Feathers and Flame // Dabi x Reader x Hawks

22: Admission

Sleep eluded you.

It didn't matter that you lay flat on your back, your breathing slow and even as you forced your mind through repetitions of loosening each muscle. It had always worked for you before, but not tonight.

You tossed beneath the soft sheets, frustration speeding up that same heart rate you'd been trying to slow for so long already. Why had the simple words of some woman you barely knew cut you so deep? All she'd done was ask you for your name — your hero name. What about that was so difficult to process?

Because I'm not a hero.

The words coiled around your heart like a serpent, slowly starving you of oxygen the tighter it wound. A hero was someone who saved. A hero was someone selfless and brave and compassionate. Not some warped creature that killed so easily and slept so deeply even with all that blood still caked beneath her nails. A hero was someone like him, not you.

They made you into the monster you were. They let you believe in grand notions of heroism — that what you did was for the greater good. Maybe it was. Maybe it wasn't. But in the end it was you who paid the price with your heart — your soul. You would be used until there was nothing left of you to give, and then you'd be discarded, a blunted blade of no worth.

You wanted to scream and cry. Wanted to let all that frustration out but you couldn't. There was nothing left inside of you but hollowness where the brightness of a soul should be. In truth, you'd forgotten how to feel anything at all until...

Until I—

A heavy thud reverberated through the silence, ripping you from the spiral of thoughts you'd fallen into. You slid from your bed, grabbed the knife you kept below your pillow and slowly reached for the handle of your door.

I swear if I need to kill someone wearing a baggy t-shirt and no bra, I give up on existing.

You opened the door, peeking out with only your head before following with the rest of you. Once your eyes landed on the source of the noise, you dropped the knife, letting it clatter against the hardwood floor.

Dabi's eyes whipped to you. Where they were usually so enchantingly bright, they'd dimmed to a mere shadow of themselves. He knelt on the hallway floor, barely clothed, one leg half-up as he tried to stand. And his skin — blood leaked from between scars and once unmarred flesh that was now raw and singed. The sight of it tore something open inside of you.

"What happened?" you said, barely breathing as you dropped to the floor beside him. "Dabi—"

"Leave."

The word was heavy. Commanding. But the pained rasp in his voice rooted you in place. "No."

"I said leave."

Those beautiful blue eyes were on you now, a flicker of that brightness returning. His lips were curled into a sneer, his jaw locked tight. Anger rippled off him in almost tangible waves. But it was those eyes that stopped you from moving even a single inch. They were desperate. Manic. Cruel. And so very very sad. Everything that he tried to hide from you.

"I said no," you spat, reaching for his arm, but he shrugged off the touch. His skin was hot. Too hot.  "We need to get you to a healer."

Dabi laughed — the sound so cold and without heart that it frightened you. "There is nothing they can do for me."

It was only then that you understood. The singed skin. The bitter smell of burnt flesh and the heat of him — of his fire. His own quirk had done this — had rendered his own body as if it was incompatible. As if his fire was too hot for him to wield. You'd speculated that much back in Deika city, but seeing it confirmed so brutally with your own eyes was something else entirely.