Love was a spurious concept; a double-edged sword, the caving gyration of flesh as a bullet penetrated deep and fatal. He could deign to answer Hawks tirade with condescension because he never deluded himself into thinking his loyalty was the truth. In this decaying, decadent world of theirs, erected on lies and fragmented promises, nothing could ever possess his faith as an unwavering, concrete sentiment. Dabi applies pressure to the sinuous curve of his spine, ruthless heat swelling along the ridges of the treads, he’s immune to it but the rubber becomes pliant, drips in molten rivulets along sun-kissed skin. Liar, that’s the epithet he imprints on his skin, useless fucking liar.
“ come on. ” the delighted cadence of his voice is steeped in malice, gaunt fingers wrapping around the bottom of his wing and giving one ruthless tug upward, how he savors the euphony of delicate, fracturing bone, the excruciating agony that ghosts across the reticent features of a hero. He was always a hero, a revered star, protector of the weak, savior of the poor, a duplicitous smear on the righteous name he should have strove harder to uphold. “ I’m not even hurtin’ you yet. ” his voice dips, baleful and without giving opportunity proper for the hero to writhe beneath him brilliant, lambent flames erupt where skin meets resplendent crimson plumage.
Be grounded, he thinks, down here with the detritus of the world you think you’re doing right by. He doesn’t deserve it, the aptitude for flight, a transient but unadulterated freedom. Dabi leans down, caressing along the brittle bone as the ashen feathers float down around them in a flurry of red and glinting, incensed cinders, all the way until he meets the juncture where tenuous, avian appendage meets skin. “ You’ve been reeeeal quiet for a while now, don’t you feel even a little guilt ? ” the rasp of his voice is as minacious as the ravening, blue fire that burgeons across his wax-wings, an incendiary act but were the consequences even something to consider ? a life for a life, an eye for an eye. He should be showing appreciation, kowtowing at his dissolving, black combat boots that this is all he’s taking as compensation.
“ Come on, sing for me. ” his fingers, taking on the impression of a sedulous conductor, drift along his solitary remaining wing, caressing each individual plume with the reverence afforded during their intimacy. Then, without warning, he sets it ablaze. This fire is ravenous, rows and rows of sharp teeth devouring all to coruscating embers as his feathers are ravaged, it begins at the extremities and warrens inward, narrow lines of flame spreading and spreading until it too meets the convergence of skin and bone. This whole time he has been applying bodily pressure to his fragile ribcage, listening attentively just in case the dulcet trembling of ribs as they crack one by one might grace him.
“ You lied to us, lyin’ to the boss doesn’t come without punishment, you of all people should be able to appreciate that, @chipen. ” with vitriol he spits out his hero’s name, retching bile and vomit a far more appealing aftertaste. Then, as sudden as the torture initiated it ends, with a brutal snap he seizes an exquisitely fine piece of bone from the withered frame of his wings, raising it up to the shafts of anemic light that spill in from the skylights above. In this dilapidated warehouse, where no one was left to call upon his name, to sear the remnants of the winged hero hawks into their memory, Dabi takes from him the very thing that defined him as what he was. a traitor.
“ Unless y’want to die I would leave, I won’t give you another chance. ” the hostility corralled beneath stark, white lashes burns with the vehemence of a wildfire, he toys with the useless remnants of that feather before crushing it in the palm of his hand. “I’m listenin’, speak up. ” Laughter punctuates the delirious grief that runs rampant alongside his erratic pulse, he hones all of his ire into his name until it permeates venom through every elongated syllable. “ Keigo Takami. ”
