Feathers and Flame // Dabi x Reader x Hawks

44: Stay

You were covered in blood. A lot of it.

The exact steps to how you got there seemed to have slipped your mind, but you didn't particularly care. All you could think about was how fucking tired you were. Unfortunately, closing your eyes was far from pleasant.

And how had the universe chosen to torture you?

Oh, with him of course.

With his cold, blue eyes and no flicker of the inferno you once warmed yourself in; with the absence of a smirk you loathed to adore. How it burned you to know that you were at fault for the hate and malice that twisted his expression.

And he would press one of your knives between your ribs. It never mattered when you begged for him to stop. And though futile, you'd tell him you were sorry for everything—for every lie and manipulation. Still, when the knife would slide between your ribs, you were always surprised. And every time, it hurt just as much as the last when it pierced your broken little heart.

You'd cry out.

Then, you'd wake up, coated in sweat with a heart that wouldn't stop hammering.

Every time you dared to sleep, it was another version of the same thing. All the emotions you shoved down and buried during your waking hours came back to haunt you in your unconscious ones. It was punishment—and a rather exhausting one.

A day passed following the fight with Lady Nagant—or at least you thought it did. You hadn't seen Deku since he'd left with All Might, though you had no doubt he'd return soon. Hawks had tried to get you to go to the hospital along with Lady Nagant, but you'd refused, terrified that stopping would mean you would crumble.

But now, despite how fast you were moving, you still felt like you were breaking.

It was the symptoms of a sleep-deprived mind, you knew that. But rest was not something that came easy to you these days. That time, when you woke so abruptly, you wrapped Hawks' jacket around yourself and breathed in the lingering scent of vanilla and musk. Then, you started moving again.

And now you were covered in blood.

It coated your hands and dripped from the tips of your knives. When you breathed in, your lungs filled with the metallic scent of iron. There were bodies around you—four of them—limp and lifeless and very, very dead.

You remembered stumbling into the wrong alleyway.

You remembered being cornered by some gangsters.

You remembered hurling a few insults their way.

You remembered being restrained.

You remembered letting them punch you, the sharp corner of a ring scraping your cheekbone.

And then you remembered killing them all.

It was raining again, but no amount of it could wash the blood from your skin and hands. You stumbled forward, stepping over a pair of legs twisted at an odd angle. God, you were tired. You were so fucking tired you could have curled up right there between those bodies on a bed of blood you'd spilled. It was physical exhaustion—yes. But more than that, it was mental.

Every thought you had was punishing and you couldn't, couldn't, couldn't stop. You needed to find him. You needed to free yourself before you drowned in it.

You looked down at your hands.

The sleeves of Hawks' jacket were soaked in crimson.

No, no, no.