shaking overgrowth from its shoulders like a beast freshly risen. Hate, hate, hate—its timbre pounds with every pulse.

“He’s dead?” Dabi asks.

Hawks’ head tips. “I don’t understand.”

Dabi pantomimes slitting his throat.

“Ah. Yes, he died. Burned himself to ash trying to claim All Might’s place over the realm.” Hawks pauses. “According to the records, he despised certain types of magic. Were you…did you serve him?”

Serve.

What a terrible word.

As if summoned by the idea, spellwork flares to life over Dabi’s limbs, written into his very flesh. It crawls, grinding over bone. Around his throat, his wrists, his ankles; in every patch of scar tissue.

“Bound,” Dabi says.

Hawks’ face devolves into grief as the spellwork shines. “Oh, my dear wisp. What happened to you?”

“Endeavor,” Dabi grates.

Apparently, Hawks understood that. He nods. “We’ll figure it out. Together. I’m not leaving until we have every answer. This is too—too troubling to let go.”

Dabi reaches out to Hawks’ wrist, tapping a bracelet that coils around it.

Hawks’ smile is sad for himself this time. “I’ve nothing left to go back for,” he says. “I’m sure the Queen and her Commission have taken over my workshop thinking I’m dead. Besides, I must heal before I can do anything. I’ll die before I get anywhere worthwhile.”

Before he can stop it, a whine slips from Dabi’s throat.

Hawks chuckles. “Let her have her supposed victory. I’ll deal with her later. They don’t have the mine and they don’t have my life or my designs. I’ve still got plenty to live for outside of this little mystery around you, dear wisp.”

Even as he says it, Hawks’ eyes fill with tears he doesn’t let fall. Dabi takes the distraction, offering Hawks some comfort as Dabi presses closer to his side.

Hawks looks up at Dabi in surprise. Then, he cracks a smile.

“Perhaps I’m the one who has now beguiled you, instead of the other way around,” he says with a little laugh. “Now, let’s start figuring this out.”

Hawks opens the slim volume and starts leafing through the pages as best he can. He frowns at it. “Some of it I can read, but some of it is written in that Astridium language I was telling you about.”

Hawks snaps it closed, moving past Dabi to examine the books. He cocks his head to read the spines. Down the lines of shelves he goes, trailing one talon over each bump of cover. Dust dances from the disturbance, but neither of them mind.

“Here,” Hawks suddenly says, yanking a much thicker book off the second bookshelf.

When he opens it and shows Dabi, it still doesn’t make sense to him.

“It’s a translator,” Hawks says, eagerness making him bounce on the balls of his feet. “With this, I can break down Astridium. I can figure out your name, wisp. And whatever other secrets lie in this place. Now, let’s see if I can find the first journal from this Lord Endeavor figure.”

Thankfully, the books seem to be extremely neat and ordered. He pulls the first book and sits down as carefully as he can manage, his tail feathers fanning across the floor behind him. His feathers puff with excitement.

He looks to Dabi. Dabi looks right back.

“Are you ready?”

Dabi hesitates. Is he? Would this bring him ruination or freedom? Now that he’s aware of the shackles in their entirety, feeling each thread of spellwork tying him to this forest, to what must be rot and bones of a man at this point, he wants them off. He can feel them stifling him, limiting his light, his flames and mind.

How he went so long without feeling it, he doesn’t know. Perhaps more spellwork. Perhaps Dabi didn’t want to see it, more content to play at being a wisp instead of whatever pain lay locked away inside of him. He knows it’s going to hurt, can already feel the rise of it along with that thrumming hatred, but having Hawks help him, even having Hawks near him, will help.

That bond might be one-sided, Dabi knows. He might be overdoing it, driven by wisp instincts that are not his own, but Dabi killed three men for Hawks. He’s…betraying his forest for Hawks, or more likely, because of Hawks. Because he asked the right questions to begin unraveling this cursed existence of his.

Dabi nods. He settles beside Hawks. One of those brilliant red wings extends to wrap around Dabi’s frame. Dabi’s tail snakes around Hawks’ waist, the soft fur tickling his still bare skin.

Hawks clears his throat, eyes glued to the page. “I found four fallen stars one day, high up on a mountain’s peak. As of the time, this peak had yet to be named and discovered. This was my mission, charged as a servant of All Might and His realm as he expanded his missive of peace upon the world. I didn’t think anything of those stars, tucked them in my pocket to bring back once the long months of exploration ended. However, what I’ve discovered changes things…”

***

The first journal said nothing of a being like Dabi.

Neither did the second.

Or the third.

The diagrams within, traced by Hawks’ taloned fingertip, show that the “fallen stars” Lord Endeavor found were picked up in the precise location of Sekoto Peak. He rambles about moral quandaries, fights with his faith as the spool of the journey grows ever longer, wrapping about Lord Endeavor’s limbs like a chain of Fate.

Hawks was not surprised to find out Lord Endeavor was a man who held no magical powers. He was not surprised when Lord Endeavor detailed his anger, his loathing, and reflected off his idea of a god so completely that every terrible action noted in the passages was a justification. He was not surprised at his spiteful words about his touted, beautiful wife who could not bear children. He was not surprised by the detailing of Lord Endeavor’s mercy killings of magical beings.

Dabi was.

All of it shocked him to a core he didn’t realize he had. All of it pulled at his bones, urging him into movement, into a hissing, teeth-baring ball of barely contained power. Every time Hawks paused to ask if Dabi wanted him to continue, Dabi made him go on, even when he knew—he knew—the anger was a mask for the hurt.

He doesn’t yet know why he hurts. But pain is pain.

Hawks pauses once more after the third journal is put in the completed pile. “Dear wisp, could you make me a cup of tea? And grab some of the bread from my belongings? It’s already growing late and I fear I may have no voice by nightfall.” He massages his bandaged throat for emphasis.

Dabi stalks away to do as he is bid, mind whirling with the new information. Because it is new to him. Whatever lock of spellwork is on him still stays tightly shut. He can almost feel the memories swirling, feel the knowledge that’s right there, on the edge of being seen, being acknowledged and lived all over again, but it remains a frustrating treat, dangling outside of his grasp.

Torment is the word that comes to mind.

Dabi grabs Hawks’ tea and food, pilfering a spare blanket to draw over his still-bare shoulders.

When he returns to the room, the fourth journal is in Hawks’ hands, open beneath his shocked eyes and white-lipped gasp.

Dabi hurries over, dropping beside Hawks and bumping into his legs. He sets aside the items in his hands, staring only at the horror displayed before him.

“Hawks,” Dabi says.

He looks up at Dabi. He knows his name now, in the Astridium language Dabi speaks.

“You’re one of them,” Hawks says.

“What?”

“One of them. The—you’re a fallen star. Some otherworldly demon. You’ve never been a wisp. You—” Hawks breaks off, cursing. “You’ve never belonged here. Lord Endeavor found you, he awakened you, and he bound you to him.”

Sound becomes hollow becomes ringing becomes silence. Hawks asks him something, face turned up to Dabi. Dabi doesn’t respond, can’t respond.

A star. A fallen star.

Something in him knows of his own duality, knows of the scorching, all-consuming fire of his being and the gentleness of creation from his own depths, from the elements thrown out into the wide, infinite expanse around him. He knows of beauty, the horror of unmaking and remaking. He knows of things lurking in the shadows of satellites, being disrupting his own gravity to try and consume him.

Is that how he fell?

And what of the others?

He must make a noise, for Hawks’ hands find his cheeks, pulling Dabi back down to earth. Some part of him registers the flicker of fire over his skin, but he cannot care.

“It’s all right,” Hawks says, thumbs rubbing over his sensitive skin. “It’s all right, he’s not here any longer. He can’t hurt you.”

Is that true? How can it be, when infinity plays such cruel tricks on him? A taste of his own medicine, absolution kept from him for the sake of what, power? Power for a man so wrapped up in his own religion, his own selfishness and greed, he tried to break the world with the very same power he scoffed at? The hypocrisy alone is killer, Dabi’s being turned into a weapon.

“Keep going,” Dabi rasps, fighting the swell of emotion in his throat. It hurts. It hurts so much he could fall apart.

“What? What did you say?” Hawks asks softly, cocking his head. Still his hands remain in a cradle, holding Dabi close.

Dabi reaches out and taps the journal once with a sharp finger, hastily pulling it back.

“Are you sure?”

Dabi nods. He carefully pulls Hawks’ hands away—he could break them, shatter each bone to dust—and reaches for the warm tea he had set aside.

Once Hawks has taken a few sips, he settles back down. Dabi tosses the blanket over Hawks’ back just so his hands have something to do, tugging it this and that way over his wings and shoulders until he’s satisfied. Hawks pats him on the knee for it, eyes returning to the journal with a touch of apprehension.

That quickly caves beneath the gravity of each sentence.

Lord Endeavor details the existence of…siblings of a sort. Three of them besides Dabi, each with their own unique variance of fire—one of them burning hot, while the other two burn cold. He writes of the satisfaction of seeing his wife have purpose beyond mourning what she cannot give, the pride he finds in this stitched together picture of family. None of the stars were there willingly, he notes, but divinity saw fit to give the stars to him, and Lord Endeavor was not keen on letting go of them, especially once he saw their powers.

He writes of two stars in particular, one with black horns and the other with scales along parts of his body. Through each passage, Hawks and Dabi become painfully aware of the Lord Endeavor’s spiral, his descent into obsession. It starts with the black-horned star, enamored with the heat output and sheer power. Dabi wonders at that now, knows it’s about himself, and while he feels his own strength, it is nothing compared to the fanatic pouring on the page.

Hawks starts to read a line in particular but stops, staring at something on the page.

“Your name is written here,” he whispers. “With the translator, I can finally make good on that promise of mine.”

Eyes closing, Dabi nods his head.

It takes a few minutes, Hawks paging through the translator with intention, muttering under his breath. His wings puff up beneath the blanket, his taloned toes tapping against the floorboards with impatience.

Dabi waits with tranquility. He’s passed some threshold long ago, disconnecting him from the roaring tides of power in his chest. He waits and he waits, just like he’s always done.

Salvation, damnation—whatever he could call it—comes in two syllables.

“Touya.”

At first, Dabi is confused. That’s not his name. Did Hawks get it wrong?

Then, he feels the spellwork rise once more to the surface of his skin.

For the first time, he really looks at himself, looks at the scar tissue haloed in white, crawling light. He looks at the pale skin in-between, the bits of wood keeping him whole. He looks at the sharp tips of his fingers, the massacre of his torso, the long, lean lines of his legs. He sees differences between him and Hawks, in proportion and subtle wrongness, making him ‘other,’ making him ‘them’ when people think of ‘us.’

This body is not ‘Dabi.’ That name belongs to a lonely little wisp tied to a cold, dark wood. A being that can’t remember anything beyond the turn of the sun and the many paths between the trees. A being that suffers without knowing its suffering.

He’s one aspect of this Touya Hawks speaks of, a product of one man’s rage.

No more.

The name rips through him like the thorns of a honey locust tree, like the tiny teeth of a pixie, like the thundering roar of beasts. It’s identity and knowing and undoing—as he watches, the spellwork on his body unravels, falling from his skin in glowing filaments as thin as spider silk.

With each piece that drops comes memories.

Lord Endeavor’s face upon wakening from his slumber, how those huge hands cradled him so gently. How they nurtured, how they cultivated and grew. How his words accompanied them, speaking of power and prestige. Those were foreign things to Touya, but he believed in Lord Endeavor, believed in his pretty lies and promises, allowed the chains to be locked onto him with the belief that it was right—it was right.

It was wrong.

He remembers how the words become poison, how slowly Lord Endeavor shifted to his sibling, Shoto, when Touya’s powers—so strong, so crippling—became uncontrollable. Shoto’s unique mix of hot and cold was strong, too. Not crippling, not stitched wrong into a skin that’s not his own. Touya knows that now, knows the body he wears is not the true one. Perhaps it was spellwork gone wrong, on Touya’s part of Lord Endeavor’s. He doesn’t know in the moment.

Touya remembers how he burned against any who stood against Lord Endeavor. He remembers conviction on his tongue, in each sparkling Astridium word that dropped from his lips. He remembers how Lord Endeavor taught them all his language—he can dredge it up now, all of it.

Even his death.

He remembers his rebellion. Sentenced to confinement on Sekoto Peak for trying to keep Lord Endeavor’s attention on him and hurting his gathering armies in the process. Touya remembers how he chose to train here, in this very same building, hoping to improve so Lord Endeavor could see his value once more.

Touya waited.

And waited.

And waited.

Still, Lord Endeavor never came. His siblings never came. His…mother…never came. Touya was forgotten, cast aside.

And so he burned.

His heart a dying star, Touya scorched Sekoto Peak to ashes, would have sent the entirety of the world aflame if Lord Endeavor hadn’t come then.

“Father,” Touya called him.

“Lord Endeavor,” he corrected Touya, disappointment plain in his piercing blue eyes.

Still Touya burned, lit up like a torch, gaping maws of blue flames slamming against the ruins of the place around him. “See what I can do, father? See what I could be for you?”

“You are a walking suicide mission,” Lord Endeavor told him. “I want you to obey me, not question me. Not when victory is so close.”

“Let me give it to you,” Touya begged, stepping closer. Lord Endeavor didn’t burn, didn’t even sweat with Touya’s proximity. Such is the gift of the magic he wrought on the fallen stars.

“No. You will remain here in disgrace. I’ll find some use of your remains.”

“Remains?” Touya questioned. His mouth stretches in a grin so big it splits the corners of his lips. “You think you’re powerful enough to kill me?”

Lord Endeavor shakes his head. “No, Touya. I’m not. You’ll do it to yourself.”

Touya’s smile turned into a snarl. “How dare you.”

Lord Endeavor looms. “How dare I? I brought you into this world. I have the divine right to take you out. Besides, you’re falling apart as it is. It won’t take much more.”

Touya chokes on a scream, knowing Lord Endeavor hates when he screams, but that doesn’t matter much now, does it?

So Touya cracks his jaw wide, wider than it should and screams his rage, his pain, at the very person that gave him life and purpose. His powers roar out of his control, blue fire exploding outward in a roiling wave licking over earth that has already turned to ash. He screams and he screams and he screams, and still Lord Endeavor stands there, judgement in his eyes, arms crossed over his chest.

Touya lets out more fire, completely relinquishes the hold he always kept on his power. It’s a riot, a war in itself that costs him everything.

His body falters. Touya falls to one knee.

Lord Endeavor grins.

Fear takes place of rage.

“Let me tell you what you will become, demon.” Lord Endeavor hisses the curse at him. Touya flinches; he’s never liked that word. “I’m going to harness what I can of your power and take it with me to use as I see fit. I’m going to bind your body and whatever I can’t take to this mountain and forest. You will never be able to leave it, that I promise you.”

Lord Endeavor pauses, considering the burning form of his son. “You acted in sin, Touya. You went against me, against the holy word I carry at God’s behest. You hurt me, deeply, when you cost us the battle at the Gully against All Might’s forces. For that, you must be punished. But what do to, what to do?”

He paces while he thinks, Touya’s flames harmless where they try to climb his shins. Touya tries to reign it in, to pull it back so Lord Endeavor can’t take it, but everything he knows doesn’t work. His fire, his magic, still surges, covering the mountain and forest below, reaching even the edges of it in its hunger. Tears fall from his eyes, even those aflame in pure white as they fall into piles of ash and embers.

The worst part of it is some corner of him believes Lord Endeavor. Believes he needs to be punished for something he couldn’t control.

“I’ll take your memories,” Lord Endeavor decides. “Forgetting just enough to keep you complacent. Besides, I imagine being immortal and alone with nothing to remember will be penance enough for me, even if you don’t remember. I’ll make sure no one ever finds trace of you, Touya. Not even your name will last. Yes, I think that will do nicely.”

Touya’s body continues to break as Lord Endeavor begins his enchantment. Orange braces of fire rise to keep Touya pinned in place. He feels when Lord Endeavor peels part of Touya’s power off of him, takes the morsel and drops it down his throat like a piece of honeycomb. He feels when Touya’s power takes root in him, melding with the well he’s taken from his siblings.

He fights against his restraints, throwing back his head and howling his defiance at a gray winter sky. Lord Endeavor continues chanting.

Spellwork burns into his deteriorating form, sinking deep into his bones. Touya keeps fighting, fear driving him like a deer stuck in a trap, like a monster being hunted. He feels himself bleeding out, his magic siphoned into the very earth he’s destroyed.

Lord Endeavor starts wrapping up his spellwork. Touya feels the memories ripping from his mind.

He throws himself once more against his bindings, blue blood dripping from his mouth. “I curse you, Enji Todoroki,” Touya says, low and quiet. “I curse you and this pitiful war you fight. The moment you try to use the power you’ve taken from me, you will burn. This I promise. This I will. This I burden.”

“No!” Lord Endeavor roars.

But Touya’s last shred of control is enough. He speaks a short phrase in Astridium, one much simpler than Lord Endeavor’s elaborate spellwork.

“The past never dies,” Touya says. “Remember me well, Enji. I could have been your salvation.”

Lord Endeavor’s snarling face is the last thing he sees before it’s all torn away beneath a massive hand wreathed in orange flames.

“Touya,” someone says.

A hand touches his shoulder. Touya jerks back into shaky existence.

Hawks watches him with concern and a certain amount of apprehension. “Are you back with me?”

Touya nods. He swallows, throat bone dry.

Very, very carefully, Touya parts his lips, wracking his brain until the language comes easy.

“I am,” he says in the same language Hawks speaks.

Hawks jumps in surprise, his wings twitching the blanket right off his back. “You—I understood you.”

“Yes. When you said my name, it—unlocked the binding, in a way. I was…meant to be forgotten.”

“You…remember now?” Hawks asks, fluffy eyebrows drawing together.

“Everything,” Touya says.

“Everything?”

“Yes. We don’t need to read anymore of his journals. After all, this is my story.”

***

Touya tells Hawks of fallen stars gracing the earth, knocked askew by a monster in the sky that devours planets. He tells of a priest caught between reality and idealism who happened upon them, coveted them, woke them up and kept them in his pocket for his supposed holy work. He tells of his demise, how after Lord Endeavor bound Touya to the mountain and accompanying forest. He notes how his power tainted this forest, covered it in otherworldly magic that attracted the strangeness that now resides in it.

“That’s how it earned this idea of the forest being cursed,” Hawks surmises. “Such power is the only reason.”

Touya tells Hawks of being a wisp, tells him of Lord Endeavor’s planted thoughts of having purpose, necessity, in this forest. How Lord Endeavor sentenced him to servitude in a place of such isolation no one would ever happen upon Touya except a select few over centuries. With the added consequences of a forest steeped in his magic, even that number was reduced to a handful.

At the end of his tale, night has fallen, deep and dark outside the few windows in the room they occupy.

“What about this place?” Hawks asks, his voice just above a rasp.

“What do you mean?”

“How did it survive?”

Touya pauses, considering the solid wood beneath his fingers. “It didn’t. I burnt it to nothing, but I think the magic rewound some of the damage. I think this moment, in this place, is stuck in time. It never changes. The tea leaves are still fresh, the books remain as they were when they were written. Magic has a funny way of preserving moments like that.”

“You mean before you died.”

“Yes,” Touya confirms.

Hawks leans against his shoulder, seeking warmth. “Mm, makes sense, I guess. My people are not particularly prone to magic and magical abilities. Bird-like traits are as far as we usually go, though some are born with magic depending on chance and parentage.” Hawks’ wings fluff to reinforce his point.

Silence falls, broken only by a cricket singing in the brush on the other side of the wall they lean against.

“I know the binding on your memory is broken,” Hawks says. “But what about your link to the forest?”

Touya blinks, trying to feel if that remains.

His head tips. “I’m not sure,” he confesses. “It’s difficult to tell. The forest was already rebelling against me before all of this. Perhaps it knew I was beginning to question things I’ve never questioned before. Perhaps it was turned to Lord Endeavor’s side. We’ll find out once we go down the mountain after you’re healed.”

As if he forgot about them, Hawks looks down at his bandaged chest. “Right.”

“You should sleep,” Touya says. “It’s late.”

Hawks glances up at him. “I don’t want to.”

Touya’s lips twitch. “And why is that, little bird?”

Hawks’ nose wrinkles. “’Little bird?’”

“Yes, little bird. Perhaps robin? Sparrow? You seem like a flighty thing.”

Hawks’ nose wrinkles further, mouth pulling down. “I think I liked it better when I couldn’t understand you.”

“Really?” Touya cocks his head. His pulse pounds hard in his temples.

“No. I like being able to converse with you much better. My dear wisp.” Hawks’ expression melts into some dopey smile. “My little star.”

“Payback doesn’t suit you.”

“No, but I mean it. You’re not getting rid of me after this, Touya. I’m not going anywhere.”

“You’ve no reason to stay,” Touya protests.

Hawks looks at him, the gold of his eyes deep and rich with the shadows around them. His pupils pin. “You’re reason enough,” Hawks says.

“You don’t—”

“My name is Keigo, by the way. Takami Keigo. Hawks is the name I use when I’m just a traveling jeweler.”

Taken aback, Touya looks at Hawks—no, at Keigo.

“Keigo,” Touya repeats.

Like a pearl, Keigo gifts him with a pleased chirp.

Touya says his name again, earning another soft noise. Keigo looks away from him, pressing a hand over his own mouth.

“Don’t,” Touya protests. “I like it.”

“Many don’t if they’re not from our country.”

“I am a fallen star,” Touya says. “I think I win in strangeness.”

“I like your strangeness,” Keigo argues.

“Just as I like yours. You’ve only proven my point, little bird.”

Keigo huffs but relents in his stubbornness when Touya pulls him to his feet. They lean on each other when the blood rushes down, leaving them both lightheaded.

Touya leads Keigo back to the main room. He stirs the coals and tosses on some extra logs, building a fire to keep Keigo warm as he sleeps.

Keigo climbs into his pallet from the night before, yawning as he goes. Before he lays down, he reaches out and taps Touya on the back, drawing his eye.

“Don’t leave?” Keigo asks.

“I’m not going anywhere,” Touya says. He finishes stirring the fire to life, uncaring about the possibility of using his powers, and sits himself beside Keigo’s pallet. Keigo lays down once Touya is settled beside him.

“Do you sleep?” Keigo asks.

“No.”

“So you don’t dream, either.”

“No.”

Keigo nestles down into the blankets and pillow. “I’ll dream for both of us. Something nice and peaceful.”

“Whatever you desire,” Touya says, eyes locked on Keigo. He’s already half-asleep by the looks of it, much more tired than he let on.

He can’t resist Keigo’s golden head poking above the blanket. One of his hands threads through Keigo’s hair, brushing against hair and feathers alike. Keigo lets out a surprised peep, soft and squeaky, before he hides beneath the blankets. He’s sure to keep his head bared to Touya’s touch, though.

Slowly, carefully, Keigo slips into slumber beneath Touya’s gentle hand.

Touya keeps watch all night long, remembering at his own pace. Discovering who he used to be as a son, an acolyte, a wisp, and pulling it into the now.

It’s petrifying, in a way. But the soft snore emanating from the body in front of him soothes his ragged nerves. He reassures himself with Keigo’s words, his actions, his unhesitating will in the face of the cruelty Touya experienced. Questions remain, answers to be uncovered. But with a little bird by his side, some of the fear abates.

In its place lingers a heart, monstrous and wrong. But it shines, just like the stone that lies below in Touya’s forest, nestled in an ugly old hawthorn tree. It glimmers and shifts, throwing strange new patterns with each change of light.

It is hope, tried and true. Touya has no intention of letting go of it.

***

Many years later, a tiny stone and wood house waits for its inhabitants to return, windows opening during the sweet summer days to air itself out. The ugly old hawthorn next to it bows, tapping its branches along the roof in a kind of message no one has yet to figure out. Birds flit in an out as they please, along with pixies and fruit dragons and other tiny creatures. They make messes that turn into gifts, piles of flowers weaving into a little crown to drape over black horns or a handful of berries rolling into sweet dough and baking itself atop a tiny fire spirit. Wisps dance about the property at night, beckoning, calling for the return of a particular red-winged man that always brought them gifts. Fireflies cascade with them, riding the waves of magic so familiar, yet so much more gentle than ever before. Even the beasts that roam the forest and mountain find themselves willing victims of a peace they didn’t know they wanted. Watchers in the field remain as they are, but something about them dulls their teeth, pulls their shape into something more human than before.

The house waits patiently, knowing in that special way it does that it will be soon. It clears itself of lingering dust, decorating with something new. The bed moves to the norther corner, the kitchen table shifted to the westward window instead of the east. The little workshop filled with jewels relocates to where the bathroom used to be. The house deems it a better fit, more logical in the way only magic can twist the idea of ‘logic.’ It sneezes leaves and a few scattered branches from its roof.

And when the time comes, it opens it door to welcome its owners home.

A blue ball of fire rockets in first, shifting in a flash to a long-limbed form and flopping face-first onto the bed, unhesitating despite the house’s efforts to move things around.

Touya groans into the pillows. A pretty gem is strung about his neck, falling onto the pillow beside him with the angle of his flop. “Gods is it good to be home,” he says, muffled.

“Hello, dear house,” Keigo says, walking in thirty seconds behind. “Did you miss us?”

The house creaks in welcome, doors flapping on their hinges.

“I know,” Keigo says. “It was a bit longer than anticipated, but we were very productive.”

“Tired,” Touya grumbles.

Keigo drops his heavy pack, rolling his shoulders. “You didn’t have to carry that thing the entire way,” he points out. “Very convenient of you to remain in your wisp form.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about. Besides, I single-handedly recreated your reputation. The traveling jeweler with a wisp as a companion.” Touya snorts into the pillow.

Keigo smiles, walking over to the bed to ruffle Touya’s starlight hair. It faded from its black a while ago now, back to what it used to be before Lord Endeavor’s actions. “Whatever you say, Touya.”

Touya whines and turns his head, face upturned.

Never one to resist, Keigo leans down and kisses him, uncaring of the sharp teeth or scar tissue. He trails his kisses along the seam with the living bits of wood keeping Touya together as well. It’s all precious, all loved. One of them uncurls and caresses Keigo’s cheek, like a finger. Keigo kisses that, too, laughing when its tiny leaves flutter.

Touya’s face falls back into the pillow once he’s gotten his fill. Greedy thing—beloved thing.

“I’m going to unpack,” Keigo says to him.

“I can do it,” Touya groans. “You’re the one that needs to sleep.”

“It’s all right, I want to organize what we have in my workshop.”

Touya sighs, turning his head. “You sure?”

Keigo nods. “With the new ruler of the Commission, I’ve got a lot of work to do. It’ll keep me plenty busy. I’d rather get started with some reorganizing than let it sit.”

“Not busy enough for me, I hope.”

Keigo scratches his talons through Touya’s hair. “Never. Anytime you want me, I’m yours.”

Touya sighs again, fully relaxing into the mattress. Keigo pulls away and putters around, taking in the newness with a curious glance.

“Wonderful choices, as usual,” he tells the house. “Although moving my workshop was quite surprising. At least I’ll have a perfect view of the mountain from here now.”

The house rumbles, just about purring over itself.

Keigo continues his little tasks. He goes into his workshop and stores all the perfect little gems he found in need of polishing. The rest of his materials are put away in their designated places, including his precious design book with all his ideas. With the lateness of summer ready to shift into fall, he and Touya wanted to hurry back to their forest so he could get started making jewelry to take with him for the winter celebrations as well as the later spring ones. This new ruler was much more ambivalent about where Keigo was getting his special gems that have become his trademark. No, this Midoriya fellow didn’t seem to care so long as he put a genuine smile on everyone’s faces at the beautiful jewelry he created. Besides, he is enamored with Touya’s brother, Shoto, one of the other fallen stars he and Touya had found and released from the fragmented spellwork holding him hostage.

Not to brag, but Keigo’s jewelry looks fantastic on him, shining amongst his dual-colored scales and hair. And with the way Midoriya looks at Shoto?

Keigo has a sneaking suspicion things will be much better handled than before.

The Queen’s demise had been strange and swathed in mystery. No one cared much when the depth of her coldness was revealed by a particular fallen star with black horns. Not when he scorched her sins into the sides of her castle, broadcast for the whole kingdom to gossip over.

He pauses in unpacking to have a slice of the pie on the counter, pleased by the burst of raspberries and blueberries in his mouth.

When he’s finished eating and unpacking, the sun slinks towards the edge of the world. It lights their forest up in burnished gold and orange, casting long shadows from the trees that shiver and move with intention he’s never been able to puzzle out.

This wood has become home, a thought Keigo would never have entertained based on its passage from word of mouth as cursed, blighted by evil, full of abominations.

All Keigo found was a lonely fallen star in need of a friend, in need of someone to remember him, to acknowledge him. He found magic that dazzled, beings he’s never seen before, mystery on a peak where his fallen star died at the hands of his father. He found knowledge he didn’t set out to find, along with a mischievous kind of love that was apparent from the beginning.

Every time Touya tried to kill him as a wisp, every time he led Keigo through the vicious pixie groves or the field with the watchers that tore at his feathers despite never moving to his eye, it was all a kind of love. Touya didn’t even realize what he was doing, Keigo later found out, but Keigo was humored enough by Touya as a wisp to not care too much. Only sometimes.

Even now, Touya likes to play tricks on him. They’re softer, though nonetheless as affectionate as trying to kill Keigo at every turn. It was sticking a mint leaf in Keigo’s dinner—he hates mint—or scorching holes in his shirt. It was waking up to find wood shavings all over Keigo’s wings as Touya scrapped away at a block of wood with his sharp fingers. It was the strangeness of having a fallen star at his side, and all the fun that came with it.

Tricks or treats, star or wisp, monster or gift—Keigo loves him all the same.

He joins Touya in bed, curling beneath the covers and pressing close. Touya hums, deep in his chest and bathed in residual gold from the open windows. Once, Keigo asked him about the melodies—none of them were familiar to him.

Touya told him it was the true language of stars, as close as he could replicate it. Astridium was too grounded, too structured to accurately reflect it.

After that, Keigo was always sure to hum along, learning one by one little pieces of his fallen star.

The house draws close around them, slowly closing the curtains and locking the doors. A fire roars to life in the stone fireplace, crackling and mingling with the steady rise and fall of two creatures content with each other and themselves.

Outside, beasts howl and the black dogs bay as they pick up a scent to hunt. The watchers stay in their guard, the pixies buzz with menacing delight, and the river continues rushing through the long, tangling wood. Trees hush the night, boughs brushing each other. Just outside the perimeter of the house, a solitary deer walks, a great crown of black antlers upon its head. Ribbons of bloody velvet droop from them, framing pale red eyes that shine even in the dark.

Above, the stars sing, humming along to the same song Touya hums below.