AN: Had a few ends to clean up, but now they are clean!


012: the lies we tell for love.
Go on, just say it:
You need me like a bad habit;
One that leaves you defenseless,
Dependent, and alone.

December; 9 years.

The next day, just as Hawks had said, there are two men that come to talk to Suzume in the hospital. They are both tall and thin, dressed in fancy, dark suits with shining shoes that make a sharp click-click-click all across the hospital floor.

It's a familiar sound, one that immediately calls to mind her brother's boots in the big house as he'd prowled through the hallways. The image of that black scuff mark he'd left on the floor of the kitchen comes to her then, completely unbidden, and there's no helping the way she finds herself tensing up, fingers curling bone-tight into the hospital bedding.

One of the men sits down on the stool Hawks had claimed the previous night, and the other stands at the foot of her bed. They both smell of cologne, similar but still different, and the conflicting scents crowd the room. It's deep and masculine and too strong in a way that Suzume finds more than a little overbearing. Heady already with far too much sleep, the smell makes her mind feel even more woozy, and her stomach turns with it.

They start by asking her if she's well, and they are very polite when they speak. There's a lot that grown ups do that Suzume doesn't understand, but even she knows this is only a formality. If they notice her discomfort – and she's sure they do – they clearly don't care. There is none of the warmth of her nurses and doctors in them; their eyes are the kind of logical, unyielding ones of grown ups who have no patience for children. Suzume can imagine them on the train, eyeing their watches with furrowed brows, mumbling about how busy and important they are. Meetings this, and budgets that, and god, these reports won't write themselves, all while acting like having to share a car with even teenagers is some impossible ask.

Smiling weakly, she lies, and tells them she's fine. Tear off the bandaid, Hawks had said, and she doesn't want to be in this room with them a minute more than she has to. Suzume feels very strongly like she doesn't like them – feels like nothing they can say or do could possibly make her like them.

And then, she asks for Hawks to sit in on the questioning.

Immediately she can tell they don't like that. There's some abrupt hemming and hawing, some important shuffling of papers and, to her brief, private amusement, the both of them scowl down at their watches. Is she sure, they ask? Hawks is a busy man. They peer at her with cold eyes and remind her that they are, all of them, busy men.

And Suzume isn't actually sure if she's sure, because asking for Hawks' help seems…

Suzume can't help the grimace that crosses her features. Asking for it feels almost like some kind of unforgivable betrayal, somehow. She imagines her brother, and how much he's done for her, the lengths he has gone to for her, and that role is his, isn't it? Her big brother, her protector, snarling and vicious. He is a monster on her behalf. He has killed for her, and she shudders, and the men stare at her, and she can't bring herself to care. Something about asking anyone besides her brother for help strikes her as the sort of something he absolutely wouldn't like. It's an instinctual thing, the knowing; she can imagine his bright eyes narrowing with the telling of it, the slight and terrible curve of his smile. She can hear him saying, "Oh, Suzu," in the low way he does when he's somewhere between disappointed and…

What else? Suzume doesn't know. She only knows the "else" is something scary.

And then, of course, there's Hawks himself.

Truthfully, Suzume doesn't know how she feels about Hawks because she can't be sure that his friendly disposition or his concern for her are honest things. At the very least, Hawks is the lesser of three evils right now; her brother doesn't have to know, even if the thought of keeping secrets from him makes her feel terribly guilty, and there's no denying the men make her significantly more uncomfortable than Hawks does. At least Hawks wants to pretend to be in her corner, doesn't he? And that's something, isn't it?

Isn't it?

Rip off the bandaid, she thinks again. Even her brother had told her to play into whatever she thought the government men would want to hear, and it feels safer somehow, telling herself she's doing what she's been told to do by two people who seem to know a lot more about life than she does.

So, putting on her most serious expression, she nods, and tells the men in dark suits that having Hawks around would make her feel better and more comfortable, and tries very hard to sound grown-up and self-assured while she does it.

It seems to work. Grumbling lowly amongst themselves then, the men skulk outside into the hall, and, ten minutes later, they return with Hawks in tow.

When Hawks comes in, he brings the smell of a brisk November day with him. There is the scent of pine and cold wind, of fresh, clean air and what Suzume thinks might be sugary coffee. The room feels immediately less oppressive for it.

"Hey, chickadee," he says jovially, as if this were some pleasant social occasion and not a very unnerving meeting with even more unnerving grown-ups. When his wings flutter, the pleasant smell of him intensifies. It is much nicer than the heavy cologne of the dour men who resume their earlier positions with expressions as openly dark as their suits, now.

Hawks crosses the room to the other side of her bed. As if he can read her mind, he reaches out and cracks a window. The air that comes in is cold but cleansing, and Suzume lets her head roll back on her pillow, taking in a deep, greedy gulp.

"Yeah, thought it was a bit stuffy too," Hawks says with a chuckle, and when his eyes find hers, it feels as if he is sharing a private joke, just between the two of them – that the men smell bad, that they're too much.

That he doesn't much care for them, either.

Suzume doesn't mean to, but she finds herself smiling back at him. Her stomach twists again, sour this time at her own indiscretion; this, too, feels like disloyalty.

Hawks is keen to the way Suzume's smile falters, though, and reaches out to ruffle her hair before he pulls up a chair. Studying it for a brief second before flipping it around, he sits down on it backwards, legs straddling the backrest.

"That's hardly professional," rumbles the man on the stool with disapproval thick in his voice.

"But," Suzume says, hoping desperately that she sounds more diplomatic than rude, "he has big wings and you took the only stool."

"Outta the mouths of babes." Hawks' laughter is smooth, and he pats her bed near her hand appreciatively. Touchy, touchy, she thinks, and her stomach twists into another knot like an old, ratty shoelace. Older boys always seem to be so touchy.

"Well, then," says the man on the stool, a little flustered, a little agitated, and he clears his throat very importantly. He shuffles the papers in his hands again, this time almost clumsily, as if he isn't quite sure what to do with himself. "Let's get on with it, then." Another glance at his watch. Older boys, greedy with their hands. Older men and watches and time. Suzume wishes this were all over already. "We're already fifteen minutes off schedule."

"Just ask the bartender to fix you an especially stiff drink later; I'm sure you'll make up for lost time just fine." The suggestion is phrased to sound helpful, but even Suzume can read impudence in the way Hawks smirks.

The men definitely do. They both fix Hawks with a withering look that reminds Suzume of the way her homeroom teacher would scowl at Katsuki when he was being especially insufferable.

"You sure you need this guy around?" Asks the man at the foot of her bed.

Hawks' gaze slides to her. His mouth is a proper, solemn, and wholly respectful line, but his golden eyes are mischievous. It has the effect of making him look like he's smiling, even if he isn't.

"Yeah," Suzume says, feeling a touch more sure this time. "Yeah, I think I do."


December; 16 years.

The suits don't waste any time before they descend on Suzume like vultures, and their hundred coldly-phrased questions come out like eager talons, picking and clawing at her with little regard for her well-being. It's no surprise they're impatient; Hawks has held them off as long as he could, having vehemently insisted that she wasn't well enough for this. Given his earlier impudence though, he's hardly a popular face at the HPSC right now, and he's never had any real power, besides.

No, the real surprise was that they'd given her any time at all.

Suzume, to her credit, seems only somewhat flustered beneath their combined rapid-fire onslaught. They ask her many of the questions several times over, only phrased slightly differently, but her answers – however briefly unsure – do not deviate.

Repetitive interrogation is a technique Hawks himself has been taught. The suits, though, have clearly not been trained in his charm; they are blunt and direct, and, judging by Suzume's expression and Hawks' own quiet exasperation, thoroughly fucking exhausting.

What did the man who killed her father look like? She doesn't really remember; she was scared, she says, so she was afraid to really look at him. Does she remember what color his hair was? What about his eyes? Her face blanches, and her eyes find the ceiling, as if trying to recall, as if the act of recalling frightens her. She doesn't really remember, she admits. His hair was maybe-dark, and his eyes were maybe-lighter-than-that, but that's all she can really picture. Hawks can't help but notice the way her hands tremble in the blankets. If the suits notice the same, they don't care.

Was he tall, was he short? They press, and they press some more. No, no, she really does not remember that. He was taller than her, but she couldn't get a good look at him before he was on her dad and they were on the ground, and then height really didn't matter.

Is that so, they ask? She really doesn't know? Suzume shakes her head. She doesn't know. She's sorry, she says, and she says it soft in a way that tugs at Hawks' heart and leaves him furious with her inquisitors on her behalf in equal measure.

Then, they ask her about her father, and Hawks feels his jaw become tight, his teeth set and aching. Was she close with her father? No. Did she like him? No, and she says that a little louder, a little more emphatically. Where did he keep her? Quiet again, she tells them: In the house. Was she allowed to leave? No, no. Suzume shakes her head. No, she was not.

Short little answers, clipped and anxious, with no elaboration. Her chest fills with air and deflates, rapidly, again and again. Sometimes she glances over at Hawks, and she looks so overwhelmed that he wants to pick her up and carry her right out the damn window.

What did your father do with you, then? It's the suit on the stool, snapping his fingers to get her attention, and Hawks imagines snapping his neck. Suzume looks back at the man, and shakes her head again. He always kept her in a room, she explains, slowly, carefully, in a way that belies her anxious, quickened breathing. Her father didn't let her leave. He didn't let her out.

Hawks has never been the sort to relish the underhanded death he's paid to deal. It's a job, he always tells himself, and there's no passion to be found in that sort of work. It's strange, then, to discover how much he regrets not being the one to murder her father. That he can't be the one to take her hands in his and tell her that she won't ever have to see that rat-fucking-bastard again. That she's free now, to do whatever she wants to do, to go wherever she wants to go. Hawks knows exactly how much of a gift that is. He knows exactly what it felt like to be given leave to use his wings, to fly free, cut loose from the oppressive shadow of a cruel, hateful father for the first time.

It's something worth killing for, he thinks. It's something he wishes he could have killed for, for her.

Why did your father do that? The suits are relentless, and Hawks comes back to the present, watching Suzume's expression waver. She seems to think about that for a bit, before finally admitting that she doesn't know why in the softest, saddest voice Hawks has ever heard. She confesses that she thinks her dad didn't like her very much.

Maybe the suits aren't completely inhuman. They look at least moderately uncomfortable at that, and Hawks can't blame them. It's obvious from looking at the kid that she hasn't had a good meal in months. Pretty in a gaunt, haunting kind of way, she's too thin and all tragedy, shadows etched sleepless and deep under her big, wide eyes. That makes it worse, somehow – how fragile she looks. How slight she seems in her big hospital bed. The nurse from yesterday had told Hawks that Suzume was half-starved and obviously malnourished, and god, she looks it.

Her father must not have liked her very much, and Hawks understands exactly how that feels, too.

It's a brief reprieve, though, and the suits go back to the man in her house again. They ask her if she really can't remember anything at all about him. She shakes her head and tells them that the man used fire to kill her father, that she watched him fall apart. Fall apart how, asks the one at the foot of the bed? Suzume closes her eyes and says that when the man was done, there were great greasy stains that used to be her father all over the floor, that she saw his bones, that she saw his eyes melt out of his skull, and her face is pale, and her voice is quiet again when she says it. The suits look even more uncomfortable. The one on the stool looks a bit queasy, even.

They all take a moment to collect themselves after that. Hawks offers her his hand, but she looks down at it with that same look she'd had on the flight over – looking, but not seeing – before she shakes her head mutely. Sorry, she manages after a moment, and her gaze lifts to him, and she says sorry again, as if she has anything to apologize for. It makes him want to take her hand, anyway, as if he could hold it and squeeze it and will something like life back into her, some notion that things are okay now, that she's going to be okay, now.

But Hawks is respectful, and takes his hand back, his arms a casual sling across the backrest of the chair.

Then, the suit at the foot of her bed says: The man who killed your father called us to come get you. Do you know why he'd do something like that?

The implication is, of course, why didn't the man kill her, too, and it's all Hawks can do to keep from snapping. Suzume looks at the suit and shrugs her slight shoulders, sharp beneath the thin fabric of her hospital gown. She says she doesn't know, and then looks down at the cat plush in her lap, her still trembling fingers smoothing over the dirty fur.

This is all such absolute bullshit, Hawks thinks, the way they're making her relive all of this over and over again. He knows they have no intention of actually investigating this crime. The HPSC had already been primed to sweep Hawks' own assassination of Featherlight under the rug. That Featherlight's actual killer had left the crime scene in such chaotic disarray had only made the cover-up all the easier to achieve. Besides, Hawks has seen pictures of the inside of that house; it's a miracle that they'd been able to find anything of Featherlight left to even identify him, let alone something to help them discover the identity of his killer.

No, whoever had killed Featherlight had been exceedingly thorough in covering his tracks. Even if the HPSC wanted to investigate, there really wasn't much to look into. The catastrophic fire damage – nevermind the extensive water damage after the firefighters had arrived to quell the raging blaze – made any real inquisition into Featherlight and his girlfriend's deaths a futile fucking endeavor. The two of them had been creamated down to ash and nothing but what appeared to be deliberately intact pieces of their goddamn jaws.

The HPSC has their theories, anyway. That Suzume lives at all – that her father's murderer seemed concerned enough with her well-being to call in a welfare check for her along with his brazen, smugly delivered confession – indicates someone with at least some vague sense of morality. The common opinion among his superiors seems to be that it was less a villain attack and more the actions of some particularly aggressive vigilante.

The suit at the foot of the bed asks Suzume if she thinks the man who killed her father thought that her father was not very nice. Suzume, still looking down at her cat, nods slightly.

Vigilante, then, Hawks confirms to himself, darkly.

This will not be an observation that makes it to the press, of course. The HPSC will not let anything out that tarnishes Featherlight's sterling reputation. His murder will be painted up bloody and devastating, declared a villain attack, put down in history as a completely unjustifiable killing of a well-beloved hero. To suggest his killer is a vigilante is to suggest that something about Featherlight was worth punishing. It's not something that will ever see the light, not if the HPSC has anything to say about it.

And it's exactly how they'd planned to frame Hawks' asssassination had he actually managed to beat Featherlight's killer to the punch.

Villain attack. Terrible. All leads exhausted.

But these men are not really here to talk to Suzume about her father's murderer. No, they are here to ask her questions to make her uneasy. And, now that she is – now that she is good and truly unsettled – they pursue what they're really here for:

"So, you think the man who killed your father thought your father was a bad man?"

Suzume frowns, and looks up, her gaze moving between the two of them before she turns to look at Hawks.

Hawks' jaw throbs with the tension of his gritted teeth, but he manages to give her the perfect mimicry of a reassuring, closed-mouth smile –

All while feeling like immense shit.

"I think…" Suzume whispers. "I think he definitely knew my dad was not a nice man."

"But he is," says the man on the stool, rustling his papers again, and god, here we fucking go, thinks Hawks. "He was. Your father is – was – a hero, and a damn fine one at that. People love him."

Frowning, Suzume shakes her head. Her eyes have widened slightly. "They shouldn't. He's not good. He's not kind. He just pretended to be on TV."

"I can understand why you'd think so," the man continues, glancing down at his papers. "It must have been very lonely, being kept in your house all day – "

"He didn't even let me go to school."

" – yes, well, I'm not going to say that's a good thing, of course. But sometimes, well, parents worry, you must understand – and sometimes they make decisions that might be… shall we say, not entirely sound, when they do."

Staring at the suit on the stool, Suzume clearly struggles to speak. "'Worry'…? You think my dad was worried about me?"

The man at the foot of her bed crosses his arms across his chest and coughs quietly, and Suzume's eyes dart to him. "Well, of course that's why he kept you safe in your room," the man says, sounding very resolute. Very rehearsed. "He was worried about you, as any father would be. The world, well – it's a dangerous place, isn't it? It's feasible that you'd think he didn't like you; men can be very stern, you realize. My own father, god – there was never a shred of open kindness from him. That's the way of men, sometimes. They have to provide, and… well, they're not very good at the rest of it. I think your father did what he thought was best for you, especially in his grief — especially after your mother – "

Hawks cannot help but wonder if this little anecdote is true, or if it's something the suit had concocted ahead of time in an effort to gain trust after whittling down Suzume's emotional fortitude.

This, too, is something he's been taught.

"Grief? What about my mother?" Suzume's voice warbles a bit around the questions, lilting somewhere between bewilderment and anger. It's like she's trying very hard to sound cold, to be cold, but she just can't manage it. She's only a little girl. The wide, wild look of her eyes makes her look very lost, instead.

Even with the window open, Hawks feels like there's suddenly not enough air in the room. He knows what's coming. Were it not for his training, he'd think it would be almost more than even he could stand.

Both suits make a point of staring her down, their expressions very stoic, but Hawks notices sweat beading on the forehead of the man at the foot of her bed despite the cool air of the room.

It's the man on the stool who speaks. "Your mother – well, the separation was very hard on her."

Suzume says nothing. The silence hangs, and the suit at her feet coughs again. "Miss Meihane," he says, "Do you know your mother – do you know she took her own life?"

There is that awful, pin-drop silence again, cut briefly by the twittering of a bird outside the window. Hawks' wings draw back; he can't help the way they prickle in a flurry of hateful agitation. Every one of his nerves stands on end.

Suzume stares at the man without blinking. There is no emotion in her voice, now. "Mama would never do that."

The man frowns, and pats at his breast pocket. "We have her suicide letter. Would you like to see it?"

"No," she says, her voice strangled in its softness. Her head shakes, slow at first, and then more wild. Her hair is a messy, tumultuous spill around her shoulders. "No, no, no. It's a lie. I know my dad made her do it. I know he did it because she tried to leave – because he wanted to punish her when she tried to take me and go."

"There is nothing to indicate that – "

"My mama loved me!" Suzume's voice shatters loud, then, like brittle glass thrown down across a hard floor. "My mama really did love me! She loved me enough to try – she worked so many jobs so she could take care of me and so she could pay her lawyers, so she could leave my dad and – "

"Miss Meihane, don't you think that made her very tired – "

"And she would never – she would never leave me!" There are tears now, a storm of them, and her face crumples raw and ugly around the words as she wails them. "The man – the man said as much! He told me my dad did that to Mama, that he made her do it – she'd never have done it otherwise, she would never have left me alone – "

Hawks reaches out to touch Suzume, but she wrenches her body away from him, nearly spilling out from the other side of the bed. The man on the stool stands up swiftly, as if worried she might tumble into him, holding his hands out. "Now, now, Miss Meihane! Please contain yourself!"

And Hawks wonders how that is possible when they are asking Suzume to accept a lie that means her mother has, in her grief, abandoned her.

"C'mon, fuck, she's just a fucking kid." Standing now, Hawks spits the words, his wings an aggressive sweep out from behind him.

The look of alarm that crosses the faces of both HPSC delegates, while genuine, is no real comfort. "And you're not?" The man at the foot of the bed is the first to recover, and his voice as he pins Hawks with a sneer is a poorly contained snarl. "Control yourself or leave."

Looking up at Hawk then, Suzume's face is a mess of tears and snot, long strands of her hair clinging to her wet, hollow cheeks. "Please tell them," she whispers, hiccuping her way through the words. "You know, don't you? Please, tell them. Please tell them my mama wouldn't leave me."

Hawks stares down at her, his tongue thick and dry and limp in his mouth.

Behind her, one of the men speaks in a low, droning buzz, reciting another speech Hawks guesses he's been practicing for just such a potentiality as this particular fucking nightmare. "The man who killed your father obviously harbored some kind of grudge. To hurt your father, and to slander his good, heroic name – and in a manipulative attempt to sow seeds of doubt in both you and in the public – that villain concocted some terrible story about your mother. This is the way villains with a grudge operate, Miss Meihane. It is not enough for them to kill; no, they must sate their terrible predilections in other ways."

Silent again save for her sobs, Suzume continues to stare up at Hawks, shoulders quaking.

Hawks knows what she wants. She doesn't speak, but her eyes beg him all the same.

And she's right; Hawks does know about her mother. He has seen the file, just like the men lying to her have seen the file. Featherlight had been on the HPSC's radar for years; his indulgent indiscretions had earned him the ire of the Safety Commission long ago, and when his estranged wife suddenly turned up dead, well —

Hawks knows her father had hired someone to kill his estranged wife, just like the men do. The HPSC had asked Hawks to put Featherlight to the blade over it.

But when Hawks doesn't answer her – when he cannot answer her, no matter how much and how badly he fucking wants to – Suzume's eyes glaze over, gone half-lidded as if she is suddenly so very, very tired. "He's not a villain," she chokes out through her tears, looking down at the cat plush on her lap.

"What?" Asks the man beside her, staring down at her, incredulous.

"The man who killed my father – he's not a villain. Killing someone who's bad…" When she swallows, her face twists, as if it hurts her. "Isn't that heroic?"

"For godssake, heroes don't kill people," comes the immediate, exasperated reply from one of the suits, and god – fuck, god – Hawks wants to laugh, and laugh, and fucking laugh. The HPSC has so much blood on their collective hands – just because these men in their suits aren't the ones with the balls necessary to do the actual killing –

"He's my hero, then," she says, more to her toy than to anyone in the room. "He's my hero, and my hero can kill bad people, and I'm glad he killed my dad."

"Miss Meihane!" Cries one of the men, but she won't look at them anymore, and she won't look at Hawks. She only looks down at her filthy, sad cat, tears streaming silently down her face.

The men keep talking. They keep talking, and talking, and talking, trying so hard to gaslight her, reiterating the same fragmented points, over and over and over again. They tell her about her sad, broken mother, so guilt-ridden over what she'd done to her family. They tell her all about her hero father, singing his praises with the same mouths that, behind another door, had called for his condemnation. They tell her she should be proud to be her father's daughter, that she's letting herself be taken in by a villain – a villain, they exclaim! – and reiterate that heroes don't commit cold blooded murder.

Suzume still doesn't look at them. She still doesn't say anything. She stares down at her cat, and her lashes are wet and gleaming and heavy with tears.

Eventually, Hawks reaches out and touches her arm. Her head stirs, but she doesn't look up at him. Slowly, exaggeratedly, he mimes peeling something back down the length of her arm.

The men are still talking, half-way through their fourth and decidedly piss-poor performance when Suzume finally looks up, and swallows, and says, "Okay."

The suits are both startled out of their poorly-disguised diatribe.

"What?" Asks the one by her feet.

"Okay," she says again, and there are no more tears, and her shoulders sag as if she has the weight of the entire world on them. "Okay. Whatever you say."


Out in the hall of the hospital, the suits are fucking livid, and the both of them turn on Hawks immediately.

"What the fuck was that?" One of them demands, eyes blazing. "What the fuck, Hawks? Trying to play good cop, bad cop, are you? You make a shit fucking 'good' cop!"

"She's just a kid." Hawks says it quiet, says it dangerous. He feels dirty in a way he knows a shower won't help with – dirty in a way that even killing has never made him feel. "She's just a damn kid."

"You know better," says the other, lowly. "You know this is for the greater good."

The greater good. The betterment of society. Hawks knows this to be true, of course. He does. He does. Hadn't he been the one to tell her to rip the bandaid off? Wasn't he ultimately the catalyst to get her to relent and surrender herself to that terrible, awful fucking lie?

More than anyone, Hawks knows how important it is to shield the world from the ugly truth. Society is a fickle, fragile thing, and it's necessary that Featherlight remain a hero, number four on the charts, beloved and incorruptible. His wife is a regrettable sacrifice, one essential to keep that tenuous peace.

Suzume, too.

And yet –

"I know," he manages, through gritted teeth. He doesn't know what it's like to be loved by anyone. He hears Suzume's voice in his head, crying out that she knew her mother had loved her, that her mother would have never left her alone. He has never had anyone to love him, and even so — perhaps especially so — he knows that this is an unforgivable lie for anyone to have to accept.

And it is how the world will remember her mother. It is how they are all asking Suzume to remember her mother.

For the greater good.

"I know it's for the greater good," Hawks says. "And this is, too."

And the punch he throws then – fast and swift and for the greater-fucking-good – easily shatters the other man's jaw.


December; 9 years.

The hospital keeps Suzume for another week to monitor her, and the days go by in a blur. It's just as well; she doesn't really want to think. She doesn't want to remember any of this. She doesn't want to be awake.

The nurses are kind still, and the doctors are too, but Suzume is just so tired. She asks for medicine to help her sleep in between all the people she's asked to speak to, and for what feels like a long time, that is the entirety of her foggy nightmare life. Sleep and talk, sleep and talk, always the stream of them, always someone new to talk to, a doctor, a therapist, a social worker, another person in a suit –

And Suzume doesn't want to talk to any of them.

Eventually she asks for the medicine so much that they grow reluctant with it towards the end of her stay. "You're going to need to learn to do without it," says the kind, colorful nurse on the third to last day. "I think it's best if we abstain for now."

Abstain is a big word, but Suzume can guess well enough at what it means. She doesn't want to abstain. She wants to keep sleeping until she can go home, but thinking about home makes her want to cry –

Where even is home, anymore?

The big house is gone, and she's at least glad for that. And the tiny apartment she'd shared with her mother –

No, Suzume thinks. Home isn't a place anymore. Maybe home had never been a place. Home is a person – and once, home had been her mother, but now that her mother is gone, home is her brother, wherever he is. Her brother is house and home and hearth, and she wants to leave the hospital because she wants to see him again – because she wants so much to see him again that she feels like she might die from the need of it, like a person might die from thirst or starvation or illness.

On the last day, a woman in a smart looking suit and skirt combo comes to see her. Several people in suits have come to see her already since the first two had arrived, always to probe at her about her mother and her father and all the things she's supposed to believe. She knows they're testing her. They are less cruel than the initial pair, but all of them lie and say the same horrible things, even if they say those same lies in kinder, gentler voices.

She thinks she'd prefer the cruelty.

And really, Suzume doesn't understand why they don't believe her. Surely they know she knows her father better than they would? That she knows her mother better than they would? But oh, she is just so tired. She feels like she has been tired for a long time, and more than anything, she is especially too tired to fight them anymore. She is dying without her brother, withering away, wasting away – and she has the sense to know they won't let her leave if she doesn't learn to lie, too.

So Suzume tells them what they want to hear, even if every murmured 'okay' feels like a fresh crack set deep into her heart.

Because really, what's the point? Whether her mother took her life of her own volition or not, her mother is still dead, and there is no bringing her back. There is only the path forward, each heavy, aching, and awful step of it, and that path leads to only one thing:

Her brother.

So when this new lady in her sharp, pressed outfit asks her if she understands everything, Suzume doesn't bother to ask for clarification.

"I do," Suzume says.

The woman gives her a smile that doesn't reach her eyes. "Good," she says, and she has the sense to sound pleased, at least. "You'll be going home to your grandmother's house today, then."

It isn't said aloud, but Suzume suspects that being released to her grandmother was another thing contingent on her "understanding" of the situation. She thinks she should feel bitter about that. She thinks she should dislike this woman and her nice clothes and her cold, empty eyes.

Again, though, she's just too tired for any of it.

And then, suddenly, it's time to go, and the woman leads her out into the hall where a trio of nurses present her with a bunch of multicolored balloons and give her hugs and wish her well in the future. Suzume nods numbly, dressed in a nice new dress and coat that someone – she can't possibly remember who – had bought her, clutching the toy her brother has given her tightly to her chest.

The nurse with the cheery scrubs is the last to hug her. When she sees Suzume staring awkwardly up at the bunch of balloons, she kneels down and ties them to Suzume's wrist. "Hawks has been here every day asking after you, you know."

Suzume only looks at her.

"I told him what you wanted me to tell him," she continues, and her voice and her nice face both seem a little sad. "I turned him away. But he still came every day. Sometimes twice."

"Okay," Suzume says, because it feels like that's the only word left in her to say. She does not want to think about Hawks and his big wide wings and his big wide smile and all the big wide lies he tells and expects her to believe.

"He's a good boy," the nurse says, and she sounds so sad. Suzume thinks it must be because she doesn't understand. Maybe they have told her the lies, too. Maybe she believes them. Suzume stares at her.

"Are you sure?" Suzume asks, and if she weren't so tired, she thinks she might cry. She hasn't cried once since the men had come with Hawks to see her, and she doesn't want to cry around any of these people ever again. "Are you really sure?"

And then the woman in the suit – impatient, like every person who has ever worn a suit – takes her hand and leads her out of the hospital.


The woman drives a car that gleams like a pearl in the late morning light. Settled alone in the backseat of it, Suzume presses her forehead to the window and watches the scenery stream by. It's December now, but the sky is a brilliant, unblemished blue, and the sun shines so brightly that it prickles painfully in Suzume's eyes even when she doesn't look at it. Swaddled up in the warm, artificial heat billowing from the vents of the car, Suzume thinks she could almost believe it was summer. It is only the feeling of the cold glass pressed to her skin that breaks the illusion.

The woman tells her that the drive from Saitama City to Chichibu, where Suzume's grandmother lives, is only about an hour long. It is the only thing the woman says at all, even after ten minutes on the road – at least until Suzume hears her curse softly under her breath.

Suzume looks away from her window then, but when she goes to look at the woman, a flash of red, rapid movement in her periphery has her turning to look out the opposite window, instead –

To find Hawks gliding there, keeping pace with the car, waving energetically at her through the glass.

He's smiling, like usual. Suzume frowns, and Hawks pulls a mirrored frown in response, making a cranking motion with his hand.

"Don't open the window," says the woman. She sounds as tired as Suzume feels.

"What does he want?"

"He asked to fly you to your grandmother's house." Tired and agitated. "We told him that wasn't wise, but he's spectacularly talented at disregarding…" She pauses, as if thinking about what word to use. "...advice."

Suzume watches Hawks pointing stubbornly at the door now with big, sweeping motions of his hand that remind her of a cartoon character. The woman reaches her own neatly manicured hand into the center console and the locks click sharply into place across all the doors. Hawks' fluffy brows furrow dramatically; it's evident he hears it even outside in the rushing wind.

"But what if I…" Hesitating, Suzume looks between the back of the woman's head and Hawks, staring pointedly at her through the window with a big, goofy grin. "What if I want that?

She doesn't, actually. Not really. Not at all. But like it had been in the hospital, Suzume wants to be in the car with this woman less than she wants to be with Hawks, and – more than that, even – she finds herself craving this one small act of rebellion.

The woman and all the people in suits don't want Hawks to talk to her. It also seems like they don't want her to talk to Hawks.

And Suzume thinks that maybe if they won't let her get what she wants then maybe they shouldn't get what they want, either.

The woman looks very cross in the rear view mirror, the arch of her neatly groomed eyebrows especially severe. "Really?"

Suzume nods, and says, as sweetly as she can manage, "Yes, please."

So, heaving a sigh, the woman pulls the car off the road, and Suzume unlocks her door, leaving that summer fantasy behind for the biting reality of winter as she steps out into the frosty December air. Frowning up at Hawks through the glare of the sun and her scuttling entourage of balloons, she clutches her plush cat to her chest and raises her free hand in some vague imitation of a greeting.

"Hey, chickadee," Hawks says, and Suzume flinches, and the smile on his face flinches, too. Like usual, though, he's quick to regain his composure. "Nice balloons. Careful they don't carry you away."

Chickadee, Suzume thinks. The nickname is an intimacy she doesn't like, one that feels less like the mark of friendship she had initially taken it for and more like a finger jabbed cruelly between her ribs. A friend wouldn't ask her to believe such awful things. A friend wouldn't lie about something so big and terrible.

Suzume does not trust him, and she does not like the word, and she wants to ask him not to call her that anymore, too, but that feels strange and impolite given the situation. Hasn't he tracked her down to play personal chauffeur?

So instead, looking more at his wings than at him, Suzume shuffles her feet against the asphalt and asks, a bit awkwardly, "Did you – did you wanna take me to my grandmother's, then?"

"Spoiled the surprise, did she?" Hawks casts a glance at the woman in the car and hangs his head like a scolded dog denied a particularly tasty treat. "Bummer."

From behind them, the woman in the car rolls down her window. She is as frigid as the air. "Do you even know where you're going?"

"Sure do," Hawks affirms, charmingly confident. His sunny eyes never leave Suzume.

"Oh, of course you do," the woman grumbles, and Suzume somehow knows she's rolling her eyes without looking back to check. Then there's the sound of the window going back up, and then of the car pulling out. Looking away from Hawks to watch the car speeding down the road, Suzume watches it growing smaller and smaller until the horizon eventually swallows it up.

"She didn't even say goodbye," Suzume observes. She doesn't especially care.

"She never does," Hawks snorts. "Did she say hello to you?"

Suzume tries to remember. The woman is already one more dull color in the muddied blur of the past week, and she can't be sure. "No, I don't think she did."

"Yeah, didn't think so."

She looks back up at Hawks, then. He is as bright as the sky, but painted up in different colors – toasty golds and cheerful reds, his skin warmed by a summery tan out of place for the season.

He looks down at her, smiling.

In the best imitation of her brother's characteristic indifference, Suzume asks, "Do you work with her a lot?"

"I – " His smile flickers like the TV sometimes did at the big house, as if the connection isn't quite right. When it settles again, it's mostly the same, but Suzume thinks he looks maybe a little more muted, now. "Well, sometimes."

"I see," she says. It's hard to squeeze the words out with the way her throat constricts around them. "I guess they don't make you wear suits like they do."

Looking back out at the road again, Suzume watches a dark gray car whizz past, the first since the woman had pulled over. It follows the straight shot road out towards the horizon, and Suzume finds she regrets her choice already. At least there was no expectation of conversation in the woman's car. At least the woman hadn't pretended to be something she's not.

"Hey," Hawks says, and he bends to sweep her up into his arms. Suzume doesn't fight him as he picks her up, holding her like a man would a bride on the TV dramas her mother used to like. This, too, is like pulling off the bandaid, she thinks. At least that had some worth, even if his friendship didn't.

Centimeters from his face now, she can feel him looking at her – see the cut of his amber gem eyes in the edges of her vision. She looks up at the balloons instead, dancing and swaying together in the wind.

"Hey," he says again, much more quietly again this time. "It's really not like that."

When Suzume doesn't say anything, he exhales softly through his nose, and then his wings beat once, twice, and then they're off. Up and up and up, first, and the road falls away and the sky gets bigger and more blue, and the air whips cold around them. They go so fast that her balloons, still tied to her wrist, whip behind them like a thrashing rainbow tail.

Then his wings go still. Stretched out now, wide and languid, Hawks doesn't use them to go up anymore, and the wind takes them instead, leading them down the road. They gain easily on the dark gray car, and, after what feels like only a minute more, they pass even the lady's shining, white vehicle.

Looking over his shoulder, Suzume watches that little car again, so far, far away, swallowed up by a wholly different horizon.


Suzume's grandmother's home is an old but charming detached house at the end of a winding, pockmarked squiggle of a road. Nestled at the bottom of a gently sloping hill, its yard is thick with outcroppings of tall grass and ancient, winter-naked trees. There is a forest rising up behind it, stretching on for as far as Suzume can see.

It's a lot like the big house in that regard, just much smaller, and a lot older – a small house instead of a big one, nestled snug in a small, country town. Suzume looks away from the forest and at the road that snakes its way up the hill. The nearest neighbor's house looks like it might be a five minute walk, but it's clearly visible, even from the foot of the hill.

"It's a lot different from the city, huh?" Hawks says conversationally as they descend silently into the barren garden.

Suzume doesn't say anything, looking now at the little house. Painted white with a pink roof, it seems cozy in a worn, tired way, everything still and quiet behind the dusty glass window panes. It's just as her mother described it, Suzume thinks, this old, traditional house her mother grew up in.

"You ever met your grandma?"

"Once," Suzume says, faintly. "She came to visit when I was really small and her health was better. She's always been kind of sick, though, and Dad – "

Hawks gently sets her down. His expression and his tone both, Suzume notices, are very careful. "Your dad?"

Suzume makes a point to look up at him, then, frowning. "Dad didn't like it when Mama saw her mom too often. When Mama moved us out of the big house – the one that got… burned down – she'd sometimes take trips up to visit Grandma, 'cause Dad couldn't stop her, then."

Hawks hums. She thinks if she were him, she would have looked away. She half expects him to defend her father, even, but he neatly avoids the topic entirely. "But you didn't go?"

At least he has some sense.

Suzume shakes her head. "She went during the week usually, and since I had school, I stayed overnight with friends."

The two of them lapse into silence then, staring up at the house.

Her brother, somehow, had known about her grandmother in the same way he seemed to know about everything. He'd told her that's where they'd probably send her when they were done with her, back when he'd told her all the things she was supposed to remember.

Suzume only knows her grandmother through stories her mother has told. Stern, no-nonsense, but fair – a tough woman, a smart woman, and kind, in her own way. Strong, her mother had told her, even in her old age, but sick now, tired now. Mama had seemed sad when she'd talked about her mother in a way that Suzume took to mean she missed her terribly.

Even though Mama didn't see her mother enough, though, Suzume knew she took care of Grandma in other ways. Some of Mama's money from working all her many jobs went towards paying for a caretaker to help look after Grandma in the countryside.

Suzume remembers asking her mother why they didn't just move in with Grandma. Wouldn't it have been easier?

"I would like that a lot," her mother had said, and she sounded sad about that, too. "But there's just not enough work out there in the country for all the things we need money for."

Money for Grandma. Money for their own tiny apartment. Money for getting away from Suzume's father. Suzume's mother had spent the last years of her life working herself to the bone, and for what?

To be remembered by everyone as someone who ran away –

"Hey."

Suzume turns and looks to find Hawks watching her. He's not smiling anymore, his face still and unreadable save for the slight furrow of his brows. He's holding something out to her –

A small, folded piece of paper.

She eyes it, suspiciously, feeling very sorry for herself. "What's that?"

"It's my phone number," he says, and he talks quiet, like Suzume thinks someone might talk to an anxious cat hiding under a parked car.

"Why?"

Raking his hand through his wind tousled hair, Hawks shrugs. "I guess 'cause – I don't know. Guess 'cause I'm worried about you. I know you don't like me, and I'm okay with that. I understand that. I get it. I just – "

He trails off.

Suzume remembers the nurse in the hospital calling him a boy. At the time, that had given Suzume pause. Hawks is older, like her brother, tall already, big already. Grown-up, she'd thought, or grown-up adjacent enough that he might as well be an adult.

But looking up at him now, she can see that his face is still sort of soft and his eyes are still a little big and his mouth moves kind of clumsy around his words. Awkward, maybe, for the first time. Hesitant.

Unsure.

"I just wanna make sure you're doing okay, I guess," he says, finally. "Just wanna maybe check up on you sometimes. Y'know, if you're okay with that."

Suzume wonders if this, too, is an act. Wonders if him coming to see her every day at the hospital – even after she'd asked the nurse to turn him away – was an act. Wonders if he's a young man pretending to be a boy, pink-cheeked and bashful and anxious.

Worried about her.

And suddenly, Suzume remembers something else – a hazy, dream-like memory, somewhere in the middle of all that sleep.

"A few days ago, the nurse in the fun colored scrubs told me that you broke one of the suit guys' jaws," she says, staring up at him. "She told me they had to fix it while he was still at the hospital, that he had to be seen by emergency doctors. Is that true?"

"Well…" Drawing out the word long and lingering as he casts his eyes skyward, Hawks shrugs again. "That sounds like it could have been something I did, maybe."

At the very least it doesn't sound like something a hero would do, Suzume thinks. And while Hawks isn't looking at her, Suzume reaches out and takes the neatly folded paper from his outstretched hand. "That's good, I think," she says, tucking it securely into the pocket of her coat. "I think he probably deserved it, anyway."

Hawks looks back at her, then, studying her for a long moment, looking very much like he wants to say something. A gentle wind works its way through his feathers and their hair both, setting the balloons still tied to her wrist off in a sprightly, twisting waltz.

Somewhere in the distance, a wind chime jingles. The sound is soft and sweet and achingly lonely.

When he finally speaks, Hawks sounds almost hopeful, his voice quieter than before. "Will you call me, then? Or text me – or, well, you know. Whatever you feel comfortable with? Just to let me know you're doing okay."

Suzume mimes his shrug, her coat rustling with the motion. "Well," she says, and her chest feels a little tight, "That sounds like something I could do… maybe."

The smile that flits across Hawks face is a strange one Suzume can't parse very well. Happy? Sad? Something else?

"That sounds like something someone who was very charming and cool and worth calling would say," Hawks says, finally, and his smile settles into what Suzume would consider comfortable.

Scrunching her nose up at him, Suzume turns and begins the walk up the gravel path to her new home. "I dunno about charming," she calls out without looking back at him, "But hitting that one guy was pretty cool."

Hawks' laughter behind her is comfortable, too, and then there's the rush of wind, his great wings beating fiercely at the air with his sudden ascension. The sound follows him up and up until it is gone.

She does not bother to watch him go.


December; 17 years.

It takes Suzume a week and three days before she calls him.

He knows. He counts.

The feeling of his phone vibrating on his chest wakes him easily from a restless sleep, and he's alert immediately, sitting up from the flat, uncomfortable mat of his PC booth.

Dabi hadn't bothered to program the number of the burner he'd given Suzume into his phone, but he recognizes the number that flashes across the screen all the same, answering it on the second and a half ring.

His voice when he speaks is edged rough and gravelly by a dry, unused throat. "Hey."

There's a brief silence – one that leaves him feeling almost a little on edge, at least until –

"Hi, Nii-chan," comes Suzume's soft voice from across the line.

"Hey," he says again, closing his eyes, and something like relief washes over him, like cool water steaming over too-hot skin. "God, it took you a while. You okay?"

"M'sorry," she mumbles, and then it all starts to spill out of her. "The hospital kept saying I had to stay, even though I told them I was fine, but they had me talk to a bunch of… talk-kinda doctors, and then a lot of government people kept coming around, and there was a social worker, too, and then the real doctors worked a lot on getting me more, uhm – nourished – "

"Breathe, Suzu."

He hears her take a deep breath, but it hardly slows her down. "But, anyway – so, it was always so busy, and I didn't wanna call you at the hospital – or, well, I really actually did, but…"

He fills the space she leaves for him. "Nah, that was a good call. You were a good girl for waiting."

"I didn't wanna be good," she whispers. "It was really hard."

Dabi feels a smile quirk in the corners of his lips. "What was?"

"The… well, everything was the worst. All the talking, and all the people, and I just wanted to sleep until I could talk to you again." Suzume sounds very tired, even over the phone. He can imagine the sleepy tilt of her head, the trembling of her lower lip, petulant and needy in her exhaustion. "The not talking to you was the hardest, but everything was also really hard."

Balancing his phone between the press of his cheek and his shoulder, Dabi begins tugging on his boots. "That sucks. But really, you okay?"

He hears her take in another long breath, and her voice goes all quivery when she says, "I'm okay."

"That's a fat fucking lie," he says, huffing a laugh.

There's a lull in the conversation, and Dabi thinks he hears a wet, smothered snuffle from the other line. He imagines she's pulled the phone away from her head, covered the mouthpiece with her hand.

"Is not," she says, finally, much closer to the phone now, and significantly more clear. A stubbornness has crept into her voice somehow, despite how it quavers.

"You know I can hear you crying, right? Your little trick with the phone didn't hide shit."

"Well, maybe it's more of a – a skinny lie – "

"No, I think it might be up there as the worst goddamn lie you've ever told." With his boots laced up now, Dabi reaches down and snags his bag where he'd left it in the corner. "Sure hope you lied better than that at the hospital."

A pouty grumble. An undisguised sniffle. "You're the only one who always knows when I'm – when I'm lying."

Dabi's smile cracks wider as he exits the booth, bag slung over his shoulder. He'd never really been worried about how much they'd press her over the murder. There was no way anyone would expect that she'd personally know Featherlight's killer. Beyond that, Suzume was an emotionally fragile girl, one he doubted anyone would be pushy enough to break in pursuit of the sordid details of the massacre in her childhood home.

"Dunno how that works out – you're hot garbage at it."

Suzume heaves a very exasperated and watery sigh, and Dabi can perfectly visualize the way her face crumples with it. "Can you not – "

" – be mean to you?"

Some quiet huffing. "Please – yes."

"That depends," he says, quickly passing through the manga displays of Chichibu's only internet cafe as he heads for the exit. "Are you at your grandma's house now?"

"Uhm." Another little pause. "Yeah?"

"Pink and white job, at the bottom of a hill?" The electronic door chime jingles pleasantly as he exits onto the silent street. It's late, and Chichibu is significantly quieter than Suzume's little subdivision back in Musutafu. As far as he can tell, he's the only one out. "Backs up to a forest?"

Suzume is completely incredulous. "How d'you know what it looks like?"

Kozue Meihane's mother was only tangentially related to Featherlight, but Giran is a damn fine broker, and thanks to him, Dabi knows everything he needs to know about Suzume's grandmother – and everything else he could possibly want to know about his little sister's life. "C'mon, Suzu, y'know better than to ask questions like that."

"Have you been here?"

Dabi snorts, his breath fogging in the air as he heads south down the empty road. The yellow, hazy street lights overhead draw out his shadow, long and sinewy, skulking behind him.

He'd definitely scoped the place out ahead of time – more than a few times. Ten days had given him a lot of time to kill, after all. "Maybe."

"When?"

"Doesn't matter. What's your grandma up to?"

Suzume's voice drops to a conspiratorial whisper after yet another loud snuffle. "She's sleeping right now."

"She pretty sick still?"

"How do – "

Interrupting her, Dabi clicks his tongue twice against his teeth. "Suzu."

"Okay, okay…"

"Listen; I'm coming over. I'll be there in twenty or thirty minutes. I'll text you when I get there. Meet me out back when I do."

"Wait, what?" Her breath hitches, just a little. "Really?"

"That a problem?"

The line falls silent again, and then, "Oh, no, no, sorry, I was shaking my head, I forgot it's – it's a phone. No, no, I wanna see you, please, very much!"

And then, as if undone by her relief, Suzume loudly bursts into active tears.

There's no helping it, anymore, and Dabi's laughter fills the empty street. "I hope you're not inside right now. Not gonna be any good for either of us if your hysterics wake up your grandma."

Suzume blubbers something he can't fully understand – something about her grandmother, something about hearing –

"Suzu – "

– missed him, so much – outside – tired – so much, again, and more about her grandmother –

"Suzu." His voice is low but sharp, velvet drawn taut over a knife.

It has its intended effect. Suzume stops babbling deliriously, and he hears her take in a few deep, shuddering breaths. "Sorry," she manages. "I'm really sorry."

"I'll be there soon, okay? Keep breathing deep, like I taught you."

"I try – I am trying – but it's really hard to do it when… when you're not here to do it with me," she manages, meekly, through heaving, unsteady breaths.

Dabi runs his tongue along his teeth, his staples pulling tight and sharp at his cheeks through his open-mouthed smile. "Oh, yeah? Is that right?"

"Everything is – " Pausing, she allows herself a couple of soft sobs. "Everything is dumb and it's bad and – and it's all really hard without you."

Dabi has the sense to know this shouldn't make him feel the way it does. There are so many other things he thinks he should feel – pity, or sympathy, or any other number of normal, human emotions.

At the very least, he thinks he should feel guilty.

But god, he doesn't feel guilty, and he just can't fucking help himself. It just feels so good – too good, almost, sweet and syrupy, pumped hot like the finest fucking drug through all of his veins. Ten months was a long, long fucking time to go without. "Oh Suzu," Dabi says, slow and deep and slick, imagining her crying at just the thought of seeing him, imagining her holding that cheap, plastic phone with reverence, as if her whole wretched life depended on it. "You're so fucking cute."

"I don't – " She chokes a bit, obviously flustered, and god, he can imagine that, too. "My face is pretty gross right now – "

"Aww, poor little crybaby. That's okay – that's fine. You know I don't care." And then, because he's greedy – because he doesn't even want to try to be better: "Save some tears for me until I get there, yeah?"


After he arrives and texts her from the trees behind her back yard, it takes Suzume a minute and a half before she comes hurtling out of the back door of her grandmother's house, a peachy-purple streak through the poorly lit darkness.

He knows. He counts.

For a while, Dabi just watches her from the treeline. Her grandmother's backyard is vast and overgrown, and Suzume bounds through the higher grass, swaddled up warm in a heavy, pale violet peacoat that reaches her knees. The scarf she wears is set so askance across her shoulders that he suspects it was little more than an afterthought.

Her head moves like a swivel on her neck, her eyes roving across the blackness of the forest, little hands clutched up in the fabric of her coat.

Even from his place back in the trees, he can see that Suzume's cheeks are blotchy with tear stains. The red of it stands out starkly against her pale skin, welted and angry looking.

It's a good look, he thinks. One he likes maybe a little too much.

When she draws nearer to the edge of the forest, her pace slows considerably, and her expression settles from anxious excitement into something a little more fearful. Her head cocks a bit, as if she's trying to listen for something, squinting apprehensively into the still darkness.

"Nii-chan?" It comes out a lilting, furtive whisper. She sounds so terribly unsure.

And Dabi knows it really is a cruel thing to let her come to him – to wait and let her take her first few hesitant steps past the line of light cast by her grandmother's porch lamp – but he does it, anyway. Something awful in him relishes in that cruelty. Something in him needs it.

Her eyes have clearly not adjusted. She toes her way past a few gnarled roots, hands outstretched now, feeling blindly for anything she might bump into, and Dabi watches the darkness take her.

But where she can't see, he very much can – and he's quick over root and fallen branch, silent and swift and upon her in an instant. He gets his arm hooked tight around her slight shoulders, his other hand a vice across her mouth, and god, how she thrashes against him, her squealing muffled behind the flat, hot press of his palm.

Her scarf slips down and settles softly in the leaves at their feet.

"Got-cha," he whispers into her ear, and he feels a wicked shudder run all through her tiny body before the fight goes out of her completely.

She makes much softer noises then, the movement of her mouth against his hand less an ineffectual gnashing of little baby teeth and more an attempt to speak. It is with no small amount of reluctance that he peels his hand back, taking hold of her chin instead.

"What's that, huh?" He asks slyly, jerking her head back and forth. "Can't hear you."

"You're the – the worst," she hisses, and to his delight he can hear the way she hiccups over the word 'worst'.

Dabi leans down and presses his nose at the juncture where her throat meets her jaw, her hair a familiar softness against the push of his cheek. She smells sweet, fresh soap edged by the scent of too many salty tears. "Thought you said everything else was the worst."

Beneath the sling of his arm, he can feel Suzume's chest stutter even as her body softens, pressing back into him with a childish, desperate neediness he lets himself savor. "Everything else is – it's the worst all the time." Taking a big gulp of air, she continues, sullenly, "You're the worst, too… but only sometimes."

"Nicest thing you've ever said to me," he purrs against her throat, and her shoulders lift up towards her ears as if the sensation tickles her.

"Still the worst most of the time," she says, but there's no venom in it, her voice gone mild and breathy and feather-soft.

"Think I can live with that," he says, and he lets her chin go so he can sweep her up into his arms instead.

It takes her a moment to acclimate to the sudden way her world spins; her expression is dazed, eyes blown wide, mouth parted in a hushed little gasp. She looks back towards the house, and then up at the tall tops of the trees, and then finally at him.

Her cheeks are red with more than tear stains now.

"Look at you," he whispers, his lips parting in a grin that shows his teeth. "Gone so red at being carried like a bride by your awful big brother, huh?"

Suzume's nose crinkles, and she shakes her head, gone several shades darker, suddenly – but that's where her denial ends.

Instead – as she often is – Suzume is painfully, pitifully honest, frowning down at his chest. "You're not – you're not awful. You're not, and I – I missed you so much," she manages, barely, and her fingers work slow over the frayed collar of his light shirt, skirting just below his skin. "Not just the last week, but before that, too – "

"You can touch me if you wanna, you know."

Her eyes when she raises them to meet his gaze are glossy and wet, eyelashes glittering.

"Can you – can you close your eyes, maybe?" Her breathing is so shallow now, fluttery and erratic.

"Why?" He knows why, of course. Like always, though, he wants to hear her cop to it – wants to hear her say it, in that soft, wavering little voice of hers.

Her gaze slides away from him then, back to the collar of his shirt. ''Cause sometimes your eyes are a bit too…" Suzume flounders a moment. "Too much?"

"Oh, yeah? How so?"

"I don't… I dunno." Her throat tightens as she swallows, and Dabi knows she's forcing herself to play his game, just for him. "They can be kinda scary, sometimes, but not in a – not in a real bad way, just… sometimes it makes me feel kinda… shy?"

"Shy, huh?" He's stubborn, staring her down with a big, wide grin. "Wonder why that is."

And then Suzume surprises him by reaching out with a small hand and brushing her fingers in a hovering, downward sweep over one of his eyes. "Please," she begs. "Just for – just for a minute."

Dabi does as she asks, closing the eye beneath her fingers, and then the second when she touches at that one, too.

And then he feels both of her hands drifting over his face. Her fingers ghost the sharp curve of his chin first, and then up along the stapled ridge that splits his cheeks in an uncanny leer. She touches each and every staple as if counting them, her finger tips gliding between each one with such a tender, gentle softness that he can't help but set his jaw so hard it hurts.

"Are you… okay?" She asks him, quietly, her fingers stilling.

"Yeah." And then, "You don't have to stop."

Because he absolutely doesn't want her to.

And because she is good, Suzume doesn't. Her palms flatten against his cheeks, cold and prickling against his skin, and her thumbs brush over his closed lids. He can feel the way they slide against his eyelashes, as if feeling for their fullness.

And then one hand falls away, and he feels the press of her lips, cold too, soft too, parted just enough that he can feel her breath against his skin when she kisses his forehead, his temple, along the staples just under his eyes, chaste and sweet. "I missed you," she says, and her mouth moves against his skin with it, and her cheek when it brushes his is wet. "Everyone is so – everyone is so dumb and I… I used to think it was just dad who was fake, but sometimes I think that everyone smiles like they're on TV. Everyone is just – everyone is just pretending. Like everyone lies, all the time. Everyone lies so much."

Dabi says nothing, but he moves his face against hers until he can feel the plush curve of her cheek against his mouth – until he can taste the salt of her now wet skin through the press of his own, open lips.

Suzume doesn't pull away. Her tears slip down her face, cold when they reach his fire-hot skin. "I don't – I don't like it. I don't like them. They lie about being good. They tell lies about good people, being bad – they pretend to be nice, but I don't – I don't think they are."

"That's the way of it, isn't it?" Dabi's tongue finds one salty little tear before he kisses it away, before he nuzzles his face against her hairline. "Everyone's mean, and everyone's cruel, and everyone's fucking rotten on the inside, but they all like to pretend they're not. They cover it up with nice smiles and sick-sweet pleasantries, but yeah, once you know what to look for – once you got a nose for it, well, you just can't help but smell the reeking, rank shit underneath all their pretty masks."

Suzume weeps, quietly, and Dabi opens his eyes to find that hers are closed. "You don't – you don't lie to me like that – "

"No," he whispers, and his teeth slide against her skin when he talks through his grin. "Of course not. I'm not like that. Why lie, really? No point in hiding all the rotten shit in me, and anyway – you're too sweet to lie to, Suzu. Too precious to lie to. There's none of that meanness and cruelty and ugliness in you. I like that about you. I want you to know me exactly as I am."

Rubbing the back of her sleeve against her snotty nose, Suzume shakes her head minutely, and Dabi can't help but nip at her cheek when it pushes against him. She squeaks a bit, but doesn't pull away – not when he puts his teeth away, and not when he kisses softly at the spot his teeth had claimed only a moment ago. "You're not – you're not rotten, Nii-chan…"

Dabi snorts a laugh. "I ain't lying to you, so don't lie to yourself."

"You're not," she insists, and her eyes open then, sliding over to his. "You're not – not all the time. Sometimes, you're – sometimes you're nice. And when you're mean and awful most of the time, well… it makes the times when you're nice – it makes it feel like the nice parts matter. Like they're real. Like you're doing it 'cause you wanna, and not 'cause you have to."

"Mmm. That what you think?" Dabi can tell Suzume is trying very hard to hold his gaze by the way she squirms in his arms, by the way her body tenses when he moves to press his forehead to hers, his nose to hers, his mouth centimeters from hers. "You're right about me doing what I wanna do, at least. Your big brother is awfully selfish; I only ever do what I wanna do, and never a damn thing more."

Suzume looks more than a little anxious at that, her eyelids fluttering at the sudden way he crowds into her space, her tiny body stiffening under the sharpness of his eyes burning into hers. "Do you… do you wanna – "

"Do I wanna what?"

More tears burning at the edges of her eyes. "Nii-chan – I can't – I can't, not without you... Please, I need you to… I need you to…"

"What? Need me to stay with you?" He breathes the words, and she flinches beneath the hot fan of it sweeping across her face. "Need me to take care of you?"

Her sobs are muted, small like the rest of her. "But… but if you don't wanna – "

Oh, but this is exactly what Dabi wants. This is what he needs, this desperate, learned helplessness, this frightened, lost-without-you despair. Broken-winged, his wounded little baby bird, caught up sick and floundering in his hands, absolutely nothing without him. The world is a big, bad, scary place for her; it makes sense, then, that she'd need a bigger, badder, scarier older brother to keep it all away.

"No," Dabi says, softly, the softest press of a knife, "Oh, Suzu. No, no. I do want that. I do. So don't you worry your pretty little head over any of that, yeah? I'll take care of you. I'm your big brother, aren't I?"

When she doesn't answer – when she only snuffles, and cries, Dabi nudges his forehead against hers. "Well, aren't I?"

Suzume's arms slide slowly around his neck then, knitting together behind his shoulders. Her swollen eyelids slip down over her eyes, heavy with exhaustion, from too many tears. "...yeah."

"And you're my cute little sister, aren't you?"

Suzume's cheeks look hot again. "Mmm… mmm-hmm."

"Then that's the way it is," he says, because it's every bit the truth. "You're my little sister, and I'm gonna be real fucking selfish with you 'cause that's what I wanna do."

"Promise?" Sweet little childish games, Dabi thinks. So sad and starved for him to validate her.

"Oh," he says, grinning sick and wide, "Oh Suzu, I fucking swear it."


"Go on, just say it.
Well, I'll just say it:
I need you defenseless, dependent,
And alone."

AN: I know I said that vignettes were gonna start with this chapter, but like, see, I got an outline of story things I wanna cover, like a timeline from start to finish! They're just little blurbs of scenes I want to touch on in the order they're supposed to appear in, and when I sit down to write them out, they always take on a life of their own. I feel like I expect them to be much shorter than they end up being when I write them, because I am a rambly binch. But now things are nice and neat and clean and everything is wholly, completely established now!

The next few chapters are going to cover a bunch of varying length scenes delving into into Dabi and Suzu's life over the next five-ish years as Dabi pretty much raises her. I think I mentioned in my last chapter (I'm too lazy to check) but some of it will be fluffy and uh... honestly most of it is gonna get kinda fucked up, 'cause Dabi just gets worse as he gets older... not better, lol. ): Things are also gonna become sexual in nature too, so uhm, IF THAT BOTHERS YOU? 😭 Now you are informed!