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Hawks always knew that this mission would be the death of him. Getting close to Dabi, and later the League, only made him realize how much they had in common, how easy it would’ve been for him to end up fighting alongside them.
‘I really flew too close to the sun this time, huh?’
Toga was just a child. A child who had been ignored when she needed help most, giving into instincts that she repressed for so long that they only got worse. Hawks thought about his conditioning to repress his own instincts and how he only struggled more with them as he grew older and understood how she could give in to the desire to unapologetically be herself.
Spinner was hated for his mutation quirk. He was scorned by everyone around him as he grew up, treated as subhuman for daring to be born. Hawks thought about reconstructive surgeries, thought about how his bulky costume was meant to cover up unappealing features that they hadn’t altered yet, and understood the man’s hatred for their society.
Twice was a genuinely good person who was all alone in the world, left to fend for himself when he fell into poverty that he couldn’t escape from. Hawks thought of sleepless nights as he hid from screaming parents, going to bed hungry night after night because they chose alcohol over feeding the child that they never wanted, and understood the desperation to escape those circumstances.
Mr. Compress was harder to get a read on, but he only ever stole what the League needed, food; medicine; clothing; and so on, and only from those with gross amounts of wealth, and that spoke volumes of his character. Hawks thought of lifting wallets from unsuspecting civilians in the period of his life between his father’s arrest and the Commission discovering him and understood that the eccentric villain had a stronger moral code than he did.
Shigaraki’s every action screamed child soldier. He struggled to make decisions for himself and seemed lost when he wasn’t fighting, and more noticeably than all of that, he desperately wanted to connect with the people around him and keep them close. Hawks thought of how he hated the Commission’s orders more often than not yet followed them anyway, not knowing any other way of living. He thought of how he latched onto Rumi and Tokoyami and anyone who showed him even the tiniest shred of kindness, the League included, and understood that desperate need to be seen and loved after knowing nothing but cruelty.
Dabi hated heroes. He hated heroes because they represented a false ideal, a promise that few ever lived up to, and because they had unchecked power. Hawks thought about the statistics, especially the civilian and villain death rates, and he, of all people, knew that Dabi was right. Heroes might not be allowed to outright kill villains, but “accidents” happened all the time. Heroes rarely got more than a slap on the wrist for deaths in the line of duty, if that.
Hawks’ heart hurt every time he looked at Dabi. He saw painful, tugging scars that always seemed to be bleeding at the edges, and he wondered who ruined the man that he still saw glimpses of throughout his mission. Dabi was the type of man that gave Toga his coat because she was cold and her own was destroyed in a particularly close fight. He was the type of man that used to barely have enough food for himself, yet still fed any stray cats, dogs, pigeons, and any animal, really, that he came across; Hawks swore that he saw Dabi feeding rats once. He was the type of man that local street kids greeted with a giant smile on their faces, trust in their eyes that Hawks usually only saw directed toward heroes. He was the type of man who was given grateful nods by local women before they pointedly averted their eyes and pretended that they never saw him. Hawks thought of how those same people looked at him with fear, only relaxing when they saw Dabi by his side, and he wondered what kind of world they lived in that the downtrodden trusted villains more than the people who were meant to protect them.
He thought of the Commission’s orders, of why Lady Nagant revolted against them, and he understood why they did.
Hawks knew that this mission would be the death of him; he just expected it to be a more literal death than this.
“Now that you’ve integrated with the League, Twice is your top priority.”
“Twice? What about Shigaraki?”
Madame President gave him an unimpressed look. “We are currently unaware of Shigaraki’s location, and there is no point in doing nothing while we wait for him to come out of whatever hole he’s crawled into. Now that he’s capable of making clones of himself again, Twice’s quirk is a national threat. Left unchecked, it will be the death of countless heroes. You know what you must do.”
None of his trepidation showed on his face. “It will be done.”
“Good. Don’t fail us, Hawks.”
Her threat didn’t need to be spoken aloud for him to hear it.
The raid was fast approaching, and Hawks knew what he needed to do.
“Hey, Dabs, can we talk for a sec?”
Piercing blue eyes locked onto him, and Hawks was hit by the same sense of deja vu that he always felt when he looked into those eyes. “Go ahead.”
“Privately.”
Dabi cocked an eyebrow at his grave tone. Toga’s giggles echoed around the room, a fanged grin peeking out as she said, “Ooo, Dabi’s in the doghouse! What’d you do?!”
“I didn’t do shit, leech!” Someone who didn’t know Dabi as well he did might mistake that tone for confidence, but Hawks knew that it was all bravado. Dabi’s voice had wavered with uncertainty, subtle anxiety practically radiating from him.
“He didn’t do anything,” Hawks reassured. “Something just came up on the hero side of things, and without Shigaraki being around…”
“Ah, business then. And here I was thinking that you just wanted alone time,” Mr. Compress teased. Both Dabi and Hawks flushed, though the former was better at hiding it than Hawks was.
“Then why wouldn’t you just tell all of us? I don’t care! It’s not like we need to know.”
Hawks grimaced slightly at Twice’s question, though he was quick to school his face back to neutrality. “I plan to afterward; I just wanted to hash out all the details of what we need to do first. This is too time-sensitive to waste time bickering over how to do things.”
The League was incredibly cohesive when they needed to be, but they also weren’t shy about voicing their opinions and considered every plan offered up by a member equally. If Hawks was going to keep them all alive, they didn’t have time for that sort of deliberation.
“Then don’t let us keep you. We expect you to fill us in after.” A few months ago, that sort of easy confidence would’ve been alien to hear from Spinner. Stability had done wonders for the entire League, though, so Hawks only gave him a nod and a strained smile in response.
He and Dabi walked to the latter’s room in an easy silence born of countless hours spent with one another, letting their guards down further and further until it became almost impossible to tell where Hawks ended and Dabi began.
“What’s rattling around in your pretty head, dove? I haven’t seen you this uneasy since we first started meeting with each other.”
And maybe it was the stress of everything coming down around him, maybe it was how used he had gotten to being honest with Dabi about everything but this, or maybe he was just tired , but Hawks blurted out, “I’m a spy” before he could think about the potential consequences of wording it like that.
Dabi chuckled. “I already knew that, Hawks.”
Digging his hole even deeper, Hawks said, “No, I mean, I was a spy for the heroes.”
“I knew that too.”
Hawks froze. “What?”
“I always knew, pretty bird,” Dabi murmured. His voice was as gentle as it always was when it was just them, not showing any signs of anger at all. “The others don’t know, but I could always tell. You were going through the motions at first, barely hiding your disgust with what you had to do and struggling to come up with convincing excuses for you to switch sides. There was no personal motivation, no tipping point, of course I knew you were still with the heroes.”
“Then why?” Hawks’ voice shook. “Why did you keep meeting with me?”
“Because I saw something in you. I saw the potential for you to switch sides for real, and considering the fact that we’re having this conversation right now, I’d say that paid off.” Dabi shook his head slightly, chuckling ruefully as he said, “I saw myself in you, you know? You were working yourself to the bone for someone who couldn’t care less about you because you didn’t know anything else. Because at least they gave you a purpose. I know that pain. No one ever helped when I reached out for it, not even when I begged for it, and I refused to turn away someone who needed help just because he didn’t know that he needed it yet. I refused to be like them.”
“Who are you?” Hawks choked out. “Who destroyed you?”
Dabi gave him a bitter smile and said, “I’m not sure that you’re ready for the answer to that, dove. I don’t want to hurt you.”
“Please, I need to know,” Hawks begged. “I need to know how a villain is one of the kindest people I’ve ever met. I need to know why the League feels more like home than anywhere else ever has. I don’t understand, Dabi!”
“Because you’re one of us, Hawks. You always have been. You just got a bit lost along the way.” Scarred hands gently preened his wings, and Hawks hadn’t even noticed that they’d puffed up with agitation.
Dabi deliberated for a few moments as he soothed Hawks, visibly steeling himself before he said, “My name is Touya. Touya Todoroki. Have you… What do you know about quirk marriages?”
Horror, then rage, then determination all coursed through Hawks that day, but not denial, never denial. Surprise didn’t either. He was living proof of the HPSC’s corruption, after all, and he knew exactly how many people they were willing to sacrifice for the “greater good”.
He wondered if the sacrifices would ever stop.
When the heroes attacked, the League was nowhere to be found. Dr. Ujiko was also long gone, transporting Shigaraki and his nomu to a secure location with the League’s assistance. It made Hawks’ skin crawl to let the doctor go, but none of them had the medical knowledge needed to ensure that Shigaraki came through the other end of receiving All for One, so it was a necessary evil from now. From the way that the League reacted to seeing how much pain Shigaraki was in because of this process, Hawks had a feeling that the doctor wouldn’t be long for this world regardless.
The Meta Liberation Army fought hard, but without the League there as their heavy hitters, they fell to the heroes one by one. It would’ve been considered an overwhelming victory for the heroes if the League had been there, and it was only after the dust settled that the people began to realize that Hawks never showed.
The heroes’ win in Deika city was overshadowed by Commission headquarters erupting in brilliant blue flames. The ashes of the building blended with the ashes of the people who were in it as it burned, but Madame President, Mera, Hawks’ handler, and every evil bastard who delighted in training him were never seen or heard from again. And if a small horde of terrified, conditioned children were whisked away by a masked man who made them laugh as he performed magic tricks for them, then no one was any the wiser. The Commission was the only one with any knowledge of the Young Heroes Program, after all, and any evidence of that was unfortunately lost in the fire.
‘You win some, you lose some.’
The League took up residence in the old, destroyed base of the Creature Rejection Clan that they’d wiped off the face of the earth, knowing that if heroes didn’t bother to investigate the activity here before, they’d likely write anything that happened off as the actions of those bigoted extremists.
Between Hawks’ withdrawing as much money from his accounts as he could before going rogue and Mr. Compress pilfering from the Meta Liberation Army before they abandoned them, the League had enough to get by for now, but it would only last for so long when they had so many extra mouths to feed. It was obvious that none of them were willing to leave these kids behind, though, and if any of them trusted heroes to take care of them in their place, then they wouldn’t be here in the first place.
“We need more resources,” Shigaraki muttered. He was still unsteady on his feet and had days where he stared off into the distance, obviously struggling with something but unwilling to speak of it, but he was slowly recovering. “Maybe we could take down another criminal group? But most of them have ducked their heads down after Deika. They’re probably barely scraping by too.”
Hawks gave Dabi a searching look, and at his partner’s nod, he said, “I’ve got a plan.”
The country was on fire after their reveal video. Heroes had already been scrambling at the loss of the Commission, who were responsible for the rankings; heroes’ pay; and paying for any damages caused in the line of duty, and while some had tried to look for Hawks, they obviously couldn’t find him. The Commission wasn’t around to expose him as a traitor, so as far as the world knew, he had died in the battle at Deika.
That’s why they were so shocked to see him alive and well on every television across the country, leaning into Dabi’s side as they revealed the horrors that heroes had committed against them to all of Japan.
The League could’ve gone down in a blaze of glory, fighting a battle that no one understood before the video, before their perception of them changed, but Hawks was raised to have the public eating out of his talons no matter what atrocities he was ordered to commit in the shadows. They didn’t have to burn down the city.
They just had to redirect the rage and fear of civilians that would do it for them.