Chapter 141 - The Origin of Quirks

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Hawks liked me.

It was less an idle remark than a certainty.

He liked to tell me irrelevant facts about his life, to take me to many restaurants for long meals and to lecture me endlessly. When the days were 'good' ones - according to my deductions - he liked to drink, and when he drank, his tongue loosened.

Or maybe he was just a chatterbox.

A chatterbox. Surely that was a species of bird that already existed, wasn't it?

- Hey, you're not listening to me

- If you want me to listen to you stop telling me useless things

- Am I boring you ?

- Absolutely

Hawks laughed.

He raised his hand and called to the barman to bring him some more spirits with long names and more synthetic smells than the previous ones.

I pointed with my chin at the brownish liquid that rolled like a wave in his glass, smashing against the ice cubes like a raging ocean against icebergs.

- I don't know how you drink this stuff, I said, wrinkling my nose. Or how you can stand the smell of it

Even strong perfumes had a way of irritating me because of my overdeveloped sense of smell: I couldn't even imagine what something as stinky as this would do to someone with senses as acute as his.

Hawks took the glass, eyes half closed, and raised it to his face, looking at the alcohol as if it were gold.

- When you can't feel anything like I do, you need at least this much to feel alive

He drank the glass in one gulp and let out a satisfied 'ah'.

His comment piqued my interest.

I asked in a conversational tone:

- When you say you don't feel anything, do you mean...?

His mouth curved into an amused smile, but his eyes narrowed menacingly.

When he looked at me like that, his eyelids heavy, his vertically slit pupils scrutinising me intently, he made me feel more like an animal than a man.

Sometimes the way he acts is really familiar...

Hawk's smile widened as he looked around.

Then he took off his jacket and threw it on the sofa beside him.

Hawks was wearing only a black sleeveless top.

Whitish burn scars covered his arms down to his neck.

They curled around his forearms and elbows, wrapping around his skin like snakes.

He looked as if someone had thrown him down a chimney to burn like a log.

It was the ugliest thing I had ever seen.

Hawks scratched absently at his right cheek, the only part of his face the flames had managed to reach.

There was a small white triangle on his jaw, its tip pointing towards his eye.

- Ugly, isn't it ?

I looked up at Hawks.

He smiled casually.

- It's something that happened when I was a child. That day, some of the nerves connected to my brain just snapped. I was in so much pain that I had a stroke on the operating table as the doctors tried to save the charred lump of flesh that I was.

He spoke nonchalantly, as I would have done in his place.

I had the distinct impression of seeing myself in the third person as I told my psychiatrist how my brother had tried to drown me and why I was glad he was dead.

- After that, all my senses: poof!

He mimed an explosion, or maybe it was something flying away.

- I've had hypoesthesia ever since. I can't feel hot or cold or pain.

He pointed to the row of empty glasses piled up on the coffee table between us.

- Now you understand why this is my thing ?

I especially don't understand how you haven't gone mad.

Hawks raised his arm and asked for a new glass, which was brought to him along with a full bottle of Daniel's. I stared at Hawks without thinking.

I leered shamelessly at him, trying to imagine the pain of burning alive while no one helped you.

The burns are too clean, too precise to be the result of an accident...

- How did it happen?

Hawks smiled enigmatically and looked at me over the top of his glass.

- Don't pretend you haven't guessed

I didn't answer.

- Why didn't they erase them ?

The Commission's golden goose must have been worth at least that much.

Hawks picked up the glass and the bottle, looked at them both, put the glass down, pulled the pin out of the bottle and took a big gulp from the swig.

He wiped his mouth with the back of his sleeve, wedged the bottle between his thighs, pulled a pack of cigarettes from his pocket and lit one.

I turned my head towards the barman, who was cutting slices of lemon without paying any attention to us.

The lights in the bar were dimmed, the chairs almost empty, the customers glassy-eyed and rarely accompanied.

Even though we were at the far end of the bar, in the most isolated corner of the sofa, there was no reason why the barman shouldn't see us.

If Hawks is indulging in a shit show of himself in such a public place, he has to know that no one is going to bother him here...

- I know what you must be saying to yourself, said Hawks. 'What? He's their golden boy and they haven't even thought about his public image?'

He took a drag, the tip of his cigarette reddening like embers. He pushed his cigarette aside and took a sip of Daniel's with his left hand. Then he reached for the crackers with the free fingers of his right hand and took a bite.

- The thing is, I wasn't 'Hawks' back then: I was just 'Keigo', a kid with a decent Quirk who'd survived... well, who'd survived something else no one should have survived. It would have cost far too much money compared to my potential. The cost-benefit ratio wasn't really in my favour.

Hawks smoked slowly, thoughtfully.

- I couldn't even walk back then. That's how worthless I was.

- Why ?

Ash fell on his hand.

He didn't notice.

- Burnt nerves, he said. It's the sense of touch that allows you to walk and balance. If I hadn't had my wings to help me...

He opened his arms wide, smiled suddenly - as if his face had convulsed - before resuming his apathetic expression.

- But I managed to get the hang of it. They were very happy. But it was too late for the scars

Hawks shrugged indifferently, as if he didn't care.

But when he took another drink and looked up at the ceiling, the cold, restrained rage I saw in his eyes was all the answer I needed.

Hawks smoked slowly, his eyes glassy but his gaze intense.

When he finished, he looked at me again.

- And you? he said. What's your tragic story?

He had already lit another cigarette.

I looked away, watching some sickly-looking old people walk away.

- There's nothing tragic in my life.

Just a little too much drama in my personnal opinion.

Hawks pointed with his chin to my left middle finger, where a whitish, barely visible scar in the shape of a spiked crown hugged the base of my first phalanx.

- Ah, this

I raised my finger to my face, pretending to recall an old story as my brain spun at breakneck speed.

Hawks - Keigo - was confiding in me, telling me a little bit about who he was, why he was, exposing his weaknesses, knowing full well how much damage I could do to him and his career with this information.

He was trying to cut me some slack, to give me the means to counter-attack (albeit on a smaller scale) if I ever feared he'd spill the beans about what had happened in Nagano.

Suddenly I understood why he'd taken me to a bar in the middle of the day on an average Thursday.

He's trying to show you that you can trust him.

Nagano wasn't information I'd willingly shared. But the story of Keigo's burns was. He asked me to do the same, to tell him a bit about who I really was.

I hesitated.

In a way, I understood Keigo.

His way of talking, acting and observing was so familiar to me because it mirrored my own.

He hadn't been raised to be a functional adult, but a weapon: my father had tried to make a decent man out of me, but I'd never been able to shake the idea that my powers were my essence, that I was worthless without the blood I could spill.

I was pretty sure that Hawks had already killed for the Commission, and I'd spilled more than just blood for my own sake.

Keigo and I had led similar lives in some ways, and yet we were completely different.

I was... I had a lot to work on.

Keigo, on the other hand, had chosen to turn to others, to become a hero and help people. The way he lit up inside when he helped a fallen old woman to her feet, the sparkle in his eyes when he managed to persuade villains to surrender without violence...

Sometimes, when I looked at him, I felt like I was looking at my father.

- Come on, he urged. You can't expect me to believe that life was easy with a brother as crazy as yours...

A sudden smile strectched my lips.

Keigo was the man who had decided to put himself aside for the common good, but who at one o'clock in the afternoon was drinking and smoking to stave off who knows what.

He had made his public persona that of an angel, but the look on his face the first time I gazed at one of his burns was the opposite.

- I was five, I think, I said. That was about ten years ago.

Eleven years, seventy-eight days and thirteen hours.

- Touya...

I raised my hand to the light of the dim ceiling lamps.

The pale, whitish scar looked like it was made of fire in the light.

- He didn't really like me, you see. So one night he came into my room and tried to kill me.

I put my hand down and smiled.

Hawks, his cigarette floating a few millimetres from his mouth, watched me in silence.

A thin puff of smoke rose from it as it burned itself out.

- We fought. He bite me and nearly tore my finger off.

The intensity of Hawk's gaze made me uncomfortable.

I continued in a playful tone:

- My father arrived, Touya disappeared and I had eleven years of peace. I'd rather he'd gone with the whole finger if it meant a lifetime of peace and quiet.

I smiled.

Hawks didn't imitate me and slowly went back to smoking, his eyes glued to the wall behind my shoulder.

His silence made me nervous, itched my nerves to the point where I could feel the blood in my veins heating up.

- What was that ? You shouldn't have asked if you aren't satisfied with the answer

Keigo turned his gaze to me.

I saw my reflection in his unusually bright eyes : smooth face, hard eyes.

- There's no need to get upset, he said.

- I'm not upset, I replied evenly.

Hawks smiled indulgently.

- You may wear a mask, but I can see all your emotions in your eyes.

I found Hawks condescending, contemptuous, belittling.

My blood began to boil.

- Do you hate him ?

- I'd love him to die

Hawks stopped.

What are you going to do with that, Hawks?

He joked.

- That's the kind of brotherly love I like.

My fingers brushed the underside of the coffee table and a seal unfolded to silence our conversation to the outside world.

- You hate him too, don't you?

Hawks smoked quietly.

- I don't have any particular feelings about him

- How long were you in hospital, I asked. How many summers alone, wondering if you'd ever get out ? How many nights crying over your ruined life ?

Hawk's wings quivered, rising sharply before falling back, like a bird of prey about to swoop down on its target.

- What's the matter with you?

His jaws were clenched, a hard line crossing his forehead.

I inhaled sharply, the suggestion about to leave my mouth.

No, not yet.

I bit my tongue until it bled, forcing myself to remain silent.

I swallowed my misplaced anger and fever into the depths of my insides.

- Tell me you hate him.

Hawks studied me in silence, one elbow on the back of the leather sofa, smoking slowly. He refused to answer.

- Tell me you haven't forgiven him.

He stared at me, chin up, whitish smoke coming from his lips as if he were exhaling snow.

If I am the only one driven mad by his very existence, then-

- I wished he'd stayed dead.

His eyelids were low, almost closed, his lashes forming two iron curtains that framed eyes of icy brilliance.

He smiled wickedly.

- Even if he had to keep a finger with him.

The pounding in my chest subsided.

Somehow, I understood Keigo. In a way, he and I were the same.

That's why I knew that he would have done the same thing in my place.

The last remorse I'd had about carrying out my plan died down like burning logs on which a bucket of ice water is poured.

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Author's note :

I wonder what kind of game Shoto is playing...

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And as always, see you in the next update everyone !