Archive of Our Own ^beta

Hunter hummed thoughtfully, kicking gently off the ground and sending the desk chair into a gentle spin. Flapjack, resting on the back of the chair, flickered his wings and chirped in amusement.

“They don’t have swivel chairs in the Boiling Isles, do they?” Hawks asked from his seat in the corner beanbag.

“That obvious?” Hunter asked with a sheepish grin, drawing his knees up to his chest to stop himself from swiveling the desk chair back and forth. They weren’t unheard of, but they absolutely did not fit Belos’s aesthetic, so there weren’t any in the castle.

“You’re not being annoying,” Hawks clarified. “Just an observation.” He returned to his examination of his flight jacket, torn from a recent skirmish. The wing slits were damaged from hasty feather deployment, and one sleeve had a large gash.

“Are you sure you’re okay to just… return to patrol after that?”

Hawks shrugged. “I cleaned off the blood. And one of Edgeshot’s sidekicks has a healing Quirk, so there’s not even any wound.”

“Now you’re only scarred emotionally,” Hunter quipped, remembering Viney and the rest of the flyer derby team with a fresh pang of bittersweet nostalgia. It wasn’t even all that long ago - could he call it nostalgia at this point?

Hawks laughed, a rare genuine sound that brought some warmth to the drafty room. “I’m gonna have to steal that.”

“That’s fine. I stole it myself.” He turned his attention back to his research, his smile fading as he perused the scientific articles. Every time he thought he understood how this world’s magic functioned, Quirk science threw another curveball at him. Alchemy was elementary in comparison.

His current focus was blood-based Quirks, but none of the ones in the database came close to the properties of Titan’s blood. There was blood that could become weapons or allow others to transform, but no blood that could react to and amplify magic.

Was there something that could amplify Quirks?

He typed in his query and the search engine instantly filled with news articles about the Trigger epidemic. An illegal synthetic drug of mysterious origin that caused Quirks to go haywire.

Illegal. Probably dangerous. But… so was he. So was his creation. So was most of what Belos had asked him to do, including hunting down Titan’s blood in the first place. A faint spark of hope, just barely enough to count as an ember, sent a thrill through Hunter’s veins. He half-turned toward Hawks, ready to announce his new discovery, when he noticed that Hawks’s face did not hold its usual confident smirk. Concentration aged him by decades. His tongue poked out the side of his mouth as he passed a needle through the thick fabric of his flight jacket. Hunter followed the movement, taking in the hasty stitches.

He arched an eyebrow. “Uh… is there a reason you’re using a suturing stitch instead of an actual sewing technique?”

Hawks looked up, startled. “There’s a difference?”

Hunter fully turned around, tilting his head in confusion. “Didn’t you work with Best Jeanist for, like, years?”

Hawks smiled wryly. “He never had to sew. He can manipulate fibers at will.”

“Well, the jacket can’t heal itself, so if you want it to look right…” he sighed. “I can show you.”

Hawks studied him. “That’s a surprisingly domestic skill.”

With a shrug, Hunter rose to his feet and crossed the home office, settling down next to Hawks on the floor. “Darius taught me. He’s the Abomination coven head.”

“Abominations. Those are the goopy homunculi, right?” Hawks handed the jacket and small sewing kit to Hunter, who immediately got to work using the seam ripper to undo Hawks’s shoddy stitches. He threaded the needle after only a few failed attempts - a definite improvement over his last try - and straightened the fabric.

“Yup,” Hunter said, his gaze fixated on his new task. The shearling jacket was not as thick as his leather armor, although the inner fur lining would be a bit of a challenge. “Darius cares a lot about the weirdest little things, like proper sewing technique or going to the healer for every little injury.” He made the first stitch, feeling a twinge of nervousness that made his hands tremble slightly. This was not a cheap jacket, and it was an iconic part of his uniform. If Hunter messed this up… he kept waiting for Hawks to be truly mad at him for something. Would this be the last straw?

“Just out of curiosity,” Hawks said mildly, “what would you consider a ‘little injury?’”

Hunter shrugged. “Apparently a cracked rib is some sort of big deal or something.”

Hawks’s smile dropped. He looked Hunter up and down.

Hunter pulled the waxed thread with more force than necessary. “Well it’s not like I have one now. It was a while ago. I’m fine now.”

Hawks let out a long breath, his returning smile slightly strained. “I’m with Darius on that one. He sounds like a smart man.”

“This is called a saddle stitch,” Hunter said, deliberately changing the subject. “It’s the best type of stitch to use for leather. If one section gets damaged, the whole thing won’t unravel.” He paused, realizing that he was actually teaching Hawks something. Hawks, who seemed so at ease in his own world, who knew every rooftop garden and shady alleyway on Kyushu Island.

“It takes forever,” Hawks observed, leaning closer to observe Hunter’s deliberately slow motions.

“Take your time now and you won’t have to waste time later,” Hunter said, reciting what Darius had told him. “This is a bad example,” he muttered as he noticed yet another mistake, an inconsistency in the intricate pattern. “I’m still new to it myself.”

“You know more about it than I do,” Hawks said.

Yep. Still weird. But… a good weird.

Hawks’s gaze drifted from Hunter’s hands to his face, noticing that his stoic, severe expression softened when he concentrated. His hands, always fidgeting restlessly, now moved with steady purpose.

The fondness in his voice when he had described Darius, despite the surface level annoyance, was unmistakable. And the way his eyes darted ever so slightly… he was remembering something. Or someone.

He had someone. Someone on the other side who was waiting, probably worried sick. Maybe Darius, maybe not.

If Hawks fell through a portal and ended up in another world, he wondered who would miss him. The Commission, certainly, but in the way one would miss their best knife. A moment of frustration and a time-consuming trip to the store to buy a new one. His fans would be heartbroken, but they would find someone else to follow. The other Pro Heroes? Same story. Jeanist was in a medically-induced coma, so he wouldn’t even know, though he might be upset when/if he woke. He supposed Mirko might grieve, but she prided herself in always moving forward.

He blinked away the thought. No, he couldn’t worry about that, because he couldn’t disappear. Too much rested on his wings, and if it fell… he couldn’t let that happen.

When Hunter had sewn half of the tear, he paused, then handed the jacket to Hawks. “You try.”

Hawks carefully mirrored Hunter’s motions. His first few stitches were little better than his original “sutures,” but he quickly fell into a rhythm. It was strangely meditative, and his thoughts drifted away from him.

Trigger. The corrosive drug that threatened to fray the edges of society, as Jeanist would say. He nearly fumbled the needle as he realized that Hunter was about the same age as Class 1-A. Another child staring down the frontlines of the impending war, even if he didn’t know it.

He couldn’t fail.

He couldn’t.

“Are you… are you alright?” Hunter asked, startling him out of his thoughts. His magenta yes were fixed on Hawks’s hands, and he realized that they were shaking. He let them fall onto his lap and forced his breathing to steady.

“I’m fine,” he said automatically. “Just… not used to slowing down like this.”

Hunter’s gaze softened and he edged slightly closer. Then he tensed, as if realizing what he was doing, and pointed at the thread. “You might want to pull it tighter,” he said. Then he let his hand fall to his side, absently tracing the fur that lined the edge of the sleeve. “Don’t you have people for this?”

Hawks shrugged. “I do, but this is a custom piece. It’ll take a while to replace.” But it could be replaced, so why was he even bothering? He studied the needle, tilting it this way and that, watching it catch the golden hue of the evening sun. He would have a new jacket in a manner of weeks, months at worst, with no trace of the battle that had left its mark on this one. Just like his arm, once covered in blood, now bearing only a faint white scar where the villain’s claws had gouged him.

He traced a finger along the scar, acutely aware of Hunter following the movement. For some reason, the thought of just… replacing the jacket, as if nothing had happened, didn’t sit right. He remembered the terrified looks on the civilians when the Trigger-crazed villain had them cornered. That wasn’t something they would soon forget. Nor would they forget his rescue. He only hoped that the stray feathers he had given them were enough to stave off the worst of their fears.

“Yeah,” Hawks said. “I do have people for this, but… I don’t know. The damage kinda gives it character, don’t you think?”

Hunter drew his knees up to his chest, leaning slightly until he was brushing shoulders with Hawks. He didn’t even seem aware he was doing it.

“Yeah.” Hunter’s voice was barely above a whisper.