Forbidden Things || Cobra Kai

23 Concern

"So that's where you ran off to so fast?"

Hawk nodded, then sent a quick strike through the air. His fist made contact with the punching bag, his knuckles pressing into its surface for a split second before it flew back. When it came back, he caught it with his free hand and repeated his actions. Each hit was like music to his ears, a rhythmic beat that sang power and strength, which he liked the sound of.

He glanced over at Miguel, who was spotting him despite there being no need for it. Hawk knew what he was doing, but he was always happy to have his best friend at his side.

They were at the dojo, though they were a little early, so they decided to get a few warm-ups in before anyone else got there. It was perfect, since there was no one else around - except for Sensei, who was in his office - so they could work in peace and talk about girls. He didn't want anyone to overhear him when talking about Penelope, especially when it came to his feelings about her. He didn't want anyone to think he was soft.

"Yeah, she needed me," Hawk said, then sent another jab forward.

Miguel hummed and nodded a bit. "Shouldn't you have called her uncle or told Frankie though?"

He had thought about that, but it had been an afterthought in all honesty. As soon as she had said she was scared, he'd done everything he could to get to her house as fast as he could. Frankie had been within reach of calling out to her, but he hadn't thought about it. Penelope had said she needed him, not Frankie. If she had needed, or even wanted, Frankie around, she would have texted her instead.

He knew that the girls were at odds all of a sudden. Penelope had mentioned it, but only as a passive statement. She didn't want to go into detail about what happened, and that was her right. He didn't particularly care why Frankie was pissed off. He only wondered how someone could be pissed at sweet Penelope.

He shrugged and dropped his stance, moving onto the next exercise. "Probably, but it doesn't matter now. After she calmed down, she said she would tell her uncle about what happened."

"What did happen?"

Hawk kicked the punching bag, then waited for it to return to its upright position before performing a front kick. "She didn't go into a lot of detail, but she woke up from a nightmare. It was pretty bad from what I can tell."

Miguel nodded, watching him carefully. "Yeah, it must've been. I mean, from what you described, it sounds like she was having a panic attack."

Hawk only hummed in acknowledgement. He knew for a fact Penelope had a panic attack. He'd had to help her breathe, get her to stop crying, talk her through the whole process before he could get some kind of answers. Her hands had been shaking so bad, she couldn't even sign. He just held them until the trembling stopped, sitting in silence with her until she was ready to tell him what had happened.

"Do you think it was something really scary or what- what could it have been?" Miguel asked. That sounded like speculative talk.

And Hawk felt like a hypocrite.

"I don't know, man," he said, then sent the punching bag back with a hard kick. He had been asking himself the same kind of questions. He tried not to, tried to tell himself it wasn't any of his business, but he couldn't help it now. "She didn't really wanna talk about it, y'know?"

"Yeah, I get what you mean."

He wondered if Miguel really understood, though. Fear was different when the body was under distress like that. Panic was nonsensical and unpredictable, causing logical thought to go right out the window and replacing it with feelings of ice cold dread. He would know. It didn't feel like too long ago since he'd been afflicted by such harrowing anxiety, yet it was still lightyears away.