"Take this as my formal hero resignation then, if that's how you're going to continue to think."
The words seemed to echo in the sharp silence that followed them, Hawks moving on autopilot as he parked his car and got out of the vehicle to slam the door closed without even remembering to lock it again. The lack of initial response was deafening, causing a deep seated panic to begin to clench at Hawks' ribcage. The hand gripping his phone was beginning to white knuckle, Hawks' jacket suddenly feeling much too hot for himself as he took the steps up to his apartment and closed the door behind himself.
"Keigo Takami."
The phone speaker crackled to life, Hawks visibly snapping up at the sound of his real name being uttered over the airwaves. Their voice sounded so loud against the quiet apartment, and something about their tone sent a shiver of remembrance through him. Hawks really didn't consider himself a traumatized person, but there was no denying the sudden wave of sharp fear and sudden memory that the voice recalled. It instilled an uncharacteristic panic in him, something that he attempted to swallow down thickly as the line crackled again.
"You are not allowed to resign."
"Like hell I'm not." Hawks snapped back quickly, roughly shrugging off his jacket and letting it drop onto the couch as he stepped further into the apartment, trying to ignore the sensation of claustrophobia it had caused. Or maybe it wasn't the jacket causing the sensation of being trapped, it was the slowly dawning notion that maybe he was stuck in a situation that he could never get out of, no matter what he said, save for going completely off the deep end. "I'm a hero just like anyone else and I can stop being a hero whenever I want-" The Hero Commission cut him off, Hawks' breath halting in his throat.
"No, you cannot. You belong to the Hero Commission. Without us you would have been nothing, a poor child left alone on the streets to starve and die. We took custody over you, trained you to be able to control your quirk, gave you the means to start your own Hero Agency. We made you who you are, Keigo. You wouldn't be able to survive without us." Their sharp voice echoed in Hawks' ear, the definite tell that they were not happy with him. But yet Hawks could sense a feeling of desperation as well, a last attempt to keep him under their finger because he was starting to think for himself now. The tight fear that had been nestled into his chest turned over into burning anger, Hawks sucking in a breath before clenching his teeth to grit out an answer.
"Watch me."
After these two words there was an initial moment of silence, but Hawks continued speaking before the Hero Commission had a chance to get another word out edgewise.
"I'm not going to be your little puppet hero. I'm going to do what I think is right, and I think that Touya Todoroki has every right to be free from the people who are going to abuse him, just like I have the right to be free from you. Don't call me again."
Tearing the phone away from his ear to silence the raised voice that was sure to come, Hawks hung up the call and threw the phone down onto his couch. He flexed his fingers that had been clenched around it open and closed, realizing that he had been stress gripping it during the conversation.
His heart was pounding in his chest and his breath was quick and raged, both uncharacteristic to the man who usually was so calm and chill in the face of any sort of danger. His eyes remained locked on the phone now laying unceremoniously on his couch, as if it was going to erupt with sound and that voice was going to echo in his ears again.
"Oh my god- fuck- what did I just do- what did I just do?! fuck-" Hawks suddenly burst out, sinking his head into his hands as he curled over to bury his face into the top of the couch. What had first started out as elation that he finally spoke his mind was quickly followed by an overwhelming sense of dread, because he had basically told his one and only provider to rightly go fuck themselves and leave him alone.
How was he going to provide for himself now? He had already been revoked of his hero status and was under watch, and now he told the commission that he was basically quitting so that he could help an escaped villain. They would no doubt cut him off from everything he had been using to support himself, labeling him as a villain when all he really was doing was not being the kind of hero that they wanted him to be.
Maybe he was overreacting. Maybe they would sweep it under the rug and pretend that the whole conversation didn't happen, make up some story about how the villains got him and he died. Seemed like the kind of thing they would do, considering the fact that they had covered up Endeavor's treatment of Touya the same way.
Hawks had wanted to be able to find something in his life similar to Dabi so that they could relate to each other, but he had never wanted it to be something like this.