The rain was falling pretty hard that way.

Just like the blows to his back.

Keigo Takami lay whimpering on the floorboards after his drunk father had beat him black and blue. One of his eyes was swollen shut and he could see blood leaking onto the floorboards and feel the stinging pain of the glass shards embedded in his skin.

With one good eye he tried to locate his plushie.

Today had been a particularly bad day.

His father was a thief, a villain.

His mother had provided cover to him after a particularly nasty incident and one thing had led to the other and now Hawks was the result.

His back hurt.

The plushie was no where in sight.

All he saw around him was blood, and all he felt was an endless agony.

Dimly he wondered whether the pain would stop if he were dead.

Whether it would be good for everyone around him.

A choked sob escaped his throat and he marveled at it, amazed that he still had the energy to cry out after everything.

"A mistake" was what his parents liked to call him, and he agreed. He was a mistake, indeed.

A mistake to be born into this cruel world.

A mistake conceived without healthy love.

A mistake.

That's all he was.

The world was spun around him, despite him staying on the floor. He felt as if he was floating.

It felt nice. The pain was gone too.

His hand touched something soft, and he fancied that he saw a flash of navy blue and orange.

His other eye gradually fell shut on its own accord, unable to stay up after this.

When he woke up next morning, he found that he was still lying on the floorboards, glass shards still sticking onto his skin.

Oh, his mother hadn't come home today.

He felt around blindly for his plushie until he found it and stared at it for a good minute.

It was nothing too fancy, just a small rendition of Endeavor.

Endeavor, the flame hero.

He remembered watching him on television once.

How his orange flames seared the villains around him.

He fancied for the flames to sear the villain in his own house too, to save him like he saved the rest.

For a gleeful moment he could almost imagine it, the Hero breaking down the doors to his house and dragging his father bodily out of his house, the flames burning the last remaining traces of him.

Maybe he would hold him and take him somewhere safe.

His flames would save the day, maybe.

Keigo thought this to himself everyday, and at some point he has half started to believe it even if he dismissed the thought immediately after it occurred, rebuking himself for hoping such a thing.

Hope was the greatest torment after all.

Hope, hope, hope.

It captured hearts with how beautiful it sounded, the fake and temporary warmth it offered before disappearing into nothing, leaving an agonizing heartache behind.

Just like he had hoped for his family to be normal one day when he was still younger.

Blearily he realised that he was five.

And the glass was still not out of his skin.

For a moment he wanted to just bleed out.

But then he remembered the flames and steeled himself.

He wouldn't give in so quickly.

Maybe one day he would become a great hero like Endeavor himself.

Little did he know that the Hero he wanted to save him was a monster himself at home.

The same kind he wanted to run from.

~~~~~~

In another part of the country, a boy was training hard.

He had just got his Quirk, how exciting was that!

Now he would be able to reach his father's goals for him.

Surely then his father would love him.

"Father, father, teach me flashfire, please."

The monster of a man smiled at his beautiful little creation, seeing him as nothing but a tool to help him reach a selfish goal.

The training imparted to him was cruel, not suited for a child, however the man refused to stop and so did he, for all he wanted was to impress his father.

After all, what was a little pain compared to that?

Even if it hurt him, it was fine, he would achieve his father's goal and make him proud.

~~~~~~~~~

Keigo remembers the first time when he had actually started believing in hope.

It was a fairly calm sky that day.

News came that his father had been apprehended by none other than the flame hero himself.

He was happy, even if he felt guilty for that after seeing his mother's horrified expression.

He distinctly remembers himself being blamed.

But again.

When wasn't he?

The Hero Commission had offered to provide protection to his mother, on the condition that he trained as a hero.

He remembers clutching his plushie tightly, scared of the unknown grown ups all around him, as if attempting to keep some part of the warmth of the flames for himself.

He looked at his mother once who agreed to it.

He didn't have a say in the matter.

For the next fifteen long years, Hawks trained as a hero.

It wasn't something that a child should be exposed to, but then again, what choice did he have?

If he refused, his mother would be in trouble.

And he didn't wish to be more of a burden on her than he already was.

Besides, he was getting to his goal of becoming a hero at last, right?

Even if it was through hell and bound by shackles so tight that every step caused him to trip over his own feet into the burning magma, he would end up as a hero, right?

Just like the one who had saved him...

He would look at his plushie and nod to himself.

Just like him, he would become strong and fast!

He would make it so that heroes didn't have to slave so hard like him, it would be so that people had too much of free time and too less to do.

Then everyone could be happy.

~~~~~~~~

Peace was never an option in the Todoroki household.

When Endeavor realised that Cremation was hurting Touya, he stopped training immediately and returned back to his factory to manufacture another tool, a better and improved one than the first failure.

Touya's hair had already begun to bleach itself from the vibrant red it used to be.

"Yes," Touya thought as he glared at the new baby in Rei's arms, "Shoto was the replacement to the failure father thinks me to be. But I will prove him wrong! I will show him!"

No one noticed how the darkness of insanity had started to corrupt his mind.

No one noticed how his movements became more frenzied than ever.

There was a moment of panic when he snapped and hurled his flames at Shoto, seething in envy and anguish.

He was quickly silenced and forever thrown aside after that.

He would go crawling to Natsuo, tearfully asking him why he existed.

Everyone at home told him that he couldn't become a hero, that he should pursue some other occupation.

He would gaze upon them helplessly.

"What other choice do I have? My father is the Number two hero Endeavor, everyone expects me to be a hero........"

"Besides.......... it's not like father and mother taught me to be anything different."

He had started falling off the cliff and there was no one to catch him.

One day, Touya decided that he would practice Flashfire by himself at the mountain side where Endeavor used to take him to practice.

This routine went on, and he could finally see his efforts bear fruit when his flames turned blue.

He was burning all over but that was alright.

He had finally done something to impress his father.

He went up to Endeavor and asked him to come to that place to see his progress.

He had gone there early to wait, in eager anticipation of his father's long awaited approval.

But he never came and Touya began to lose hope.

His euphoria vanished, being replaced steadily by a crushing sense of hopelessness and rage.

He turned his Quirk on, to Cremate the surroundings around him.

However he soon realised that he couldn't stop it.

For he had only been taught how to turn it up and never down.

It was always up.

No one had taught him how to do the control.

His tears burnt under his eyes, evaporating and being replaced by burns.

Touya burnt away.

Endeavor stood at the edge of the mountain, gazing at the burning spectacle in horror.

He wasn't worried about the fact that his child was burning, no, it was never that.

It was the horror that accompanied this failed endeavor along with the questions the authorities were sure to ask him.

He hoped selfishly that there wouldn't be any trace left.

He wished that his failure wouldn't disgrace him further than he already had.

So when they brought back ashes, he was internally relieved.

It was passed off as a Quirk misfire.

~~~~~

It wasn't a chance encounter, both the parties were aware of that much.

They both had plans.

Dabi, to get a hero on their side and Hawks to get inside information on the villain league.

Dabi had originally assumed that he was the one with the blackmail when he first saw the body bag.

However, as the flames burnt blue in his hand in the present day, he discovered that it wasn't the case after all.

The trickster was right in front of him, tempting him to take his life.

A familiar feeling of helplessness engulfed him, as if he was thirteen all over again, abandoned on the cliffside.

A/N: Half the reason I put off updating this was to get Hawks's backstory from the manga and the other half of the reason was that.....well it's mentally agonising to write Endeavor as anything but a monster so I kept putting off writing Hawks's part until today...... ehm, so see y'all in whenever the next update occurs.