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Dabi hated fireflies, they didn’t make a single noise but instead used their little lights to communicate. They didn’t need to fight to be heard, and they didn’t need to whine and beg for people’s attention.
They were just there, human eyes naturally drawn to them as they communicated only within their tight little clusters. Or sparks, if you wanted to be creative.
Dabi hated it. To get Endeavour’s attention he had to actively join a fucking villain group. A villain group.
His flame was stronger, brighter, warmer than a firefly’s light would ever be.
Yet nobody’s eye was drawn to him, when he was younger he could walk through crowded streets and be practically invisible.
He could form a burst of fire and spray it at a passerby and the only thing they would do was run and scream, calling the cops and wailing before they too quickly faded back into irrelevancy.
It was sickening, how the only way to be noticed was to stay in the limelight. Chaos had to follow you, adventures had to guide your every move.
A hero or a villain, a popstar or a selfish paparazzi. A casualty or the one making them.
And that was Dabi’s problem with society. They never bored themselves with the things too beneath them to notice.
If somebody was seen in a good light, everybody would continue to delude themselves that the person was good. If somebody was seen in a bad light, nothing would change the public’s mind.
Same went with inanimate objects, places, things, animals. A snake was bad, a firefly was romantic.
He huffed, objectively the place he was standing in was pretty, long, lush green grass, flowers dotted everywhere but not in such abundance that it would be overwhelming.
Society would call it a place to go when you wanted to propose to someone, to impress them. To promise to stand by their side and to create the perfect novel world fantasy.
Dabi wondered how their perception would change if he burned it to the ground, a gravesite, a massacre of beautiful flowers. The glow of the sunset would turn from a promise to an execution.
He was sure it would turn to a place of bad omen, you would never take a first date there. It would be haunted dry, the air a sickening sort of smoky.
And it would eventually fade, because the media didn’t want to focus on an ugly place. Visitors would dwindle and the only people running there would be delinquents trying to take a shortcut through ash.
But eventually the cycle would begin anew, flowers would begin to blossom, the grass, left untethered would continue to grow.
The dead bodies of the ecosystem before would provide nutrients for the people anew.
Yet it would never be exactly the same. Perhaps a patch of flowers would die then refuse to regrow. Places where the sun used to hit no longer getting enough before the grass overshadowed it.
Maybe, Dabi thought, amused. That was what had been happening to hero society since the day the commission was formed.
Perhaps it had been burned one too many times, actually good people leaving, setting their legacy for the younger ones to easily follow.
Heroes immediately regarded in a good light without ever having to earn it.
An easy path to fame and fortune.
Was that why Endeavour became a hero? Was that why he had managed to go on so long? Nobody wanted to be the one to say that their No.2 hero wasn’t as good of a person as the media made him look. Nobody wanted to rip off their rose-tinted lens and actually see the dying flowers.
Dabi didn’t have some noble mission, he didn’t want to purge the earth so that new flowers could grow anew.
He wanted to burn it to the ground, the whole field, all the cities, the people, the buildings and development.
And make himself into ash in the process.
“DABIII!!!”
Dabi grimaced, there were only two people who would ever call his name like that. And only one was a boy.
He glanced one last time at the fireflies, dancing their beautiful dance, at the sun, slowly setting and painting the night sky shades of pink, encroaching on purple.
Then he turned to the hero. “Hawks.”
They landed, because of course they flew everywhere, regardless of their own safety. Though it wasn’t like travelling on the ground would be any less or more subtle Dabi supposed.
Hawks was always in the public eye. He never wore a mask and his bright red wings were eyecatchers.
But he was made for it, the media vultures easily repelled by the hidden predator that was the hero in front of him.
Hawks made a show of huffing and puffing, but Dabi knew that it was exaggerated. Not a drop of sweat had formed on Hawk’s brow, and not a single breath as erratic as Hawks tried to make it seem.
“Dabi, my man, I was looking everywhere,” Hawks whined, and his voice took a high-pitched tone. “Where were you?”
Dabi rolled his eyes at the hero’s antics, and crossed his arms. “Why were you even looking for me, hero?”
“Do I need a reason to enjoy your company, hotstuff?”
“Only when you’re looking for me this desperately, birdie.”
Hawks gave a huff. “I’ll have you know that all of my fans would be drooling to get this close to me, much less have me look for them.”
Dabi only smirked and rolled his shoulders, moving to sit down. “Well you’ve found me, so I’ll give you the time of day.”
Hawks grinned. “I seriously just wanted to hang.”
Dabi sighed, and it was a wonder that this was only his first one, the birdbrain had a way of causing exhaustion just with his presence alone. “Fine.”
As much as Dabi pretended to hate Hawk’s presence, he still felt calm, sitting in the field with red wings sheltering them and protecting him from the cold.
Dabi didn’t know how to name half the feelings he had, a side effect from being Endeavour’s son, he suspected. But he could name this one: peace.
Maybe Hawks was a traitor, Dabi suspected it from the start, but he found that if he got to stay in this space for a little longer, if he got to feel this sense of peace for just a moment more, he would gladly pretend.
And the field survived another day, with all of the fireflies and ants and bugs and life attached.