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He looks young, is Hawks’ first thought upon finally meeting Shigaraki in person.
Wow, he really sucks at Dark Souls, is his second.
“Nice to finally meet you, boss!” Hawks waves instead of holding out his hand to shake. He has some self-preservation instincts, after all, and he’s read too much about Shigaraki’s quirk. “I was beginning to think Dabi was gonna keep me his dirty little secret forever!”
Dabi scoffs and shoves him. “Only because I had to make sure you wouldn’t betray us as soon as you met him. But you earned a little trust with the High-End, so count yourself lucky.”
Five casualties, seven injuries. All for the mission.
You know that sometimes sacrifices have to be made.
“Should’ve earned more than a little! You know how difficult it was to set all that up?”
Dabi rolls his eyes. “I can’t imagine how much work you put into walking around the city like an idiot with the number one hero.”
“So, this is the recruit you’ve been talking about? Hawks? ” Shigaraki interrupts their bickering. His voice is raspy, almost to the point of sounding painful. “You never said you were bringing a hero to our base.”
“Well, this hero claims to wanna join our cause. If you wanna dust him, go for it, but he could be a pretty useful info source.”
Shigaraki scratches at his face, chewed-down nails leaving red marks against his skin. His obvious stress over Hawks’ presence makes him look even younger. He doesn’t quite look like he’s finished growing, judging by his body’s lankiness and the awkward way he holds himself. Maybe late teens or early twenties?
“Look, if you need some time, I can go for now—”
“No!” Shigaraki starts. “You’re not leaving now. Not until you tell me why a hero like you would want to join us.”
And this, Hawks is prepared for. He gives the speech in full, hands crossed behind his head like he’s completely at ease instead of terrified that he’ll be dusted at any moment. Shigaraki seems agitated throughout, like there’s something about Hawks that makes him uncomfortable. Dabi, on the other hand, huffs out little laughs throughout Hawks’ speech. Asshole. If Hawks ends up a pile of dust on the floor, Dabi would probably walk right through him without a second thought.
“And, yeah—that’s the basic gist of it. You see a lot of bad shit when you’re at the top like me. Got kinda tired of being around fake shit all time, and you seem like just the right people to shake things up.”
Shigaraki doesn’t trust him—his eyes are narrowed, his shoulders are tense—but he doesn’t move to attack him either, and that’s all Hawks was really hoping for from their first conversation. As long as they give him a way in, he can get the information he needs.
Shigaraki finally turns around and heads back to the couch and gaming system. “Lead him out, Dabi. We’ll call the hero if we need him.”
The League’s hideout is disgusting.
Compress assures Hawks they used to have a better living situation, but it sounds like Kurogiri took care of most basic cleaning. Hawks decides to keep his shoes on when he walks into whatever shack they’re squatting in at the moment. He had enough experiences with stepping on broken glass as a kid, thank you very much.
He’s not… entirely sure about what he should do about the growing discord in the League, if anything. It's a deeply-rooted instinct in him to smooth over conflicts between others, first learned from his parents then perfected with the Commission. Still, it’s probably better for everyone if the League does implode.
It’s not a bad idea to use the unrest between them all to ingratiate himself a little more to their leader, though, which is exactly what Hawks does.
“You said the doctor worked with your sensei on all the Nomu but you never met him? Why’s that?”
Shigaraki scuffs the sole of his shoe across the dusty floor, mouth twisting up in a slight scowl. “There were some things Sensei didn’t need me for.”
“Oh? That’s weird, considering you’re his successor. I thought you’d be more involved in all of this.”
Shigaraki studies him carefully, instead of bursting into the rage Hawks had been told to expect from him. It’s strange—past reports of Shigaraki from USJ and Kamino Ward indicated he’d be short-tempered, easy to unbalance. Instead, he was patient, letting Dabi leave constantly to torment stray alley cats or whatever the hell he did when he wasn’t with the League, and letting Spinner blow up at him over their situation and his lack of “ideals”.
Why the change?
“What about you?”
“Huh?” Hawks asks, shaking himself out of his thoughts.
“Dabi said you didn’t go to any hero school. The Commission trained you. Did they tell you all the ins and outs of everything they do?”
A trick question, but one that’s way too obvious.
Hawks laughs at it, making sure to seem unaffected. “Do you think they share that kind of info with any heroes? I’m just one of their grunts, nothing special. Pres is kind of a hard-ass about confidentiality, and I’m too much of a loudmouth to trust with anything too important.” He steps forward to flop onto the couch beside Shigaraki, feeling the worn cushion give way to the springs underneath that dig uncomfortably into his backside. “Besides, if I knew anything that would help us out, I’d have already told you, right?”
Shigaraki glances sideways at him, and Hawks is mildly surprised to see a faint pink on his cheeks. “Right,” he mutters, fiddling with his hands.
Huh.
He scoots closer to Shigaraki, eyes catching how his shoulders tense and he tilts his knee away from Hawks, like he’s afraid their legs will touch.
“So, what was training with your Sensei like?”
Shigaraki furrows his brow, but still answers. “Harsh. My quirk isn’t easy to control, and it doesn’t really have much range of utilities. Not like yours.” He glances behind Hawks at the red wings spread behind the couch. Hawks gives the feathers a subtle shake, watching as Shigaraki’s eyes carefully follow the movement.
“Aw, don’t be so hard on yourself!” Hawks slings an arm across Shigaraki’s shoulders, preparing himself for a negative reaction, but Shigaraki doesn’t do much besides freeze for a moment. Hawks has to wonder how often he’s been touched in his life, considering his quirk and the fact that he was raised by a supervillain straight out of a comic book. Hawks continues, “I’d love to have the raw power of a quirk like yours. The wings are pretty and all, but I’m pretty useless against power-types.”
Shigaraki scratches at his neck, muttering to himself. “High speed, low power, low hit points, huh…”
“Uh, should I take that as an insult?” Hawks carefully lets the tension sink out of his arm, letting it fully rest on Shigaraki’s shoulders.
“No, you’re fine, the League needs a speed-type.” The corners of Shigaraki’s lips upturn slightly. “You can fill an important gap in our team.”
“Cool, cool,” Hawks replies, searching for something else to fill the new silence in the room. “So, did you ever finish Dark Souls?”
Shigaraki’s face lights up, and Hawks relaxes further into the couch as he listens to him recount all the hours he spent on it.
“Is he okay?” Hawks asks as Shigaraki is sent flying by Gigantomachia again. Surprisingly, the League’s leader is laughing, even after he slams face-first into the tree. Yikes.
“No,” Twice answers. “Probably!”
Hawks un-shoulders the bag of snacks and food he’s flown out to them. Toga squeals and immediately starts rustling through everything, probably searching for the Oreos he hid in the side pocket.
“Do you think this’ll be over anytime soon?” It’s gone on for over a month so far, and the Commission so far hasn’t come up with a good solution for Gigantomachia. The waiting is making Hawks antsy.
“Oh, he says he’ll beat Giga any day now!” Twice yells, mouth full of saltine crackers. “He’s hopeless, we’ll all end up dead if this keeps going!”
Hawks kind of agrees with the second part. It’s kind of difficult to see the League as any sort of real threat when they were barely scraping by like this. Of course, remembering Dabi siccing that high-end Nomu on Hawks’ hometown a month ago really wore at his sympathy. Speaking of which, where the hell is he?
His phone goes off, and he waves a quick goodbye to Twice before taking off again.
Barely a day later, he checks his phone after apprehending a villain to listen to a desperate voicemail from Twice. It’s garbled from Twice’s sobbing—something about Toga?—but he takes off towards Deika at his fastest speed, and still doesn’t make it back in time to stop Shigaraki from dusting the entire city.
The empty horizon echoes the sinking feeling in Hawks’ stomach that he’s too late.
Shigaraki limps towards him, leg trailing the ground after him. Hawks lets the feathers that are holding up everyone around him drop them gently back down once he’s sure the ground beneath Shigaraki’s feet isn’t disintegrating.
Shigaraki grins when he sees him.
“Glad to see you could join us, hero.”
“Heh, looks like I got the invite a little late. Seems like it all turned out alright without me, though.”
He tries not to think about the number of deaths that are, again, on his shoulders. Not while Shigaraki is watching him so carefully.
“It’s fine,” he finally says. “I’m just glad you’re here now.” Shigaraki steps forward until he can swing his arm across Hawks’ shoulders, leaning on him heavily. “Now, let’s get the rest of the League and get out of here.”
After Deika, all Shigaraki will let the doc do is bandage him up and send him back out to announce himself as the leader of the Paranormal Liberation Front. Hawks declines to join them onstage, instead waiting in the back to catch Shigaraki when he inevitably falls trying to walk on his bum ankle.
“Easy there, boss. I gotcha.”
Shigaraki squirms for a bit in his arms before giving up and going limp. Instead of taking him straight to Ujiko, Hawks makes a detour for his room first, laying Shigaraki down on his bed and inspecting the bandages on his hand again for fresh blood.
“I’m fine. You don’t need to fuss over me like this.” Shigaraki’s voice rasps.
“Not fussin’. Just checking you over so you don’t collapse on me again like that.” Hawks looks up to grin at him. “I’m no doctor, but I at least know how to tie a decent bandage. No need to make yourself go back to that creepy old lab for this at least.”
“Did they teach you that in hero school?”
“What kind of hero doesn’t learn first aid?”
Shigaraki scoffs and turns his face towards the wall.
“So…” Hawks begins. “You’re really gonna let Ujiko experiment on you?”
“He said he’ll make me stronger. And he’ll give me Sensei’s quirk. So I can finally destroy everything.” Shigaraki pauses, his free hand fisting into the pillow beside him with his thumb out. “Just like I always wanted.”
“So there’s not… anything you want to keep?” Hawks asks, gently unwrapping his bandaged hand to look at the damage. It’s scabbing over well, thankfully, but it’s slightly cracked where Shigaraki overdid it, still getting used to his missing fingers.
“I’ll spare whatever the League wants me to.” Shigaraki pauses for a moment before continuing, “You all deserve to have the things you want for once.”
Hawks wonders, not for the first time, just what kind of hero Shigaraki could’ve been if AFO had never found him.
“What about what you want?”
“I already told you. I just want to destroy all the things I hate.”
“Is there anything you don’t hate?”
Shigaraki turns, and fixes Hawks with that red stare. He still looks exhausted from the month of fighting Gigantomachia, dark circles visible even under the scars around his eyes. Hawks wishes he could fix it—fix him —but Shigaraki needs so much more than a liar like him could ever give.
“Everything I want to keep is with me already.”
Hawks’ hands stay steady as he re-wraps Shigaraki’s stumps, but his heart thumps a little harder against his ribcage.
“How romantic of you.”
“Will you tell me your real name?”
“Huh?” He fumbles, and apologizes when his own hand bumps Shigaraki’s stumps.
“You’re the only hero I’ve ever known who keeps their name a secret.” Shigaraki sits up, looming slightly over Hawks. “Why is that?”
Hawks swallows. “Safety issues.” Not necessarily for his family, but for himself, considering the president would probably kill him if it ever got out that the great winged hero was the son of a two-bit murderer. “I haven’t gone by my civilian name in years, anyway. Kinda prefer Hawks, to be honest.”
Shigaraki’s brows furrow, but he doesn’t push, instead scratching at his eye with his unbandaged hand. “I remembered a lot of things during the fight at Deika.” A particularly harsh scratch draws a bead of blood, and Hawks wipes it away with a thumb without thinking.
“Like?”
“Like my family. And my birth name. Sensei gave me this one, you know.”
No, Hawks didn’t know that. No wonder Shigaraki isn’t on any search systems. Maybe, if Hawks can get him to share a little more, he can find who he is, and then—
Then what? What would knowing his name change?
“Do you plan on going back to your old name now that you remember it?”
“No. Sensei gave me my name,” Shigaraki says, raising the hand that’s missing a couple fingers to Hawks’ face. “And now, I choose to keep it.” Three fingers touch Hawks’ cheek, the tips grazing carefully just under the black marks around his eyes. “I guess this gives us something in common.”
Just like he chooses to destroy. Just like you choose to do this mission. Just like you choose to be a hero. Just like he chooses to be a villain.
Hawks turns his face too quickly for Shigaraki to pull his hand away, and presses his lips to his palm. The skin is warm, and dry, and the knowledge that Shigaraki will probably never look at him with this vulnerability in his eyes again makes him want to cry. Shigaraki shifts his hand, almost like he’s going to pull Hawks’ face closer to him, so Hawks pulls back before he can.
He can’t let himself get closer than this.
He clears his throat. “So, did the doc ever tell you where exactly you’ll be going for his creepy experiment then?”
“No,” Shigaraki answers carefully.
They both know he’s lying.
“Well, I wish you the best of luck. I wouldn’t let that guy touch me with a ten foot pole. The way he looks at my wings already gives me the heebie-jeebies.” Hawks stands, and starts to step away, but gets stopped by a gentle tug on his pants leg.
“I’ve already told him you’re off limits,” Shigaraki mutters, head tilted down just enough that Hawks can’t see his face. “The rest of the League, too. He knows not to try anything.”
Hawks opens and closes his mouth. What is he supposed to say?
Thank you for protecting me.
He can’t. Not when all he wants is for Shigaraki to be a little less human, a little less kind to him. He wishes Shigaraki would turn that rage and callousness he seems to have towards everyone not in the League towards him. He wishes Shigaraki had threatened him instead of helping him prestige for the fifth time in Call of Duty.
He wishes he’d met Shigaraki before he got to this point.
“Will you be there when I wake up? I can let Ujiko know I want you teleported over once the procedure is completely done. It should just be a few months.” Shigaraki looks up at him now, and Hawks can barely make himself meet his eyes.
“Yeah,” he finally forces out. “I’ll do my best to be there.”
Shigaraki stares at him for a few quiet moments, before letting go. “Okay. Do what you need to. I think I’m gonna sleep for a while before I see Ujiko.”
“I’ll get out of your hair then while you rest.” Hawks walks towards the door, but stops again when he hears Shigaraki’s voice behind him.
“Hawks.”
“Yeah?”
“I meant it when I said I’d spare only what the League wants, and destroy everything else.”
Hawks almost laughs. This is what he’s been waiting for, been expecting from Shigaraki the entire time. A harsh tone of voice, defined by the threat in his words.
The line drawn between them is all too clear.
“I never doubted you for a second,” Hawks says, and shuts the door behind him.