Rising Stronger [Sequel to When the Strong are Weak]

13

The smaller cuts were closing on their own by the time Hawks looked in on her again. She lay unmoving on her stomach as he entered the room. But she had moved, he noted. Where before her face had been turned towards the wall, she was now looking into the room, though her eyes were vacant, unseeing. Hawks moved cautiously, fearful that even moving too quickly would injure her further.

He squat before her, his own eyes taking her in with a scowl. The wrappings on her back needed changing. He had begged her before to use her quirk on him; to let him help her as much as he could, but she hadn't the strength then to even lift a finger. Now though, in the shadows cast by his wings, her hand twitched, the deep purple hue of Y/N's quirk glowed against her fingertips. Hawks nodded, answering the unspoken question without hesitation.

"Be gentle with me," he winked for his own sake. "I'm fragile."

The joke earned him a huff of amusement but he couldn't say for certain if it was genuine or not. He tried not to jolt in surprise at the cold press of her fingers to his ankle. They were like ice and only there for a breath of a moment before she pulled away. Hawks felt the affects all the same though not as intolerable as they could have been. It only felt as though he had just woke from a deep sleep. Even so, he was elated to see the damage he'd caused disappear without a trace.

"I'm scared." Her voice was but a hoarse whisper yet it startled the pro all the same. He turned his eyes from his work to her face and found her still staring at the wall across from her. It was a slow process but Y/N reached out, fingers trembling as she struggled to keep his feathers in her still weak grasp.

Hawks watched silently. After too short a time her hand fell back to the concrete floor and she sighed, the little bit of movement tiring her already despite the self-healing. "It's okay to be scared," he told her. He went back to work changing her wrappings.

"I didn't mean what I said," Y/N spoke slowly, concentrating. She paused every few words, the pain too much to finish a whole sentence in one breath. "You were only doing what they asked you to. I don't want to die. Not yet; not here."

"I know you didn't, Y/N." Hawks forced himself to keep his focus on the work before him. "Torture makes you say things you don't mean, it makes you lie even when you don't want to, if it means the pain will stop."

Y/N wanted to argue that the pain hadn't stopped, but the evidence before them both made that clear enough on its own. She could see it in his eyes when she finally chanced looking up at him that the past couple of days – had it been days already? – had been rough on him. She wondered how much sleep he'd actually managed since she saw him last.

"I miss my friends," she decided to say into the quiet room.

Hawks allowed a half smile to turn up one side of his face but remained quiet. It was only a matter of time before the others would be making their move.

As Hawks worked, Y/N let her guilt swallow her again. How could she have thought this was the right answer? Sure she was young, not quite eighteen yet, but she should have known better all the same. Even in her grief. She'd been warned. The pros tried to tell her. Why hadn't she listened?

Y/N hated that Uraraka was probably sick with worry. It wouldn't surprise her in the slightest if Uraraka wound up inviting herself over for sleepovers after she was finally back home safe. Nor would it surprise her if Kirishima was constantly keeping Bakugo from blowing something or someone to bits. Their quirks had always been a good match up for the other, they'd proven that time and time again when they had their training sessions at each other's houses during –

"They aren't going to hate you for what you did, you know." Hawks interrupted her thoughts.

Eyes still trained on the wall across from her Y/N spoke. "You can't know that for certain."