Chapter Text
When the static clears, Hawks hears the squelch of flesh, and feels the warm gush of liquid around his feather that he had never wanted to feel again. Barely a gasp comes out of the man he’d just felled before there’s a thump and Hawks can finally piece together where he is again.
Gunga Villa.
An undestroyed Gunga Villa, which is impossible because a couple days ago the raid happened, and these very walls were brought crashing down by Cementoss, and this very room is where… where…
It was burnt to bits by Dabi.
Never mind that the feather Hawks is holding is impossible because all his feathers are gone due to that same villain. The doctors had told him that it’d take weeks this time, if not months, for full recovery. Why is he at Gunga Villa when he last remembers being outside with the other Top Three keeping watch over Midoriya?
‘I must be dreaming,’ Hawks thinks to himself. ‘This is just me remembering. But if it’s the memory, where’s Dabi? I didn’t kill Jin in this room, but outside of it. Yet, he’s…’
Jin Bubaigawara lies dead before him. To the side, Hawks sees the shredded remains of all of Skeptic’s cameras, much like they’d been during the fight. But this is not how it went. There’s no flames, or smoke.
Dabi’s missing.
There’s some pin and needles sensation that starts to ache on his arm and Hawks puts back his bloody feather to push back his sleeve and see what’s there. The normally unmarked skin of his inner arm is now marked with stark numbers, etched into the surface of his skin like a tattoo he doesn’t recall having.
05:00
Five minutes? Five o’clock?
‘Something’s wrong,’ Hawks thinks again. ‘And this isn’t the right place to figure it out.’
A loud boom comes from outside the room, shaking the very foundations of the building. He can hear screaming in the distance, much like when the raid started. Hawks stares at the doorway, wondering if he should go down to check it out. But if this is somehow the raid again, within mere minutes Dabi would show up and Hawks doesn’t want to feel his flames on his wings and flesh again. But he can’t stay here and play sitting duck either.
Decision made, the hero grabs the body he’s been standing over. There’s a small pool of blood underneath Jin’s corpse that Hawks merely wipes at with his boot ineffectively before he launches himself out the window, corpse in tow.
If Hawks must get to the bottom of this, he might as well buy some time.
Days later, Takami Keigo is in a very familiar office before a very familiar woman. Neither of which should still exist but they do. He’s just come from a press conference terribly like the one he remembers doing a few weeks ago. Any attempts to remember only bring up flashes of static not unlike when a TV loses signal. Somehow he can relate – he feels lost being here as he looks down at the HSPC president who is supposed to be in a coma, and not sitting at her desk as if nothing happened.
“It could have gone much worse,” she says, folding her arms across her lap, sternly meeting his gaze. “Much. Worse. That boy, Todoroki, his plan could have worked much better if he’d gotten more footage or managed to include Bubaigawara’s death in his little video essay. The abuse allegations against Endeavor aside, the one thing he had on you besides your father’s criminal status was Jeanist, and that didn’t go well. You did well to carry out your task so quickly, Hawks.”
Hawks nods, folding his arms across his chest. His wings are back, as heavy as ever, but a new hollowness has settled in somewhere he can't pinpoint.
“I was just following orders. We’d agreed to take Bubaigawara out first.” The words sound empty to him because he’d refused the first time around; argued in favor of offering Bubaigawara clemency in exchange for deserting the PLF, or at most knocking him out and taking him to a detention center. The first time around, Hawks had lost control of the situation, especially once Dabi had come in. This time, he didn’t even give Jin a chance.
“Quite surprising given how insistent you were on giving him a chance. Still, it worked out for the better. Bubaigawara’s death meant that the clone we thought was Redestro melted before we could engage it in a fight. Lucky for us,” she says, opening her drawer and taking out a pen to write on a notepad. “Of course, there’s still massive casualties to deal with. Gunga Villa was a success but Jaku’s hospital wasn’t. It could have been much worse, but the League is still out there, and Endeavor’s reputation is in shambles. We don’t even know where Himiko Toga is; she wasn’t with the rest when Gigantomachia arrived. It’s only due to us preparing that we knew to guard against the prison breaks that happened after Tartarus.”
Many of which were Hawks’s doing. Once they’d moved to deal with the Villa, it’d been his trademark speed that helped quell some of those in what was one of the most tiring nights of his life, all because Hawks knew exactly when and where AFO would strike next. It had to be said that the HSPC training had at least taught him to keep cool in moments like these, where he’d been deposited into some other…world? Universe? Dimension? Where things were the same and yet so different, and yet Hawks still has the presence of mind to do what he does best.
“So?” Hawks asks, too exhausted to smile down at her. “Did you need more from me?”
Her mouth twitches and Hawks can see she’s displeased with his tone. Well, boo-fucking- hoo . Hawks hasn’t slept in two days. He can’t, not really, because every time he closes his eyes, he either feels searing heat enveloping him or the gushy softness of blood and organs and Jin .
“You’re going to be number one. He won’t come back from this.”
“I know.”
He never wanted this. He wants a world where heroes have more free time than they know what to do with; and the burden of creating such a world is one he’d take on his not-broad-at-all shoulders. But it feels heavier than ever, now that he’s going to bear the crown.
Number one hero Hawks.
He wants to laugh. Not in his wildest dreams as a child had he looked and wished for it. Oh, but he watched Endeavor be a shining light in the dark, yes, but the rankings still feel like a fantasy on TV.
Golden eyes slide from his boss’s face to the window. He’s ascended from a gutter sparrow to a golden eagle all with the help of her and those under her. And yet he feels more trapped to ground than he’s ever been. The shackles are only going to get ever tighter on him. He feels guilty thinking that he’d at least tasted freedom the first time around, even if society paid the price for it.
“If taking up the mantle is what I need to do to bring some order and peace to the chaos out there, I will.” Hawks says, feeling déjà vu creep up on him from a day months earlier, on a rooftop where he bowed before them. “Perhaps it’s not the broad shoulders and heroic figures that people want from their heroes.”
“There’s one more matter besides this,” She says, writing and seemingly not paying him much mind as she does so. “We decided it’s too much of a risk to deal with any examination of Bubaigawara’s death in case All For One or one of Garaki Kyudai’s subordinates have infiltrated our operation and want to use the body for noumu development. A quirk like Double can’t be allowed to exist. Too dangerous. Tomorrow, we’re going to dispose of the body, secretly, and give him a cremation and then burial in an unmarked urn.”
The hole in Hawks’s chest feels like it’s expanded and grown more painful.
“What?”
“We’re burning then burying him, Hawks. Full Buddhist rites under a different name so no one can know. The reason I’m mentioning this is because I know you, boy, and I know it wasn’t easy to do the right thing. Nonetheless you put your sentimentality and feelings aside for the greater good and we’ve come out stronger for it. That doesn’t mean I, or the HSPC, are cruel . I’m extending an invitation for you to attend his funeral and kotsuage . Otherwise, he’ll have no one else.”
Something bubbles in Hawks’s chest. A laugh wants to escape his throat in incredulity; the irony of the murderer (and didn’t he remember being called one… was that right before the static? ) being the only one to attend the funeral of the person he killed.
How lonely.
How sad.
She knows him too well. Hawks doesn’t leave things undone and wouldn’t have been able to refuse. Is this a concession to the sacrifices he’s made? An acknowledgment of the fact he’d argued prior to the raid that some of the villains could be rehabilitated, Bubaigawara as his main exhibit?
It’s always like this with her – for all Madame President says the HPSC isn’t cruel, Hawks finds it hard to agree with this assessment. Not like anyone asks him, though.
“Where?”
She pushes forward a small piece of paper with coordinates and a time. “Don’t spend too long on this, Hawks. There’s so much work to do and once this is done, I expect you to be in the best shape possible for leading us through this crisis. Our society does not have time, in this crisis, to let you indulge in too much sentiment and remorse. ”
He bows to her before making his way out.
“Don’t worry about me and making up for time.”
The tattoo on his arm hasn’t changed. It’s still stuck at 05:00. He’s not sure what it means other than a quirk; and he suspects his brief flashes of memory of a mob surrounding him and Jeanist’s car are the only link to what happened. A bunch of angry civilians with countless unknown quirks. One of them may have pushed him into this parallel universe where he’d wasted no time in killing Jin.
It leaves a bitter taste in his mouth. What’s this trying to teach him, that he shouldn’t have even tried to offer his hand to Twice? Because this was an objectively better world than the one he remembers. Sure the Tartarus inmates are running around, but all the other jails are on secure lockdown. There are far less angry mobs in the streets yelling about heroes.
Still, Hawks heads back to the hospital to check up on some colleagues. Heroes still got injured. It’s there, as he tries to find Miruko’s room, that he sees a familiar face.
“Tsukuyomi-kun!” Hawks calls out, the smile on his face actually natural. Even if the kid hadn’t saved him in this world, Hawks couldn’t actually hide his gratitude for any iteration of the young hero who’d ascended to his list of favorite people.
The big red eyes marked by his distinct (realizing it had been hair had brought Hawks a certain sense of horror) plumage fix themselves on him and then the boy bows his head in acknowledgment.
“Shishou.”
“Hey, none of that!” Hawks protests, feeling his cheeks burn at the title. Sure, Tokoyami was a strange kid with lots of quirks, but the deep well of respect the teen must feel to call him a ‘master’ as if he was an apprentice Hawks took on, well…
Hawks hasn’t done much for him. Nothing to inspire the sort of reverence Hawks half-remembers hearing as he faded in and out of consciousness during the raid, where the boy sobbed out that his hands weren’t dirty. He doesn’t deserve the devotion this one high schooler shows him because…
Hawks wears gloves for a reason.
“You can just call me Hawks,” He adds, coming closer. The other heteromorph didn’t have his quirk out right now and was dressed casually. “Since our internship got cut short. Plus, after hearing about how quickly you took down Redestro, I’d say you ain’t that far from ‘master’ yourself.”
He can’t really tell Tokoyami’s reaction to that with all those feathers (don’t tell him it’s hair) covering the kid’s face, but there’s something awkward and bashful in it.
“Such forwardness… But that doesn’t absolve me from acknowledging the salvation your teachings have given me, you who have given me wings akin to a dark angel…”
The boy says in the same manner one would use delivering a rousing eulogy at a funeral…
Wait a minute, funerals.
Funerals .
The words fly out of his mouth faster than he can close it.
“You want to go with me to a funeral?”
The offer is ridiculous, and Hawks should be ashamed, dragging this boy into his mess again, when in this…whatever it is, Tokoyami hadn’t even intervened or needed to. Hawks didn’t even know what he was more ashamed of this time around – again relying on this kid for some absolution or once more sullying himself in front of him and revealing himself as a killer once more.
He can barely remember the words the bird-headed student had pressed into his face as they ran for it from Dabi’s homicidal rage and inferno, but all had the desperation of a boy whose hero had failed him . The denial of what Hawks’s hands were covered in, had committed. It’d hurt as bad as the maniac’s flames had.
Tokoyami just looks confused and swallows in what must be nerves.
“A funeral, Hawks-shishou ?”
Hawks chuckles awkwardly, deciding to play it off as just a joke.
“Yeah, it’s nothing, just some funeral thing I have to do, never mind. I’m just annoyed that I'm going to be alone. Don’t worry ‘bout it, dude, okay?”
It does not work because Hawks knows that serious determined expression in Tokoyami’s face, has seen it a couple times before, and now his chest feels tight because it’s not like he wants the kid to pity him.
“I can go,” Tokoyami says with resolution. “When is it? Now? Is it a hero?”
“It’s tomorrow,” Hawks says, all reluctance fading. Maybe he wants someone else to drown out whatever he’s going to be feeling at Jin’s kotsuage tomorrow. “And no, it’s not a hero. Just a casualty who the Commission wants buried quietly.” That last part comes out as a scoff even if Hawks knows hiding Jin’s death from the public is the best way forward.
“I see.” There’s a puzzled look in the boy’s red eyes that Hawks doesn’t want to address. He really shouldn’t take the kid, there’s no reason other than…
Hawks doesn’t want to be alone. Alone with Jin’s body.
Not at all.
He isn’t the type to ruminate. He likes to call himself an optimist, a forward-thinker, a ‘what’s next’ type of guy. Maybe it’s the Commission training. Maybe it’s the fact that he was born into a family of abusers who had given up on trying to live and better themselves long before he’d even arrived in the picture. Maybe he’s always been the type to fly away from problems before they can catch up with him.
Because that’s freedom, right?
(it used to be)
He takes out the card, memorizing the coordinates and time before handing it off to Tokoyami.
“Here’s the info,” The hero says before sticking his hands back into his jacket, folding in on himself slightly. “Not that I don’t trust you, Tokoyami-kun, but this really has to be hush-hush, okay?” He lowers his voice as a nurse with a cart passes them by, eyeing them clear interest on her face.
The student scans the card before putting it in his own pocket.
“I shall act with the utmost discretion, Master.” Tokoyami’s over-seriousness and straight-faced dramatics have always been comical to Hawks but in this he can’t but feel another burst of warmth for the kid. He didn’t deserve it, really, the way this boy looked up to him. He wonders if he could make Endeavor feel like this, but he supposes the relationship isn’t this mentor-student one. Too late for that and… too complicated.
(He remembers surprising himself as he curled his wings around Shouto, staring off at Endeavor, wanting reassurance that the Todoroki patriarch wasn’t like that anymore, but also feeling some small sort of anger that this boy knew what that felt like in this first place.)
A smile cracks on his face again, Tokoyami having brought out the only real smiles on him since he’s woken up in Gunga Villa with a feather running through Bubaigawara’s body.
“I’ll see you tomorrow, then.” And he reaches out to ruffle that mess of not-hair nor feathers but something in-between that covers Tokoyami’s face, eliciting a noise not too far off from a squawk that sounds terribly similar to what comes out of his own mouth at times. He bids the boy goodbye, trying to not pay too much attention to how Dark Shadow comes out as he leaves and how they whisper between themselves as he goes and pays his respects to the still living.
His arm itches.
The nondescript building that houses Jin’s body is not unfamiliar to Hawks. There’s been deaths in the Commission before, caused by the Commission. He knows there’s a process, but even the cold bureaucracy that runs the Hero Public Safety Commission has some small amount of piety and respect for tradition. For people who they cannot afford to be publically laid to rest, they have their own priest, paid to be quiet, and their own facilities.
The priest, a slight man who looks exactly like a stock photo search of a buddhist priest would if Hawks had cared to google, welcomes with a kindness in his wrinkled face that Hawks finds discomfiting considering he’s about to bury his victim. Not that the Commission sees it that way.
Not that he should see it that way.
It had made figuring out how much money to put in the koden envelope a nightmare earlier. Hawks had spent a sleepless night wondering if it was insulting to pay double the rate of the closest of relatives as the murderer. Not that the cost was an issue – the HPSC should take care of the funeral expenses but Hawks feels obligated in a way he’s only felt in the few situations he just wasn’t fast enough. Even then there’d been abstaining from going overboard due to respectful distances, but Jin was alone. There was no family to insult by giving an amount of money enough to cover the normally expensive funerals of his country (even if Bubaigawara was given the barest of them). Only the dead to insult, and perhaps that’s what Hawks feared even more.
He feels haunted enough every time he looks at his hands.
So it’s with a very fat envelope that Hawks approaches the priest, who raises a grey brow at the amount in it. More than enough to pay the priest himself, but it’s not like Hawks cares about the cash gathering dust in his accounts.
“Let’s begin,” The priest says, leading him into the building. Given the nature of the wake, it’s not surprising he’s going to the cremation room first, barely getting to really say goodbye. As if all the other rituals preceding it don’t matter to the Commission. Hawks is early, true, but part of him just wanted to get the waiting over fast enough.
A thin white sheet covers Bubaigawara’s body. The face has been uncovered, cleaned up. None of the blood Hawks recalls from either instances that had flown from his lips is on his mouth.
He looks peaceful. Not heartbroken, but like he’s asleep. But not really.
The dead always have a strangeness to their faces; you can’t call it sleep when the faces look fake. Plastic almost. A mere effigy to what they were in life.
‘I killed him,’ Hawks reminds himself. ‘This is my handiwork.’
It should be alright. He was a villain.
‘If it’s alright why can’t I sleep at night?’
In both instances, it’d been hard. First time the pain medication had helped to deal with it given all his burns. But in this world he’d nothing to think of but what he’d done.
Looking at Jin hurts. He’s seen that face cry in terror, frustration. He’s seen that face contorted in worry over small things, like having to give speeches about ideologies he couldn’t even understand. He’s seen that face smile at Hawks brightly, happy to see him.
It’s overwhelming, being hit with all the understanding that he used to be alive. Jin used to be alive.
Now he’s not.
Inside his jacket Hawks had bought a fresh pack of the Natural American Spirits cigarettes Jin had been so fond of. He’d once asked him why he’d been so loyal to the brand and Jin had surprised him by telling him that particular quirk of his was a recent development, out of love of a friend who’d changed his life. He’d never learned the friend’s name.
It’s painful to think that even if he did, he wouldn’t have been able to tell them to come say goodbye.
It’s as he’s stuffing the cigarette into a pocket that he notices a handkerchief poking out of it, worn and bloodstained. He’d seen the man fondly caress and never asked him about it.
The absurdity of it hits him, hard.
A short, bitter laugh escapes Hawks’s mouth as he shakes over Jin’s body, elbows wavering as he feels the shame wrack him. This farce of a funeral, where the only attendee was the man who killed the deceased, it’s all absurd isn’t it?
“Is everything alright?” The priest asks as Hawks starts wiping at his eyes, unwilling to start crying in front of this body.
“No.” He chokes out, stepping back and gripping the handkerchief he replaced the cigarettes with. He’s not sure why he’s gripping it, and he should really put it back, but it’s like his fist doesn’t want to unclench. “It’s not.”
The priest gives him a sad look but doesn’t say anything comforting. Probably told by the Commission of the details.
There’s no comfort to the cold realization that you killed a friend and are denying him a decent send off.
The priest covers Jin’s face up and then gestures to the door.
“Our cremations are quick… Just an hour and he’ll be done and we can start the kotsuage itself.” A worker who has been quietly waiting in the background comes forward to close the coffin and wheel Bubaigawara into the crematorium itself. Hawks watches the crematorium doors close around the coffin, blocking off any sight of him and the sound of the worker starting up the cremation.
“Feel free to wait in our other rooms – we also have a bento for the occasion.”
The next hour finds Hawks picking at the bento, appetite nonexistent. There’s no smell from the crematorium but somehow, in his head, he smells the cigarettes as he leans over his food. It’s a plain one, only barely resembling the normal bento you’d get for funerals which sums up how Hawks feels about the whole thing. Barely trying.
He’s kicking around his sour plum when his wings pick up a noise at the front.
“-My mentor, Hawks, told me that the funeral would be here…”
“Tokoyami!” Hawks calls out, leaving behind the bento to go see where the kid was. He finds him at the door, talking to the priest who doesn’t seem to be keen on letting him in.
“It’s alright,” The winged hero moves to pull the student in despite the priest’s protests. “I invited him here, makes it easier.”
The priest looks uncomfortable and Hawks is sure it’s due to the Commission. But, for once, he thinks he might tell them to buzz off.
“If you must.” The look the priest gives them both is dour, no longer kind. “The bone-picking ceremony will begin soon. Please prepare yourselves.”
Hawks nods emphatically, somehow lightened by the presence of Tokoyami, like a sun bursting through cloud cover. A strange metaphor when the kid is usually comedically morbid and gloomy but he supposes nothing can be worse than the pit he feels he’s in right now.
“Come on, Tokoyami-kun, you can have the rest of my bento. I only ate the karaage.”
“That’s very like you.” Tokoyami mutters as they sit down and Hawks hands him the bento . “Shishou , wait, I just don’t get it, who is this for? Are you the only one here?”
The smile is easier to fake on his face now.
“Yeah, I told you it was all hush-hush.” Hawks mimes a shushing gesture in front of his face. “Quite honestly, I’m surprised I’m getting to be here myself. I thought they would have burned him and tossed his ashes into the sea without telling anyone.”
“Who?”
“Bubaigawara Jin.”
Tokoyami drops his chopsticks, and they would have hit the floor if not for Hawks’s quick reflexes.
“Careful.”
There’s a wary sort of fear in those red eyes as they scrutinize him, as if waiting for a joke. When one doesn’t come, Tokoyami looks down on his lap, lowering his hand and taking back the chopsticks.
“Isn’t that the name of that…villain? One of the League, who went missing during the raid?”
“Yeah.” Hawks says, heart squeezing because this time around there was a MIA near Twice’s name, not a KIA with his beside it.
“So, he’s…dead?” Tokoyami asks. “Why didn’t he get listed as dead?”
Hawks nudges the bento so the kid can eat it, not liking food to go to waste.
“That’s the question, isn’t it?” Hawks asks, and he’s about two seconds from breaking out into laughter again, hysterics too. “Because then people would start asking like how he’d die, and who killed him, or whether it was authorized and other questions the Commission doesn’t like being asked right now when we’re at war with thousands of escaped convicts and insurrectionists.”
“So, it’s... it’s all politics?” Tokoyami finally starts pecking away the bento .
“It always is.” He learned that lesson so early on when they explained why Takami Keigo, the name, was bad for optics. As was any interaction with the woman soon to be known as Ukai Tomie.
Little Hawks had been more than glad at the point to bid goodbye to them both.
There’s a minute of eating as the U.A. student likely digests what he’s been told so far. Hawks is merely waiting for the inevitable question, knowing it’s coming.
“But why are you here, Master?” Tokoyami asks again. It’s curious how the strangeness of the situation has robbed his speech of the usual chunni quality it has. No more of that strange ‘dark cadence’ the boy is known for speaking in. “Why did they ask you?”
Hawks thinks it’s because he killed him.
“He was my friend.”
Tokoyami pauses mid-bite and once again Hawks is scrutinized by red eyes as sharp as knives. That’s a new quality the kid must have picked up with all that’s happened even if Fumikage had always been quick. It’s what made Hawks like him.
Birds of a feather flock together.
But there’s something uncomfortable about seeing the youthfulness from his eyes sharpened like that. Tokoyami had always had nerves of steel, a drive and a competitiveness that Hawks didn’t, and it’s what made him give him a chance. But even if it’s something the kid picked up quickly in this war, Hawks thinks to himself that someone has to mourn his childhood and his right to it. No one had mourned his, after all.
“Wait,” The boy says, sharp eyes belying some sort of understanding. “You mentioned that they, uh, the Commission don’t want people asking questions about how he died and who killed him. Do you know something?”
Hawks doesn’t want to answer this question, much like he didn’t want to do the action in the first place. Mercifully, he’s spared admitting this so far because the priest comes back, dour-faced, and tells them the cremation is done and they’ve cooled the ashes for the kotsuage.
He takes the chance and gestures for Tokoyami to follow, leaving the food behind.
“The bone-picking ceremony.” Tokoyami says, as they enter the room to see ash laid out on a surface, two chopsticks ready beside an urn used to house the bones. “I’ve never had to do this before.”
“Neither have I.” Hawks admits. “Never had anyone close to me die before.” Or, more truthfully, he’s never been close enough to anyone who died that he’d be out here doing this. It’s even more sick to think of the fact that he shouldn’t be doing it. No matter how much he liked Bubaigawara, he’s the reason he’s like this, and it feels so…cruel that he’s the only one.
The little voice in his head that sounds like the President tells him that it’s not like they can parley during this war with the League and give them back their dead. Shigaraki hadn’t, after all, thought of the living in Jaku when he’d left them without anything of their dead. Plus, sending back Jin’s body was dangerous. The choice to engage in villainy is not one without repercussions; losing the chance to properly bury their friends is one of them.
Much like the act of killing Twice, it's a sound line of reasoning to Hawks’s ears. But that doesn’t make it not cruel or make him feel better about what he’s doing.
He seats himself and picks up the chopsticks, frowning down at the skeletal remains of a man he’d admired. What was it he told Jeanist months ago, in that other time? That he wants to be like him?
He can’t say that again. It feels too stupid, too callous in front of him. He can’t detachedly avert his gaze from the screen showing Twice’s last moments. He can’t focus on the last few good memories before the raid.
Keigo can’t pretend that these bones and ashes aren’t his work.
His hand shakes as he picks up the strange funeral chopsticks. He knows of the process even if he’s not religious, and the low drone of the priest giving instructions on which bone to start with so that each one is placed in a way that the deceased is upright is wasted on him. Out of the corner of his eye he sees Tokoyami stare at the body with wide, wet eyes, and Hawks pities him.
What a good kid, even for a villain he doesn’t know…
Maybe, after this day is over, Keigo will go and finally let himself cry over Bubaigawara Jin.
Despite the sight of the dead clearly affecting him strongly, it’s Tokoyami who first actually reaches for the bones with his chopstick, which is exactly the kind of bravery Hawks needed from the boy. He lets the boy lead, taking the bone from him and depositing it gently into the urn each time. It’s silent work, not one for idle chatter, especially now that the priest had left to give them privacy.
It also allows for Hawks’s mind to wander.
He’d never discovered what happened to Twice’s body the first time around, had he. Buried under rubble, likely, unless the few remnants of the Commission had been smart enough to go find it before one of AFO’s associates could. Somehow the thought was more upsetting than the fact he’s here, laying his ashes and bones to rest. Twice’s body, alone and abandoned. The man had been so lonely, and that’s what had made it easy for Hawks to slip in.
Even with his friends in the League, Twice had been so preoccupied with proving to them that he deserved his place with them. Guilt over leading Overhaul to them and paving the way for Magne’s death and Compress losing his arm as Hawks found out one day from a distraught Jin who’d spilled the beans. It had been why the villain had been so eager to learn the bullshit Destroist theory; a way of being useful by commanding his regiment well. Hawks knows that one fear all too well.
The need to prove oneself useful so that you’re not abandoned.
He’d never told him, of course. Hawks had only taken everything Jin had: his fears, his story, and his life, without giving anything in return. He wonders if it would have been different if he told him a story about a lonely and scared little boy who’d grown up in a broken household. A story of a boy who had been thrown aside until he finally proved useful.
And, in a moment of true regret, Hawks asks himself if there had been any way he could have refused to kill Twice and whether they would have gotten to talk about those stories.
It's that thought that finally breaks the dam.
A bone and chopsticks clatter to the table loudly, as Hawks bends over, fingers gripping his knees as his head bows and allows the tears to drip down, months too late.
“Hawks?” Tokoyami says, alarmed.
“I k-killed him!” Keigo spits out. “I killed him! Twice! He trusted me, called me his friend, and I killed him! Killed him as he was running to his friends! And now he’s gone, and I’m the one with his body! It’s….”
There’s a rustle of clothing and he feels smaller hands than his wrap around him, threading around his wings. His sobs are loud but he can hear a voice asking him what happened.
“It was orders, from the Commission. Once we’d gotten the information we needed from him, he was too dangerous to let live, so if he resisted arrest, I had to. He’d been thrown away and discarded by people he’d trusted all his life and I just… just-!”
The boy behind him says nothing, pulling away, and Hawks doesn’t want to turn back to look at him, too afraid of damning eyes.
“It was the only way,” Hawks swears. “But I still feel…so wrong. So awful. Jin called me a friend, called me a good person, and I betrayed him, discarded him after he’d no longer been useful. What’s the point of saving people if I can’t even save a person I called a friend? W-what does it make me, that I do that to a person in the name of being a hero?”
Hawks doesn’t expect an answer, not yet, but he gets one anyway.
“It makes you a traitor.”
There’s a sharp chain in his chest and Hawks looks down to notice that there’s a knife sticking through it. Blood fills his mouth as he turns around to look at a half-transformed Toga Himiko, those all-too sharp eyes looking much more natural in her original golden hue. There’s a look of crazed grief on her face as it loses all semblance of his intern.
He looks back down at the knife sticking out of his chest and feels cold. Toga’s grief and anger loud in his ears, screaming about betrayal, but her voice and rage seem to grow dimmer before the dark takes him completely.
