Work Text:
PROLOGUE
KEIGO JUST WANTS to close his eyes and go. His bone-thin fingers prick into his Endeavor plush, attempting to dispel the unease vibrating into his flesh. He squints his eyes against the measly light slinking in under the door, but it only forces the tunneling to worsen. His body shifts intangible as his skin feels to crawl inside him, his flimsy being spinning in and out of center, swaying violently until he slams shut his eyes. The loss of sight throws his trembling limbs into a painful lock and drives his feathers to quiver. ’It’s too much, too much, TOO MUCH!’ He flinches back, oversensitive skin dragging against the rough blanket scrunched behind him.
Keigo bursts into the closet door, out of it, and into the damp streets.
The darkness hushes over him. Envelops him in a safety. He shivers at its cold touch, welcomes it nonetheless. He doesn’t remember his rush out of the shack. Doesn’t remember the last time its darkness comforted him. Doesn’t remember what comfort even is. He walks, callused feet silent against the rain-swept pavement. The blanket of warmth that his feathers are drape over his quivering shoulders, twitching spastically. Edges and shadows envelop him in their invisibility, clutch him close, hold him protected from drunkards stumbling the late-night streets. From undesirables strapped for cash; villains who wouldn’t hesitate to mount a live prize for sadistic eyes to peel apart, to watch struggle to its final moments.
Keigo’s eyes fixate on a glint, caught in his peripheral. A feather darts out, snatches it. A moment of pause. A squint. A . . . coin.
. . . It’s money .
He pockets it before it can attract attention. Continues walking. Continues finding coins. Continues pocketing them. He stops in front of a conbini; his coins jingle in their hiding place. His stomach cramps, rumbling in his prickling ears, vibrating heavy in his feathers, and he’s stepping inside. He freezes in the bright light, and doesn’t know what to do. He stares at the options and the people. They’re staring back , and his vision tunnels. He bolts, rushes to grab inexpensive ingredients, cheap canned goods. He hides himself in the short line, terrified of the gazes that burn behind his flesh, quick to put his spoils before the cashier. He sees the price tag and gets rid of several items he needs but doesn’t, and the final price drops within the range of his budget, so he discards his bounty, hesitantly, on the counter. A bag is handed to him and he scurries from the conbini.
The light scorches over his too-small shoulders, sends him blending again into the secure embrace of the darkness that saw him there. It sees him go where he’s expected. Sees him back to a sham-safety; a mere few miles from whence he came. His feathers finally calm, pliant like he is. Sharpen. A headache, drumming into his eye-sockets, squeezing his eyeballs with the goal to pop! , drives his lids to a sudden, clamping close. Violent vibrations shock images into his brain, flash behind his lids, ba-DUM an even harsher tempo into his skull. Dread sloshes into his stomach, zaps his spine, comes to the forefront of his brain before he understands what it’s seeing. Before he knows it, he’s moving, hand thrown out at the street, convenience store bag swinging from his other and then dropping to the ground in his surge forward. His feathers spring from the bones mounted in his shoulders, cut through the sky faster than the cars speeding head-on into a collision; gather the people inside to the side of the street just as thousands of kilograms of metal crunch together in a spark of terror.
When the sound fades, when the people frozen jump into action and panic, only a glimpse of fluffy red is caught preceding its disappearance. Authorities like flies swarm the scene soon after.
↭
He thought he’d gotten away fast enough, that no one saw him. Thought the darkness clinging as a second skin to him would have kept him hidden.
It did not.
Thudding footsteps shrieking the floorboards, the knock that caused them, the sudden silence hushing over the dingy shack, is proof of that. His failure. Proof of his disobedience . The door creaks open. It slams shut and the shack explodes into noise. Covering his ears has never helped, so he doesn’t. A box is shoved into his arms, and his mother’s hand pushes at his back, shuffling behind him. A rhythm, da-da-da-da-da , thumps into sagging wood. A hush. A hand again at his back. Passing streets, people. A subway station, and then one of its walls.
His mother asks him why he was born.
He thinks ‘To help my mother.’ But he hasn’t really helped her. Not really. He’s only ruined her life, and he knows that.
So he settles on “I don’t know.” and quietly thinks instead, ‘So I can help people .’ He doesn’t think what for. Doesn’t need to. Just knows that it’s all he’s meant for, to do.
And three days later, people in sleek black suits walk up to them, introduce themselves as officers for the Hero Public Safety Commission. He thinks it’s fate. Instead, they tell them what they already know: The Takami Thief has been arrested. Keigo thinks he likes the name when the Suits mention a Hero named Endeavor achieved the arrest. The Suits notice, say they saw what Keigo did beforehand; saw him save people from a car and truck swerving too fast towards one another. He lights up and just as quickly fades. The Heroes from the TV screen are real and these people want him to become one. But he also illegally used his quirk. He did, and they know . His blood runs cold. Runs like it does whenever his mother speaks of him. Like it did whenever he had his back turned to his father. Never on , always to , but never meaning different things to the man; always the same to him. Keigo’s mouth doesn’t pause in the face of repercussions. Instead, his heart asks the question—a question the meaning of Endeavor evoked, the distinction between the Suits’ use of “save” rather than “endangered”—that would forever chain him in misery before his brain could catch up:
“Can I become someone who saves people? A Hero like Endeavor?” He doesn’t dare hope.
Their answering grins give him more of an answer than their words do. And maybe just a little bit of that fluffy feeling slips into his heart.
“Of course, little guy. However . . . to be a hero, you have to abandon the name Takami Keigo .”
“Can you do that?”
He nods, shy, into Plush Endeavor. He doesn’t mind. The Suits seem to know that.
They take him away and he doesn’t see his mother again until he ranks in the Hero Billboard charts.
It takes twelve years.