Summary:
focal length: (n.) The distance from a mirror or lens to the image that it forms. The longer the focal length, the narrower the angle of view and the higher the magnification.
Hawks, internships, and other regular high school problems... kind of.
Notes:
<3 I hope the canon divergence entertains you!
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Tokoyami does indeed end up choosing Hawks as well. He comes to find me after the announcement, looks me in the eye, and says, "It will be good to work with you."
He dips his head. Behind him, Shouji sends me a thumbs up. "I'll be in your care," I tell Tokoyami, and he nods, and apparently that's that. We don't exchange phone numbers, because Hagakure had imported the group chat contacts into my contacts list when I hadn't been looking last week.
Four names had become five, then six, then nine, then twenty-five. Number twenty-six had been Hatsume Mei, and Shinsou Hitoshi had made twenty-seven. I hadn't asked Hagakure how she'd gotten both their numbers, and she hadn't told.
But it feels – nice, to scroll down the list and see people's names. I hadn't realized how nice it would be until I have it, and now that I do I can't imagine the contacts list being any other way.
The train station is busy, everyone gawking at the pack of high school children trailing after a scruffy man, with bright briefcases and backpacks stuffed full of a week's worth of supplies. Sensei gives us a short lecture about costumes and behavior and U.A.'s reputation, which is fair.
Everyone splits up. Japan is a small country relative to the others, maybe, but there's still a lot of ground to cover. Thankfully Tokoyami is a quiet transit companion; he grabs a seat next to mine but doesn't try to engage in conversation when I pull my headphones on.
Hagakure's group chat is busy with a flurry of texts by the time we arrive. I put my phone on silent and tuck it away, and wake up Tokoyami with a hand on his shoulder. He's dozed on the long train ride, which is fair. "This is our stop."
He rouses with a hand scrubbing at his eyes, and I leave him a moment to refocus. Hawks's Agency isn't too far from the station, but they'd sent somebody over anyway to walk us over. I'm not sure if this is something that they do for everyone or just infamous hero interns from U.A., but Tokoyami hadn't seemed too surprised.
The Agency guide meets us just outside the station. He bows to Tokoyami but keeps his eyes on me. "Welcome to our city!" he says cheerily and smiles wide with teeth. "Here, come. How was the train ride?"
I've pulled down the headphones and put them away, but Tokoyami keeps up the conversation, thankfully. Something about the ride not being too long, and how nice it had been of him to come out and fetch us. Pleasantries, all of it.
It's the last bit of pleasantry we get, because as soon as we step through the doors we're being herded over into a changing room – "Usuallly for the sidekicks," Guide Guy says, still cheery, "but today they're for you! Hawks is out on patrol right now but you might be able to catch him if you hurry."
Tokoyami doesn't hesitate. I take the time to set my pack in a locker – triple digit combination but no padlock, the gauge doesn't even work properly either, and I wonder if it's just this locker or all of them – and pull out my modified costume. There are no individual stalls here, and with the speed at which Tokoyami is changing I doubt I have the time to find one. There's nothing for it, then.
Fuyumi-nee and I had discussed this version of the costume, after Power Loader had sent in his recommendations. Natsuo-nii had taken one look at it and laughed over the phone. "Is that the blue of the PE uniforms at your school?!"
"It's darker than that," I'd told him, but that hadn't stopped the laughter.
He'd called it overkill afterwards, and Fuyumi-nee a worrying grandmother. But it's comfortable, and more importantly it's proper armor.
As soon as we both pull on our costumes, we're out the door. Outside the Agency, sidekicks litter in Hawks's trail like breadcrumbs; it feels like at every corner we turn there's another sidekick, taking statements and soothing civilians and talking with the officers arriving on site. Red feathers are littered and smeared on the ground at some of the more rubble-filled locations – presumably burglaries or other small villain arrests where he'd had to actually fight – but they're few and far between.
Hawks flies above our heads in a flash of brown and red. Tokoyami doesn't have a mouth with which to frown, but there's frustration in the furrow of his brow.
At least the sidekicks recognize us. "Oh, you're the interns?" one of them asks, and flashes us that same bright smile from the other Agency guy. "Welcome, welcome! How's the day been so far?"
We'd gotten on the train this morning, had a one-hour long ride, and been shoved unceremoniously into what's apparently Hawks's daily routine of crimefighting. "Eventful," I tell him, because Tokoyami seems to have words stuck in his throat.
The sidekick waves us on, but I feel the weight of his eyes on my back as we leave.
It's just as we turn the corner when Tokoyami snarls and Dark Shadow sneaks out from his costume to say, "What're we, chopped liver? He hasn't come down once! I swear, trying to catch up with that guy is like chasing after a feather!"
Dark Shadow pauses, almost visibly rethinking. I tell it – him? – dryly, "He does have two full wingfulls of them."
Tokoyami doesn't groan like Hagakure would, exaggerated and dramatized, but he does sigh. "Todoroki-san," he says, and I blink at him. He amends, "Todoroki-kun. Do you not feel the frustration in your breast, the same as I do?"
He speaks like some of the more flowery poetry works, but, "Yes." Pretty much all of the sidekicks we've seen have been performing the actual paperwork and cleanup of post-heroic intervention. It makes me wonder how many times he's stopping a burglar or saving a cat or taking down an armed villain. Is this how he keeps up his status as a Number Three? By sheer numbers of reports claiming the deed to the civil service that oversees the Hero institution?
"We can only hope," Tokoyami murmurs, "that this will not continue to be a pattern."
It's a pattern for the rest of the day. The longer it goes on, the more visibly frustrated that Tokoyami gets. By the end of the day we've seen Hawks three times and spoken to him none.
All of the sidekicks seem to take this in stride, though. "He's always on the move," one of them says, and her voice is pleased.
"Highest case solve rate in the area."
"How else do you think he's Number Three at the age of twenty-two?"
Which is fair. Hawks is only twenty-two and here he is, the Number Three Hero. I wonder about his education and his training – he's the first top ten to not be a U.A. alumni, and the media frenzy at that year's Billboards had almost turned into a riot. But he has to be skilled enough to keep his place, with enough charisma to win the popular vote section of the rankings.
By the time we finally catch up to Hawks, it's two hours past sundown. Tokoyami isn't winded, but he does look tired and Dark Shadow coils around his feet like a particularly annoyed cat.
"Oh!" Hawks calls out when he finally sees us – on the roof of his own Agency like some kind of gargoyle. He crouches on it, staring down at the street where we are, and with his wings flared out for balance he looks like some kind of predatory bird. "You're the U.A. kids, aren't you? When did you get here?"
"This morning," I tell him, before Tokoyami can snap out an answer that'll get him disciplined. "Is this the end of your shift, sir?"
"Don't sir me," Hawks laughs, scratching at where his hair meets his visor. He's smiling but it's like Fuyumi-nee's smile when Natsuo-nii asks about a topic she doesn't want to talk about. "Just call me Hawks! And yeah, this is the end of my morning shift. I'll be starting the night one in a few hours, though – you don't have to be up for that one!" he adds. His eyes behind his visor flick between Tokoyami and me. "But we do have rooms for the sidekicks to crash in that you're welcome to take. You didn't get a hotel or anything, right?"
"They did not," someone says from behind us. I make the half-turn to keep Hawks in the corner of my eye; Tokoyami is next to me, at my flank, slightly behind, but he's a U.A. student and he's Shouji's friend, he's fine. "We've got rooms all set up for them. Hawks, you're late for your debrief."
Hawks laughs again, with more – nervousness? – than before. "Yeah, yeah, I'll be there. It was good seeing you, U.A. kids!"
And then he's gone in a flurry of red feathers, and the Agency man is tilting his head and gesturing with an open hand. His eyes gleam. "This way."
Tokoyami is silent the entire time we're herded from the locker rooms to pick up our stuff to wherever the Agency has set us up. It's a shared room situation, one bed on the left and right walls each. A single light controlled by a switch next to the door, shared bathroom down the hallway.
I haven't shared a room with anybody in years, but again there's nothing for it. I drop my bag off at the end of the bed on the right-hand side; Tokoyami takes the other. Together we say the necessary pleasantries to make the Agency man go away.
As soon as the door shuts, Tokoyami is sitting down on his bed, knees drawing up. His face – does something. I don't know how to read it, not exactly, but after four weeks and change of being in the same classroom as him I know the slope of the shoulders and the knuckled hands.
"He runs both a day shift and a night shift?" Tokoyami asks. Oh. "Is that normal for top ten pro heroes?"
I scratch at the back of my neck. The new costume is still a little stiff, even with a day's worth of playing catch-up with a winged hero to break it in. Power Loader had coated it in something – flame retardant or acid retardant, I'm not sure – and it's a weird texture against my skin. "My father runs a day shift. He comes home at nights."
"So it might be just Hawks, then."
"Or it might be a bad week for him."
Tokoyami makes a sound in the back of his throat. "He had to have known we were coming, though. Aizawa-sensei sent in the forms in advance."
I think about the Agency men and women's smiles, the way Hawks's mouth had twisted – just slightly, not enough for the media to notice except if you saw that expression in the mirror every day.
Or I could have been imagining it.
…I might have been imagining it.
"Anyway." Tokoyami shrugs like he's – no, he is resettling his feathers, they're fine and small enough to make it seem like his form is one smooth plane but it's made up of many smaller ones. "Would you like the bathroom first, Todoroki-kun? To change?"
I stare.
Tokoyami shakes his head, but Dark Shadow is giggling when it leans out from behind Tokoyami's shoulder and whispers, "What, you thought we didn't notice?"
Of course they would. They're observant, they've been giving me looks since the beginning of the year, but none of them had said anything about my habit of changing in the bathroom – until now. When we can no longer tiptoe around it.
"Yes," I tell him, and Tokoyami nods like he's confirming something. But he doesn't say anything else, and I grab a change of clothing from my bag and slip out into the hallway.
I turn on my phone on the way back and almost immediately, it starts vibrating hard enough to slip out of my hands. When I check, though, it's just Hagakure and the smaller group chat.
Chat members: invisigirl, Shouji_M, rockruff, tailman, TodoShou
Today at 8:26pm
invisigirl: soooo
invisigirl: how was everyones first day of internships??
Shouji_M: Pretty quiet.
Shouji_M: We patrolled. No incidents.
rockruff: thats good though isnt it???
tailman: Well, yes
tailman: I had some kids getting lost
tailman: We took them to the nearest police station
invisigirl: nice nice
invisigirl: we had a quiet day here too
invisigirl: wby todo-kun??
TodoShou: Also quiet.
TodoShou: Hawks certainly earned his place as No3 hero.
TodoShou: We didn't see him until the end of the day shift.
invisigirl: oooooh
invisigirl: thats sad
invisigirl: hopefully youll see more of him tmrw??
TodoShou: Hopefully.
When I get back, Tokoyami is already changed into his civilian clothes. "We skipped lunch," he says when I come in, and he says it like a revelation. "Do you suppose they'll have dinner for us?"
I'm not sure how Hawks's Agency works. Most have a cafeteria or food court or something, as part of the amenities, and sometimes the quality difference can make or break a sidekick's willingness to sign on with one Agency over another. Father's Agency has the best to-go bentos that money can buy, as part of their internal HR's attempts to keep the sidekicks with him.
I tell Tokoyami this, and thus cheered up he joins me as we wander the hallways. The walls of Hawks's Agency are a neutral beige, and with the white trim it feels like an office building more than it does where heroes work and spend most of their time. Which makes sense; an Agency handles more than just the frontline of the hero work. PR and Support must also be here, and I wonder why it's so quiet. The Support wing of U.A. isn't like this at all.
Tokoyami presses closer as we walk – he must sense it, too. He doesn't come close enough to trip, though, just enough to brush shoulders, and I try to let go of the tension as we walk.
Guide Guy from this morning catches up with us not even ten minutes into our walkabout. "What're you doing here?" he asks. He doesn't look tired or winded at all, even though it's been a full eight-hour workday since we saw him last. "This isn't the way to the rooms!"
"We're looking for the cafeteria, sir," Tokoyami tries. "Or wherever else we might find sustenance."
"Ah. Then you certainly got turned around!" Guide Guy turns on his heel and leads us back the way we came, but instead of the right we'd taken he takes a left. "We really should've gotten you a guide or something, huh? This is the way to the training rooms!"
"Or a map," I add, because the people who work here must have something better to do than lead around two high school kids around the building.
"Yes, yes… I'll get on that for you." Guide Guy throws a wink over his shoulder and slows down as we reach a glass double-door I haven't seen before. "And here we go! The cafeteria! I'll be hanging around, so let me know if you two need anything else, alright?"
"We don't have a schedule?" Tokoyami mutters under his breath as we enter, but I'm too distracted by the lack of noise to reply. U.A.'s cafeteria is filled to the brim with people, and I can often hear the chatter from down the hallway. The Agency's cafeteria is much smaller, which makes sense, but it's also much quieter. There's a wall of refrigerated shelves like this is a convenience store – a quick check on the neat labels reveals that it is corner store food – and small fridges at knee-height hold drinks.
There's hardly anyone else in here. Which makes sense; it's past eight o'clock at night. At home, I'd be getting ready in the dojo, stretching and loosening up muscles in preparation for Father to sweep in through the door.
Here, now, I grab a box with Tokoyami and find us a table in the back corner where I can see the room. Tokoyami doesn't protest. If the eyes and rustling feathers are any indication, he's unsettled by the silence of the room.
We don't talk as we eat. I check the class group chat, but there's nothing from Iida, even though Ashido's co-opted the so-called for-academics-only channel for bubbly gossip about her day at her internship. Where is Iida interning again?
"Todoroki-kun."
I look up from Yaoyorozu's pinned list of student-agency-city pairings. Tokoyami has already finished his meal – chicken salad with apple slices – and he's neatly folded his fingers on top of the table. "Yes?"
Tokoyami opens his mouth – pauses – closes it. He blinks and shakes his head, feathers rustling. At last he finds his words. "Would you perhaps be interested in a nighttime training session?"
Guide Guy had mentioned training rooms. "Sure," I reply, and put my phone to sleep so that I can stand and bin my leftovers.
Tokoyami rises with me, hands fluttering. "Not as of this moment! Please, finish your meal."
I eye him. He seems genuine, and he meets my eyes. Dark Shadow doesn't say a word.
Slowly, I sit down and pick up my chopsticks again. Tokoyami sits down with me, but instead of watching me eat like Hagakure would have, he turns to his phone instead.
I try not to take too much time so he doesn't have to wait as long, but I'm not sure I manage.
Texts between Tokoyami Fumikage and Shouji Mezou
Not Emo: you were right
Not Emo: he did want to change in the bathroom, same as at school
Shouji_M: I see.
Shouji_M: Thanks for letting us know, Fumikage.
Not Emo: no problem
Not Emo: any other tips for livin with todoroki for a week?
Not Emo: we're in the same room at the agency
Not Emo: they're not having us in a hotel
Shouji_M: Give him his space. If he has his headphones on, try to come into his sightline slowly. Don't touch him, he'll startle.
Not Emo: will do
Shouji_M: Let us know how your internship goes.
Shouji_M: And take care of yourself, alright?
Not Emo: also will do
Not Emo: have fun at ur internship mezou
No one from the Agency comes find us until we've already covered the training room in ice and dust. She doesn't yell – doesn't say anything at all, really, just looks around the room. Her expression doesn't change as she does so.
"Impressive," she says into the silence, when Tokoyami has already started picking ice chips out of his feathers and I've swept out my left foot to begin the thawing process. "But it's past ten at night."
"Do you know our schedule?" I ask. Tokoyami startles, head-crest feathers flaring, but he doesn't say a word. He looks back to the woman, because this is the question that's been bothering him and here we are, looking for answers.
"You'll be given one tomorrow morning." She spreads her hands, then lets them fall to her sides. "We apologize for the delay. With the Hero Killer still at large in Hosu, Hawks's schedule has been somewhat fluid and uncertain. With us not knowing when he'll deploy and where, it's hard to give you a solid timeline. And as part of your internship, we want to maximize the amount of time you'll spend working with your mentor."
The amount of time that we see him, maybe, or the amount of time that we witness the aftermath of his heroic interventions. I bow my head and thank the woman before Tokoyami's low hissing can evolve into something more detrimental.
We walk back to the room in silence. The Agency woman is gone, but her presence lingers.
I wonder what Tokoyami would have done if I wasn't here. I wonder if the internship would have been the same. Most likely. I would have kept quiet, kept watch, and wonder if this had been the natural order of things, or if my presence and the internship had disrupted the regular flow; and I think Tokoyami, with his natural quietness that meshes well with Shouji's, would have done the same.
Tokoyami goes to bed soon after. I listen to him sleep, his soft breathing filling the air. When I sit up and pull the covers back, Dark Shadow is curled up on his chest, form melding with the shadows.
I think about light and dark and metaphysicality and quantum mechanics before I visualize myself setting the thought aside. I'm taking a walk in a place I'm not familiar with, and I'm not Shouji, I'll have only my two ears to help me navigate away from people.
But when I make my way back to the training rooms, one of them is occupied. It's Hawks.
"When do you sleep?"
Hawks startles badly, feathers going everywhere. He reaches for a long one, kicks himself forward – he hadn't been too far away from the door, it'd be –
And then there's a feather leveled at my throat. I still.
Hawks's eyes are wide behind his visor.
He's twenty-two and just finished a day shift. Presumably his night shift will start soon.
"When do you sleep?" I ask again, low into the quiet, and Hawks sighs like he's emptying his lungs of air and slumps. His arm falls and hangs limp by his side; he holds onto the long feather with a glove-wrinkling grip.
"Sleep is for the weak." Hawks flashes me a smile, bright and brilliant and media approved. "Speaking of, isn't it past your bedtime, kid?"
"You're twenty-two," I point out. "The brain develops until you're twenty-five years old, at least. And even then, you need a minimum of six hours of sleep to function. When do you sleep?"
The media-ready mask doesn't break. But there's something behind that visor, behind his eyes, and, yes. I recognize it because Natsuo-nii looks like that sometimes.
"It's a tense week," Hawks murmurs. "There's always cases to solve. Accidents to prevent. People to save. Just because the sun goes down doesn't mean the work stops."
"The work stops for other people." I'm pretty sure moving will set him off again, so instead I lean back and rock forward a little on my heels, no threatening movement. Hawks's hand still spasms around his attack – sword? – feather. "It stops for you, too. Six hours of sleep, sir. Pick a shift and stick to it."
Interestingly, that's what breaks the veneer. Hawks sighs and puts up a hand that's not filled with a weapon to push up his visor and scrub at his eyes. "I told you to drop the 'sir,' kid. That's my manager's title, not mine."
…why would his manager be called sir? Hawks is the one who's employing them.
"Anyway, you're sure one to talk." He points an accusing finger at me. He's still wearing both gloves, even though it's summer and at night and he's inside his own Agency. What is he wearing them for? "When do you sleep?"
"At night, like –" not normal people, can't say that, Fuyumi-nee would tell me I'm being insulting. "You should be doing."
"You're really insistent about that, aren't you?" But Hawks is smiling, now, and he lets go of his feather. The rest of the ones floating in the air drift backwards and reform into his wings.
"Sleep is important to memory consolidation and encoding." I feel certain enough Hawks has a handle on himself that I can fold my arms across my chest and not get my throat cut for it, so I do. "Chronic sleep deprivation can affect both short- and long-term memory."
"Too late for that!" Hawks says cheerily, but he sounds – genuine. "But not too late for you, kiddo, so you should get to bed, hm?"
There's no clock in here for me to check the time, but I know when I'd left Tokoyami in the room and how long it'd taken me to get from the room to here. "When does your night shift start?"
Something changes in Hawks's expression. I'm not sure what. "Midnight. Why?"
There's at least a few hours left where he could be napping, but I'm starting to realize that I won't be able to convince him. So I offer the next best thing instead: "Would you like to spar?"
Hawks blinks – then he grins, and his teeth are sharp. "Sure."
Hawks spars like Spiky does: all restrained and violent grace, all exhilaration and thrill. No bloodlust, just clean movements and a style that makes full use of the mobility and control his Quirk gives him.
"There's no actual bones," I tell him when he pins me down for the third time. "You're flying by synchronizing the movement of all the feathers together, right?"
Hawks doesn't startle but the angle of his dagger-feather does shift away. "What?"
I'm too busy replaying the last twenty seconds back in my head to take advantage of the opening. "So you must – no, you still have control over your feathers and some sensory information input from them even when they're detached. No appendage connected by a nervous system would usually do that." Some mixture of a mutant-class Quirk that gives wings as well as an emitter-class, then.
Hawks lets me up, eyes wide behind that visor. His mouth has fallen slightly open in his surprise. I don't take the opening he gives me to put him on the floor and instead I drop back onto my heels. I've soaked my clothes but it's fine, I'd come to the training room with the intent to sweat.
But Hawks isn't looking up at my face, at me talking about his Quirk. He's looking further down, where his feathers have sliced the last one-third of my shirt away during one of his attacks, and – oh.
I don't have a jacket, there's nothing to cover up the scars with, so I flex my fingers into fists and keep them there. There's no use trying to rearrange the tattered shreds of my shirt into something decent.
"That's some impressive scarring," Hawks says after a long moment. "Good to see that you survived whatever almost killed you."
"It was training," I tell him, and his face – twists. His feet slide into shoulder-width apart, his chin goes up, he looks me in the eye. "The others at U.A. are talented and driven. I only won by the virtue of having more experience than them."
Something shifts in Hawks's face. He seems – relieved? Pleased? "When did you start training?"
"When I was seven," I say carefully, and Hawks's wings flutter with excitement.
His words come out almost faster than I can parse them: "Wait, seven? Me too! Or, well, I started when I was eight but same difference, right? Who taught you? Oh, this is exciting. I thought it was just me," he adds, and, ah.
No wonder Hawks is a hero at the age of twenty-two, even without the education that U.A. would have given him. He's like me.
"My Father taught me for the most part." I toe the linoleum floor – it's not like the dojo tatami at home, it must be easy to sweep or clean – and eye Hawks's shuffling feathers. His body language is like Tokoyami's, in a way, if more emotive.
"Endeavor?" Hawks's smile widens. He sounds thrilled. "Ooh, you must have some good stories about him."
He's only a little younger than Fuyumi-nee, I realize. Both of them are twenty-two, and yet Hawks acts like Natsuo-nii. The difference is startling.
Before I can say anything, though, Hawks stiffens. His posture goes from easy and slumped to formal and ram-rod straight. His sightline goes above my head, eyes widening behind the visor before he throttles the reaction.
"Staying busy, are we?" the man from earlier today, who'd come to fetch Hawks for debriefing, says from behind me.
I turn around and have to intentionally not skid my foot against the floor. There's ice already on the walls and ceiling, there's no way he could have missed it, and even though I hadn't heard him coming Hawks is right here. I can't do anything.
"Just a little light workout before my shift," Hawks replies. All of the vibrancy from before has been pressed out of it. He sounds like one of Father's sidekicks, reporting in for duty. "Did you need me anywhere?"
"Case updates before you head out tonight." The man hasn't stopped to look away from me. His yellow-eyed stare pins me in place. "Todoroki Shouto, yes? I'm sorry I didn't get to introduce myself earlier. I'm Koyama, Hawks's manager."
No first name. I bow the same bow I give my homeschool tutors. I don't say a word, nor do I look away – I can't.
"Hawks, you can show yourself out, can't you? I'll walk young Todoroki-kun back to his room."
Hawks slips away. I see his red feathers go out of the corner of my eye. Koyama gestures when he's gone, and I step forward – one, two, three strides – and then he's at my side as we walk down the hallway together.
"I'm sorry I didn't get to see your spar," Koyama says, finally looking away. I can finally breathe again, and I try not to be too obvious about it but I'm not quite sure I succeed. "Judging from the state of the room, it must have been an impressive one."
He pauses, leaving an opening. There's at least four more minutes left to the room at the pace that we're walking. "I wouldn't say so," I demure. "Hawks-san is very skilled. It was a one-sided spar."
"Ah, he is very good at what he does, isn't he?" Koyama chuckles as though he's the one who's been complimented. "But you sound impressed – or, jealous, Todoroki-kun?"
He says it like he knows the answer already. I don't understand. I'm impressed, definitely, but jealous?
"Would you like a training session with Hawks? That can certainly be arranged." Koyama says this, too, like it's his decision. All self-assurance and certainty.
There's something wrong about that, but I can't pin my finger down on what. Koyama's pace is steady, and he hasn't even given my tattered shirt and exposed scars a second glance. He hadn't yelled when he'd found me out of the room after what surely must have been curfew.
"Does he have the time for that?" I modulate my voice to be softer, humbler.
Koyama hums. "Of course. It's your decision, Todoroki-kun."
"Then, if Hawks-san is sure," I dip my head in a respectful nod, "I would love to have a proper training session with him. Is it okay if I invite Tokoyami-kun to it as well?"
Koyama – blinks. The corner of his mouth twists, his eyebrow twitches, like he's – startled? A blink, and then it's gone. Maybe I imagined it.
"Of course," the man says again, and before I know it we've arrived at the door to the bedroom assigned to me and Tokoyami as interns. "I believe this is your stop. It was a joy to speak with you, Todoroki-kun. I'll get that training session sorted. Have a good night."
Koyama walks away, steps silent in the hallway. His shoes don't leave scuffmarks in the carpet.
I affix the sight of his face to my mind as I get ready for bed as silently as I can, but by the time I slip off into dreaming, all I remember about the man is his voice: low, soothing, sure.
We wake up and head to the cafeteria at seven thirty in the morning. School would be starting in half an hour if we weren't at the internship, and the lack of class after four weeks of it is almost startling. Habits and patterns, I remind myself. It's the same as the homeschooling. It's just a schedule. There's no need to be discomfited.
I still find myself checking the group chats as Tokoyami and I share a quiet breakfast. Shinsou had been active in one around 3AM in the morning, and Asui had commented on it in her usual dry way, and then it had devolved into… dog images?
Guide Guy finds us when we're done with breakfast, arriving just after Tokoyami has put away his last mouthful of toast and I've gone and binned both of our trash. "There you are!" he says, clapping his hands with delight. His teeth are white and unerringly straight. "Come, come! You've had breakfast – yes, good. So let's get you set up for today!
"A little birdy," and here Guide Guy winks in Tokoyami's direction, "told me that you two wanted a schedule for the rest of the internship?"
Tokoyami's feathers look unsettled, so I step forward and redirect the attention. "And a map."
"Ah, yes, that too." Guide Guy fishes out a piece of paper from his pocket and hands it to me; I pass it on to Tokoyami. "But this afternoon you'll be getting time with our very own Hawks! Isn't that exciting?"
It's eight in the morning. Hawks's night shift had started at midnight. Did they pull him off early? Or is his night shift shorter than the day shift, which had been at least eight hours?
Tokoyami seems pleased, though, so I let it go. Guide Guy hovers outside the door when we get back, humming quietly to himself, blocking off the path to the bathroom. I dig my fingers into my hero costume and try to breathe.
It's fine. I'd changed in the locker room yesterday, Tokoyami had been there, the cat is already out of the bag, and yet – and yet. I can't make myself let go of my costume to properly pull it on.
And then Dark Shadow is looming in the small space between us, taking up space. It stretches from the closed door to the far wall, and it catches my eye – stares me down with that golden gaze – before deliberately, obviously, turning its back.
Tokoyami says nothing about the fact that his Quirk is acting as a living curtain partitioning the room. I sigh through my nose, wincing when it sounds loud to my ears in the quiet, and try to pull on my costume as quickly as I can.
Guide Guy's idea of a schedule is something similar to yesterday: trailing after Hawks in his wake, helping his sidekicks clean up incidents and write down reports. But after noon where there's an actual break for lunch, we have a three-hour session blocked off with Hawks.
I think about when we'd arrived yesterday and the fact that Hawks had been working then, and then the night shift. Now a day shift. As far as I'm aware, he hasn't slept in the last twenty-four hours, but who knows how long he's been working earlier this week?
I keep my worries to myself, though. Tokoyami looks eager for that session marked off as Training, and I don't want to disrupt that.
Notes:
Hawks: See, Jeanist?? I'm not the weird one! Other people do train at an incredibly young age and are raised into the Heroics lifestyle and have the capability of becoming a full-fledged hero years before they're of legal age!
Best Jeanist, who has been trying to convince Hawks for years that the Hero Commission has been grooming him for sacrifice since he was eight: Excuse me?
Shouto now has his season 2 hero uniform! But with dumb redundancies for all his electronics and thermoregulation, and better first-aid kits on his belt than the capsules because Fuyumi went over them with a fine-tooth comb (teaching elementary school has taught her a lot about how to stock them).