DabiHawks One Shots [Eng.]

The Bird That Forgot How To Fly.

Summary: Hawks was done. So, so done. His life sucked, and since he lost his only friend and childhood crush, Touya, life has just been shit to him. Or it was, until he met Dabi.

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Hawks was done. So, so done. His life utterly sucked, and that was a fact. For starters, he was the winged hero, and the number two hero, he could fly anywhere, anytime, and be there in a flash. Perfect, right?

Or it would be. If he wasn't a bird trapped in a cage.

He'd try many times to break free, but every time, just as it seemed the light of freedom was right around the corner, it would slip from his fingers, leaving a bittersweet taste on his mouth. So now he knew better than to try and escape his cage.

He had been bought off his family as a kid and put into intensive training, all with one goal: to turn him into the best hero the world had ever seen. And Hawks wanted that, of course he wanted to be like his idol Endeavor, but in order to get there, they completely broke him down and rebuild him, shaping him like clay so he'd be obedient and perfect.

They started by pointing out every physical aspect they disliked of him: his talons, for example. And Hawks loved his talons!

...

Until he stopped liking them. Until everyone reapeated to him so much how ugly they were that he himself started to belive it. They made him hate the parts of himself they considered 'ugly' and 'not attractive to the public'. And Hawks was overly confident and egocentric. Keigo, however, was insecure about every single aspect of his body. But he couldn't show that to the public.

Every time his talons grew, Hawks was severely punished. A child, being punished about a physical aspect of his Quirk, that he himself had no control of, and even it he did his best to trim his talons, by the next day they were already long and sharp again. But his Handlers didn't listen, they never did, and so even now as an adult, the mere sight of his talons growing long and sharp caused him surge or anxiety and an uneasy feeling that wouldn't go away until they were trimmed again. Almost as if one of his former handlers would pop into his apartment to punish him for it.

Then, they started to pick into his mannerisms and nervous responses. And eventually, Hawks went from happily chirping constantly, to barely making any bird related noises at all, until they finally got him to stop doing it. They convinced him his chirps were annoying and ugly, like his talons.

Hawks had become a doll. One that started out made with clay, and ended up made of porcelain. And it wouldn't take a lot to break him.

He was practically raised a child soldier. He had learned not to speak up to his handlers, not to sit wrong in a chair, not to do or don't do the right thing. Because when it came to his handlers, Hawks was always walking on thin ice. Failing at training, speaking when he wasn't supposed to, even sitting in a way their handlers thought inappropriate would ended up with him being punished. So the porcelain doll may look intact, but on the inside, it was already broken.