eternal || hawks x reader

Prologue

"the lights, the red flowers, the snow. it's all so pretty, but so sad. because i know that i have no control over what will happen next and i have to watch it all with a sinking heart."

- atlas.

Freedom.

It's a concept I've been unable to grasp since I was old enough to have independent thoughts, which was probably around three years old when my Quirk was discovered. It's uncertain whether or not that was my actual age since my true birth-date is unknown but no one at Littlest Angels Orphanage has a real birthday. Whenever our unique power manifests is decided as the day we were born and the quirkless stick to the day that they arrived. Though, the quirkless always disappear in the year after they turn three. They're taken to a "doctor's appointment", whatever that means, and then we never see them again. It's kind of sad, but I never had to go to one of those so I just decided it wasn't my problem.

The day I discovered my Blood Manipulation Quirk was both the worst and best day of my life. The worst of it stemmed from the fact that I was getting stomped on and beaten by four seven year olds, I don't remember the reason, and they had injured my nose along with breaking some skin. I can recall the pain, something that's so numb to me now, and not being able to take much more of it. I was on the verge of losing consciousness when I pleaded with myself for the strength to make it all stop. After that, all I remember seeing is...

Red.

The dangerous but intoxicating hue brought me a sense of comfort in a way that would frighten others. The moment I saw it escaping out of the small bodies of my previous bullies before me, spilling down the pavement like a wave washing ashore, it was the first time in my life I ever felt content. All four boys were left in a state that would be unexplainable to someone who didn't find me standing in a pool of their blood mixed with my own. There was that moment of silence, before the scream from the Head "Angel" as she came upon the scene, that could only be explained as euphoric. My head had lifted up to the sound of flapping wings; and that's when I saw it.

I saw a bird.

I had never seen one before, mind you, so you can imagine my surprise when I came upon the knowledge that some beings on this earth possessed these limbs that could take those who desired it to the skies. I was immediately jealous and the grown hands that grasped my shoulders so hard I thought they'd break my clavicle didn't even phase me. I was so fixated on the concept of escaping the world around me with a simple flutter that everything around me just faded. There was only one thought that floated in my desolate mind...

That's what true Freedom is.

I realized later that Head Angel wasn't frantic to know what happened to the children as she was to know how I was able to leave them how I did. I had never seen someone smile so wide at me before and bring me into their own warmth. I imagined hugs to be more sincere, caring.

It was actually disgusting.

After that. I didn't get to see the outside again. It was admittedly upsetting but I didn't have much time to dwindle on that feeling. Instead, I was stuck in a part of Littlest Angels Orphanage I didn't know existed. There were other three, four, and five year olds with activated Quirks that all slept in the same room - no one older. A total of twelve, four of each age group counting me. They all wore numbers, and as the twelfth I completed the count. Later I'd come to know that this number would be all I was, and all they were.

We were never called by our actual names, just the figures on our clothes. The same number of bunk beds were spaced out around the dull room we'd spend most of our days in. The only other part of the house we were allowed in was the basement and because of the size; the Head Angel had turned it into a sort of torturous training facility. Before I knew it, we were being put through rigorous sessions of Quirk enhancing that killed Three, a five year old, and Nine, a three year old.