A Wilted Red Rose (Hawks x Reader)

What Have I Done?

A/N: I commissioned this chapter's picture from viathatoneartist on Reddit!

~~~

Another day scraped by agonizingly slow as the morning sun rose over Hawks' agency, an emerging shadow looming over the hero's tense form. His jaw tightened, his grip on the pen like a vice as he wrote the dreaded words in a case file. It was day two since you were reported missing. After being trained so meticulously to remain calm and collected, on the inside, Hawks was panicking. For two days his back was bare, each one of his feathers scouted every inch of the city for traces of you. Your voice, your heart, your breathing, anything.

He hadn't showered. His swept-back hair was tangled and more matted than usual. His remaining feathers were unpreened and almost filthy. His agency begged him to slow down and get some sleep, aside from the 20-minute intervals he would be collapsed at his desk. He couldn't slow down. Not until he found you.

His former intern Tokoyami began expressing his concern over his mentor's health – he was in a fragile state the student had never seen him before.

Hawks led a missing person's case on you that he was overseeing directly, and in your file he studied what little info he had on you. The only picture he could provide for the file was the one he had taken by catching you by surprise. Seeing the text in red, the emboldened word under it shook him to his core:

'MISSING'

His heart and mind screamed at him. This was all his fault. He was such a coward for refusing to tell you the truth about why he was upset that night, and instead opted to lie, leading you to go missing.

You may have been dead because of his inability to tell you the truth.

At that thought, he rubbed aimlessly at the nubs on his back, frustrated to the brim about how useless his feathers were if they couldn't find the person who meant the most to him. As his brows furrowed and quaked, his lips drew into a stubborn frown. Somehow, he held back the tears.

Distraught, Hawks couldn't comprehend it.

Where was your necklace?

Why weren't you wearing it?

Where were you?!

The aching weight in his heart was made heavier by the realization that the last thing he said to you before turning his back was something he so deeply, irrevocably, regretted. It was a harrowing nightmare.

Hawks still was to present the body of Best Jeanist to Dabi, despite his unpresentable condition. Yet he found the energy, duffel bag in hand as Dabi approached him, the villain taking a sick delight to the hero's prominent bags and severe fatigue under his otherwise faux stoic expression.

"You look and smell like a shit sack," Dabi snarled.

"Yeah?" Hawks answered with a disinterested eyebrow raised. "If I'm playin' ball in your court now, figured I should look the part. You're rubbin' off on me, ashes."

"Tch," the unamused villain scoffed at his words. "The body."

~~~

On the second day, granules from the sand embedded themselves against the skin where you slouched, growing numb and delirious from the chest pain and dizziness overpowering your body. Your sight had glued to the salient object mere feet from where you leaned, a blood-red feather on a severed string once fastened around your neck. It felt as if it were taunting you, its glistening, alluring sheen told that you were this close from rescue. Your already failing heart ached further upon recalling Hawks telling you that the longer his feather was detached from him, the harder it was to sense, which was why it was imperative to wear it and press it to your chest for him to sense you from afar.