Chapter Text
Tokoyami Fumikage is nine years old when the Hero Public Safety Commission takes him in.
-
Fumikage doesn’t really remember much from before the HPSC. He had a normal life, he remembers that much. He was a mutant and had an odd quirk, but he wasn’t bullied and his parents loved him. He loved them, too.
Which is probably why he reacted so badly when they were killed in front of him.
He only remembers flashes of the incident: his parents now bloodied heaps on the floor, the band of villains drawing closer, the other hostages whimpering in fear behind him, Fumikage screaming, screaming, screaming.
It’s only when he wakes up in a facility owned by the commission that somebody explains what happened. There’d been a villain attack at the bank his parents had taken him to, and his parents had been killed first when they’d tried to protect Fumikage from being dragged away as the first hostage victim. They’d lived in a remote area at the time and there were no heroes in the vicinity; the local police presence was small. A perfect place for a bank robbery, and a threat to kill a child would’ve been a very effective negotiating chip.
But Fumikage’s parents had fought tooth and nail, and paid for it with their lives.
Then, fueled by grief and fury and fear, Dark Shadow had grown tall enough to hit the ceiling and lashed out at the villains. Pummeling them, sending them flying into the concrete walls, determined to hurt the people who had hurt his parents. One villain had been so violently flung out the window that he’d lost an arm.
By the time the first licensed hero arrived on the scene, most of the villains were unconscious, and there’d been only the fearful hostages and an exhausted, weeping Fumikage huddled over the bodies of his parents.
The commission had whisked Fumikage away on the spot. He was too dangerous, they reckoned. And he was as valuable as he was dangerous.
According to the witnesses, Fumikage’s violence had been erratic but focused purely on the villains. When a villain had tried to lunge for another hostage, Dark Shadow had snatched him up with a huge claw and thrown him out the window, as if recognizing who was a threat and who was a victim.
That’s some real potential right there, some of the commission members whisper.
While the adults murmur amongst themselves, there’s an older boy with golden eyes and red wings, quietly watching Fumikage. His gaze reminds Fumikage of birds of prey, and it fascinates and terrifies him in equal measure.
‘He won’t hurt us,’ Dark Shadow mumbles in Fumikage’s chest. ‘He said sorry.’
‘When?’ Fumikage asks silently.
‘When he found us in the bank.’ Dark Shadow remembers the aftermath better than Fumikage does. ‘He stopped one of the bad people from hurting us. He said sorry for being too late.’
Fumikage tries to remember, and he thinks there’s a flash of red in his memory. Red feathers, a quiet voice apologizing for being too late, a warm hand to his nape, lulling him to sleep as Dark Shadow wailed.
“He’s just a kid,” The boy says, and Fumikage doesn’t know if he’s pleading or if he’s arguing.
“He can be much more,” one of the adults say, and the boy looks away.
-
The boy’s name is Hawks, and the commission keeps him because they are training him to be a pro hero.
The commission keeps Fumikage, too. Not the way they keep Hawks, because Hawks is meant to fly in front of the public, and Fumikage isn’t meant to be the same. The commission is still trying to figure out what to do with Fumikage, but they know he will be useful, so they keep him for now.
And for now, they train him.
-
The commission wants Fumikage to have a background that looks normal on the outside, unlike Hawks, who will have no past at all when he makes his debut. Fumikage will be a boy who grows up with public records and an average history. It will be useful, the commission president says, to have a civilian background.
So Fumikage is, on paper, adopted by Kobayashi Kiku after his parents pass away, and he is home schooled by her in a greenery-filled house. In truth, Kobayashi is Fumikage’s handler and their homely abode is a secure building with two hidden entrances aside from the front door. Kobayashi isn’t affiliated with the HSPC in any official capacity, and she isn’t a hero, either. But she knows martial arts and sword-fighting and her quirk allows her to hear anything and everything within half a mile of her.
Kobayashi is much older than Fumikage’s parents were and she’s blind in one eye, but she is far from frail and hardly soft. She isn’t cruel, but she isn’t kind. She is simply there, always listening. Fumikage knows that whatever she hears, she will tell the other adults, so he takes care to be quiet. He takes care to talk to Dark Shadow only in thoughts and minute gestures, keeping all their conversation non-verbal.
The nights Fumikage spend in that house are quiet. Nobody speaks within it. Kobayashi is there, but Fumikage feels like he’s alone, with only Dark Shadow to keep him company as he cries without making a sound in the dark.
-
Fumikage trains at the commission’s headquarters every day. They teach him how to throw a punch, how to kick, how to block a blow and counterattack. He’s still small and he’s no match for the adults who teach him, but they do not push him too far, and they pull their punches for him. Fumikage knows he must grow stronger, because he has a feeling that this mercy will not last long.
The combat training is exhausting, but it is not particularly painful. Fumikage can endure it.
The mental training is infinitely harder. The adults teach him how to stay calm no matter what. They teach him how to flatten the anger and control his fear. They push him, harder and harder and harder, until all Fumikage wants to do is cry and scream. He does neither, though, because he knows the adults will dislike it, and he does not want to find out what they will do to him if they dislike him.
‘I don’t understand,’ Fumikage thinks, frightened and trying not to show it. The adults shoved him into a small, dark space and told him that they’ll let him out in an hour. He has no idea how much time has passed. ‘Why are they making us do this?’
Dark Shadow snarls inside of him. ‘This is a test. This is a test and we hate it. Let me out! Let me out! Let me out!’
But the whole point is keeping Dark Shadow inside himself, to not let Dark Shadow overwhelm him, and Fumikage grits his teeth and tries to calm his quirk down. ‘No, they’ll let us out soon. We just have to wait. We have to be patient.’
Dark Shadow screams at him, and Fumikage covers his ears and ducks his head between his knees. But Dark Shadow is inside of him and his screams cannot be blocked out, so Fumikage simply swallows a sob. He waits and waits and waits. Until the adults open the door for him again, until they let him out into the light, until Dark Shadow stops screaming.
-
Every once in a while, Fumikage will look up from his training and see golden eyes watching him from afar.
Hawks has his own training sessions to attend to, and he occasionally goes out for field training as a hero with a provisional license, but when he’s not otherwise occupied, he seems to show up just to observe Fumikage. He never approaches Fumikage, but he never looks away when their eyes meet, either.
At some point, Fumikage finds himself searching those eyes out first, whenever he finishes his training. And whenever he fails to find Hawks there, he swallows his disappointment down.
-
He can’t explain why he seeks the older boy out. They’ve never really interacted before, and aside from Hawks occasionally watching Fumikage in training, they rarely even see each other. But Fumikage can’t help but feel himself drawn to Hawks, so when he finds the time between training sessions, he goes searching for the winged boy.
‘Why do we care so much?’ Dark Shadow asks.
Fumikage carefully peeks around the corner to make sure nobody else is in the hallway. ‘I don’t know. But I want to talk to him.’
‘Maybe it’s because we’re birds,’ Dark Shadow guesses.
‘Maybe.’
Fumikage is allowed to wander the commission’s headquarter grounds barring several specific floors and areas. He used to have an adult tailing him everywhere in the first couple months, but they don’t keep such close tabs on him now. As long as he doesn’t exit the grounds by himself, he can do as he pleases during his rare break times, so this is his opportunity to go find Hawks.
Eventually, they head outside and find Hawks sitting atop the edge of the roof of the main building, which makes Fumikage feel both jealous and crestfallen. It must be nice, to be all the way up there, with those wings. Fumikage can’t reach up there, both because he can’t fly and also because the roof is one of the areas that are off-limits to him.
He’s staring up at Hawks when the other boy notices him, and soon red wings spread wide, flapping once, twice, letting Hawks descend to the ground and land in front of Fumikage.
“Are you lost?” Hawks asks, his face unreadable.
Fumikage hesitates, but decides honesty is the best policy. “No. I was looking for you.”
“Me?” Hawks blinks, his blank facade breaking open to reveal surprise and curiosity. He blinks, then offers Fumikage a smile. It looks odd, though. Like it doesn’t quite reach his eyes. “Well, you found me.”
Dark Shadow peeks out of Fumikage’s chest. “We did!”
Hawks’s eyes go wide. “Oh, I didn’t know you—I thought you didn’t talk to anybody.”
“I talk,” Dark Shadow says quizzically. “I talk a lot!”
“But not to other people.” Hawks still looks surprised. He looks a lot younger, like this. With such wide eyes and his mouth not in a grim line for once.
“We don’t like other people.” Dark Shadow withdraws a little, hiding back into Fumikage until only his face is barely visible from Fumikage’s chest. “Because other people don’t like us.”
‘We shouldn’t say that,’ Fumikage hisses inwardly. Who knows if Hawks will pass this along to the adults and the adults will get mad at Fumikage? Nobody’s gotten mad at him yet, but he thinks it’s just a matter of time. His teachers at school had always gotten mad eventually. ‘He might tattle.’
But Hawks simply looks down at Fumikage and Dark Shadow, something softening in his gaze. “But you like me?”
Dark Shadow nods, and Fumikage follows suit, because him and Dark Shadow share feelings. If Dark Shadow trusts Hawks, then that means deep down, Fumikage does, too.
After a long moment, Hawks smiles again. This time, it reaches his eyes. “I like you guys, too. C’mon, I’ll show you a spot with a great view.”
-
Hawks takes Fumikage to a small room tucked away in the corner of the main building. It was originally meant to be used for storage, but it’s been neglected and forgotten in the midst of all the different departments butting heads over which rooms they can take. So Hawks has made a little nest out of the place, collecting a couple pillows and a shawl and a few other items by the windowsill in the back, hidden by a bookshelf.
It’s not a secret spot; the right people know this place exists, because there’s no such thing as keeping secrets entirely from the commission, but at least it’s not common knowledge, either. The adults allows Hawks this much, given his stellar performance records and his well-proven loyalty.
And now Hawks is letting Fumikage into this private space, leading him over to the back corner’s window, where the city’s horizon stretches on wide under the blue sky.
“Pretty neat, huh?” Hawks throws himself into the armchair and gestures for Fumikage to sit on the ottoman opposite of it. “Not as great as the rooftop, but this place is better when the weather is crap.”
Fumikage stares out the window. The sight of the cloudless sky and the endless space mesmerizes him. “I’m not allowed on the rooftop.”
Hawks snorts. “For good reason. Nobody wants you falling off and breaking your egg-head.”
Fumikage turns to stare at Hawks. “You’re allowed, though.”
“Duh.” Hawks flutters the tips of his wings. Dark Shadow rumbles in Fumikage’s chest, itching with the desire to pounce and grab red feathers. “I can fly, remember?”
It’s a fair argument. “You can fly anywhere, right?”
Hawks nods and glances wistfully at the scenery outside. “Yep.”
“Could you fly away from here?” Fumikage asks, and Hawks’s eyes snap to his. They both know they’re talking about more than physical flight, right now.
“Tokoyami,” Hawks says slowly, and Fumikage realizes this is the first time he’s heard Hawks say his name. “I can fly anywhere in the world, if I want to. But wherever I go, the commission is always going to own me.”
Fumikage thinks that over. “You’re going to be a hero.”
“Yeah. That’s my choice. It’s the only choice that was mine. Everything else, though…” Hawks looks at Fumikage with an expression that Fumikage can’t quite understand. Like sadness and discomfort and pain distilled into one emotion. “I’m not sure how much of a choice you’re going to get.”
Fumikage isn’t sure, either. Even as he slowly improves in basic combat and controlling Dark Shadow, the commission hasn’t said anything about what he’ll be doing in the future. They haven’t asked Fumikage yet, either. Not that Fumikage really has any idea what he wants.
(He wants to go home, but home doesn’t exist anymore.)
“Can I come here again?” Fumikage asks, because that’s at least something the commission won’t dictate, and Hawks’s mouth curls into a crooked smile.
“Sure, whenever you want.”
-
Fumikage watches Hawks train sometimes, too. Not very often, because Fumikage is too busy with his own training, but the president thinks it’d be helpful for Fumikage to observe his sort-of predecessor once in a while. So Fumikage watches.
Hawks is very good. He’s what the adults call a natural born hero. He can use each and every one of his feathers with incredible accuracy, and he’s always working hard to increase his control and speed. Fumikage can’t help but admire Hawks’s skills. Dark Shadow wonders if they can become as strong as Hawks someday, and Fumikage promises that they will.
But the thing about Hawks is that he’s always trying. Always pushing himself harder and harder. And the higher-ups of the commission always want more.
Fumikage watches Hawks wipe sweat from his brow with his bruised and bloodied knuckles and sees the way his expression goes carefully blank every time somebody says he can be even better.
Fumikage watches, and thinks that Hawks looks very lonely.
-
Fumikage and Dark Shadow practice communicating with each other. Not just silently, but instantly. They’ve always shared thoughts, but what the commission wants is for them to share their entire minds as if they’ve melded into one.
The commission will show Fumikage an order and Fumikage will silently pass it along to Dark Shadow, who will enact whatever they’ve been told to do, whether it be grabbing a flag of a certain color or rescuing people-sized dummies. Dark Shadow learns to move and act according to Fumikage’s orders within milliseconds, and in return Dark Shadow learns to absorb information and send it back to Fumikage in a split second. The commission will show Dark Shadow a question that Fumikage can’t see, and Dark Shadow must silently pass the question along for Fumikage to answer it aloud. It takes time, because the communication between the two of them has always been instinctive, but it was never meant to be this instantaneous. Even a three second lag is too short; they want Fumikage to respond to what Dark Shadow sees in the span of half a second. It’s dizzying and hard and Dark Shadow throws a hundred silent tantrums, but Fumikage grits his teeth and keeps going.
Over these sessions, it becomes rapidly clear that Dark Shadow can absorb more sensory information than anybody expected. While Dark Shadow always had the advantage of being able to levitate and see their surroundings from a high up, they’re starting to realize just how good Dark Shadow’s eyes and ears are. In fact, Dark Shadow doesn’t even have ears—but he can sense sounds nevertheless.
Fumikage’s instructors push him to hone Dark Shadow’s abilities to pick up information, and slowly, gradually, Dark Shadow learns to hear even the smallest, most distant sounds. He’s nowhere near Koyabashi’s level, nor Hawks’s with his wings, but the commission has faith that their abilities will only improve with time and training.
The training is endless. If it’s not physical combat, it’s emotional control. If it’s neither, then it’s quirk control or communication. And then it branches into learning codes.
Fumikage was never one of the smart kids in school, but he learns different codes one by one, standard hero code, naval code, Morse Code, book ciphers, underground hero standard, then secondary. There’s so many ways to communicate and Fumikage has trouble keeping up with it all. Some nights, he spend the hours staring at nothing and reciting the codes with Dark Shadow, back and forth, until they memorize everything.
At some point during one of these midnight memorization sessions, Dark Shadow mumbles something about how they could probably invent their own language out of these.
‘Our own language?’ Fumikage asks, blinking away the drowsiness.
‘Our secret code.’ Dark Shadow manifests, hovering over Fumikage to blink down at him with big, glowing eyes. ‘We could make one.’
‘But why? We don’t need one to talk to each other.’ Fumikage gestures between them. They’re already conversing in silence. There’s no need for a code between them.
Dark Shadow circles the air above Fumikage. ‘Not for us! For Hawks.’
Fumikage blinks at his quirk. ‘We want to make a secret code just to talk with Hawks?’
‘So we can say the things we want even when adults are there,’ Dark Shadow explains, and Fumikage thinks about it. He and Hawks see each other more often now, but it’s rarely just the two of them. There’s always at least one adult in the vicinity, somebody listening to what they say. And while it’s not like Fumikage has any huge secrets he wants to keep, he wants to talk freely. He doesn’t want to keep silent all the time.
‘Okay, let’s try,’ Fumikage thinks.
-
Fumikage’s never been a particularly smart child, but he’s always been a rather stubborn one. Which is how he slaves over developing the new code with Dark Shadow for weeks before he finally finds the right opportunity to present it to Hawks in the private corner where the nest is.
“A secret code?” Hawks looks amused, but he listens attentively to Fumikage’s explanation and reads the language he’s scribbled onto a piece of paper discreetly ripped from one of his notebooks. He doesn’t interrupt Fumikage even once, but his eyes are sharp as they examine what Fumikage’s come up with so far. “You really put some serious thought into this. It’s better than what I expected from a nine-year-old.”
“Will you use it?” Dark Shadow asks, peeking his head out. “With us?”
Hawks looks down at their new language scribbled on paper and then looks at Fumikage with an odd look on his face. Like he’s never been asked to keep a secret with somebody, and he doesn’t quite know what to do with it. Like he wants to treasure it. “Yeah, I’d love to.”
-
The language Fumikage invented is a constant work in progress, evolving to the point where it doesn’t resemble any code Fumikage’s learned so far. He’s proud of it, if he may say so himself.
In fact, Hawks proposes that they make a variety codes so that they can use them depending on the situation. Ways to communicate in broad daylight in front of other people, ways to communicate in silence, ways to communicate long-distance. Hawks already knows all the standard codes the commission is drilling into Fumikage’s head, so they build up from there, creating variations that nobody else can understand.
It takes weeks and weeks, because there’s only so much time they can share privately without the adults coming to collect them for training, so they make the most of the free hours they have to practice their own little language.
At some point, Hawks laments the fact that neither of them can use bird calls, despite both of them being avian mutants. At least if they were canine mutants, he muses, they might at least be able to communicate via ultrasound with dog whistles. Not even Kobayashi, who is entirely human in terms of DNA, can hear sounds at that frequency.
“Does it matter, though?” Fumikage asks. “You don’t use your ears for the really small sounds, and Dark Shadow doesn’t, either.”
Hawks stares at him for a long moment. “Right…because my feathers and Dark Shadow operate by detecting vibrations, and they’re both more sensitive than human ears. Oh my god.”
Fumikage tilts his head. “Can you get dog whistles?”
“Yeah,” Hawks says breathlessly. “I’ll sneak ‘em in as soon as I have a chance.”
-
The next time they meet, Hawks brings in two dog whistles, one for each of them. They split up; Hawks goes to the rooftop while Fumikage moves towards the opposite end of the commission’s grounds.
Can you hear me? Hawks’s whistle blows in their version of Morse Code, utterly silent to Fumikage’s ears but clear as day to Dark Shadow.
I hear you, Fumikage whistles back. Can you hear me?
Hawks doesn’t answer via whistle. Instead he comes flying straight at Fumikage, a blinding grin stretched across his face as he says, “I hear you, Tokoyami. I hear you.”
-
They learn to conceal the whistles under their clothing, up their sleeves, into the lining of their jackets where they’ve cut open little opening to stash their secrets away. Nowadays, they talk to each other every day they’re both at headquarters, even if they don’t get to see each other face to face. Ultrasound carries a long way; while it doesn’t carry through thick walls, Fumikage can hear Hawks every time he limps his way out of another grueling training session. You can do this. You can do this. I believe in you.
Nothing is quite as good as getting to see Hawks in person, but the piercing sound of the whistle helps Fumikage feel less lonely.
-
Fumikage turns ten years old and his training evolves accordingly. The adults push him farther then they used to, and pull their punches a little less. His training focuses the most on physical combat and emotional control. Broad strokes that can be later sharpened and developed into quirk usage in a hundred little ways. Fumikage’s muscles ache every day and his mind aches even more from all the ways the commission tests his patience and control over Dark Shadow.
Some days, his training sessions leave him breathless and proud with new achievements; some days, they merely leave him exhausted and seething over his own helplessness.
Hawks’s training is much more precision-based. Fumikage watches Hawks practice manipulating his feathers to rescue and subdue all at once, and he wonders how Hawks does it. If this is all mere instinct to Hawks, part of his natural talent, or if it’s something complicated that’s been trained into him so deeply that it’s left marks on his very bones, its own code of heroics that Hawks has no choice but to be fluent in.
It’s not just his wings and combat that Hawks has to train for, though. Hawks is also trained to be socially adept, to smile and wink and develop an image that the public will adore. He is trained to become somebody under the spotlight at all hours, and Fumikage doesn’t know if he should feel jealous or pitying.
Fumikage will never be like Hawks; the adults have not stated it explicitly yet, but it is obvious that Fumikage’s future will not belong in the spotlight. He will travel into the darkness and go wherever the commission tells him to. The public will never know him and he will never need to worry about what society thinks of him. It is a freedom that Hawks will never get to have.
Fumikage is a child of darkness and Hawks belongs in the light. The paths they are on are best-suited for each of them.
But even a soul that lives under the sunlight feels the desire to rest in the shade for while, and even a creature that thrives in the dark still misses the light from time to time.
Fumikage will never be like Hawks; Hawks will never be like Fumikage.
But they are both owned by the commission, so maybe they’re more similar to each other than anybody else can imagine.
-
Fumikage stumbles upon his own invention completely by accident. He’s merely walking in the shade along the back of the commission headquarters’ main building, Dark Shadow hovering behind him as Fumikage looks up at the wide-open sky with an ache deep in his chest. A longing to fly up, to perhaps reach the sun, even if it means burning to ash in the end.
And then his foot catches on an uneven edge of the brick path and he stumbles forward with a wobble, nearly crashing face-first onto the ground.
But then he catches himself right before he smashes his beak into the brick, and it takes him a while to realize that it’s Dark Shadow that caught him, and now he’s hovering in the air, Dark Shadow carrying him with his arms looped around Fumikage’s waist.
“Oh,” Fumikage says, and Dark Shadow echoes the sentiment.
He experimentally wiggles his feet, and he doesn’t wobble with Dark Shadow’s firm grip around him. He silently directs Dark Shadow to carry him to the end of the path, and Dark Shadow glides through the air without a problem—until they leave the shade and are hit by the sunlight, at which point Dark Shadow weakens too much to hold up Fumikage’s body weight.
‘We can fly!’ Dark Shadow silently shrieks in excitement, dancing in circles over Fumikage’s head.
Fumikage is already digging out his dog whistle. If he had a human face, he thinks he’d be grinning ear to ear. ‘Yes, we can fly.’
He gingerly fits the whistle to the side of his beak—it’s always a hassle for him to use it, but today he doesn’t care at all—and signals to Hawks where he is. I have a surprise.
Hawks comes over a few minutes later, presumably after shaking off any other adults before heading to where Fumikage’s been waiting. He looks at Fumikage from head to toe, not seeing anything notable, and raises an eyebrow. “What’s the surprise?”
Dark Shadow manifests from Fumikage’s back with a gleeful screech, then wraps his arms around Fumikage and lifts him up high, all the way to where the second floor windows are.
“Holy shit.” Hawks’s eyes light up as he follows Fumikage up with a flap of his own red wings, and they stay up mid-air, looking at each other, full of elation. Fumikage has never imagined, even for a second, that there may be a day he could truly catch up to Hawks, but in this moment, he knows he can. He will.
“Looks like you’re a real bird now,” Hawks says, and he zips in a quick circle around Fumikage. “I mean, you’re gonna need a lot of practice to fly properly, but you’re already halfway there.”
“Can you teach me?” Fumikage asks.
Hawks pauses, then offers Fumikage a crooked smile. “Yeah. I’m the only one who can.”
-
The adults in the commission are thrilled to discover that Fumikage is now capable of flight. As Hawks predicted, they immediately add flight lessons to Fumikage’s training, with Hawks as his tutor. After all, nobody else in the commission knows the sky the way Hawks does.
They start easy; Fumikage acclimatizes to being held in Dark Shadow’s grip. The commission fits Fumikage with a dark cloak to protect Dark Shadow from the light and maintain the energy to keep Fumikage afloat. Then Hawks takes him around the training center, flying in slow circles until Fumikage’s flight is stable.
From there, they practice flying faster, changing speed mid-air, diving from high altitudes, and irregular flight patterns. Fumikage is not afraid of heights, so he learns the lessons quickly with little hesitation.
“Hey,” Hawks says as they take a break, wiping his mouth after a gulp of a sports drink, “Just remember—if you fall from high up, it’s gonna hurt like hell. And if you go high enough, the fall with kill you. Never forget that.”
Fumikage nods. “Dark Shadow will never drop me.”
“I know.” Hawks takes another sip of his drink. “Just be careful, okay? Don’t want your little egg head to break.”
“My head isn’t an egg,” Fumikage protests.
“People break easily.” Hawks sets his drink down and stands up, offering a hand to Fumikage. “Tokoyami, I don’t want you to break.”
Fumikage catches the faintest hint of desperation in Hawks’s voice, and because he is ten and full of unearned confidence and determined to never hurt Hawks, he blindly promises, “I won’t, Hawks. I won’t break.”
-
Hawks teaches him how to fly outside, how to navigate the wind and to take care of the sunshine glaring down, Fumikage feels utterly delighted and carefree for the first time since his parents passed away.
But no matter how high he soars, he doesn’t feel truly free.
-
Fumikage learns that Hawks has a plushie back in his own room where he sleeps in the commission’s private living quarters. He only finds out because he follows Hawks to his room after a flight training session to pick up an illustrated book Hawks has about aerodynamics, and he sees the small plushie innocently sitting on the bed.
“Is that Endeavor?” Fumikage asks, and Hawks turns a little pink.
“Um, yeah.” Hawks scratches the back of his neck. Clearly, he feels embarrassed about being a sixteen-year-old with a plushie. “I had that since I was little.”
Fumikage does not have any keepsakes from his childhood. He feels a little jealous but mostly just sad. “Is he your favorite hero?”
“Yeah, he is.” Hawks clears his throat and glances at Fumikage. “What about you? I bet someone at the commission will get you some merch of your favorite, if you ask.”
Fumikage remembers heroes. All Might. Endeavor. Yoroi Musha. Best Jeanist. He remembers, but they all feel so distant to him, now. He doesn’t live in a world where heroes will come save him. They’re simply figures on paper and screens to Fumikage.
The closest thing to a hero he knows is the person who apologized to him in that bank. Red feathers pinning a villain who had aimed his gun at an exhausted Fumikage’s head. A warm palm on Fumikage’s nape. Soft apologies drowned out by Dark Shadow’s and Fumikage’s combined sorrow.
Even if he was too late for Fumikage’s parents, Hawks had come in time for Fumikage.
And now he shares a secret language with Fumikage, is the only person Dark Shadow talks to, and teaches him to fly. Every time Fumikage has needed him and called for him, red wings have come flapping, gold eyes searching for Fumikage.
Hawks, right now, with his blushing cheeks and golden eyes and flustered smile, is the only person worth placing Fumikage’s faith in.
“It’s fine,” Fumikage says. “I don’t need any.”
Fumikage’s favorite hero is right here. He doesn’t need any keepsakes.
-
Sign language is a logical next step for Fumikage to learn, and the commission trains him in standard Japanese Sign Language and basic gestures that heroes use in the field.
Of course, Fumikage and Hawks sprinkle in a few of their own additions, signs they only send to each other when they know nobody else is looking. Considering that both of them have superhuman eyesight, thanks to their avian genes, they can signal each other from very far distances.
This is especially helpful once Kobayashi starts training Fumikage.
-
Kobayashi doesn’t go to the commission grounds; instead, she keeps a training room on the second floor of their house, and it’s there that she teaches him how to use a sword.
The commission had asked her to train Hawks since a couple years back, and Hawks still has weekly sessions with her—which happen while Fumikage is at headquarters for quirk control training—and now they want her to train Fumikage as well. It’s an odd choice, given that Hawks has in-built blades in his longest feathers, but Fumikage does not carry a sword in any way or form.
“You can’t rely on your quirk for everything,” Kobayashi tells him, throwing him a wooden sword in the shape of a katana for practice. “It’s good to know how to use a variety of weapons.”
“It’s not like I’ll be carrying a katana around,” Fumikage says, fumbling with the practice sword.
Kobayashi raises an eyebrow. “You sure about that, kid?”
Fumikage pauses.
He isn’t sure, actually. He has no clue what the commission will make him do in the future. If he’ll simply masquerade as a civilian while playing informant, or if he’ll be acting as a villain who can play double-agent. Who knows if he will carry knives or swords or even guns? Fumikage has no clue.
“See?” Kobayashi points her own practice sword at him and gestures for him to raise his own. “Now, we’ll start with the basics.”
-
Kobayashi is utterly ruthless. She hardly gives Fumikage time to breathe, and she makes his muscles ache more than any other physical training session has. Hawks laughs half-heartedly when Fumikage tells him about it. “Yeah, she’s…terrifying.”
But more than that, she’s an incredibly good teacher. She might be ruthless but she never loses her patience no matter how many mistakes Fumikage makes, and she is quick to praise his achievements as she is to point out his mistakes. She seems to instinctively sense Fumikage’s limits, and he often ends up challenging and pushing them further under her tutelage.
“You have talent, and you work hard.” Kobayashi never offers him a hand up after she knocks him to the ground, but she always brings him something to drink. “You’ll be good at this.”
“Why aren’t you a hero?” Fumikage asks, trying to get his breath back.
Kobayashi sighs. “I don’t like heroes.”
Fumikage blinks up at her. “Then why do you work with the commission?”
“Because I like people.” She hums. “Let’s just say that being a hero isn’t the only way to save others.”
Fumikage doesn’t quite understand what that means, but he thinks he eventually will. There must be a reason the commission chose her to be his handler. There’s a reason Fumikage is not fated to be a hero, after all.
-
It takes him three months to master all the basics, and another two months for Fumikage to spar against Kobayashi without being pinned to the floor in three seconds flat.
Once she and the commission decide his basics are good enough, they start a whole new kind of training for him and Hawks: aerial combat.
They’ve been having flight sessions that amount to aerial tag for a while, with them taking turns trying to catch the other mid-air. While Fumikage loses quite often because he’s not as fast as Hawks, everybody agrees that Fumikage’s speed will only improve once he and Dark Shadow pass puberty and grow stronger.
But this is new territory for both of them. Mock-clashing in the air, trading blows with nothing under their feet. Hawks is especially hesitant, worried that he might injure Fumikage, but the adults assure them both that they don’t expect anything drastic. They simply want to see how Hawks moves around a target in the air, while they want to see how Fumikage can fend off a threat. There is a safety net beneath them to prevent any injuries from falls, but Hawks is still apprehensive.
“What’s the point of me learning how to beat up a kid?” Hawks says, and he’s the closest to defiant Fumikage has ever seen him.
“The point is that Tokoyami learns how to protect himself from a stronger opponent,” the president of the commission says, and Hawks presses his mouth into a thin line.
They face each other in the air, bare-handed and barefoot. Hawks will most definitely pull his punches; Fumikage wants to as well, because he doesn’t want to hurt Hawks, but if he does not grow stronger soon, he will only hinder them both. He knows that once they make enough progress, the adults will want him and Hawks to spar in the air with wooden swords instead of their bare hands.
So they spar in the air, ducking and spinning and dive-bombing, attacking and defending. Dark Shadow does not drop Fumikage even once, but sometimes Hawks hits them too hard and they crash straight into the safety net. They’ve never even sparred regularly before, so Fumikage is getting a full dose of Hawks’s combat expertise for the first time, and it’s painful.
But for some reason, Hawks looks the most pained of them all whenever he lands on the net to pull Fumikage back upright.
So Fumikage doesn’t complain and keeps going, if only to grow stronger. If only to lose less. If only to make that awful pain in Hawks’s eyes go away.
-
“Nice one,” Hawks comments dryly, tapping at the bruise purpling across his own temple.
Fumikage, who is now allowed on the rooftop and has just landed here, winces. Their aerial combat practice session had been particularly rough today, especially now that they’re sparring with wooden swords. Fumikage still loses most of the time, but he’s getting better at surprising Hawks. “Sorry.”
“No biggie. I sure as hell dealt you worse before.” Hawks dangles his legs over the edge of the rooftop and sighs. “Man, I’m beating up a ten-year-old. What kind of hero does that?”
“I’m not an ordinary ten-year-old,” Fumikage points out as he sits next to Hawks.
No ordinary ten-year-old learns ciphers and naval codes. No ordinary ten-year-old is locked into darkness with increasingly terrifying stimuli as part of his quirk training. No ordinary ten-year-old is being raised to be a weapon for the commission to wield wherever they need him, even if it is the darkest path imaginable.
Hawks looks at him. Fumikage has slowly been learning to decode the emotions in Hawks’s eyes these days, and he thinks this one just might be heartbreak. “No, you’re not.”
They look out at the horizon. The sun is slowly starting to set, painting the sky a gorgeous kaleidoscope of warm colors, and Fumikage wonders what it would be like, to fly off into the sunset. He wonders if he’d burn up. If he’d be free.
“You know, I always thought it was funny.” Hawks’s voice is quiet, his words barely discernible over the wind, but Fumikage hears him clear as day. “When they decided to bring you in. I thought it was a funny coincidence that you were a bird, too.”
“It is a pretty big coincidence,” Fumikage agrees.
Hawks stretches his wings wide and curls them around himself and Tokoyami, as if shielding them from the wind. Maybe from the world.
“Ironic,” Hawks murmurs, “that we’re both birds but we can’t fly away from this place.”
Fumikage isn’t foolish enough to suggest that they could try anyway. He knows that no matter how far they go, they will never be truly free. As long as the commission owns them, as long as they stake their claim and refuse to release them, then flying away will only mean that they will be hunted down and dragged back. They have been trained to be strong and clever, but they are ultimately young and helpless.
“Do you want to?” Fumikage asks. “Do you want to fly away and not look back?”
Hawks laughs. Curls his wings closer around them both. “Sometimes, yeah. But you know what’s really awful?”
“No,” Fumikage says, even though he has an idea.
“I want to be a hero more than I want to be free,” Hawks says, and his voice cracks a little. “I want to save people, and if that means I gotta be in a cage…I’ll do it.”
Fumikage scoots in closer, until they’re sitting side by side, warmth seeping in where they’re pressed up together. “You’re going to be a great hero.”
“God, I hope so.” Hawks looks at Fumikage. His eyes are a little glassy but they are sharp as they search Fumikage’s face for the truth. “Tokoyami, what do you want? Do you want to leave?”
Fumikage wants to. He wants to be free. He wants to have a life not dictated by the commission and wants to have friends and wants to be a normal kid. Maybe if he begs hard enough, the commission will grant these to him. They still haven’t asked Fumikage what he wants to choose, after all. He could be free.
But in exchange, he’ll have to lose Hawks. Hawks will be left here, alone, still trapped and caged and owned, and Fumikage can’t bear to leave him behind.
“I want to stay with you,” Fumikage says, and something in Hawks’s expression shatters open.
Hawks pulls him into a hug, arms wrapping tight around Fumikage’s smaller frame and wings folding over them both as he buries his face in Fumikage’s shoulder. “You’re an idiot.”
“No I’m not,” Fumikage protests.
“I’m sorry,” Hawks says, and Fumikage knows he’s not apologizing for calling him an idiot. He’s apologizing for something bigger and sadder and not at all his fault. Just like the first time he said those words to Fumikage in a bloodied bank.
“It’s okay,” Fumikage says, even though he’s not sure if the words are true. “It’s okay, Hawks.”
They sit there like that for a long time, even after the sun goes down.