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It’s slow in the mornings.
Or at least, that’s what Himiko’s noticed, prancing around their fancy new ‘safehouse’ (sort-of) in equally fancy sleepwear — paid for with their new PLF funds, the kind of light pink silky kind that she’d passed in a storefront window once on the streets and had loved ever since — and thick socks that she was half-sure were Spinner’s.
Eh, oh well. She’d just throw ‘em back in the laundry pile and hope it sorted itself out.
Slow is something she was… kinda used to. Except for days like these when she wakes up way too early and has to laze around waiting for everybody else.
She hums a bit to herself, slinking down the halls— Jin and Compress are asleep, Tomura and Spinner are definitely asleep since they stayed up nearly all night, and Dabi’s been out recruiting for days. So not in his room.
In fact, the only person she can find, breathing in deep and smelling it ripe in the air…
He shouldn’t even be here , not if Dabi’s away.
But there he is, the country’s golden number two dragging his feet in their kitchen, with the sliding back doors’ latch flipped. Early, early, early. What could their hero friend need so soon?
Himiko smiles, trotting forward in time with how she calls, “Hiya, Hawksie!”
The very tips of his outermost primaries twitch, just a bit, like in a little flutter. Surprised. He hadn’t noticed her.
He turns to face her, features betraying nothing. “Oh, hey there, Toga. You’re up early.”
“So are you, y’know? I thought you weren’t s’posed to be here without Dabi.” she lilts her head back and forth, and still Hawks’ expression stays the same. Maybe she’d have a bit more trouble with the hero if his blood weren’t so heady just beneath his skin — he hid it good and well, but there were always nerves when he was with the League.
“Funny you say that— I was busy looking for him, myself. You wouldn’t happen to know where he is, would’ya?”
Light and airy and, for all intents and purposes, genuine. If not for the growing thickness in the air. He glosses over what she’s said. “Nope, sorry!”
Hawks just rolls his shoulders out. “Bummer. Guess I’ll just try and get ahold of him later, then.”
“Got somethin’ important to give him?”
The way his eyes flicker ever-so slightly makes her laugh. “Kidding! Don’t tell me.”
She drops it in a whisper, like it’s some kind of secret. Sure, she could push him, prod and poke and see what he’s like beneath the skin — but he’s Dabi’s hero. He obviously doesn’t trust him and so she won’t either, but she won’t wreck his fun.
…Of course, that doesn’t mean she can’t have some questions of her own.
“Y’know, if you’re here, can I ask you a question, Hawksie?”
She’s just curious. Years gone by and aimlessly wondering, sometimes…
She can taste his unease as she hops up onto the counter and more into his space. Oddly, fascinating, he doesn’t move away, even if it's so clear that he’d like to. Odd, odd, odd. “For sure. I mean, I’ve got time.”
Her legs kick out. She thinks of bright posters contrasting beige, unkind walls and practiced smiles that Hawks himself reflects in the uptick of the corners of his lips.
She’s long-learned how to dissect a person’s appearance. For more reasons than one.
“Has the Commission’s quirk counseling department changed at all? Since, like… I dunno, nine, ten-ish years ago?”
A laugh brushes at the back of her teeth at the heroes’ stillness. It’s not what he’d expected, that much is obvious.
But it was everything she’d thought about since she stopped having to go.
“I… huh. I don’t actually know about that one. Why do you ask?” Hawks’ voice isn’t too heavy, but isn’t too light, either. Perfectly adaptable. A million ways to interpret it.
The smell in the air hasn’t changed a bit — risen like his hackles.
“Oh, just curious!” Himiko leans in more, grin never falling as her eyes flash. “Just wanted to know if anything changed since I went.”
We’ll get you all fixed up, Himiko. You’ll be nice and normal before you even know it.
“Since… you went.”
Surprise in the air, tingling like… pineapple, maybe, fresh-cut on her tongue. She giggles. “Mhm-mhm!”
And then cocks her head to the side, watching. “You think I turned out this way on accident?”
Her parents had freaked, gotten a little desperate after the local counsellors had rejected working with her — around here is more suited for quirk incompatibility, and difficulties controlling them and the sort. We… just don’t handle the types of children such as your daughter, Mrs. Toga — and instead sought out the nearest HPSC office a whole prefecture away.
Just to… fix her. Oh, she’s the best of the best, you know? She’s turned so many children around, improved so many lives…
She’s so heroic. So brave for taking on such difficult kids.
Heroism… it hadn’t sounded so sweet when she heard things like that. Nothing really had. Hero became another word for mean. Dirty. Unsafe. Unreliable.
“Oh, I’m… sorry, that— what, uh—”
He’s so clumsy when it comes to such blatant admissions. So tactless — it makes her wonder how he’d react to anyone else in the League. Loud openness about what got them to where they were was just how it went.
Or maybe he’s just walking on eggshells since it’s her.
It makes her wonder how he gets by doing his whole hero thing. He’s not even older than Dabi, is he?
Whatever he’s meant to be, he’s damn bad at being it.
Himiko waves her hands idly, voice detached. “They were all suuuper mean, you know? Especially my counselor, always telling me I needed to be normal and not a deviant and that my parents probably weren’t so off when they called me a demon.”
She perches her elbows onto her knees and quits swinging them — she wants to drink in all that the hero says. Every last bit. “The program was headed by the Commission and all of their hand-picked employees. So unregulated — I bet they could basically just do whatever they wanted, right?”
They did. Over and over and swept under the rug, hushed proposals of have you considered corporal discipline? Technically the term is punishment , but I don’t like using that word in my practice with sugared smiles.
Stinging cheeks and teared-up eyes and grips around the wrist a little too hard and it hurts, it hurts, Miss it hurts really, really bad please—
It’s okay. This will help you, Himiko. We’re going to fix you.
“That’s…” Hawks’ throat bobs. “I’m… sorry. No one— no one should’ve been telling you that, that’s—”
“I know, silly!” a smile reignites on her lips. “I mean, I didn’t then and totally thought it was all me, right? But I’m with the League now.”
Her tone warps into something dreamlike, sighing. Hawks’ feathers rustle again, and his head tilts so slightly like he doesn’t realize he’s doing it. “I thought you… you know. Wanted to do the things you liked and live easy.”
Gotta say, I’m pretty curious about you. Why are you with the League?
I wanna love how I want and live easy. And she had smiled at their recruit. Dabi had smelled like suspicion and Hawks like unease. It was true — maybe he’d earned this bit more.
“I do! But that doesn’t mean I don’t think this society is dirty— and that’s what Tomura wants, anyway. I want all my friends to be happy and get the things that make them happy and for them to live easy just like me.”
“...And that’s what Shigaraki wants. For things to be better.”
Himiko smiles a smile that’s more a baring of her teeth. “Of course he does.”
Another fluttering of the very tips of his wings. Bold, but not too bold, not daring or animalistic and humanly manicured. “That’s… I guess I get that.”
Not for the first time, Himiko studies him. The uncanny skin and unchapped lips and meticulously messily fixed hair— the groomed quirk and unflinching tone.
Is it better or worse that Hawks is hardly a hero? Showdog, more like. Figurehead.
“Do you?” she asks, simply.
He blinks. “...Wanting people to live easy — isn’t that why we’re all here?”
We. We, we, we — is that really you talking in there?
Himiko feels something coy curl in her fangs, exposed. “That’s why we’re here. So why are you here, Hawksie?”
Hawks stills. And she sees— so flat. His face isn’t twisting or twitching with anything. He just… shuts down.
Not for very long, of course. No matter how it feels that her words hang in the air.
“For… the League,” an easy, plasticly practiced grin spread across his face. “Whatever the League wants, I want. I trust that our goals are similar enough.”
…Hm.
What a letdown.
You could get so far, she thinks. If you’d just let yourself. You’re hiding. We can’t do anything if you’re hiding.
Himiko can still smell it on him, the light treading and the wisps of something, in a way, hopeful.
For what, she can’t really tell.
She giggles when she hops down from the countertop, startling him bad enough to take a step or so backwards.
“We should talk more, hero.” she says, instead of anything else. “See ya’ ‘round!”
She waves and skips off back into the hall, waiting just long enough to hear the back door open and then close again — skittering further to hear the telltale signs of other people waking and moving about and lighting up.
Something to take her mind off of phantom burns, thinking of blood and love and safety. Himiko hums and considers and nearly races down the hall to find — thinks that…
Well, who knows about the little hero in their midst? Maybe she’d even talk with Dabi when he finally comes back.