Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

Touya had received a phone call earlier this week. That wasn’t the odd part, no, he receives plenty of phone calls in the week. The surprising part was where the phone call was from.

“Am I speaking with pro hero Dabi?”

“The one and only, whom am I speaking with?”

Mainly because no one there would enjoy seeing his scarred face,..

“Pardon my manners, I’m a prison therapist from Tartarus. I was wondering if you’d be available for a little chat about a certain inmate. ”

“Who exactly are you referring to if I may ask?” Touya barely managed to keep his voice from breaking.

..definitely not the only person he would actually want to see from that place.

“Prisoner 4149, Keigo Takami.” Touya almost choked on air. “More commonly known as the villain-”

“Hawks”

—

The war ended two years ago. It’s been three years since he infiltrated the league of villains. Two whole years since he betrayed him. He hadn't heard a single word from a certain bird since that day, and by the looks of it neither had anyone else.

In the meantime, Touya had started a new rehabilitation program with the help of the UA staff. The program’s main focus is on helping villains have a second chance in life, get them steady on their feet after prison instead of just throwing them back into the world. Touya’s not saying this was basically built for the sole reason of helping the league but he won’t deny it either.

Actually most of the league members were already part of the program, only one was left in order to complete the whole team. Just a little tiny birdie that wasn’t cooperating much, not in terms of being evil or doing bad stuff, he just didn’t believe and was weary of the program.

Hawks was much of a talker based on the brief description the therapist had discussed with him over the phone. His speech was basically nonexistent for the most of the time, he had a blank face all day to match his muteness and no matter what happened it never wavered. They had been trying to get him to join the rehabilitation but there was no way to convince him.

In the two months they’ve been trying to convince him they discovered there was no way to make him express his thoughts or convince him about the program. He had no family, no friends that weren't dead or imprisoned, they didn't have any leverage against him. No secrets, no nothing.

The last thing the therapist could think of doing was trying to get Touya to talk to him given the nature of their past relationship. They thought that maybe, he would be able to convince the bird to join.

Because as the doctor had said, he was the closest thing to something they had against Hawks.

So here he is now, in an empty hall walking towards the scariest door he has ever seen in his life with no clue of what he was doing or why he was doing it.

The therapist told him to not be surprised if he didn't receive a verbal response -or any kind of response to be honest, to not be let down by it. In the end, this is just an attempt out of something that's hopefully bringing them somewhere but they didn’t have much hope in Touya.

Jeez, they could’ve at least lied to his face or something. Way to help a man with his nerves when he’s about to talk to the person he ended up betraying years ago.

Anyways, they’ve also informed him that only emotions they have seen Hawks express during his imprisonment was care towards another inmate. One the younger lads in the prison had been backed into a wall by some bastards, trying to get the poor younger bastard to their terrain to do god knows what.

The second Birdie’s eye landed on the scene he got into action, biting one of the bastards hard enough that they had to put stitches. Not to say that the rest of their bodies went unharmed, oh hell no, Touya’s seen that file, those guys had black and blue bruises everywhere. When he says everywhere he means it. All with a blank face and zero words towards anyone.

In Touya’s opinion this was all bullshit. If no one else could make Hawks agree or collaborate why would he be able to get something out of him. He's the one that betrayed them, he almost killed the bird -he still didn’t know how he survived- he’s probably the last person he would like to see in the world.

Like honestly, who can fucking fault him?! Touya betrayed them all, he betrayed him.. gave him his fair share of scars- as if he already hadn’t had enough-. He left both physical and emotional scars…but now he was trying to do it right, even if the trust was gone. Had their situations been reversed he’d probably wouldn’t want to see his bird either.

‘Sadly in this universe my birdie’s got no choice but to see him.’

…

‘Wait, he could close his eye-’

While Touya was in his thoughts, the guard had already opened the door to the visitation room gesturing him to start moving. It was an empty room with grey walls, a table and two chairs. It was a really sad room in Touya’s opinion. There was a metal door in front of him that he hadn’t noticed before the other guard had opened it.

Would it be too late to go home now? He really didn’t want to do this, why did he agree to this again?

“Don’t do anything funny, we have all eyes on you.” The guard sounded exasperated while talking to the person behind the wall. Finally someone else entered the room.

That’s right, he agreed because of him.

In all his scarred glory stood Hawks. But even with all the scars in his face he was still the prettiest in the room. He only had one beautiful remaining amber eye, the other eye looking as blank as his face. His blonde hair was longer and tied back with what looked like… yep there was the missing piece of his prison pants.

He wore a muzzle, probably because of the incident with the other prisoner. Behind the muzzle he could see his facial hair had grown a bit more but only on half of his face, the other half was full of burn scars that won’t let the hair grow any more.

He was in an orange jumpsuit, with the inmate ID ‘4149’ on the front right side. It reminded him of Nagant and wasn’t that ironic.

He had cuffs on his feet and hands that were tied together by metal chains that made a lot of noise every time he so much as twitched. His body was tense, but out of that there was no other emotion at sight. His face was a perfect mask of how much he wanted people to see of him and he sure as hell didn’t want Touya to see any part of him.

“If anything happens yell, I’m pretty sure you won’t want to touch him but still, no physical contact is allowed-”

His thoughts were interrupted by the guard that went on and on, telling him all the safety measures because at the end of the day this is still tartarus and Hawks’s a villain.

“You got it?”

Touya made a small noise along with shooing motions with his hand indicating that everything was fine without being able to peel his eyes away from Hawks. Especially at his back, where he was missing his two enormous appendages that would normally come out of his back.

After the guard left to his position Touya remained silent, he couldn’t get himself to mutter a single word. Hawks was staring straight at him, he had his only healthy eye pinning him with just a look, he could tell he was being analysed.

It’s not like Touya hadn’t changed his fair share.

Also having only one good eye, funny how life works.

It took him a couple more minutes to finally muster all his courage to say something to the man before him. “Well well well, a birdie told me you haven’t been talking much lately.” In Touya’s defense, what was he supposed to say? Would it have been better if he had asked how he was doing?

…

Yeah, that’s what he thought.

Hawks remained silent, staring at him intensely like he could break him apart with just a look. He was probably well in his way at this point. Touya could feel his anxiety spike up. “What happened, the cat finally got your tongue?” Hawks only stared at him and if looks could say something then he was pretty sure he was being called stupid.

“Never thought I’d see the day where you had nothing to say.”

Honestly it’s not that Hawks talked a lot but something he noticed from their past conversations was that when Birdie talked he often talked nonsense. That way he could distract people from asking him things but not because he liked doing it, no, it was a strategy he followed from head to toe.

He normally preferred listening to others rather than talking himself. He still remembers that one time when he had entered the league’s hideout for a meeting and came face-to-face to the sight of Hawks helping Toga brush her hair and style it while she talked a mile a minute. Hawks had listened to every word that had come out of her mouth, he gave his input at times and asking her questions to keep her going.

The sound of chains crinkling together brought him back to reality, he shouldn’t be so absent at this moment honestly. He looked up to see that Hawks had crossed his arms on top of the back of the chair. He supposes that his wings should still be there if he had to sit with the chair backwards.

That took a heavy weight out of Touya’s shoulders that he hadn’t even known was there. “Uhmm.. hey birdie, you probably don’t want to hear this from me of all people but I’m sorry about the Twice incident”

The hero could tell the exact moment his words reached Hawks ears because the room temperature had suddenly dropped to freezing still. His perfect mask had slipped for one second but that second was enough for Touya to know everything. In just that terrifying second Hawks made it clear that Touya had no right talking about his nearest moment to death- that Touya knew of.

Hawks continued staring this time with anger in his eyes. Touya should have thought this through before trying to talk to him as if nothing had happened. It was clear the other man wasn’t going to follow the normal playful banter so why not fuck everything even more by satisfying his own curiosity about the incident? The cat was already out of the bag, what could go wrong about that?

“I didn’t mean for that to happen but I need to know, how did yo-”

Hawks suddenly stood up from his chair making every single gun in the room pointed at him but he just stared at Touya’s eyes before turning and knocking three times on the door.

The guards, having understood that he wanted out, started to unchain him from the desk and chair. Once they chained him again to himself the door opened. But before Hawks left he turned his head and looked at him with his last amber eye. If the room had been even the slightest bit noisy the blonde's words would have fallen on deaf ears and taken away by the winds he used to fly with freely.

Luckily for Touya the room was in this intense awkward silence when Hawks said “Ya shoulda kept both of yer'eyes on me” and with a small smirk behind the muzzle he left.

The words were a little shaky but had force in them, his vocal cords had been rough and damaged probably from the burns and all the time he had spent without talking. And Touya just stood there, sat on the chair gawking at the closed door that wouldn’t open again.

What now?

Chapter Text

After that disastrous visit, the therapist and prison guards had congratulated him. He had apparently done the impossible, that by the looks of it was managing a smirk out of Hawks, but Touya hadn’t counted it as a victory.

He had made Hawks’ mask crack but with anger something he hadn’t really wanted, not really. That wouldn’t help if he wanted Hawks to trust him and join the program.

The rest of the week he hadn’t been able to stop thinking about Hawks, how angry he had looked and that awful expressionless look he had given the raven had only served as a reminder of how close they used to be.

Touya wanted to visit Hawks again but was afraid he wouldn’t be welcomed. Which in Hawks defense, it was totally valid. Maybe Touya should change his way of trying to approach Hawks about the subject but he’s sure the bird wouldn’t listen to him.

Touya was deciding what he was gonna do when he had finally arrived at his destination after walking for at least 30 minutes. He was in front of the UA entrance doors, he had decided to end patrol early because he couldn’t stop thinking about a certain birdie’s situation. That’s when he got the brilliant idea to go see how his brother and his friends were doing, that way he would be distracted with something else.

Maybe he could ask Aizawa's opinion on his dilemma now that he was here.

UA was silent these days, after the war nothing really went back to normal. The kids helped with the reconstruction of -not only with the destroyed buildings after the war but their new society. They had been a big help for everyone and Touya couldn’t be prouder of how far along they had come. He did often wish they hadn’t had to do all that, to go through all of that.

All of the kids still get nightmares from the events that occurred three years ago, even after all this time they still wake up drenched in sweat and terror. Most of the other heroes still get up at night shaken by nightmares of the war. Hell, even Touya still wakes up screaming every night, with the ghost of someone that isn’t dead looming over his shoulder, haunting him.

He was still deep in thought when he finally reached the dorms. It was chaos like always, some of them were studying, finishing their homework for the day while others were playing Mario Kart. He could hear Sato and Kirishima yelling in the kitchen, probably starting deseart or something, some were trying to sleep what little they could get even with all the noise around them.

There had also started to show up some “new” faces. Thanks to UA being the primary sponsor for the rehabilitation program the members of said program were allowed to walk around the facility with an escort. And lately it was no surprise to see a certain vampire look alike rooming around the dorms of the 1A class.

“HEY EXTRAS, SCARFACE IS HERE. You staying for dinner?” Welp they had discovered him before he could even say hi.

By the sound of that yell it sounded like Bakugo was in the kitchen making dinner. “The kitty?” Kitty? What was Kaminari talking about? “IS THE KITTY BA- oh it’s just you” Shouto looked up from his game of cards with the biggest smile on his face just to find Touya standing there and immediately go back to his game pouting.

Shinso had also woken up at the mention of the supposed cat and was even more disappointed than his brother was. “Lovely to see you too peppermint and yes, I’m staying for dinner.” Touya stated sarcastically.

Toga was next to Uraraka as always, she was staring at Touya with her big yellow eyes and thinking back, maybe this hadn’t been a really good plan. Their relationship wasn’t horrible but it wasn’t what it used to be, Toga didn’t join the program because she trusted him or anything similar, she did it for Uraraka. And then Twice had joined for her, ...the cycle went on and on.

They’re able to have civil conversations but that’s about as far as it will go. She doesn’t smile at him like she used to, nor does she ask him to help her do her hair, she mostly ignores him and only answers if he addresses her specifically.

She only really does it for the rest of the class, she knows how close they are with Touya. She wouldn’t be able to make things awkward for them when Touya’s like the older sibling of the class, not when she probably knows how much it hurts to be separated from an older sibling like person. Touya’s sure that if it were up to her she would never direct a single word at him again. Understandably so.

She was still mad at him for the incident with Twice, the whole discovering that he was indeed a sort of spy thing. At the time, not only had he tried to get twice arrested and away from the rest but he had also successfully managed to “kill” Hawks who’s literally her big brother. Not by blood but by everything else, birds of a feather birdie used to state proudly whenever it was mentioned.

It’s really a miracle how he's still alive.

He neared the study table where half of them were either playing uno or actually studying. “How are you kiddos doing today? Anything interesting happened lately?”

“No, Aizawa-sensei is coming for dinner tonight along with the league.” replied Shouto as stoic as always, “Oh yeah, I can’t wait to see Tenko- UNO!!” Midoriya yelled. “I still need to talk with him about this new-”

They continued their game while talking about all the random things that happened in their week, such as Kaminari leaving the whole building without energy, Toga and Monoma causing chaos and laughing so hard they could be heard from the other side of the dorms… the normal really.

They were talking about the new burnt spot on the top corner of the room when Mina suddenly won the Uno game just in time for dinner. Touya was secretly rooting for Sero but he lost with four cards left.

While they were finishing setting up the table for dinner, Aizawa announced their arrival when he entered the common room with Compress beside him.

Behind Aizawa, he could see Spinner next to Shimura talking about a new video game that had come out and Twice didn’t even last a minute before running to hug Toga and talk like they hadn’t seen each other that same morning. Kurogiri was still getting treatment for all the mind washing All for one did and Hawks was.. well in tartarus.

The league was greeting everyone when they heard Bakugo yell to get their asses to the table to eat.

At the beginning it had been a little weird being near the league again, they obviously didn’t trust him but had more or less forgiven him for the betrayal because he was helping them. At least they seemed to tolerate his presence .

Unsurprisingly it was Twice the first one to welcome him back again. “Dabi, how was your week my friend? We aren’t friends with this loser.” At this point it was easier to just follow the first statements Jin says. “Well it was definitely something” he said looking down at his food.

He wanted to ask Aizawa about Hawks but was it a good idea to talk about it on the table? Maybe the league could give some advice or help him convince Hawks about the program.

“I went to tartarus.” Every person at the table paused and turned to look at him. “You got arrested?” Asked Spinner, doubting his own words.

“What? No, I went to visit!! Why would I go t- you know what forget it” Why would he go to prison, what type of things were they all thinking about him. His thoughts were interrupted by a really loud whine

“Why does he get to visit tartarus but we can’t!!”

“Silence Dark Shadow!!”

Dark Shadow had decided to come see what the commotion was about. “Why would you want to visit tartarus?” Why would a kid want to visit such a dangerous and depressing place? “Don’t you know? Tokoyami was close with Hawks, they had a mentor-mentee kind of relationship.” Stated Jirou like it was obvious.

Well thinking back to the war it is true that Hawks had suddenly run off to save the kid from All for one but… “Nuh uh, We are birds of a feather from different parents!!! Same with Himiko-chan!!”

“We don’t have parents, Dark Shado-”

“But Fumi it’s true and Hawks-nii does..”

They kept bickering for a while when Aizawa asked who had he visited at tartarus “Well I was there because they asked me to come and convince an inmate of trying out the rehabilitation program and-”

“You talked to Keigo-nii didn’t you?”

Toga was staring at him, those being the first words she had directed at him during the entire afternoon he had been here.

“I did.” Why would he lie at this point?

“He doesn’t want to join the program does he?”

They didn’t really get to talk about the program or other members that would be joining it but- “No, he doesn’t.”

The room was silent, everyone looking at their plates with only a few hushed words asking for salt or bread. “It’s really no surprise” Shimura, the brave soul that decided to break their tense silence, “who was the genius that thought that letting this dumbass talk to him was a good way to convince him? Like seriously after all h-"

"Let's calm down for a second, Tenko, we both know that Keigo wouldn’t have agreed, no matter who went to ask.” Mister cut him off his rampage. They were probably right but still they could have sent someone better qualified and with a less gruesome history with him in order to talk to him.

Touya really didn’t want to keep talking about this but maybe he could get something useful out of it that could help. “Do you think there’s some way we could convince him to try the progra-”

Toga suddenly laughed and grinned in a way that didn’t reach her eyes. “Keigo-nii always said that he would rather die than go back to another cage but now he is in one, again.” Toga paused for a second, gathering her thoughts “He’s already familiar with this one and he’s not leaving for another cage that he doesn’t trust and knows nothing of what to expect from it.”

Silence settled after Toga's comment.

The plates started being cleared out from the table. “She’s right, Keigo doesn’t trust easily and if you break that trust then it’s probably gone forever. He’s not going to risk being used again.” Shimura added. Shimura had a point, he was not gonna trust him again so easily, so maybe he should try getting him to trust him.

“Why don’t we just make him try out the program?” Kaminari suggested, “Don’t be stupid Dunceface, the point of the program is for people that want to change to be able to do so freely. If he doesn’t want to do better then it’s no use and he’s only gonna be more wary.” Even Bakugo was making sense now, if they made Hawks do it without a choice of his own then the program would be the exact same thing they are trying to avoid.

Midoriya looked about to say something when Tokoyami said “I don’t think Hawks doesn’t want to change.”

“Yeah, it sounds like he just doesn’t have a good enough reason to try a program that he doesn’t trust. So maybe if someone that he does trust talks to him about it then maybe he will join it!!” Midoriya suggested looking a little unsure but full of passion at his words.

“Okay, we could try that but who does Hawks trust that’s actually allowed to visit him?” The moment the words left Touya’s mouth every single head at the table slowly turned to look at Tokoyami who was finishing his apple.

“What? Why is everyone looking at me in such a way?” Tokoyami was confused until he heard Dark Shadow squeal next to him in a high pitched voice.

The kid’s face turned from confusion to a gleeful expression at the mention that he was gonna be able to see the bird and with a fond small smile he said:

“Oh, what a mad bouquet of Darkness.”