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“You know, they say you die twice,” Dabi said out of nowhere, staring pensively across the horizon. “First when your heart stops and a second time when someone says your name for the last time. For me, I don’t think it’s going in that order.”
“What do you mean?” Hawks asked, “you’re like, one of the most notorious villains in Japan. Every news site talks about you.”
“But they know me as Dabi. ‘Cremation’. Who I was is dead. He burned to death ages ago, and I guess I lost my name to the fire as well.”
“Me too,” Hawks said quietly.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Takami Keigo. That’s my real name. Or I guess it was. I’m just ‘Hawks’ legally now.”
If Dabi was nothing but a villain, then Hawks existed solely as his hero persona. As people, as real individuals with names and hopes and ambitions, they’d both died as children. And maybe that’s why they got along so well - just two empty men, trying to ignore the ghosts they left behind.
“Touya,” Dabi said. “My given name. It was Touya.”
“So,” Hawks said, “how’d Touya ‘die’?”
“His own flames. Result of shitty genetics and an even shittier dad. And Keigo? What happened to him?”
“Sold to the Hero Commission. They own me legally, now. Name and all. Well, name as in Hawks. Keigo doesn’t exist. He died well before his tenth birthday.”
“Keigo,” Dabi said, just testing the feel of the name. It fit, he decided, much better than ‘Hawks’.
“Touya,” Hawks responded.
And maybe, just maybe, they could keep each others’ names alive.