Archive of Our Own

Keigo has known since he was a child that his soulmate is going to hate him. 

He knows he is one of the unlucky few who have a mark displaying pain, instead of love. That he’s got his tragedy inked onto his body for all the world to see. Why else would he have the shape of a large hand wrapped around the base of his throat?

His mother makes it clear to him from a very young age that he’ll have to be careful of whoever turns his mark to color. They will not care about him. They will be significant in his life, hold a piece of his soul because they will hurt him. Keigo wonders what he did in his past lives to deserve this. 

Certainly he must have done something to earn this. He doesn’t think the universe would curse a child like this otherwise. 

When the Commission takes him, he thinks that maybe one of these people, with their angry words and angry hands will be the one to color his mark. They all seem to enjoy hurting him enough, at least. But the training gets harder and he gets tougher, and the mark stays dull and black. 

When he’s ten years old, his handlers teach him how to cover it up, and tell him that it is important that he never lets it show. It’ll look bad to the media, of course, and it’s better to keep people guessing anyway. He’ll have more fans if any of them think they could be his soulmate.

Keigo does not understand, at ten years old. He still dutifully covers up his mark, as he’s told. 

He is nothing if not eager to please. 

Maybe that’ll make his soulmate hate him a little less, if he tries harder to be good.

His eagerness carries poorly into his adult life, for him at least. It’s how he climbs the hero rankings so fast, sure, but it’s also how he winds up infiltrating the League of Villains, because the Commission asked, and he really doesn’t know how to say no anymore. He doesn’t know if he can.

He somehow, miraculously, makes contact with the villain Dabi through a long series of contacts, and sets up a meeting and tries to ignore the way his heart is trying very hard to free itself from his chest as he slinks down an alley in the middle of the night. 

He’s there five minutes early. 

And he’s still there fifteen minutes later.

And half an hour later

And an hour later.

He’s about to leave, thinking he’s been stood up, when his feathers sense vibrations somewhere nearby, moving too fast to get a lock on before Keigo’s being slammed into a wall. 

There is a hand clamped around his neck, and in a panic, Keigo grasps the arm connected to it, trying to get a primary feather loose so he can have a defense. He can’t believe he let his guard down so much. How foolish, how fucking stupid. 

His entire world lights up in pain as half of his feathers go up in flames all at once. 

Dabi—because that’s who this is, there’s no way it’s anyone else, with the flames and the scars and the staples—gets very close to Keigo’s face, and snarls. 

“Give me one good reason I shouldn’t roast you alive right now, Pretty Bird,” he sneers, and Keigo has to tamp down on the way that churns his stomach. 

He taps, desperately, insistently, at Dabi’s arm, trying to make him let go, because he can’t answer if he can’t breathe, and if he can’t answer, Dabi’s gonna kill him. 

Dabi relents, only by a hair, but it’s enough for Keigo to cough and splutter and catch his breath. 

“Please don’t,” is the first thing out of his mouth, and he curses himself for sounding so stupid. “Look, I’m not here to bring you in. I’m the one you’re supposed to be meeting with. I’m here to talk to you about working with the League.”

“You?” Dabi scoffs, incredulously. “You expect me to believe that you, the up and coming fucking golden boy , wants to suddenly go turncoat? You’re kidding. I’ll give you one more shot before I melt your face off. Do you think you could still be a hero if you looked like me?”

Keigo’s eyes go a little wide, and his remaining feathers ruffle in alarm. 

“I’m not lying! I mean it! I’m sick and tired of the way that hero society is run! This… everyone’s so focused on the rankings and staying in the Commission’s good graces, they’re losing sight of everything that should actually be on heroes’ minds! I’m out there running myself fucking ragged trying to save people and the people who are supposed to be actually implementing preventative measures to help before villains are turned into villains are doing nothing. Helping people isn’t all big flashy fights, it’s helping people who are less fortunate, who need a support system to get back on their feet. The government is supposed to do that, we’re supposed to be working towards a world where heroes have free time to...be. I’m sick and tired of everyone pretending we’re so different from each other. It’s time for change, and I can’t do that from where I am right now. Not alone, at least.”

Dabi regards him with a terrifyingly cold gaze for nearly a full minute. Uncomfortable with the silence, and starting to feel unable to breathe with the grip still around his neck, Keigo speaks up. 

“Can you please let go of my neck?”

He is not expecting the answer to be yes, but after only a moment of further consideration, Dabi releases him, and reaches into his pocket. 

Keigo does not move from where he is braced against the wall. 

He barely catches whatever Dabi throws at him with no warning a second later. 

“Keep that on you. Tell no one you’ve seen me. I’ll contact you if I feel like it.”

And then he’s gone. 

Keigo walks home half in a daze, lamenting the loss of half his feathers, and the time that it’ll take to grow those back, but with hope blooming in his chest, though it’s tinged a little with fear. 

He did what he was supposed to. He has positive news to bring his handlers. He’s going to corrupt himself and do horrible things very soon, no doubt, but he’s doing it for the greater good. He’s doing good . 

That’s what he tells himself, at least, as he detaches his remaining feathers, and climbs into the shower to try to wash away the grimy feeling crawling under his skin. 

He watches the coverup paint run down the drain with disinterest, and scrubs his skin raw in an effort to feel clean again. 

He steps out of the shower, and almost topples to the ground when he catches his reflection in the mirror. 

He really should have been expecting this. He deserves this. He deserves a soulmate who is going to hurt him, because he’s a failure and he’s not good no matter how hard he tries to be, and this is what he gets. 

Fuck, no, that’s… okay. Keigo takes a deep breath. He cannot afford to lose his composure now, even if he’s only performing for himself. 

He clutches the towel around his waist tighter, and steps closer to the mirror to take stock. 

His soulmark is alight with a swirl of navy and near-neon blue. The hand print is colored just like Dabi’s flames. Keigo can’t believe his goddamn luck. 

Not only is his soulmate a villain, Keigo’s bond is Incomplete. He didn’t leave a mark on Dabi in return. 

He’s got a soulmate who hates him, who isn’t attached to him in return. 

Figures. 

Still. He has a mission. He has a job to do. People are counting on him. He cannot fail. 

He cannot let his soulmate hangups get in the way of this. He can’t pretend that he’s more important than everyone he’s meant to protect.

~*~

Keigo, for the record, was not intending to get attached to the League of Villains. 

He wasn’t. 

But then things start happening . 

It starts with dinner. 

It takes months for them to allow Keigo into their hideouts, even just the temporary ones, but the second they do, they seem determined to keep him around as much as possible. Trying to get more out of him, or keep a closer eye on him, or what, he doesn’t know. 

Whatever it is, they have him stay for dinner, after a few meetings. 

It is a simple meal, but this is a waking nightmare for Keigo. 

Compress went out and picked up an assortment of takeout, and it’s all fried meat and vegetables drenched in sauces, and fuck, just looking at it makes Keigo’s lips want to curl. 

He can eat other things, sure, but meat is the only thing that really agrees with his stomach, that doesn’t make him terribly nauseous, and it’s only really enjoyable for him when it’s raw, so Keigo tends to only eat alone, if he can manage it. He doesn’t want to disgust anyone else with a shameful habit like that. 

So he forces down a few bites of whatever’s closest to him to be polite, and when he’s offered anything else, he declines. Even just looking at the food in front of him right now is making his stomach roll violently. 

The others seem to be paying little attention to him, but Dabi is glaring at him. 

The fourth time someone— Toga, he thinks, he’s not quite sure— offers him something and he declines, Dabi slams a hand on the table with a groan. 

“Get off your fucking high horse, hero. We’re not gonna poison you. fucking eat, you stubborn piece of shit.”

Keigo doesn’t flinch back, but it’s a near thing. Memories of when his handlers tried to train him out of his carnivorous tendencies flash through his mind, and leave him a little short of breath for a moment. 

“I can’t,” he says quietly, and he means it. 

Now there are eyes on him. All of them are looking at him, and he does not think this is going to go well for him. 

“What do you mean, you can’t?” Shigaraki asks, narrowing his eyes in Keigo’s direction. 

Fuck, god he didn’t want to have this kind of conversation, he doesn’t want these villains knowing this much about him but they’ll know if he’s lying about something so simple as food. There’s not a lot of harm in it, right?

“It’s not anything that you’ve done! It’s just that this is all fried or vegetables and I’m… It’s just, you know, my quirk. I’m part raptor. I can’t… uh, sorry. Don’t worry about it, really!”

Keigo tries for a smile, and knows it falls short. 

Dabi lets out a very loud grumble and storms out of the room. 

Keigo, in the wake of Dabi’s exit, tries very hard not to panic. He spends the next twenty-five minutes staring at some point on the table, and trying and failing to hear the conversation around him.

He’s snapped out of his thought spiral by a yellow styrofoam package being dropped onto the table in front of him. Keigo’s mouth waters at the sight of the raw ground chicken, his stomach twisting in knots at the thought of finally satisfying the hunger he’s been trying to stave off for a while. He’s sure that his pupils have narrowed to pinpoints with how focused he is. 

Still, he shakes his head, and tries to push the package away. 

“I— thank you, but I can’t— I mean I don’t want to make anyone uncomfortable. No one wants to watch a guy eat raw meat, it’s kinda disgusting.” 

He is trying to joke to lighten the sudden tense mood, but it does not land. Once again, all eyes are on him, and Keigo swallows nervously. 

“Fucking eat, Birdbrain. No one gives a shit about weird parts of your quirk. We’ve all got ‘em. Get over it.”

Keigo gnaws on his lower lip and glances to the others like he’s looking for additional approval. When they all just go back to eating as though nothing has even happened, Keigo very carefully peels open the package Dabi tossed in front of him. 

He doesn’t dig in with his hands, like his stupid Raptor Brain tells him to, but he picks up a fork and ducks his head in his best effort to hide as he takes a bite. 

Keigo makes it halfway through the package’s contents before chancing a glance up at Dabi. Dabi is staring at him curiously, and Keigo feels an imaginary throb in the mark on his neck. 

He ducks his head again and finishes his meal in silence. 

Dabi refuses when Keigo offers to repay him.

~*~

They really are starting to grow on him, much to his chagrin. It’s almost enough to make him forget his whole soulmate dilemma with how weirdly kind they all are to him. 

The League is strangely accepting of Keigo’s oddities, he’s come to find out. Far more accepting than any of his handlers have been in the past. 

By a week after Keigo first eats in front of them, every time he comes to one of their hideouts, he finds the fridge stocked with yellow styrofoam packages, full of nicer cuts of meat than he would ever treat himself to, too ashamed of his eating habits to allow himself something so nice. 

A month after the first incident, Keigo is sitting around waiting for Shigaraki, and absently trying to fix some of his out of place feathers. He’s starting to molt, and his wings are getting ridiculously itchy, and everything is out of place and he’s going crazy. He had at least been able to deal with most of his wings before he came here, but the closer he gets to the junction of his wings and back, the more difficult it is to reach, and he hadn’t had time to sort those out before leaving the house.

Kurogiri comes into the room through one of his vaguely terrifying portal things, and Keigo drops his hands into his lap to hide what he was doing. He wasn’t full-on preening, that’d be horribly embarrassing, but he hates being caught like this anyway. 

“Hawks,” Kurogiri greets neutrally. 

“Hi! Sorry, I was just waiting to meet with Shigaraki, I was supposed to give him a couple files he asked for.”

Kurogiri nods, or at least Keigo thinks he does, he can never tell what with the everything about how Kurogiri looks. 

“Are your wings bothering you?” he asks, and Keigo goes rigid. 

“Ah, no, it’s not really a big deal. Just have some new feathers growing in and they’re kinda itchy. Puts everything all out of whack, and I can’t really reach the feathers closer to my back easily.” He shrugs like it’s no big deal, even if he is being hit with the irrational urge to just claw at his wings until they stop itching. 

“Would you like some help?” Kurogiri offers, also as though it’s no big deal. 

Keigo’s eyes go a little wide. “Oh, no, no you don’t have to do that. It’s fine, I’ve just got to sort them out when I go home. Thanks for the offer, though!” 

And then he sits and waits some more and Shigaraki is really late now and Keigo is really itchy and he cannot take it anymore, he reaches back and tries to adjust the feathers that he knows are causing his grief and he can’t fucking reach like this. 

Kurogiri steps through another one of his portals, and Keigo thinks he’s gone and breathes a sigh of relief, trying to contort himself further to reach the last few out of place feathers. 

He can’t, and he slumps in frustration, about to give up on this whole meeting and just leave, when he feels a hand very carefully card through his wing and adjust the feathers that were bothering his. 

“Holy shit,” Keigo yelps, half in surprise, and half in relief. 

“You seemed to be struggling,” Kurogiri says, nonplussed. “You need to learn to allow yourself to be helped.”

Not a word about how weird Keigo’s wings are, not a word about him being an inconvenience. Just that he needs to let people help him more. 

That’s… not what Keigo expected from a villain, at all. 

Interesting. 

Keigo is almost tempted to ask him to continue to help, but then Dabi stalks into the room with a glare and a sneer curling his lips, and Keigo cuts himself off before he can even open his mouth. 

“Kuro. Bird,” Dabi greets, and then stalks out and quickly as he came. 

Two months after Kurogiri helps him out, Keigo finds himself caught in a torrential downpour on the way to meet with the League at a new hideout. He gets himself lost trying to find his way there, and it takes so long that the rain hits before he can get inside, when the storm should’ve passed him by while he was with the League. 

He steps in the door dripping wet and miserable, and shakes himself like a wet dog as the League watches on in amusement. 

“Shut up,” he mutters, before anyone even says anything. 

“You look like a drowned rat,” Dabi mutters, and Keigo has to fight off the urge to hide behind his wings. 

He flicks a few drenched feathers in Dabi’s direction instead. They don’t make it even half of the way there before they go up in flames. Keigo winces at the loss, but doesn’t react otherwise. 

“Can I have a second to dry off? I’m sorry, the wet wings are really uncomfortable.” 

Keigo doesn’t know when he started being so...honest with the League. But it’s kind of nice to have a few people he doesn’t have to put up a complete front with, even if he is planning on betraying them the first chance he gets.

“Stop apologizing,” Dabi snaps. 

At the same time, Shigaraki waves a hand dismissively and says, “Two doors down that hall has some towels, one after that is empty.”

Keigo ducks out of the room with murmured thanks to Shigaraki. He grabs a couple of towels to attempt to dry out his wings, and steps into the other room and closes the door firmly behind him. 

His wings are waterlogged as shit, so he dislodges most of his feathers to try to pat them dry more easily, and then strips his shirt off to wring it out for good measure. It’s just his luck that he’s mid-twist with the soaked shirt that Shigaraki swings the door open on him, a wad of fabric in his hand.

Keigo startles and lets out an alarmed noise, just this side of human sounding. He snaps his wings in to cover his chest, but it’s not quick enough. He knows, from the way Shigaraki is pointedly not looking at where his wings have covered him up. 

“Fuck, I’m sorry,” Keigo says, raking through his hair with the hand that isn’t wrapped like a vice around his sopping wet t-shirt. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean for— you shouldn’t have had to see me like this. I’m sorry you had to see that, I know they’re ugly to look at. Could you just— please don’t mention it to the others, I’m really sorry—”

“Stop.” Shigaraki’s voice leaves no room for debate. “Part of your quirk, I assume?”

Keigo nods, but doesn’t speak. He was told not to after all. 

Shigaraki raises an eyebrow, and narrows his eyes. 

Keigo, unable to stand the awkward silence, breaks. “It’s a secondary set of pectoral muscles to help with flying.”

“None of my business then.” He tosses the wad of fabric he’s holding at Keigo. It unfolds in the air, and reveals itself to be a shirt, the back already slit to accommodate wings. “Someone dug up a spare shirt for you. Figured you’d wanna let that stupid jacket of yours air out. You’re no use to me if you keel over dead cause you let yourself get sick.” 

His tone sounds… oddly fond. Keigo doesn’t know what to make of it, or even if he’s hearing that right. 

But Shigaraki doesn’t say anything more to Keigo, and he doesn’t say anything to anyone about Keigo’s fucked up physiology, and he makes sure Keigo’s not going to get drenched again on his way home before he lets him leave.

So he must be at least a little bit right about the fondness he heard. 

Strange. 

Two weeks later, he’s alone in a warehouse waiting for Dabi when Toga saunters in, clutching something in each hand. She gives him a slightly unsettling smile and hops up onto the hunk of concrete he’s sitting on. 

“Dabi wanted me to tell you he’s gonna be late! And I didn’t want you to be lonely, so I thought I’d come keep you company!” 

“That’s very nice of you,” he says absently, still staring off into space, a little zoned out. 

“I brought you a snack too!” 

“Oh that’s ni— Holy shit!”

“What?” Toga says, innocently, like she’s not holding a dead bird by the neck right in front of his face. “You eat raw meat, right? So, a snack! One for me, one for you. Dabi says you never eat enough and it annoys him.”

Of course Dabi has an issue with his habits. Dabi has an issue with everything about him. 

More importantly, though, weird as it is, Toga’s actions are actually really thoughtful. She’s gone out of her way to bring him… well, the freshest raw meat she could get her hands on. 

Still…

“Toga, this is really sweet of you but I’m… I don’t think I’m comfortable eating that. I really appreciate you going out of your way to bring it to me though.” 

Toga shrugs, and sets the dead bird down gently on her other side. 

“That’s alright! More for me then!” she says, and sinks her fangs into the second bird’s neck. 

Keigo… doesn’t really mind. 

He thinks that a couple months ago he would have. When he had first started getting closer to the League his own reservations about himself were far too strong for him to have been able to accept this, even from someone else. But a bit of exposure to the League’s particular brand of kindness and while he can’t bring himself to just eat a freshly killed bird, he’s happy to sit in companionable silence while Toga sucks a couple of them dry. 

He wonders, distantly, why the Commission was so adamant that he keep the raptor parts of him hidden. Even the villains, those who are meant to be cruel and spiteful to all those around them, can accept these little oddities about him. He wonders, for the first time, really, why he isn’t allowed to be himself with anyone but the people he’s meant to be betraying. 

Dabi kicks in a door to the warehouse then, and Keigo leaps to his feet, his curiosity shoved to the back of his mind and locked into several boxes, behind several walls. Those are the kind of bad thoughts that are going to get him in trouble. 

“Bird, Vampire,” Dabi greets, his signature sneer on his face. 

Besides, Keigo has bigger problems to handle, like the pyromaniac who hates him that just entered the building. 

Still, now that Keigo’s thinking about it, Dabi does put a lot of effort into keeping him alive for someone who supposedly can’t stand to be around him. Sure he’s constantly spitting the word “hero” at Keigo like an insult, and calling him “Birdbrain” and criticizing his behavior. But Keigo also knows that Dabi’s the one who stocks the League’s fridges with raw meat for when Keigo’s there. He brings Keigo little gifts, things he thinks Keigo will like or things he’s mentioned needing. He’s constantly forcing Keigo to take time to take a nap if he hasn’t slept in a while. 

Dabi has a weird interest in making sure Keigo stays alive. It’s probably just for his information, given how much Dabi clearly despises being around him, but still. Having his soulmate display so much...affection towards him lights hope in his chest. He doesn’t want to let it grow too much, but it’s hard not to. If he didn’t know any better, he’d almost be tempted to say Dabi was courting him. But he knows better. He is not Dabi’s soulmate.

A week after Toga offers him a dead bird, Keigo gets into a fight with a minor villain. It’s not a difficult fight, wrapped up in a few minutes, but the guy gets in a lucky hit that slashes a deep cut into Keigo’s chest. 

When Keigo still turns up to the hideout later that day, Dabi seizes him by the shoulders and steers him directly into one of the empty rooms with an approximation of a bed. 

“Fucking get some rest you, idiot. We saw you go down during that fight today, asshole. Why the hell are you even here?” He shoves Keigo into the bed and turns on his heel. “You know what? I don’t want to know, don’t tell me. Just. Fuck. Go to bed dumbass.”

Keigo doesn’t know why Dabi behaves the way he does. He doesn’t have any obligation to Keigo as a soulmate, not the way Keigo has to him. It’s one of life’s great mysteries, he supposes. 

And then he passes out, because Dabi was right, he needs the rest. 

~*~

Keigo, if he’s being honest with himself, knows he should have been expecting everything to come out eventually. It’s just his luck. There’s no way he could keep his mark hidden forever. 

Still, that doesn’t make it any easier to deal with. 

He’s out on a mission with the League, one of the first he’s been allowed out on, and in order to conceal his rather recognizable self, he’s left most of his feathers behind, carrying only a couple of his primaries as weapons, just in case. 

Of course, things have to go sideways, because Keigo does not get to have nice things, even if those nice things are a group of murderers and psychopaths hellbent on razing hero society to the earth. 

The supposedly easy recon mission goes so far sideways, it ends with Keigo being carried out in one of Compress’s marbles, because he’s bleeding out through a gash in his stomach put there by a spear he jumped in front of to keep Dabi from getting grazed. 

He really can’t seem to put his heroic instincts on the backburner for even one mission. 

He wonders why the Commission thought he was capable enough for this. 

For anything really. 

He can feel himself losing his grip on consciousness. 

He passes out before they can pull him from the marble. 

~*~

Dabi is going to wring Hawks’s neck as soon as he’s better. 

The fucking fool just had to go and put himself in danger to stop Dabi from getting nicked by their opponent’s spear, as though Dabi couldn’t handle it. The stupid, self-sacrificing, moronic little idiot. 

Fuck. 

He’s afraid he’s not going to get the chance to kill Hawks for his actions. Hawks might actually die first. 

He’s unconscious when they pull him from Compress’s marble, pale and sweating profusely. As much as Dabi wants to give it his best shot to shake life back into Hawks’s limp body, he knows he can’t help here. He is built for destruction, not healing. He steps back, and lets Kurogiri and Compress get to work patching Hawks up. 

Dabi thinks, a little bitterly, that it’s almost funny. A group of villains trying so desperately to save a hero’s life, because he’s grown on them a bit. It’s fucking tragically ironic. 

Dabi wants to scream. 

“Hey, what’s that?” Spinner asks, interrupting Dabi’s angryhurt spiral. He looks up to see what the lizard’s talking about. 

Oh. 

That’s… odd. 

Hawk’s sweat is tinged tan over his clavicle, like he’s sweating off…

“It’s makeup. You should clean that off of him so it doesn’t get in any of his wounds,” Dabi answers. He knows first hand how painful that can be. 

Compress nods, and while Kurogiri continues to tend to the wounds on Hawks’s lower abdomen, Compress cleans away the foundation that Hawks is sweating off. 

Dabi does not like what it reveals. 

“Oh,” Toga says, after the first few swipes of a cloth over Hawks’s chest. “That’s a soulmark.”

“He’s been hiding it?” Spinner asks, confused. 

“Why?” 

Dabi knows why. 

Oh fuck. 

Oh god, fuck, no. 

Compress cleans the last of the cover up away, and Dabi’s worst suspicions are confirmed. 

Standing out starkly against Hawks’s flushed skin is a clear print of a hand around his throat. Dabi’s hand. 

“Oh my god,” Toga whispers. “Who would do something like that to him? He’s so… nice! How could a soulmate do something like this at all?” 

“Well no wonder he covers it up,” Shigaraki grumbles. 

Spinner looks to him. “What do you mean?” 

“He’s got a mark that’s not based in someone caring about him. Sometimes soulmarks are from a person who’s significant to you because they fuck you up. They’re rare, but they happen. Looks like Hawks was unlucky enough to have one of those.”

Fuck, Dabi’s going to be sick. 

His stomach lurches. 

No, no, no. 

He did this to Hawks. He looks at the mark and he knows. He knows he did this. 

“Do you think his soulmate is the reason he’s embarrassed about parts of his quirk?” Compress asks. 

Kurogiri sighs. “If this mark is anything to go by—” no, don’t say it, please don’t say it, “—I think it could be safe to assume that Hawks’s soulmate is—” please no, don’t say it, don’t say it, it can’t be true,  he can’t be— “abusive.”

Dabi physically recoils. 

He’s just like his father. 

Fuck, he’s just like Endeavor, he’s just like that monster, he hurt his soulmate, he’s fucking disgusting, he can’t—

Dabi spins on his heel, and flees the room, like the fucking coward he is. 

~*~

Keigo comes to in waves. 

It starts with being vaguely aware of voices around him, before he’s pulled back into darkness. The next time, he’s aware of the voices, and of the fact that he fucking hurts , and then he is swallowed by the dark again. 

The third time, he blinks his eyes open, and glances around.

“Hawks!” Toga exclaims, her face lighting up. Keigo gives her a tired smile. 

“I feel like I just got hit by a bus.”

“You got stabbed with a spear,” Shigaraki says. There’s an odd intonation in his voice, and it immediately sets Keigo on alert. 

That’s when he registers that he’s lying, shirtless, on a metal table, surrounded by the entire League, minus Dabi. 

Keigo’s heart starts beating double-time in his chest. 

Everyone is silent for a moment longer, before Toga, ever incapable of staying silent, pipes up, her voice laced with sadness. 

“Why’d you hide it from us? You know we would’ve helped you!”

“Toga!” Kurogiri admonishes, but the damage has been done. 

Fuck. 

They know. 

Oh god, fuck, they know. 

Dabi knows. 

“I’m sorry,” is the only thing that Keigo can think to say. “Fuck, I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean— I didn’t want him to feel obligated, and I didn’t want— I didn’t know what to do , he hates me and he’s my soulmate , I just— I— I’m so sorry.”

“Hawks. It’s okay,” Kurogiri starts. 

Keigo throws a hand up in the air and gestures around. “It’s clearly not, because he’s not here !” 

“What?” Shigaraki bites out, pure venom in his voice. 

Keigo balks. 

“It’s fucking Dabi?” Spinner says, tone full of disbelief. 

Oh fuck. They didn’t… 

They didn’t know. 

They didn’t know and now he’s told them, he’s ruined everything, goddammit, why is he such a fuck up, they’re going to kill him, they’re going to kill him, he’s going to die —

“Breathe,” someone commands, and Keigo, nothing if not eager to please, obeys. 

“He doesn’t know,” Keigo finally stammers, after he collects himself enough to speak. “He doesn’t… I didn’t leave a mark on him. It’s Incomplete, it’s not— he doesn’t know. I’m not his.”

“Are you sure?” Compress asks, not pressing, just curious. 

Keigo nods miserably. “I touched him back, soon as he touched me. I didn’t leave a mark on him.”

“And you haven’t told him?” Shigaraki prods. 

Keigo shakes his head this time. 

“No. I didn’t… I know I’m an inconvenience to work around, with my schedule, and my habits and the whole secret villain thing and just… It’s a half formed bond. I didn’t want him feeling obligated to give a shit about me because of some unrequited bullshit or— I— and I didn’t want— I already have the Commission on my back. I didn’t want another person knowing how much power they hold over me. I’d… There’s not a lot I wouldn’t do for him, even though he hates me.”

Kurogiri leaves without another word. 

Keigo’s fucked up, badly , if even Kurogiri is just walking out like that. 

“I’m sorry.”

Keigo can’t keep himself awake for much longer after that. 

~*~

When he wakes up again, he’s alone, and well enough to stand, so he calls his feathers back to him as quickly as possible, and flees without a backward glance. 

So what if this jeopardizes his mission. So what if it’s a massive risk. 

So what if it makes him look guilty. 

He can’t be there. 

He needs to leave. 

He needs time to figure his shit out so he can plaster his fake smile on his face again and pretend like he didn’t just monumentally fuck up. 

He’ll be fine after he just gets over this. 

He’s fine. 

He doesn’t hear from the League for a week. 

In the end, it’s a request from Compress to meet. Compress is safe. He’s not going to push or prod or try to get him to open up or anything. He’ll stick to business if Keigo does. 

He agrees to the meeting, and sees what sparse information he can dig up to hand over this time, and makes his way to an abandoned warehouse in the middle of the night, like nothing is wrong. 

The temperature shoots up the second Keigo steps into the warehouse, and he knows immediately that he has been tricked. 

Dabi’s pacing a trench into the concrete floor in the center of the warehouse, blue flames licking up his fingers and glinting off of the staples in his hands. 

Keigo is about to turn tail and run, when Dabi calls out. 

“Why the hell did you lie to me?” 

Dabi’s voice is twisted and angry and hurt, and Keigo shrinks at the words, his wings drawing close in a protective manner. 

“Shigaraki told me what you said. Did you really think that I’d— I mean fuck Hawks. I’m a villain, but I’m not a fucking monster, I’m not— I’d never— How could you actually think that I’d fucking— God Hawks, what the fuck —” 

Dabi cuts himself off, and fixes his gaze on Keigo, and Keigo has to fight off every instinct in him that is screaming at him to run the fuck away . 

He’s trembling where he stands, his feathers ruffled in alarm, his chest heaving with the effort it’s taking him to breathe, and his barely healing wounds are aching. 

“Fuck,” Dabi says again, “the first time I laid hands on my soulmate I was trying to kill you. You must hate me.” 

His tone is softer than Dabi has ever sounded. 

Keigo doesn’t know how to handle it. 

Instead, he says, “I’m not your soulmate.”

Dabi looks confused. 

“But your mark—”

“Is unrequited. I touched you back that night. I’ve touched you a thousand times since. Nothing happened. I didn’t mark you back. You don’t owe me anything because of some stupid, half-formed bond. It’s fine. You probably have other marks anyway, with the rest of the League, or… whatever. I don’t matter.”

“Hawks,” Dabi snaps. 

“It. Fuck. It doesn’t matter. I meant it doesn’t matter.”

“I don’t think you did,” Dabi says, and he stalks closer to Keigo, his staples catching the low light in all the wrong ways. “And you’re wrong about my marks.”

Keigo just blinks at him stupidly.

“I don’t even know what marks I have for sure. I don’t remember well enough. I can half-see a few of them, I think they’re ones from my siblings, but I— did you know that soulmarks can burn away?”

And Keigo can't even make himself respond, gaping like a fish and staring because is Dabi saying what he thinks he’s saying? 

“I think I remember one, on my arm, where you touched me. I knew that it felt weird, that I felt weird, I mean shit, do you think I give as much of a fuck about anyone else as I do about you? Why do you think I’ve been trying so hard to take fucking care of you, asshole? I felt fucking something!” 

Keigo’s breath catches in his throat.

“Why?” is all he can force out, choked and weak sounding. Fuck, he’s pathetic.

“What the fuck, Hawks.”

Keigo takes a step back, but holds his ground on his point. God, he’s getting emotional, he’s getting upset, he’s going to ruin everything, he’s going to say something he regrets.

“Why? Why do you care? I’m not… you have no proof I’m your soulmate! You don’t even like me! And besides, look at me! What do you see that makes you want to give a fuck so bad? I’m a fucking freak, Dabi! I eat raw meat and I have these stupid fucking muscles that make my chest look all fucked up and I—“

“Shut the fuck up,” Dabi growls out, and Keigo snaps his mouth shut, apologies already at his lips. “Don’t you fucking dare talk about yourself like that. You’re not— I mean shit, Hawks, my skin is stapled onto my body to keep it there, how could you ever think I— fuck, you’re goddamn gorgeous, who told you otherwise?”

Keigo fixes his eyes on the ground and tries to catch his breath, and mumbles something non-committal about a handler.

“The fucking Commission did this to you? Policing your damn appearance like they’re entitled to your body like that? No one is entitled to that, not even me, not even your soulmate—”

“I’m not your soulmate!” Keigo insists,  because he can’t be, he can’t, he could handle the half formed bond, he could handle the betrayal if it were just that, but he can’t do this, if they’re really soulmates, he can’t do this—

“Why can’t you accept that we might be soulmates? Did they really fuck you up so bad that you can’t even consider— I mean, I know the mark I left on you is bad and I’m sorry I made you go through your life thinking that I’d be awful, but do you really still think that I—“

Keigo, in his panic addled state, does not think about his next words or how monumentally stupid they are until they’ve already condemned him. 

“How the fuck am I supposed to betray you if it’s a real bond!”

Oh. 

Oh no.

Keigo’s a dead man, holy shit.

Dabi says something. Keigo can’t hear it. He can’t hear anything besides the ringing that’s screaming in his ears. He’s ruined everything, months of work, all because he was too fucking stupid to just keep up appearances, because he couldn’t do a single damn thing right.

Dabi’s still speaking.

“Dammit, Bird, you have about five seconds to fucking tell me what you mean before I set this building on fire with you in it!”

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” is all Keigo can gasp out, clutching at his own throat, over his painted over soulmark. “Fuck, I didn’t— I’m sorry, I— I fucked everything up, they’re gonna kill me. You’re gonna kill me, oh my god, I didn’t— I can’t— I’m sorry .”

At some point, his knees buckle, and the weight of his wings drags him crashing down, still struggling to breathe.

He’s going to die. He’s only twenty-two, and he is going to die. Distantly, through the haze of panic, he wonders how long it will take them to find his body. If they even look. Or maybe the League will dump his corpse on the Commission’s front steps as a message. 

He ducks his head and waits for Dabi’s flames to envelope him. 

The fire never comes.

When Keigo finally makes himself look up, Dabi’s not even looking at him, his eyes instead fixed on his own trembling hands. 

“I’m sorry,” Keigo squeaks again, his voice reedy and strained. 

Dabi’s gaze snaps to him, caught somewhere between horrible pain and unadulterated rage. 

“Fuck,” he whispers.

And then he takes off running.

Keigo is left staring at the floor in front of him, to figure out how to explain this all to his handlers, if he even gets the chance to. 

Maybe the League will just release information, images, that he has no doubt they’ve been gathering, and let Hawks go down in history as the biggest traitor of their time. Or maybe they’ll let Toga take his face and go on a rampage. He’s sure they took some of his blood when he was unconscious. Maybe they just won’t do anything, and Keigo will actually be forced to tell his handlers how badly he’s fucked up. 

He’s more afraid of that than anything the League might do.

He decides that he’ll decide what to do tomorrow. For now, it is the middle of the night and he is freezing and still hurt and half conscious. 

He just wants to go home.

He wants to text Rumi, and have her come over and just hold him, he wants some form of comfort, wants someone to tell him he’s gonna be okay, but Rumi doesn’t know about his undercover mission. He can’t drag her into this. 

It takes him an hour to convince himself, but he flies home without calling her, as much as he wants to.

When Keigo gets back to his apartment, the lights are on. 

He did not leave them on when he left.

Looks like he’s facing consequences from the League first then. 

Panic flutters in his chest again, but his body is too tired to actually react to it. 

“You’re here to kill me, I guess,” he says, before he’s even locked the door behind him. 

He doesn’t want to be resigned to it, but, he doesn’t know what else to do.

“We’ll see.” 

It’s only Kurogiri, which he wasn’t expecting. He thought they’d all be here to watch the traitor disintegrate. 

“What, do you want me to beg or something first? If you’re just here to torment me, just get it over with. Please.” 

Keigo sounds defeated, even to his own ears. 

“It appears that you’ve gotten yourself into a rather sticky situation,” Kurogiri says.

Keigo scoffs. “Call it what it is. I’m a traitor, and you’re here to deal with me.”

“I’m here to hear your side of this story. Dabi wasn’t the most informative about exactly what happened. You have one chance. Explain yourself, and if you think of running, I’ll teleport you out the window without your wings, understood?”

Keigo shudders at the thought, but nods nonetheless. The fact that he’s even being allowed to explain himself at all is more than he expected. 

“Good. Start with what all this traitor business is.”

Keigo’s wings curl in towards his body protectively, as though he can make a barrier between himself and Kurogiri that’s actually worth anything. 

“I—the Commission, they—fuck. I was assigned to infiltrate the League for the Commission. No other heroes know about my involvement. It’s just me and my handlers.”

“Handlers? No other heroes we’ve ever heard of have Commission appointed handlers.”

Keigo waves dismissively. “They’re the same ones I’ve had since I was a kid. They raised me to be a hero when I was young, and now they just boss me around a lot, like it’s not my name on the agency.”

“I see.” 

“Yeah. They don’t know about Dabi being my soulmate or anything, or even that I’ve found my soulmate. I’ve kept that mark covered ever since they got their hands on me anyway, so it doesn’t really matter. Anyway, they told me to jump, I said how high. I was supposed to keep an eye on you and do my best to obtain information that could lead to your apprehension. But then I had to go and get my stupid fucking feelings involved and I screwed the whole thing up and here we are.”

“Why did you tell Dabi of your assignment from the Commission?” Kurogiri asks, his tone as neutral as ever.

Keigo shrugs. “I told you. I let my feelings get in the way. I know the bond is… fake or half formed or whatever. I know I fucked it up. But I still care about Dabi a lot. He’s the only mark I have, no matter what’s wrong with it.”

“But you never said anything about it until now? You knew Dabi was your soulmate from the moment you met him.”

“I know . But I just… he knows now. He knows and he thinks that it might actually be real and that changes everything. If it were just a fucked up, half formed freak thing on my end, I could do it, but if he’s actually— If I’m— I can’t do it if it’s real. He asked me why I couldn’t accept that we might have a bond, and I panicked, because I’m shitty at being a spy.”

“Clearly,” Kurogiri says, and Keigo almost wants to laugh. 

If he weren’t facing his executioner, he would. 

“Can we just get to the part where you kill me? Waiting to die isn’t as fun as it might seem.”

Keigo never thought he’d be begging to die, but he also never thought he’d have a soulmate who displayed any kindness towards him, and Dabi had been nice to him, sort of, while Keigo had been doing his job well. 

He’d let Keigo live in the warehouse. 

Things change, he guesses. 

“I have two more questions, and I’ll decide what I’m going to do with you.”

“Shoot.”

“Why do you care for Dabi?”

“Why do I—” Keigo splutters, “He’s my soulmate. My only soulmate. And I… He’s nice to me. He kinda hates me but he’s still so goddamn nice . He doesn’t call me disgusting for eating raw meat, and he makes sure I’ve been eating and sleeping, and that I’m actually okay when I’m hurt. No one’s ever really done that for me before.”

“Last question. Answer carefully, Hero. Why did you accept this mission?”

And, fuck it, Keigo thinks. He’s about to die. This man’s a villain. What does it fucking matter?

“Didn’t have a choice. How do you say no to the people who all but own you?”

“You’re talking about the Commission.”

Keigo does laugh, now. A half hysterical little thing. 

“Funny, isn’t it? What I said to Dabi to get my foot in the door wasn’t a lie. I like being a hero. I love helping people. But fuck, if the way heroes are controlled isn’t fucked up. You know the Commission bought me from my mom when I was eight? Just purchased me, like a fucking dog, under the guise of giving me a better life and helping my mom with her ‘expenses’. The Commission is supposed to be helping, implementing preventative measures in cities so that people don’t have to turn to crime just to survive. That’s how most villains start out! But instead, they’re so focused on micromanaging rankings and public appearances they’re failing before they’ve even started.” 

Keigo laughs again, breathy and strained. He sounds like he’s wheezing. 

When he calms down, he looks to Kurogiri with something like tears in his eyes. 

“So yeah. I agreed because if I said no, they would’ve made my life miserable until I said yes. Saying no has never been an option for me.”

Kurogiri regards him for a moment, entirely unreadable, and then opens a portal to Keigo’s right. 

Keigo lets out a sharp breath and clamps his hands around his upper arms. He’s shaking. He hopes Kurogiri doesn’t notice. 

“Let’s go,” Kurogiri prompts. 

Hawks steps towards his death. 

~*~

Dabi has been losing his shit for the last two hours. His meeting with Hawks went so far sideways he doesn’t even know where to start with that and he’s still shaking, and has been since he left that warehouse. 

Since he’d left Hawks on his fucking knees, apologizing to Dabi, panic lacing his every word. 

He had a soulmate, one who wasn’t his siblings, one he could actually still be around, and he’d found out the guy was a traitor, and then made him fear for his life. 

Dabi is… fuck, he isn’t taking this well. Kurogiri went out a while ago to handle the whole traitor situation, so Dabi at least doesn’t have to actually determine what they’re gonna do with Hawks. But still, he’s got a lot to process. 

Sure, he’s got a right to be pissed at Hawks for betraying them, for lying to them. To him. But he had no right to… 

God, he’s just as bad as his father. 

Dabi remembers when he was still Touya, when he had a family, and parents who debatably loved him. He remembers the orange handprint his mother sported on her upper arm, and the fact that his father had no mark in return from her. 

His mother’s white handprint, spread across his lower back, is the only soulmark he has that he can still see. 

He remembers how his mother would send him to his room, sometimes, when she knew his father was in a bad mood, and how he could hear the screaming from wherever Enji had finally found her. 

He remembers comforting Fuyumi and Natsuo when their parents yelled, and Shoto too, before their father had stolen him from them. He remembers a blue handprint on Fuyumi’s cheek, left from when they were children. He remembers a flash of blue on Natsuo’s forehead. He remembers his whole hand pressed to Shoto’s chest, just over his heart. He remembers he never left a mark on his father. 

His father left plenty of marks on them, though never the soul kind. 

He was happier to leave them with burns and bruises. 

Just like Dabi had left his soulmate with a handprint pressed to his fucking throat. He’d left Hawks thinking for twenty two years that his soulmate was going to abuse him. He’d left Hawks thinking he’d had a half formed bond, even though Dabi didn’t exactly have the proof that it wasn’t. He’d left Hawks trembling on a warehouse floor, thinking his soulmate was going to murder him, threatening to set the building alight around them both. 

Really, Dabi knows that he’d rather burn himself the rest of the way to a corpse before actually laying a hand on Hawks with an intent to hurt him, traitor or no. 

But Dabi also knows he’s inherited his father’s temper. He knows he is quick to anger and easily provoked into violence. He has killed and he hasn’t hated it. He has kidnapped innocent teenagers and harmed countless others all on his quest for revenge. Hell, he’d almost hurt his little brother, one of the people he’s actually out to protect. Dabi knows that no matter how much he doesn’t want to hurt Hawks, he eventually will, in the end. 

He already has. 

Because Dabi is just like his father, as much as he doesn’t want to be. 

He’s a monster. 

As much as it would break his heart, he almost hopes Kurogiri decides Hawks has to die, just so Dabi never has to face him again. But then he actually thinks about it, and knows that he’d rather die himself than have Hawks’s blood on his hands. Which it will be, if he dies right now. 

Dabi’s the one who ratted him out to the League. 

He’s just like his father. 

Shigaraki and Toga haven’t quite left him alone yet, but they moved to the other end of the bar the second time Dabi threatened to roast them alive and lit up his hands to prove it. They’re watching him carefully as he burns nonsense shapes into the wood top of the bar. Kurogiri’s gonna kill him when he gets back, but that’s a problem for Later Dabi. 

Now Dabi is just thinking about how his soulmate is a hero who might be dead by now and Dabi never did anything but make him feel terrible. 

He’s just like his father. 

He hears the soft whoosh of Kurogiri’s portal opening up behind him and Dabi tenses, waiting to hear a confirmation that Hawks is dead. 

“I’m not dead,” he hears, instead, in Hawks’s voice. 

“Not yet.” That’s Kurogiri. 

“I’ve still got my wings.”

“For now.”

“ Why?” Hawks asks, after a beat of silence, like he honestly can’t fathom his continued presence on this Earth. 

“You were honest.”

“That doesn’t make any sense!” Hawks argues, and Dabi almost turns around right then to slap a hand over Hawks’s mouth to make him shut up, why is he arguing for his own death? But it doesn’t seem like Hawks has even noticed him, so maybe he can slip away without confrontation. “I was honest about the fact that I betrayed you! What, are you gonna let me live so that I have to go back to the Commission and tell them how badly I fucked up so they’ll kill me instead? Take the heat of killing the number two hero off of yourselves? Fuck, come on just get it over with!”

“I’m not going to kill you, Hawks,” Kurogiri says, and Dabi is struck when he realizes that Kurogiri means it. 

“Please, at least you’ll make it quick, the Commission won’t do that! They’ll hang me out to dry and let me go down as a villain to the public and they will kill me slowly , just get it over with, please! ” Dabi almost chokes when he realizes that Hawks means every word of that too. 

Flames lick up Dabi’s hands, and he hears Hawks draw in a sharp breath, and then the sound of a few shuffling footsteps away from him. 

“Why am I here?” Hawks whispers, and he sounds terrified. 

Dabi extinguishes his flames and rotates in his seat just enough to see Shigaraki, Toga and Kurogiri. He can’t bear to look at Hawks right now. 

“Why is he here?” Shigaraki asks. He’s a fair bit more annoyed than Hawks sounded. 

Kurogiri sighs. “Hawks, it seems—”

“No, please, don’t!” Hawks protests, but Kurogiri continues. 

“—was purchased by the Hero Commission at a young age. He was not allowed a choice in taking this assignment. I believe he is a greater asset to us alive, rather than dead.”

“Fuck,” Hawks breathes, still just out of Dabi’s line of sight. 

That’s when Dabi turns to look at him, finally, because that sounds… 

Shit, that sounds awful. 

Hawks looks awful, too. 

He looks absolutely wrecked. His soulmark, usually carefully covered, is partially exposed, where Hawks had clawed at his own neck in panic, thin lines of blood caused by Hawks’s talons running through the mark and the half-there makeup. His gloves are off too, which says a lot, because he never leaves those off for longer than the time it takes him to eat a meal, sometimes not even then. His feathers are all out of order, his face red and patchy. 

His eyes are darting around the room rapidly, any slight movement making his gaze snap in its direction. His hands are flexing repetitively at his sides, and his breath is coming in short, sharp pants. 

He’s having a very quiet panic attack, Dabi thinks. 

Shit. 

“The fact that he is Dabi’s soulmate is helping his case too,” Kurogiri admits. “I’ve made my judgement. Dabi, you share the bond with him. I believe it is your call from here.”

Dabi does not want to be the one who decides whether his soulmate lives or dies. 

“I’ve gotta talk to him first. If he tries anything, he roasts, don’t worry,” Dabi mutters. Then, looking to Hawks again, he snaps, “Bird! Let’s go,” and tries not to wince at the way Hawks startles. 

Hawks follows him without a word, eyes still tracking every movement they catch, chest still stuttering with ragged breaths. 

By the time Dabi leads Hawks into one of the empty rooms at the back of the bar, he is almost certain Hawks is beginning to dissociate. It’s clear he’s expecting pain. His eyes are dull, and his breath is slowing, but still hitching. His hands aren’t flexing anymore. 

So Dabi starts to talk. 

“I’m sorry, Haw— Keigo,” he starts. He thinks that if they’re soulmates, that if they’re going to try this thing, or if this is the last night they’ll ever have, he should at least call Keigo by his real name, not the one the Commission had given him. “Keigo, I— I never meant to hurt you. I know I’m an asshole and that I keep threatening you. I know I’m bad at this, I’m bad at everything about people, I know you deserve better. I’m just like my father, even though I’m trying not to be. I remember when I was a kid, how scared of him I used to be, even though I pretended not to be. My mom used to do everything she could to keep us safe, me and my little siblings. But he was so intent on training me and then it was Shoto, he was so determined to make us stronger that he didn’t care that he was breaking us. He didn’t care he was burning us away piece by piece. Most of these scars are from me, from my own quirk being too much for my body to handle, but the first ones, underneath all of these, they were from him. Those were the only marks he ever left on us. Not a single soulmark on any of his kids. Not even his wife. Fuck, he… I’ve never been scared of anyone in my life, except Endeavor. I never wanted to be like him, but here I am. Threatening to kill my soulmate. God I wonder how someone as good as you ended up with someone like me.” 

“Your dad is Endeavor?” 

Keigo’s voice is barely audible. He sounds heartbroken. 

Dabi just nods in response, scrubbing a hand over his face, and wincing when it pulls at staples there. 

“I looked up to him my whole life. More than even All Might.” Dabi almost interrupts there. That’s almost a deal breaker, but Keigo deserves to be heard, at least. Dabi has a feeling he isn’t allowed that, very often. “A little while before the Commission took me, Endeavor picked up my dad for theft. He was just doing his job, but he… fuck, he saved me. My dad was awful to me and my mom. And my mom wasn’t great, but still, she didn’t deserve what he did to her. I’ve worked with him countless times. I’ve asked about his kids, I’ve met Fuyumi and Shoto! I can’t believe I… God, I guess that’s just what I get. I really am bird-brained, huh? Fucking stupid.”

“You’re not. He’s good at hiding it, and he’s got my siblings scared into silence. You’re not close enough to him to have known. He doesn’t let anyone get that close.” 

Dabi lets out a humorless laugh. It’s almost funny, in a sick sort of way. 

“He’s why you became a villain, isn’t he.” Keigo says it like it isn’t a question, like he already knows. 

“Yeah. I’m not… the best at controlling my temper, just like he is. I tried for so long to just bear it, to keep my siblings safe, but he took Shoto, and he fucked up my mom so bad, and I just… I snapped. I can’t… I want him dead, Keigo. I know you’re a hero and all that, but fuck I want him dead, I want him to pay for everything he’s done, I want him to pay for taking my baby brother’s childhood, and for ruining Yumi and Natsu’s. I think about it and I just can’t— It makes me so fucking angry!” 

Flames lick up his arms before he can tamp them down, and he groans, dropping his chin to his chest. 

He’s a little surprised when a single red feather slips under it, coaxing him to look up again. 

“You’re not like your father. Sure, you’re angry, but you’ve… I mean, besides the first time you grabbed me, when you thought I was there to take you in, you’ve never— even when you were threatening me, you’ve never laid a hand on me. You’re not like him. Hell, you’re a villain, and you’re nicer than some of the handlers I’ve had.”

“What?”

Keigo shrugs. “Especially when I was little, when they were training me out of the bad parts of my quirk, they were... aggressive. They wanted me to progress as fast as possible, by whatever means necessary. Didn’t matter how much I liked it.”

“That’s disgusting. And they call themselves heroic?” Dabi says, face twisting in horror, already planning a murder or seven in his head as he speaks. 

“What I said when I first met you wasn’t a lie. I want to change the way heroics are run, bureaucratically. The Commission has a lot of good people, but the few at the top bar them from doing the things that’ll actually help people before they become villains. They stop efforts to start villain rehabilitation programs, or provide infrastructure to struggling neighborhoods, or emphasize mental health for heroes in training so they don’t snap when the weight of the job comes down on them. The way things are now makes them more money.”

“Keigo, that’s not what I meant. God, those people abused you, if not outright tortured you to make you the hero they wanted! That’s fucking awful!”

Keigo laughs at that, a little hysterically. “Well yeah. They used to strap me down and pluck out the feathers that grew where they didn’t like until they just stopped coming back. They filed down my pointed teeth. They used to damn near beat me to death in training when I chirped or made any vaguely bird sounding noise. They’re shit people. I’ve known that. But Kurogiri was right. They pretty much bought me from my mom. They practically own me, Dabi. What the hell am I supposed to do about it?”

“ Let me help you, ” Dabi says, without hesitation, because he means it. He’d raze the entire Hero Commission to the ground at the drop of a hat if Keigo only said the word. “We could destroy them.”

“I can’t. Dabi, I know you’re set on revenge, and you don’t mind being a villain to get that, but I… I like being a hero. I don’t like the bureaucracy of it, but I love helping people. It’s the only reason I still get up in the morning. I don’t want to lose that. I don’t want to give that up. I don’t care about the fame, or the attention. I just want to help the little kids like me, who needed someone to save them before they even really knew they needed to be saved. I want to keep helping. I can’t do that if I’m on the run.”

Dabi sighs, because of course, of course Keigo would say that. He’s so good . 

“Fine. Then we do it legally. It’ll stick better that way anyway, dissuade anyone else from trying for a repeat of these guys. I’ll help you take them down completely by the books.”

Keigo’s face goes through a complicated series of emotions, and settles on disbelief. 

“You… you’d really… for me? You’d do that for me?”

“Pretty bird, I’d burn cities for you, I think. But I’ll settle for some political espionage, if that’s what’ll make you happy. I don’t want to fuck up this whole soulmate thing right after it’s started. It’s been way too much effort to keep you alive, traitor. I’m not gonna lose you now.”

The look Keigo gives him makes him think that maybe, just maybe, he’d build cities for him too, instead of just burning. 

He’s made for destruction, but he’d learn to create to see that smile on Keigo’s face again. 

~*~

It takes months to gather all of the evidence they need to take Endeavor to court. Hours of agonizing interviews with Fuyumi and Natsuo and Shoto. Keigo ends up being a shoulder to cry on a lot, as he records the three youngest Todorokis detailing every instance of abuse they can remember. Natsuo has pictures of some of Shoto's wounds, from when he was younger, that even Fuyumi didn't know about. Once, when Keigo arrives to interview Shoto, he has the unfortunate luck to be able to document some bruises and burns himself. 

He ends up with a lot of shaky pictures. 

They gather statements from Todoroki Rei, as well, from her nurses and doctors, who all state she’s been fit for discharge to an at-home caretaker for at least a year, but Endeavor has refused their advice. Family doctors and Shoto’s friends add their accounts to the ever growing list. Shoto’s teachers, All Might himself. 

All the while, Keigo keeps Dabi updated, quietly, the Commission still thinking he’s been infiltrating the League. While they’re distracted with Keigo’s sudden questioning of Endeavor’s activities, though, Dabi and the League have been doing their best to gather intel on the Commission’s corrupt members. 

When they’ve gathered the final pieces of evidence against Endeavor, Keigo calls in the detective, Naomasa, that All Might said they could trust. 

And he brings Dabi into the police precinct with him for the meeting. 

It’s a full seventy-two hours before Keigo leaves again, without Dabi, and with his uncovered soulmark carefully wrapped up under a scarf. 

His connection with Keigo, everything that had come to light with the Endeavor case, and the information Dabi had offered up on the Commission’s corruption, are enough for them to cut a deal. 

The city’s been working on a villain rehabilitation program, pending the Commission’s approval. The information that Dabi provides is enough for them to, at the very least, remove all of the Commission members who oppose the program from their positions. 

Two days later, in the biggest story to hit the media in decades, twenty five of the highest ranking Commission members, and the current number one hero are arrested in a spectacular display on live television. Keigo definitely doesn’t have anything to do with the media catching wind of it. He wants Endeavors face pasted on every screen with the words “Arrested On Abuse Charges” underneath it. Even if he gets off legally, Keigo wants to make sure Endeavor’s reputation suffers . 

The Commission members are arrested more quietly, but it’s still a media storm. Reporters are suddenly after Keigo and all of the Todorokis, wanting their statements, wanting to know what Endeavor’s abused kids have to say, wanting to know what the new number one has to say, wanting to know why the Commission just lost so much of it’s staff. 

Keigo, wanting to protect the Todorokis from more stress, fans his wings out in front of them all, blocking the other three from view. He gives the statement he prepared with a PR person from Rumi’s agency, his own PR agents long since behind bars. 

He tells the press as much as he can about the abuse he suffered at the hands of the Commission, about the corruption he’s witnessed since he was eight years old. And he tells them to respect their privacy, and leave the Todorokis alone. 

Four days later, with new people, good people, heading the Commission, they announce the first comprehensive villain rehabilitation program, one that’s been in the works for years, but had been barred at every turn by the recently removed members. They announce the mental health programs and the hero sponsorship involved to ensure that participants keep up with the program.

They announce their first participant, Dabi, and his sponsor, the Rabbit Hero, Miruko. 

Two weeks later, Endeavor goes to trial. 

It takes two days for a jury to convict him on several counts of child abuse, neglect and endangerment. 

Keigo and Rumi take the Todorokis out to dinner to celebrate. Mid-meal, Rumi sets a black mark on Fuyumi’s arm alight with a swirl of pink and orange. It’s the happiest Keigo’s ever seen Rumi.

Fuyumi takes custody of Shoto. 

Todoroki Rei’s medical power of attorney is transferred to Fuyumi as well, and she is released from the hospital the next week. They use Endeavor’s money to hire a home caretaker for her, a bright young woman who Rei takes to instantly. 

Dabi, through the rehabilitation program, starts therapy, a lot of it. He gets into anger management, and throws himself into it, because he is still so afraid of what he might do to Keigo. He gets proper medical help for his scars, and they finally, finally start to heal. 

Funny enough, Dabi’s soulmarks, while not as vibrant as they should be, start to show up again, as Dabi’s skin heals. They are faded, hardly visible, but Keigo can see, right on Dabi’s forearm, a dull red print, that perfectly matches his hand. 

When he starts getting better, not just physically, he starts helping the Commission with the program he’s still finishing. He’s their test run, after all, he says. He’s got to let them know how it’s working. (And after everything he does for them, it’s only a matter of time before they hire him.)

He still talks to the League, though they can’t meet in person very much anymore. With the corrupt Commission being handled, issues with heroics being addressed, the League’s purpose has more or less been fulfilled. They’re laying low, now, each figuring out what to do next. They’re going their separate ways, but they’re still important to Dabi. To Keigo too, though he’s more hesitant to admit it. 

They keep numbers in their phones under false names, and they keep in contact.

The mess with the Commission takes longer to sort out. Everyone arrested in the ‘purge’ is permanently removed from their jobs, of course, but a few of them, the ones less involved in Keigo’s upbringing, in the corruption, get off, with little consequence. It makes Keigo’s skin crawl, knowing they’re still out there, not knowing what they might do, but he’s allowed to take out restraining orders against the seven of them, at least. 

The eighteen who don’t get off face differing consequences. Keigo’s testimony, along with some from other members of the Commission, most of them former members ousted from the place for speaking against the corruption, ends up putting away the Commission president for a life sentence. Others, the handlers who held him down and ripped out his feathers, who tortured him for the sake of having a hero they could control, face anywhere from twenty five to life. Others face sentences no less serious. 

They call it Quirk Trafficking, what they did to Keigo.

Human Trafficking for the sake of quirk usage. 

Keigo doesn’t know how to feel about finally having words to describe what he’s survived. 

He gives interviews, and talks about it, about how he still doesn’t understand, instead of thinking himself in circles trying to figure it out. He helps the new Commission start programs to help stop Quirk Trafficking. 

And at the end of it all, after every endless day of the trials, after every day that ends feeling hopeless, Keigo will come home to Dabi. Dabi will lay his hand, gently, reverently, over Keigo’s mark, the one he keeps uncovered now, while they lay in bed, falling asleep at night. 

And they are still fighting, but it’s not so bad, with his soulmate at his side.