Chapter Text
Keigo is a quiet child. He tries hard to be, anyway. If he’s quiet, his parents don’t notice him so much. Things are better that way.
When he’s home, he creeps down the hall on tiptoe, footsteps gentle and hollow-boned so that his shoes don’t make noise on the naked floors. Bare feet would be quieter, but in the end he prefers the crunch of glass under the sole of a boot rather than a muted, shaky exhale and washing blood out of his socks.
He spreads his wings until the tips of his feathers brush along the walls, a hushed rustle that tells him if there’s anybody on the other side of a wall, a door, a curtain. His mom has a speed quirk that works through self-directed telekinesis, and his dad has feathers like Keigo does, but neither of them can hear like him. He didn’t know it wasn’t usual until he started practicing being quiet, and realized that the beat of his heart didn’t give him away.
Being quiet isn’t enough anymore, though. Now he lives in a different place, where they give him slippers to wear inside and no longer call him Keigo. He’s Hawks now, which means three whole meals a day and training to be a hero like Endeavor. The floors are still naked, but it’s in a clinical, sterile way. It’s okay to wear slippers because there’s nothing that hurts to step on.
It’s also okay to not be quiet, because everybody here pays attention to him, and there’s cameras all over the place anyways. Hawks doesn’t need to be quiet, because Hawks is going to be a hero, and heroes talk to people and inspire them. Even Endeavor, a man of few words, didn’t hide away - not even from Keigo’s mom. That’s how Keigo knew Endeavor was so brave.
It takes him a while to get used to being Hawks, though. He’s been Keigo his whole life, and he doesn’t know which parts he’s supposed to leave behind. That’s what training is for, though.
So Hawks isn’t supposed to be quiet all of the time, but he starts out that way anyways.
Hawks is also a little kid, like Keigo was. Unlike for Keigo, though, Hawks being a little kid means that people have to look after him and make sure he doesn’t get in trouble or use his quirk outside of training. Hawks is fast, and smart, and a little bit too quiet, which means he’s hard for his handler to keep track of, even with the cameras. They want to make it easier, so that he’s safe.
“It’s perfectly safe, Hawks. We’re just going to make sure you don’t go over your limits and hurt yourself,” his handler tells Hawks, crouching down so that they can look him in the eye. They’ve been pretty nice to Hawks so far, and he’s not sure why they talk to him like he’s a scared little kid. He promised that he’s going to do what he’s supposed to, since they’re training him to be a hero. Adults always like to say all kinds of nonsense things, but now they say them at Hawks, and Keigo never learned how he’s meant to respond.
He nods, silent, and then remembers that he’s Hawks now.
“Okay,” he chirps, and takes their hand when they hold it out. It’s kind of stupid, because he’s not a baby, but it makes them feel better to know where he is all the time.
They lead him down a white hallway and into a room he’s never been in before. That’s nothing special, really. The place he lives now is huge, with lots of floors and rooms he’s never been in. He’s not sure he could explore it all in his whole life.
This room, though, is pretty neat. It smells weird, like chemicals and flowers and sweet things and more. There are mirrors with lights around them, and a table with pretty glass bottles and all kinds of different brushes. His mom had some things like that when he was Keigo, but he wasn’t allowed to look at it up close. She said it was expensive, and didn’t like him touching any of it, which was fine - the smell is tickling his chest already, sending his nose wrinkling and his breaths shallowing out.
His handler pats a big black chair that’s in front of the largest table and mirror, and Hawks hop-flutters onto it obediently. It feels like it’s made out of fake leather stuff, the kind that his mom always sorted into the junk pile after she went shopping. There’s also a man by the chair, waiting for them both. His wavy brown hair smells a lot like the stuff on the table, and he’s not dressed in the black suits everyone else here wears. Instead, his pressed shirt is a bright, colorful blue, and he has a white apron on.
“Here,” his handler says, taking his arm and turning Hawks around, “Like this.”
It’s not how people normally sit in chairs, but the normal way isn’t very comfortable to Hawks either, so he doesn’t mind sitting kneeling backwards on the seat. His wings are free to droop over the sides of the seat like this, which they do when his handler tugs them out from against his back. Hawks lets them move him around however they’d like, waiting to find out what kind of training they are doing today.
“Okay,” his handler says eventually, seemingly satisfied with his position, and glances up at the new man. “This good?”
The man shrugs, propping up an elbow on a folded arm and fiddling with an earring. Hawks really likes his earrings - they’re very shiny. Maybe Pro Hero Hawks can be the kind of person who wears earrings.
“I dunno,” the man says, “I’ve never done anything like this. It should be the same as hair, shouldn’t it?”
“Mm,” his handler agrees, “Hawks, honey, please hold your wings steady now.”
He thinks he knows what they’re going to be doing. His mom used to do this sometimes, too, before Endeavor saved Keigo. When Keigo used his quirk to be too noisy, too annoying, too clingy and in-the-way, she confiscated his primary feathers so that he wouldn’t fly around so much. It hurt a little bit when she tugged them out, and itched when they finally went dead and started to regrow. Sometimes, Keigo would steal them back from her and put them back onto his wings… but only when she was busy and out of the house.
His dad never really noticed. His dad didn’t notice a lot of things, though. He spent most of his time making messes of sharp things on the floor and hogging the TV.
She’s not here now, though, and hasn’t been around to tug out his feathers for a long time. He supposes it’s not so bad, if it’s part of training - though Hawks wishes that it was something he could leave behind with Keigo.
The man with the pretty hair and the earrings pulls out a long, sharp pair of scissors.
Hawks’s eyes widen, vision flickering at the edges as his pupils narrow and widen with the jolt that shoots throw him, and he yanks his wings back in, shaking his head.
His handler sighs.
“Hawks,” they say sternly. They don’t call him ‘honey’ when he’s being bad. “I said to keep your wings out. This is going to take thirty seconds, and then you have training.”
Hawks shakes his head again, staring at the way his hands wind through the fabric of his shorts and chewing on his lip.
“Use your words, Hawks,” they say, “Don’t you want to go do hero training? Or do you want to be sent back home over a little trim? I thought you said you were sure you could handle it?”
His wings shudder on his back, once, and then Hawks takes a deep breath and holds it. He stretches his wings back out and squeezes his eyes shut.
“There we go!” his handler says, satisfaction curling through their tone. “Okay, Watanabe-san, please be quick.”
“Uh-huh - “
The scissors make a ‘snick’ as the man opens them, and a warm hand wraps around the solid bone of Hawks’s wing. They snip once, twice, five quick little slices that are over before Hawks knows it.
The pain, though. The pain stays longer than that.
Hawks hasn’t ever cut his feathers before, but he’s had them break. Sometimes it was his mom, dragging him by the wing to throw him out of her room because he got into her nice clothes. Sometimes it was just a bad landing, with Hawks unbalanced by the plastic convenience store bag in his arms and tumbling head-over-heel into the tree the neighbors had in their nice, fancy backyard. His mom pulled on his feathers for that one, too, because he’d kicked up and squished some yellow flowers, and not gotten out fast enough to stop from getting caught.
It always hurts. And not in the easy, momentary way that happens when he gets a paper cut at school or sticks his hand on something sharp through the trash bag when he’s doing chores taking out the trash. It’s a deep, weird pain that travels all the way up to the bone of his wing, and then splits in two: the ache of his wing, and the phantom tug of something being wrong and missing.
It’s not quite so bad compared to that, to have the feathers cut. The severing point is cleaner, and there aren’t any jagged edges to poke at his other feathers. Of course, Hawks has also never broken five of his biggest feathers at once.
Hawks jerks back with a gasp, wet with involuntary tears, and keels over right into his handler in his effort to get away from Watanabe-san. He wraps his clipped wing around his shoulder, clutches it to his chest with both hands, and his other one flies out in a flap as he tumbles off the chair.
“No!” he shouts as his handler catches him, forgetting all of his resolutions about staying quiet. “No, no - stop it, I don’t want this!”
“Hawks!” his handler snaps, smacking the table beside his face. Hawks jumps, flinching into the air, and they grab his shoulder to shove him face down against the table. Bottles go flying when his wings beat harshly at the air, tinkling to the ground like a waterfall of glass, and his handler leans a forearm against his back. The breath wheezes out of Hawks’s chest, turning his protests into empty puffs of air. His handler grabs his good wing, the one that doesn’t hurt, and presses it flat against the cleared table with an open palm until all his flailing amounts only to so much twitching.
“No,” Hawks repeats, trying to reach back for their arm. The angle is bad, though, and all he can do is shove his palms uselessly at the table. “Let me go!”
“Seriously, kid,” his handler grunts, “I get five words out of you that aren’t ‘yes’ or ‘no’ all week, and now of all times you want to throw a fit? Get it done, Watanabe-san.”
“Uh - !”
“Before he hyperventilates himself into unconsciousness.”
“ - Alright. Alright.”
Watanabe movies hesitantly at first, but gathers himself together when Hawks rakes his talons down the table, leaving small furrows.
He clips again, once for each of Hawks’s five biggest primaries.
Keigo is a quiet child, but Hawks has never had his wings clipped before, and before he knows it, he wails into the wooden table.
“It hurts,” he sobs, cheek shoved against the countertop as Watanabe’s scissors close onto his wings again and again, “It hurts, it hurts, please stop, it hurts - “
His handler lets go and Hawks drops to the floor, darting under the table as soon as his feet hit the ground. He’s hiccuping so hard between breaths that he can hardly catch a lungful, and his wings hurt and feel wrong, and he can’t steal his primaries back like this, can’t grow them back, he’s not going to be able to fly -
“Hawks?” calls his handler, voice as soft as Keigo’s used to be, “Hawks, honey, what do you mean ‘it hurts?’”
He pulls his knees up to his face, huddling into the corner so that his wings are pressed against the wall and well out of anybody else’s reach.
“Feathers don’t have nerves, honey,” they call, crouching by the table so they can peer under it. One of their hands holds the tabletop to balance themselves, but the other reaches out to Hawks, palm open. He does not reach back. “They’re like hair.”
Hawks’s talons pinprick against his palms as his fingers curl. He tucks them against his chest so that they can’t see the way they’ve tightened.
“Use your words, Hawks,” his handler reminds him. Keigo is a quiet child, but Hawks isn’t supposed to be.
“They- hic! - hurt,” Hawks repeats, then takes a breath and holds it until his chest stops hitching so much. “They ain’t like hair. I can feel ‘em, ‘n they hurt.”
“Use your polite words,” his handler corrects, and Hawks ducks his chin against his collar. He talks like his mom, and his mom never said anything nice, so Hawks isn’t supposed to talk like her.
“Try again,” they say.
“I can feel things with my feathers,” Hawks whispers into his knees, “So they hurt when you cut them.”
“I didn’t know that,” his handler tells him, “I’m sorry that clipping them hurt you. We did it so that you could control your flying better while you’re still young. Do you understand?”
Hawks isn’t sure if he does understand, not really - he knows what words his handler is saying, but the way frissons of pain trickle up his feathers and down his wings doesn’t map onto any definition of ‘for his own good’ that he understands. It just hurts, so he nods obediently and curls up tighter in his dark little corner under the desk.
After that, he starts new kinds of training.
He gets to practice listening to things with his feathers. He’s already very good at doing it at home, where it’s quiet, but his teachers explain that he has to be able to tell apart different noises in rescue situations. They tell him to imagine how much better and safer and faster he would have been during the highway crash if he could know exactly where all the people had been without even looking, tell him to imagine being able to save everyone in an avalanche or a big burning building.
And then, when he says he wouldn’t be able to send his feathers into a burning building anyways, he starts the other kind of training.
His feathers are a great boon, his teachers say, because they let him do and hear and feel so many things at once. They’re also a hindrance, though, because he has so many and they’re so easy to hurt. All heroes get hurt in the line of duty, but Hawks has more places to hurt than almost any other hero, and he has to be able to deal with that in the heat of combat. He can’t let his greatest strength also be his greatest weakness.
Then his teacher takes out a lighter, steals one of the small, scapular feathers from the base of his wing, and burns it right up.
He cries again the first time it happens, but his quirk training teacher isn’t like his handler. She doesn’t ever call him honey, and her face doesn’t twist with pity when he grabs at her arm and cringes into her suit jacket. She makes him put on a blindfold and do his quirk practice, and she keeps plucking out his scapulars and burning them until he stops missing his targets every time she does it. Then, she switches to twisting them in half. Then to snipping them apart with scissors.
It goes on like this, and Hawks loses track of the ways she finds to destroy his feathers.
Once, there’s a real earthquake that shakes the building - not the kind of drill that Hawks trains through sometimes, but a massive, shuddering thing that cracks a wall and sends dust and plaster raining into Hawks’s hair. His handler rushes him to evacuate, but they’re on the uppermost floors and the intense, wild sway of the building slams his handler into a wall right on top of Hawks. He doesn’t hit his head, but the weight of their body crushes one of his wings.
His handler is dazed when they get up, groggy and confused with a trickle of blood coming from their temple. Hawks wraps his arms under their armpits and flies both of them out of a window on a broken wing. He’s fluttering and half-falling by the time he gets them to the ground, his landing rough and unpracticed, but his handler is okay and nobody else gets seriously hurt.
His teacher congratulates Hawks the next day, and says she’s proud of his progress. His broken wing is wrapped up and bound to his back, and he doesn’t have to do any quirk training while it heals. She praises his skill and his resilience, and he spends his canceled class time learning to read lips and remember current quirk use laws.
Two weeks later, when his nurse says Hawks can train again, his teacher starts plucking secondary feathers.