AN: ALL RIGHT, I promised I'd get this chapter out either last night or today, and it is today, and I am here to DELIVER, BOY HOWDY. Initially this was supposed to be part of the last chapter, but then that chapter would have been so goddamn long. I also thought about just releasing this one next Monday so I'd have a bit of a build up, but I'm really bad at sitting on things, lmao. WHOOPS. This whole chapter is from Hawks' POV. He's fun, IF STRESSFUL, to write. I swear I'm not getting attached... ️
018: bonds forged in the sky.
Summer; 18 years.
When the call comes in on Hawks' headset, it's 7:27 in the morning. He's already at work, and that's not surprising, because really, when does he ever leave work? It's not even like he sleeps proper-style. Not really. He takes naps, more like, three or four hours at a time – and that's if he's lucky. If he's especially lucky, he makes it home to collapse face first into his bed, free to drool all over his pillow. (The joys of having a housekeeper who is in his sparsely furnished apartment more than he is means Hawks never has to feel guilty about occasionally drooling all over his pillows. His bedding is always freshly changed and drool-free by the time he's home again. Little luxuries. Totally worth it.) Most often, though, Hawks steals one or two uncomfortable hours of shut-eye sequestered atop some tall company building that doesn't make much use of their roof.
(And he even has all the best roofs in Kyushu memorized!)
Currently, he's operating on three hours of sleep. It's fine. He's used to it, just like he's used to working at 7:27 in the fucking morning, and 5:14 in the morning, and three AM, too. What else is there to do? There are always problems that need solving, and people who need saving. There's always the solemn-faced zombies in suits yap-yap-yaping their way through all their boring-as-shit rhetoric, all while they pull his leash so hard he thinks they just might be trying to choke him. Kinky bastards.
(They're not, really, of course – at least, not that he's aware of, anyway. He can't decide if it would be better or worse if they were. At the very least, it would be interesting. So: maybe better?)
But he's not going to think about that. Hawks fills his day with so much entirely so he doesn't have to think about anything, but especially them. He's sure as hell not about to start thinking about them now, even though the morning is quiet and still and awfully fucking dead in that way he hates, because god; his thoughts always get so loud when things are dead.
So, no. No. Fuck that. He's going to think about the call coming in on his headset, instead.
That, much like him being at work so early, is hardly out of place. His handlers – and his sidekicks, too, though much less often – call him at all hours, because he's awake all hours. The perils of never not working. Maybe he should fix that.
But this call – Hawks knows immediately it isn't one of theirs, and that is weird. Each of their numbers is set to the same specific alert. Long ago, in a fit of whimsy he'd long since come to regret, Hawks had picked the most annoying call tone he could find – what sounded like someone throwing a series of plate glass windows down a very long flight of stairs – because why not? His handlers annoyed him at the best of times. The tone was torture to listen to. It had seemed fitting.
Considering how often they call him, though, Hawks has kind of Pavloved himself into a near perpetual bad mood. It sure is hard to have a good day when his headset is consistently rattling with the cacophony of shattering-goddamn-glass – nevermind the heinous assholes it always heralds.
(He should change it, he knows. But he's also lazy.)
This alert, though, is different. And because Hawks isn't expecting it at all, he almost mistakes it for what it is: the innocuous chitter of birdsong.
This particular peeping has become very familiar to him over the last few weeks, though, and he very quickly realizes that it isn't some stray sparrow come to serenade him where he's perched on the ledge of an impressively tall skyscraper.
Oh, he thinks, wonderingly: Suzume. Hawks has to verify with himself that it's 7:27 in the morning and not 3:30 in the afternoon, when she always calls him. In his ears, in perfect stereo, the sparrow chatters perkily, its voice lifting into a song he's wholly unfamiliar with because he's never let a call from her ring unanswered this long.
Shit. What is he thinking? If she's calling this early –
Distantly anxious, he takes the call.
"Hey chickadee," he says, forcing a perfectly mimed cheeriness into his voice to cover the flutter of concern that has, frustratingly, taken hold of his wings. "You're up early. Eyes bright? Tail bushy? Going hard for that worm?"
There's a pause, and in that moment, he knows something close to real honest-to-god panic. It's not much of a familiar sensation, and Hawks finds he rather dislikes the way it feels. The tension in his face reminds him that he has temples – and god, who actually thinks about their temples, ever? Behind him, his wings have gone completely rigid.
"Um, just school, actually. But I guess it sounds about as appealing as a worm. Actually, no, maybe less. Worms are kinda cute at least, and school is… well." There it is. There she is. Hawks thinks she seems… a little tired, maybe? Maybe a little off. Still, though: no hint of terror so far, and that's something, right? "It might maybe be a bit too early for bird puns, though."
"But not for bright eyes and bushy tails?" Hawks gives a great, big, dramatic sniff, willing his heart rate down. "I'm hurt, chickadee. This avian-based discrimination won't stand. What'll the tabloids say?"
"Well…" She draws the word out, buying time for herself as she thinks. "Pre-teen girl… likes cute and fluffy things? That's not really much of a news story."
"Excuse you, little miss! That's even more discrimination. Birds can be cute and fluffy, too."
"Some birds," she corrects. "Like, those tiny, round, small ones – the kinds that are all chubby and puffy. But hawks are — well, they're big, and regal, and… sometimes kinda scary."
"Oh, so the reviews are in! You think I'm big and regal and kinda scary, do you? Now you got me with my chin in my hand, kicking my legs in the air. Maybe I'm even twirling my hair. Go on, little charmer. Tell me more."
Despite her apparent gloominess, Suzume's laughter is sunshine warm, vibrant and sweet even over the phone. Hawks exhales very slowly through his nose. She can't possibly be in any immediate danger, and that's enough, he thinks – or at least, it should be. He doesn't want to be overbearing. He doesn't want to demand too much. The guidebooks and his classes and his trainers are all in agreement: kids need to be guided where you want them, all without realizing it. They're stubborn, and guarded, prone to rebellion for the sake of it. They don't like being fretted over. And yet –
"Hey," he says, fretfully, cursing himself inwardly even as he does. "Real talk, though: you okay?"
Across the line, from all the way across Japan, she makes a cute, little noise. It might be a huff, or another, smaller laugh, or maybe even a scoff, and Hawks wonders: what does she look like now? Is she any taller? Has her face filled out more? He remembers her wrists, so thin, bird-boned and glass-fragile, and it makes something in him ache. Are they still so thin, now? And it's been so long, so fucking long, and he has thought about her so much more than he thinks might be healthy or normal.
Whoops. He should talk to someone about that, maybe, but he knows he won't. He absolutely won't.
After a year and a half, Hawks had long since given up hope that Suzume would ever want to speak to him again. For reasons he had struggled to articulate to himself, even in his own mind, that had really upset him, but also, he couldn't blame her. He hadn't been angry at her, not even a little, but he had sure been very angry with himself. Angry, and maybe a little sad, too.
(Regret, he thinks. Maybe regret is a better word, and oof, he really doesn't like that, not one bit.)
But then, a few weeks ago and completely out of the blue, Suzume had called him, and she had been infinitely more amenable than he'd ever dared to imagine her to be. That she evidently didn't completely peg Hawks to be as contemptible as his sharp-suited handlers was some kind of mercy he didn't think he deserved. Hawks was no penitent, though. Who was he to question his sudden – if surprising – good fortune?
"I'm – " She cuts herself off, and Hawks can remember her swallowed up in that sterile hospital bed, clinging to that filthy stuffed cat, as wary as she was hesitant and unsure. "I'm okay. Just – "
That sounds like a lie, and a terrible one at that, but okay, Hawks thinks; he can work with this. Despite how much she suddenly sounds like the audio equivalent of a deflated balloon, Hawks knows better than to question it. After years of training, he knows when to push, and how to push, and this is not a situation for pushing, much as he might want to.
So, he tries prodding instead. "Just?"
"I know this is last minute." Suzume's voice is a whisper now, and a crackle works its way through her words as the signal dips, briefly. (Stupid, sparse country towers, Hawks thinks. Chichibu really is in the fucking boonies.) "But I was – I was hoping…"
"Uh-huh…"
"If maybe – um. If maybe we could – maybe we could meet, um, sometime after school? Today?" Hawks can hear her suck in a long, squeaky breath, and then, as if the spigot has been turned full-open, the words are spilling out of her in a fast, flooding rush: "I totally get if you can't, of course, like, if you're busy, because it's so last minute – I won't be upset or anything and I won't hold it against you, and really it's not a big deal at all, and maybe – maybe it's not even a good idea, 'cause I've been feeling kind of sick, like a little nauseous? Since I woke up this morning, but also, just — I don't know, I just thought maybe it would be cool if you could – or we could, or just – "
Despite himself, Hawks laughs. Through the cheery yellow sheen of his polycarbonate visor, all the streets of Kyushu are limned gold and summer-bright. They always are, because his visor is always yellow. Today, though, everything looks like it might be just a little more gold somehow. "Whoa, chickadee. Deep breaths. You gotta breathe, or you ain't gonna make it to school."
"But I don't even wanna go to school," she says, miserably, and very thoroughly side-tracked. "It sucks."
"A popular opinion, yeah, so I've heard. Dying sounds a hell of a lot worse, though, y'know. Check the reviews: staggeringly negative, probably worse than school, ten outta ten doctors agree, 'Don't fucking do it, what the hell, you got so much to live for. Dying's for losers.' And who are we to argue with doctors? They went to school for, I don't know, a billion years or something. Pretty sure after all that they'd know something we don't. At the very least, after those billion years in school, if even they say death is worse, well, then – "
"You've never been to school," Suzume points out, though even through the phone, it's evident she's trying very hard not to laugh. "So you wouldn't understand how much it sucks."
"Maybe not," Hawks says, agreeably, "But if you're dead, you can't go anywhere else, either. I mean, I get it; I sympathize! School straight up sucks, but you know what would straight-up-suck-even-harder?"
With the air of someone long suffering, Suzume announces, very profoundly, "Literally nothing."
Hawks snorts his way through his own undisguised laugh. "Well, okay, fine, but just consider this: you'd be missing out on a very cool dinner and an even cooler after dinner… uh, event? Hang out sesh? I'll get back to you with what that might be later. But ill-thought out plans aside, it'd all be with a moderately cool bird guy who just so happens to be willing to forgive you your earlier bird-based-slander. And not to toot my own horn or anything, but that's also pretty cool, right?"
"Oh, I see," comes her voice from the other line, archly. "You're just moderately cool?"
"Yeah, moderately cool. Or spectacularly cool, if you're feeling generous. Those are your only options unless you wanna take a spin in the tabloids again for more discrimination charges. Or, you know, if you fancy the more likely outcome: hurting my very sensitive feelings."
"Well," she says, very seriously. "We can't have that."
"See?" Laughing again, Hawks fishes his phone from his pocket and begins to search for restaurants in Chichibu. "Reasons to live! You're welcome."
There's a long silence. In that silence, Hawks can see her so clearly again. It's like she's there beside him, her little tip-tilted nose crinkling as she works her teeth across her lower lip, lost in thought.
"Tonight?" She asks, finally, and her voice is so small and so full of hope that, fully outside of his control, Hawks' wings ruffle with pleasure.
"I'll totally ditch my after school clubs and even cram school for you, chickadee."
"It's…" She hesitates again. "It's not gonna put you out any, is it?"
"You know how many days off I've had in the last two months? Go on; gimme a guess."
"Um. Hmm." When she pauses this time, it's very obvious that she's taking his teasing at face value, no doubt puzzling over potential guesses. Hawks can't help but find that terribly cute. "Three?"
"That's three too many, but hey, you were close. Congratulations!" He claps his hands loud enough for her to hear and hums the congratulatory jingle from a popular game show, no doubt a little off key. "As the only participant in our How-Overworked-is-Hawks-Quiz, you win the grand prize by default, nevermind the obvious judge bias! So, I'll take you to dinner, and you can attend guilt-free without a worry in the world about it conflicting with my slave-driver schedule."
There's the sound of her laughter again, tinkling and bright. "Don't you… make your own schedule? I saw – at least I thought I saw on the news that you ran your own agency."
"Aww, you keep up with me on the news? Now you're really flattering me." There's no possibility of him containing his genuine grin, so he doesn't try. Hawks is immensely thankful he's dozens of stories off the ground and well out of sight from anyone with a camera and an inclination to immortalize something tremendously embarrassing. "I sure do, though. I'm my own boss! And lemme tell you, the boss is a real cock about me working all day, every day, but don't worry; I've earned enough brownie points what with all the breaks I never take, so I'm positive he'll let me off tonight."
"I'd say that's generous of him…" Suzume's tone is light, and a little playful. "But he also sounds like a bit of a jerk."
"To be fair, it's not like I get a reason worth cutting work for cropping up on a daily basis." Falling quiet for a moment, Hawks debates internally with himself, before adding, entirely against his better judgment: "And hey, who knows; maybe you could help that be a more frequent thing."
Their dinner date is neither a date, nor even really a dinner – not in any technical sense, anyway – but Hawks is strangely restless all the same. He arrives at the restaurant early, both because he is always early, and because he wants to scope it out. That, too, is something he always does. He scopes it out. He scopes everything out. Standing in front of the small Italian cafe, he briefly wonders if his inherent need to be way early and over-prepared are facets of his own personality or something that has been thoroughly trained into him. Sometimes, it's hard to tell where duty ends and he begins.
That is, of course, assuming he'd ever really begun in the first place.
(Morbid thought, he thinks, frowning briefly. Doesn't serve him. He banishes it immediately.)
Unfortunately for his nerves, there isn't much to scope out. The cafe is mind-bogglingly tiny, sharing space in a crumbly old building with a nondescript bar and a couple of ratty looking upstairs apartments. Peering into one of the cafe's two windows reveals a grand total of five mismatched tables, assembled throughout the room without any sense of order or reason. The chaos of it – like someone had impulsively plopped them down at odd angles, clapped his hands, and said, "Good enough!" before plodding off to make what Hawks hopes are delicious pasta dishes – is oddly charming. All of the chairs are completely worn, and by some stroke of incredible luck, all of them are completely empty, too. As of 4:13 when he arrives, Cucina Salve has only been open for thirteen minutes. Apparently, no one in Chichibu likes to take their dinner early, and Hawks finds himself feeling grateful that Suzume lives out in the goddamn boonies for the first – and what he suspects will be the only – time.
From inside the cafe, a man in a white-pressed chef's coat and smart black hat waves enthusiastically at Hawks, tucked away behind his humble counter-bar. Hawks returns the gesture with the same level of enthusiasm before motioning at his watch and pointing off down the street with a shrug. The man smiles, evidently understanding the wordless pantomime, and bends his head to work whatever bizarre and unknowable culinary magic chefs do behind their equally bizarre and unknowable counters.
(Hawks has been taught many things by many people. Cooking is not one of them. Turns out food has very little to do with either assassinations or being a charming hero. A shame, really. Hawks loves to eat.)
With very little to investigate – and that's a shame, too, because what is he even supposed to do with himself? – Hawks pushes his hands into the pockets of his brown leather jacket and sweeps his gaze up and down the street. It isn't a busy one by any stretch of the mind; three quarters of it seem to be businesses, most of which aren't even open, and the quarter that remain are residential apartments. There are only a few people scattered about, busy enough with their own lives that they don't really acknowledge him beyond stealthy if curious glances in his direction. With absolutely nothing else of note going on, he has to check his watch again to confirm that it is, in fact, a Friday. What does anyone even do in Chichibu? Hibernate for eleven months out of the goddamn year?
And then: there. In his seventh pointless observation of the street, and exactly on time, Hawks finally spots her. Walking briskly down the sidewalk towards him, Suzume is dressed in a loose and oversized blue sweater that swallows her up, so long it very nearly obscures what he guesses is the skirt she wore to school. Even from far away – or maybe especially from far away – it has the effect of making her look spectacularly small.
When she eventually reaches him, though, it's abundantly clear that she actually is just that small, which is, not-so-incidentally, exactly as he remembers her being. Hawks finds most of Suzume to be exactly as he remembers her, even – and yet also completely, utterly different, somehow. Her hair is still fetchingly wild. Her skin is still pale, though thankfully no longer in the sickly-gray-corpse range of pale. And while she's hardly any taller than she was a year and a half ago, her face is so much softer now, all the sharp, grave lines of half-starvation smoothed out by what he imagines must be a good, healthy diet. Her high cheekbones curve down into plush cheeks no longer hollowed out by grief, and the eyes he recalls as empty, cloudy glass now raise to meet his, shining and alert and brilliantly violet.
Lifting a hand in greeting, Suzume regards him with a curious expression on her face. "Hello?" Pitched high at the end, it's more a question than a real greeting. Hawks realizes with horror that he's been staring, saying nothing – doing nothing. He's gone metaphorically slack-jawed like a complete fucking idiot.
(It's only by the grace of some mysterious and most generous deity that he isn't literally slack-jawed, too.)
"Oh, shit," he says, and there goes years of work spent learning to be cool and charismatic and well-spoken slam-dunked straight into the fucking the toilet. His handlers would be so inordinately peeved.
But hey, that's something, isn't it? Pissing them off, even just hypothetically, is always a bonus. And it's fine. This is fine. Nothing is unsalvageable, Hawks tells himself; he can absolutely recover from this. Suzume is, what, all of eleven years old? Really – how hard can it be?
"Whoops," he says, and internally makes a note to wring his own neck, later. "And by that I mean: sorry. And by that, I also mean: hey, hi, and hello. Check that out: whole variety of greetings, just for you! Really though, sorry. Got a bit distracted there." And then, because every good story is best built on a foundation of truth, he continues: "You're just – well, you're different. But also the same? Guess it took me by surprise, so I went full mouth-breather there for a hot second. I offer you my sincerest apologies. It'll probably happen again at some point."
Her laughter is immediate, and exactly like her eyes: bright and sparkling. (Sparkling, Hawks thinks? Can laughter even fucking sparkle? He thinks it can, now, at least.) "I think aging maybe does that to a lot of people – maybe even everyone, actually," she says, and it all sounds very wise and thoughtful for someone her age.
"Yeah?" Cupping his jaw in his own hand, Hawks turns his face and musters up what he knows is a very photogenic smile. "You think I'm the same but different, too?"
"Hmm…" She peers up at him intensely, her eyes roving his face. "No," she declares, eventually. "You look pretty much exactly the same."
Hawks lets his hand drop, and then his shoulders, too, all very exaggeratedly. "Ouch! No growth for me, I guess. Doomed to be a perpetual baby forever. Think a beard would help?"
She laughs again, sparkling again, just like a gem in the blindingly bright sun. "Oh, I didn't – I didn't mean it like that. Just… you're on TV a lot, right? Sometimes I even see you in the magazines at the store, and, well… I guess I've seen you more frequently, kinda, so if there are changes, I just don't notice them the same way?" Her eyes lift from his and land on the aviators perched atop his head. There's a smile about her mouth now, freshly sprouted in the wake of her laughter. "If it helps at all, the shades make you look cooler than I remember you being."
Outwardly, Hawks pretends to preen, running a hand through his hair as he fixes her with a grin. Inwardly, Hawks preens, too. "I'm gonna elect to take that as a compliment rather than a dig at past me's sense of style. Rest assured, whatever you remember, shades or no shades: it was absolutely killer."
"Well… maybe." She says it impishly, and her smile blooms a little more. Hawks thinks the combination of it is tremendously cute.
With a low and knightly bow that she observes with quiet amusement, Hawks pulls open the door to the cafe with another sweeping gesture of his spare arm. "After you, chickadee."
She's so tiny, moving past him. As close as she is to him now, Hawks finds himself wondering if those centimeters he thinks she's gained are real or only imagined in his head. When she slips by him into the restaurant, he catches the faint scent of what he thinks might be peaches, rich and achingly sweet.
Following her in, the restaurant is darker than it is outside, and even more cramped than he'd expected. There's hardly any room to move. Just as Hawks finds himself beginning to regret not insisting on their faux dinner-date being a take-out picnic, though, everything very suddenly becomes a complete fucking circus. The chef, wielding a stool rather wildly in both hands, comes striding out into the dining room with what Hawks guesses to be the only waiter. There's a couple of mismatched shouts of, "Welcome!" from the duo as they begin to hoist tables and shuffle chairs about with seemingly no plan whatsoever. Somehow, the pair manages to create a place setting with enough room to accommodate Hawks' wings in between a bunch of excitable hand waving and bows. Then they immediately devolve into a repeated series of apologies repeated in out-of-sync duplicate.
"You, uh, really didn't need to do all that." Hawks, used to ordering take-out exclusively (though never for picnics), finds himself feeling a little flustered and a lot mortified. That only has the men apologizing further. They both seem so earnest, and Hawks wonders if this is some spectacular show of customer service or if this is their real, honest feelings.
He can't even begin to imagine —
Tucked off to the side, neat and tiny and very much out of the way, Suzume watches the chaos unfold with open fascination. Her eyes are round as they move between the stool the men had replaced a chair with and Hawks' wings. Fluttering them, he's pleased to find that has the intended effect of recapturing her attention.
"After you," he says again, motioning broadly to the one actual chair the duo had left at their table before disappearing in a noisy clamor back behind the counter.
With a gracious smile, Suzume takes a seat. Much like her sweater, the chair seems to swallow her up. She doesn't seem to really notice, but Hawks supposes that makes sense. She's probably very used to being small, and so she doesn't marvel at how wide the back of the seat is behind her or how her toes only just barely brush against the floor. Instead, her gaze drifts around the restaurant, lingering on menu signs and bits of decorative frippery with a surprising amount of interest. Hawks takes his place on the stool across the table from where she sits, wholly disinterested in anything but her. "So. You like this place?"
Cucina Salve had been her choice. At the end of her call earlier that morning, Hawks had rattled off a list of restaurant names, and she'd picked it rather decisively, in a way that had him very nearly sure that she'd been here before. Suzume, though, shakes her head, turning back to look at him.
"Actually, I've never been."
"Ohh, I get it. Trying something new, then. An adventurous spirit, striking out blindly but boldly into the unknown rather than settling for safer fare. Your taste buds crave danger. I like that. That's cool."
Suzume's nose crinkles exactly as he'd imagined it this morning, and it hits just right: adorable, and a bit bittersweet. "Do I lose cool points if I tell you I've never actually eaten at any of the restaurants here in Chichibu?"
Hawks is completely taken aback. "But this morning, you said – you said you loved pizza, and, I quote: 'I could eat it every day, but I try to make do with every two months!'"
"Well, yeah, but what – what's that got to do with other restaurants?"
"Are you just manifesting the pizza?" He folds his arms across the table and leans over them, closer to her, lowering his voice to a conspiratorial whisper. "That your secret, chickadee? You've had a quirk this whole time, and it's the ability to manifest pizza anywhere?"
The smile that surfaces slowly across her face is more-than-a-little nonplussed. "You… you know you can make pizza at home, right?"
Somehow – impossibly – Hawks is even more taken aback. "Wait, grandma's house is rocking a real, honest-to-god oven? That same centuries old place I dropped you off at way back then?"
"Well, no, it doesn't have an oven, but – you can make pizza on the stovetop just fine."
"Uh, no, I absolutely can't make shit," Hawks says mournfully, and Suzume laughs. "But for real? You're telling me your grandma can wizard up a pizza in a goddamn pan?"
Before Hawks can make a further fool of himself with his sheer incredulity – although if her wide smile is anything to go off of, he most certainly already has – the waiter from earlier sidles up to their table, presenting the pair with glasses of water before very animatedly reciting the dishes on offer for dinner. Suzume seems to be listening very intently; Hawks listens a little less so, having already acquainted himself with the menu ahead of time on his flight from Kyushu.
As they place their orders, Suzume once again encouraged to go first, Hawks tries to determine if she's shy, or simply just reserved. Though her expression is hardly cold, her smile is considerably more restrained now. She seems to try her best to meet the waiter's gaze as she orders a margarita pizza, but there are moments where either her resolve or her desire falter; her eyes move often between what Hawks suspects to be the waiter's eyebrows and his actual eyes as she answers his questions. It's a clever trick to imply eye contact while alleviating the stress of it. Hawks had learned that one while young, too.
Hawks himself, of course, has neither a problem nor any disinclination meeting the waiter's gaze as he orders. His confidence is easy. Practice makes perfect, after all, and for better or for worse, he's practicing all day, every day. The waiter rewards them both with a smile and a low bow before scuttling off behind the counter, as quick and as smart as he'd arrived.
"So," Hawks says, reclaiming her focus. "Never been out to eat anywhere in Chichibu, huh? What's up with that?"
It's meant conversationally, but it's a question he immediately regrets asking. Suzume looks a little put on the spot, and stares down at her hands, folded neatly in front of her on the table. "Well, it's just – it's easier to cook at home."
"Ah, your grandma a good cook, then? I'm jealous." Hawks forces a perfect self-deprecating chuckle to cover up his own contrition. "I can't cook for shi – well, I can't cook to save my life, so I'm condemned to a life of take out and convenience store food."
Suzume makes a noise of acknowledgement, a polite little mmm that precedes a forced smile nowhere near as convincing as his own play at good humor. "That doesn't sound so bad, though. You don't have to come up with a menu, or do any real work, and – well, there's always something new and interesting to buy, yeah? When I lived back in Musutafu with – well. There was a park right by my house that I hung out in every night, and a convenience store right next to it. I'd get snacks there, sometimes, while my mom was at work." She shrugs again, wistfully, and the fabric of her thin sweater draws tight around the hint of slender shoulders. "I always liked it a lot. It was… nice."
Hawks recalls Suzume in the hospital, hysterical about her mother. He is very gentle when he asks, "Your mom didn't leave you with food at home? I mean, I guess she was busy – "
"Oh, no, Mama always made sure I had nice meals, or – or the means to make it myself, if I wanted to. Whether she made it for me herself, or… Well, I spent a lot of time at friends' houses, too, and they'd make dinner for me. Their moms would, I mean. But, sometimes, since the convenience store was right there…" Another shrug. She's very wistful, now. Her eyes have a faraway look to them, as if she is looking through him, beyond him, looking and searching for something gone far, far away – looking as if it might be there, somewhere behind him. "You know, I'd get just… a snack sometimes. Sit on the slide with it. Hot chocolate when it was cold, or sweet bread, or…"
And now, she looks briefly very sad before her expression, much like her hands, folds in on itself. Shaking her head, she fixes her face with a smile, again very badly constructed. "Sorry," she says, faintly. "I'm rambling."
"Please," Hawks says, lifting a hand to wave it encouragingly at her. "You are as a renowned bard, and I am but your most ardent audience of one. Spiritually, though, I'm rapt enough to make up for at least like, eleven other people. That's why me and the gang – the gang being the eleven other people, for clarification – wanted to take you out: to hear you ramble."
Hawks expects a laugh, or maybe just a chuckle. Instead, Suzume unfolds her hands and lets her fingers wander the table. They seem drawn to a couple of long, deep scratches. She's silent for a while, taking the time to fit her fingers into the uneven grooves before finally looking back up at him again. "Really, though – why?"
It's a very pointed question, and almost defensive. Hawks considers it carefully, but not long enough before he, too, finds himself inexplicably rambling. "I… well, I don't know. Or – I guess I do. I told you back then, right? I wanted to make sure you were okay. You're obviously alive. Not dead, at least, good job with that by the way, glad to see you kept breathing and made it through school today, but… you're more than just alive, right? I wanted to make sure you were doing okay, doing good, even. Let's say: flourishing."
Hawks sighs, feeling immensely awkward. This, too, is a new feeling. He absolutely, positively cannot stand it. "I feel… I don't know, maybe… responsible? Somehow. I know that's kinda arrogant, you know, to feel that way. Maybe I'm just being selfish. Maybe I just feel… I don't know. Guilty."
"That's very honest of you," says Suzume, softly.
Wincing, even if only inwardly, Hawks realizes it is. Seriously, he thinks; what the hell is up with him today? And yesterday? And the day before that, and all those weeks before? "A little bit, yeah. Maybe even a lotta bit."
And then, suddenly, as if he were predestined to step in and interrupt any and all awkward moments in his cozy little establishment: the waiter arrives, beaming, like a veritable gift from the gods. He lays further gifts very artfully across the table, arranging soups and salads beside chilled glasses of iced milk tea and melon soda. Desperate to fill his mouth with something other than bizarrely vulnerable confessions, Hawks is tipping back mouthfuls of neon green liquid before the waiter can even leave.
Suzume, meanwhile, does not immediately take a sip of her drink, but he loses her attention to it all the same. She touches it gently, experimentally, as if she were blind. He watches her fingers chase the condensation beading along the glass until her skin glistens in the low light of the restaurant, very nearly dripping with it. There is a little puddle already forming beneath her glass.
"So, uh" Hawks says, feeling more out of place than he has since he'd cut free of his family years ago, "how's school, sport?"
Lifting her hands from her glass, she rubs her wet fingers together idly before her eyes flicker back up to him. "The worst."
"You did say that, yeah. But all the time? How come? You got friends?"
"Everyone is nice," she says, very deliberately vague. Hawks waits for an elaboration. There isn't any.
"Do you – "
But she's looking at him now, very intently, her eyes fixed on his and gleaming like polished amethyst. "Actually." It's slow, the way she says the word, measured and careful. "Can I – can I ask you a couple of questions?"
This sudden directness takes him entirely by surprise. Until now, Hawks has had to let her come to him entirely at her own pace, and her pace has been glacial. While she's called him very nearly every day for the past few weeks – because he always lets her call, so as not to push and frighten her off – Suzume has remained, for lack of any better description, very cagey. It's not that she ever reacts with any real hostility. She doesn't even seem timid – not really, not at all. It's a kind of reluctance, maybe, he thinks, but he isn't quite sure if that's the word, either. Never really one to volunteer anything of her own accord, Hawks has to lead her, and very gently. Her wariness reminds him of a bruise, tender and painful; she does not like to be touched. Similarly, it seems she does not like to touch, either.
Now, though, she stares at him, and her gaze is wide, and intense, a palpable thing reaching out for some kind of connection. "Oh boy, pop quiz," he says, a little giddy in spite of himself. "Well, shoot your shot, chickadee; ask me anything. Consider me your willingly captive and quiz answering audience."
Suzume tilts her head to the side, studying him. "Well, I have two questions. One is… well, maybe it's… weird? The other is – I guess you could say it's more serious, and actually a bit of a favor."
"Spoiling me for choice, huh?"
She nods. "You can pick whichever you want me to ask first."
"Well, in the spirit of adventure, let's go with the weird one first," Hawks declares, grandly, lifting his glass to his mouth again. "Hit me with that one. I like weird. I'm ready."
Nodding again, and with a wholly serious countenance, she asks him, "What's it mean to – to cream your… pants?"
And Hawks, now suddenly choking on his melon soda, realizes how very unready he actually is. The heretofore refreshing carbonation of the drink is really doing a number on him as it works its way into his airway, bubbling and sizzling all the way down in a manner that reminds him of drain cleaner in a sink. Hawks can only just barely manage a choked out, "Uh – what!"
The alarm that has overtaken her features unfortunately doesn't seem to preclude her from taking his exclamation literally. When he sees her open her mouth as if to repeat her own question, Hawks frantically throws out his hands, shaking his head vigorously as he heaves through his coughing fit. He's not sure he can bear to hear her say it again without his soul wholesale abandoning his body. "No, no – hang on, wait – I heard you, I heard you." Pounding his chest with his fist, he blinks his watering eyes and thinks, a little hysterically: what-the-actual-fuck.
Sinking back into her over-large chair, Suzume looks up at him with an expression halfway between self-reproach and concern. "I'm sorry – "
"No," he says, clearing his throat with another couple of gagging, phlegmy, melon-flavored coughs. "No, it's not your fault, I just – fuck, where did you – where did you even hear that?"
Sucking on the inside of her cheek, her brows furrow considerably. "Well, um – someone at school," she says, vague again in a way that only serves to heighten his fast-growing frenzy.
"To you?" Hawks' poker face joins his dignity from earlier for a spin round the toilet. This absolutely insane question has him completely fucking rattled. "Did some boy say that to you?"
For the first time since their arrival, her gaze visibly buckles under his own. As a pink warmth settles its way across her cheeks, Suzume busies herself with her drink, working her straw awkwardly around the glass. She looks like she wants to be anywhere else but here. "Is it – is it that bad?"
"No, no, wait. For real. You need to tell me." No longer choking now, Hawks can't quite reclaim his composure. His hands flex across the table, forming tight fists as if he might reel back his mortification somehow. It absolutely doesn't work. His mortification is through the roof, straight into the goddamn stratosphere, gone halfway to Mars by the time he manages to ask, again: "Did some kid at your school say that shit to you?"
She flinches a little when he says shit so scathingly, and looks very helpless when she mumbles, quietly, "Well, he – I mean, yeah."
"Jesus," Hawks says. There's no hope of keeping the scowl from his face or the disgust from his voice, so he doesn't even try. "What the fuck."
"Is it really that bad?"
"It's – " Hawks stares down at her, and she looks back at him with those round, wide eyes. There's not a shred of understanding in them, but there is an uncanny kind of desperation. With her teeth buried in her lip, it's as if his reaction has frightened her and – regrettably – made her all the more hungry for clarity.
"Look," Hawks says, and flounders for a moment. How the fuck is he supposed to navigate this? Why was this not in his training? When the hell did eleven year olds start having such colossal balls as to be running around talking to their adorable, naive classmates about –
God, fuck, and looking at her, he can't even think it. Hawks presses his fingers into his temples. His temples – again! Second time today! What fucking is this!
"It's not – well. I guess it's… No, okay, so if some guy at school is saying it to you, talking to you about that sorta thing, it's most certainly gross and also certifiably real-fucking-bad in that context. Could even say it's straight up one-thousand-percent disrespectful." And then, for elaboration, and because he has no self-control: "I want to break his fucking kneecaps. You want me to break his kneecaps?"
"I – how can I want you to break his kneecaps over something I don't understand?" Her fingers, still wet from the condensation, lace together pleadingly. "C'mon, please? Can't you explain it?"
"I – god, chickadee, no, I won't, I can't. I can't tell you what it means, you're just – you're too… little. Like, god, look at you, you're goddamn tiny, you're a bitty baby, you don't need to be thinking about that sorta – god-damn. But please believe me when I say that if some fucking twat is saying shit like this to you at school, he absolutely, positively, without-a-fucking-doubt deserves to have his fucking kneecaps broken. Repeatedly. Ideally so they never heal again. Like I think him being unable to walk would be in everyone's best interest"
"I'm not a baby, and I'm not too little, and I can handle it, and it can't possibly be that bad – "
Hawks exhales sharply in exasperation, feathers a furious rustle behind him. "You are, I repeat, an itty-bitty-baby, and it absolutely can be exactly that fucking bad."
"But that doesn't – none of this helps me at all." There's a sulky quaver gone and crept into her voice. "He wouldn't explain it to me, either."
"And thank god for that," Hawks manages between gritted teeth. "Maybe he'll make it into purgatory instead of hell – assuming I don't put him there myself."
Suzume levels him with what he suspects she's hoping is a mature gaze despite the pouty slump of her shoulders. The way her bottom lip pushes out isn't really helping her case, either. Hawks decides not to point it out. She seems a little affronted, now. "Frankly, I don't think that's not very heroic of you, Mister Top Ten Hero."
"Yeah, well." He shrugs, with all the gravity of someone discussing the weather. "Frankly, I don't think that kid should be breathing."
Resting both her palms on the table, Suzume leans forward, intensity leeching its way into her voice. "That's a pretty big jump from dusting his kneecaps!"
"The jury's had ample time to deliberate –"
Waving her hand emphatically, Suzume is quick to interrupt him. "Ample time! It's been, what – a minute and a half?"
" – and found the escalation – and subsequent execution – abso-fucking-lutely necessary. You understand."
"I really don't!" She exclaims.
"You will," Hawks says, and wiggles his fingers at her in what he hopes is an ominous and distracting gesture before he lifts his melon soda to drink from it in what he hopes is a similarly ominous and distracting fashion. It's decidedly difficult to appear as unflappable as he'd like; his pulse rips through him at an unfamiliar speed that even he struggles to comprehend – and Hawks is nothing if not fast.
Her nose crinkles again, this time accompanied by something bordering on a frown. "You know, I can't – it's hard to take you seriously when you're drinking something that… green."
(Distraction: successful. Point for Hawks, he thinks, and feels immediately guilty. She is eleven.
…half-point for Hawks.)
"No judge, no bully. Leave me and my toxic waste sugar sludge alone." Hawks shakes his half-empty glass at her, the ice inside tinkling cheerily. "You know how many carbs I burn flapping away all the time? I got a battery to recharge, and the only thing that'll work is sugar, sugar, and more sugar. Caffeine, too, but that goddamn question just ensured I'll never have to sleep again, so: thanks. You've saved me a ton on coffee."
Her frown deepens, but Hawks is quick, unwilling to give her an in. "And anyway," he continues, "I'mma need you to get your head in the game, chickadee. It's time to Get Serious. No more weird questions. I've decided whatever serious favor-question you're packing can't possibly be any worse than that nightmare."
"But you didn't even answer and I still don't understand – "
"And that's a good thing, and you should keep it that way before you drive me to murder. Now quick!" He slaps the table a few times. "Ask me the other thing before I do something we'll both regret and go hunt down every boy at your school. I'm jonesing for the distraction."
After her first question, Hawks is a little less sure that he's ready for her second. It's admittedly hard to imagine anything that could top the catastrophic disaster of the first one, but he finds himself tensing all the same when she looks at him steadily, teeth working at the insides of her cheek again. He's certainly been wrong before. He'd been wrong moments ago, even. He's not sure he has the mental fortitude to be wrong again.
"I don't have… I don't need to," Suzume says, suddenly, looking anxious herself. Her fingers drum against her still untouched drink, and her whole body vibrates with what he suspects is a bouncing foot tucked not-so-discreetly beneath the table. "I don't wanna put you out."
"No," he insists, feeling strangely more certain in the wake of her hesitation. "C'mon, for real: I wanna be put out. Lemme be put out. Put me out like the trash, chickadee."
"Hawks-san," she says, taking a big, deep, shaking breath, and it's the first time he can ever remember her using his name, "Do you think you could teach me how to fly?"
Hawks stares at her. "Uh. You mean, like, metaphorically? Like, you want me to be the wind beneath your wings, help you take to the skies of your dreams, buoy you up in times of strife, etcetera, etcetera? 'Cause like, sure, I'm down for that, I can do that, I got you, I –"
"No," says Suzume, quiet again, even as she interrupts him. "I mean it literally."
Hawks really stares at her. She meets his gaze, her hands gone completely still on the glass. She doesn't even look like she's breathing.
"Suzume." In his mouth, her name feels like an intimacy he doesn't deserve. He says it, anyway, and again, when he says, "Suzume – do you have your father's wings?"
She's not even blinking, now. Suzume's face is a perfectly unreadable mask. "I need to learn," she says, and it's all the confirmation he needs. "I have so much to catch up on."
Quirkless, Hawks thinks. She's supposed to be quirkless. But her eyes are violet, like her father's had been, and her face is unerringly lovely, like her father's had been. And Hawks thinks that's funny, really, funny in a way that really isn't funny at all. For all that she hates her father, Suzume is still her father's daughter, and god, isn't that a familiar kick in the fucking teeth? Hawks closes his eyes, briefly, and tries to imagine her with the wings her father had had, white-lavender and shining with their own spilled-moonlight incandescence.
(It's a lot easier to do than he expects.)
"Does anyone else know about this?"
When he opens his eyes, she isn't looking at him anymore. Her attention is back on her hands, back at the gashes in the table that she tries, in vain, to fill with her fingers. "No," she whispers, guilt-sick. "No one knows."
He shouldn't ask. He knows the answer, because it's his answer, too, isn't it? Still, it spills out of him before he can snap his teeth closed around it, cage it back in, swallow it down where he's refused to ask it, even of himself. "Why?"
"Because it was something that was his, and – and I hated that about him. I hated everything about him. And, maybe even more than that – I hated it about me, too. I didn't wanna be anything like him." She looks back up at him, shoulders trembling as if the weight of this is just too much and has been for a very long time, and Hawks thinks: it is. He knows. God, how he fucking knows. He's known this his whole life.
Her voice, then, is so small when she says, "I didn't want anyone to know I had anything of him in me. I wouldn't even let myself think about it. It made me sick."
For not the first time, Hawks wishes he could have been the one to kill her father. It's a twisted, awful, oily kind of jealousy that settles into him, the knowing that he'd missed that chance to bloody his hands by mere fucking minutes. It's a selfish thing, really, that impossible wish. He's worked so hard and long to not be spiteful, to not be vengeful, to be level-headed and collected and calm. A professional death dealer doesn't have room in his heart for emotion like that; it's compromising. And Hawks has delivered every death ordered of him with the detachment required of his position and responsibility exactly as he was trained, telling himself that tired old mantra, over and over again: for the greater good.
For the greater good.
"I wish I could have been the one to save you," he wants to tell her. "I was so close. I was almost there." But talk is cheap, and the words are too much, and his feelings are too raw, and all of it is caught up, choking, in his throat. It's all a little sick, really – remembering her in the hospital, fingers tangled up in the fur of that soot-stained plush cat, crying, "My hero can kill bad people," and that's what she'd said, and she'd meant it. She'd really believed it.
And god, that jealousy, it had felt so suffocating. "I can do it, too," he'd wanted to say, then. He wants to say it now, too. "I wanted to do it for you."
Steeped in all that blood for the greater good, a false hero on a pedestal beloved by millions who didn't even know him, who would condemn him if they did know – and he'd missed the chance to do it for her as he really was: as a murderer.
And it feels a little like being unable to save himself.
(Because isn't her secret his secret, too? Isn't her hatred his hatred?)
"Hey," he says, very gently, as if to a frightened animal. With that same gentleness, he reaches across the table and settles his hand overtop of hers where it works with a frantic kind of energy at one of those awful scratches set so deep in the table. Inexplicably, it makes his heart ache when she does not tug her hand away.
"Suzume – listen to me, okay? Your dad is dead. If you got wings, well, they're not his anymore. They're yours. Just yours. And even when he was alive – even if he was still alive, now – they were never his. They'd still be yours. They're a part of you, separate from him and everything he is, and they will always be yours, and what you make of them and yourself is completely independent from who and what he was. It's your choice. You're your own person. You can be and do whatever you want."
From across the table, Suzume looks at him as if she doesn't really believe him. She looks like a child, small and frightened, and she also looks about a million years old, wearing a look of ground-down-to-the-bone weariness he has never seen on anyone before.
It's like she's afraid to believe him, or too exhausted to want to try. She has the look of a caged and hunted animal about her, and he cannot begin to understand why. Her father is dead. Her father is dead, and Hawks hadn't killed him, and –
"Really?" she asks, and her voice breaks on the word.
"Really."
Her hand beneath his is small and still and very warm. "Sometimes," she says, very, very softly, "I wish that was the truth."
Hawks offers her a smile that has her looking away, lids heavy, eyes downcast, so he squeezes her hand instead. "Hey, I get it, and it's okay. It can be hard to unpack this sorta thing. It's way easier to wallow in it, even. But as with anything, the more you do it, the easier it gets, right? You'll be an expert in no time. You'll be the best at flying, and better at, well, I don't know, hurting less, and just, anything you want, you can do it. And hey, you've already proven yourself to be excellent at helping me with my problems! That's definitely something."
"Yeah?" Suzume asks, still not really looking at him. "What problems are those?"
"You've got no idea how much I agonized over what we'd do after dinner. I had no damn clue. Walk? Boring. Arcade? I fucking suck at games. Stone throwing? Confession: I know I suggested it, but I don't actually know how to skip stones. It's been a fucking catastrophe for me. What does anyone really do for fun? Fuck, I thought. I don't know. I don't know!
"And so, here I was, prepared to make a spectacular, S-class, god-tier clown of myself – but no more. Now I know exactly what we can do. I'm back on top of the world, baby. Mr. King Cool himself."
"I mean – you probably should have kept the bits about being an S-class, god-tier clown to yourself… you're kind of underselling your point, I think." Her eyes are still so sad, but there's a hint of a smile in her voice; Hawks can tell. And that's enough, he thinks. It's enough for him. He can work with that.
Grinning at her, he squeezes her hand again, his thumb smoothing down the length of her own. "Funny thing you picked Italian," he says, "Great choice, really. Couldn't have picked anything better, even?"
"How come?" Curiosity now, too. A little less sad.
With his spare hand, he slides his melon soda across the table towards her. "'Cause we got years of flying to catch you up on, chickadee, and god knows you're gonna need all the carbs in the world to keep up."
For a long minute, Suzume considers the drink before her. Then, very carefully, she lifts the glass and holds it up in his direction. "To bonds forged in the sky," she says, and her eyes look a little wet. "I'll try not to disrespect their sanctity."
And Hawks wonders: is this what people do? Is this what living is like? What family is like?
And his throat aches, but not in a way that's bad. Not really.
And he finds he feels lighter than he has in a very long, long time.
(Maybe even ever.)
AN: ...I lied, I'm getting attached. LORD, LMAO. I was really agonizing over this, both because I was worried I was making him like, emtoo/em much, but also, idk, I just love him as a really goofy, irreverent, self-deprecating dork. I feel like he'd deffo be an incredible older brother. Suzu's life would prolly be a lot more, uh, stable, if Dabi had put his plan into place a day later and Hawks had gotten there first.
