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Lady Nagant is a mystery, except for how she isn't.
"Thanks for your help," he says. He likes to think he hadn't really needed it, but, well, things are rough out here these days and heroes are spread far too thin.
Not that she's a hero, of course. Not anymore.
Her eyes are piercing in the dark, and they kind of make Hawks wish he'd never encountered her on patrol—even if it would have made his job harder. He's turning to go when her voice stops him.
"They really haven't changed, have they?" she says.
Hawks freezes, his wings already spread to take flight. In the bright neon lights of Musutafu's night, her voice is cold. It's not a surprising thing to hear her say, really, all things considered, but something about the way she says it—
She sounds like she knows far too much.
He laughs, because that's what he was trained to do a long time ago. "Who?"
Lady Nagent doesn't play along. "I'm just saying, I'm going to take them down one day. You're more than welcome to help. I wouldn't take that away from you."
His pinions stiffen. He tells himself it's an instinctual reaction to the chill. The wind is picking up; he has no control over it. "I don't know what you're talking about," he says easily. He bends his knees, coils all of his energy into his legs.
He really has to go. There are things he should be doing, orders he should be following, and listening to a criminal that by rights he should be arresting right now isn't one of them.
"Sure you don't, kid." Her voice is still cold, but he gets the feeling it isn't directed at him. "You think I can't tell you exactly where the bruises are just because I can't see them? I know how they like to treat their property."
Hawks's whole body stiffens, now. It makes the fingerprints left behind in the divots of his hips pull tight. He doesn't think about them much, most days. They never really go away, after all, and he's long learned how to adjust for them with every move he makes. It's second nature.
It's not like he can be useful, otherwise—on the field or elsewhere. There's never any telling when someone will call him.
Hawks knows what happens to useless things.
"You don't know anything about me," he says, his voice light.
"Sure," Lady Nagant says again. She turns, her form already on the brink of fading into the alleys crisscrossing the city. She looks back over her shoulder, and Hawks tries not to flinch at the blue and red lights as they play over her cheekbones. The neon sign above them flickers, then steadies for a moment before finally flickering out and casting her face into shadow. "But I was you, once. Don't forget that."
Then she's gone, and Hawks stares into the darkness for a long, long time before he finally flies away.