Touya was neck deep in work. And as much as he appreciated being trusted enough to run things with Tomura gone, and being recognised as a hard worker by his boss and partner... he fucking hated meetings.
The whole time Tomura has been away, Touya had grown a newfound respect for his ability to sit still and actually listen during the hours-long meetings Touya had to endure in his absence.
And now it was way past Star's bedtime, which meant that Touya had missed another night of putting her to bed, and although he was glad to hear that Star had let Zero put her to bed tonight, finally trusting him in her room after the first night Touya had taken him out of the lab, he wished he could have gone home and seen to it himself.
She'd been so angry lately. She was beginning to calm down finally, but she had been a lot stroppier than usual in the last few days, and Touya couldn't figure out how to make it better. He couldn't make Tomura come back, otherwise he'd be back by now. He couldn't erase the damage her mom had done to her. He couldn't take back the years of neglect and abuse she'd suffered at the hands of that vile woman and the poor company she kept.
He could only love her like she was his own and try to make her feel cherished and safe for the rest of her childhood.
When the burner phone he'd shoved in his drawer vibrates and plays birdsong loudly, he's pulled out of his head, his eyebrows pulling together. It was late, and the only two people that had that number were Hawks and his kid. And it was too late for either of them to be calling for a good reason.
When he sees the word 'swan' on the screen, he answers immediately, his stomach dropping.
"Where are you?" He asks quickly, standing from his seat and grabbing his jacket.
"At home." She replies.
At home? Where the hell was Hawks? Touya wasn't an idiot, he knew everyone did parenting differently, but seriously, how oblivious could one person be-
"Everything's fine, I just need to talk to you. Can you come and pick me up?" She continues, her voice sounding a little wobbly.
A chat? She'd called the number he told her was specifically for emergencies for a conversation she could easily have when she next saw him?
"Ain't a fucking taxi service kid, jus' speak to me next time you're here." He snaps, hanging up.
Well, now he's standing up, he may as well go home. Maybe soak his scars in salt water and think about getting all the staples replaced. They were starting to rust and tarnish again, it was a shitty job, it hurt, but it felt a little better knowing he had the money to pay for someone to do it instead of selling himself out for it to be done again.
The phone starts vibrating again, and he snatches it up with an annoyed hiss.
"What?"
"Please. It's really important." She begs.
Touya clicks his tongue at her, looking at the clock. Too damn late for a kid her age to be begging a villain to come and pick her up for a talk if it wasn't important he supposes.
"What's so damn important that I gotta come an' get you for a chat?" He asks, trying to get some more information out of the girl.
"Please." She repeats quietly.
Interesting. Maybe she didn't feel comfortable talking with that stupid chicken around. Probably didn't even tell him that she had Touya's number.
"Who can fuckin' blame her." He mutters to himself before saying a little louder: "Fine. This better be good, kid. I got a lot goin' on right now."
He's about to hang up when she speaks again.
"Don't bring Star." HakuchÅ says quickly.
He couldn't even if he wanted to, but she didn't need to know that. The sudden request is a little weird, but the fact she even felt the need to bring Star into this is enough to have Touya's instincts alert as he pauses to consider potential topics the teenager might want to talk to him about.
"Alri'. Be there in ten." He agrees, hanging up the phone and throwing his jacket around his shoulders.
On the way to the street the kid had made him stop the car at near her house last time, he considers places to stop the car for their conversation. She was bound to be a little jumpy in tight spaces with men whether she was in denial about what had happened to her or not. And that was with average men, never mind wanted criminals with less than favourable rumours being spread about them.
He decides on the pond near the rich neighborhood that Hawks and HakuchÅ lived in. He'd taken Star there once before when they'd been wandering the streets, and figured it was a nice open, non-threatening space for her to be in, even if Touya was hardly the frontman for pleasant company.
When he pulls up to the street corner, she's already there in a hoodie and sweats, no jacket despite the fact it's late and she's shivering.
Honestly, teenagers.
He rolls down the window and beckons her inside lazily. A few seconds in an enclosed space with him would stop the shivering in no time.
And honestly, he'd kind of forgotten about how awkward her wings were to get in the car as he waits for her to figure out how to hold them so she could strap herself in safely.
With a white cocoon of feathers around her and her seatbelt on properly, Touya pulls off again.
"What is it then?" He asks, wanting to get to the point so he can get home quicker.
"I..." She begins, and then cuts herself off immediately. Maybe Touya needed to lay off the abrasiveness, she already had issues with going nonverbal as it was.
But she soon speaks up again.
"I have to tell you something." She announces.
"Mhm." Touya hums, biting back the 'duh' that wants to leave him.
"About... you. About everyone." She continues vaguely.
"Somethin' about me? Love it." Touya snorts, waiting to hear the next wild thing the kid was probably going to accuse him of.
"The thing is, I... uh..." She falters again, picking at the white plumage covering her. "I was passing the staff room the other day, and I heard them talking about a big operation."
Touya glances at the young girl quickly.
"The staff room." He repeats dryly.
The staff room where exactly? UA? Hawks' agency?
The latter seemed more likely. There was no way pro heroes would discuss such matters as a mission on school grounds.
And what kind of 'big operation', exactly? He needed more than what she was currently giving.
"Yes. At UA." She elaborates, her voice pretty convincing considering it was such a blatant lie.
"The staff room at school." Touya repeats again as he pulls up at the pond and turns off the car, leaving the lights on so she could at least see the open area they were in.
He's trying to highlight how unbelievable the story is to get her to stop before she continues. He wasn't a stranger to teenage lies. He'd been a shitbag teenager himself, told all the blatantly obvious lies that this kid will too, probably about ten times over.
She nods. "There must have been a leak or something. They were saying about how they're going to try to storm the base while Shigaraki's away."
"A leak." Touya repeats, sounding like a parrot at this point.
He leans his back against the door so he can look at the girl Star seemed to adore so much properly, hoping his distrust shows in his eyes.
He fucking hated being lied to, and he knew he'd done all the checks to make sure there couldn't be any leaks unless she, or Hawks, had been running their mouths.
She nods again, a little more nervously. "They said they were going to use any force necessary."
Touya can't help but give one humourless laugh at the statement that really highlights how untruthful she's being right now, and she doesn't even seem to realise how unbelievable it is that pro heroes would have such a brazen conversation in a space where children who have starry eyes and no knowledge of the truth of hero society could hear.
He can't help but sneer at her a little.
"The heroes at UA were discussing a big operation, where they're gonna storm our base an' use 'any force necessary'?" Touya repeats one last time. "An' you happened to hear this all?"
He was trying to offer her an out, a way to correct herself before he got really pissed off.
"Yes sir." She nods as she commits to her lie.
Touya's nose scrunches as he has several flashbacks of his father towering over him, and Touya fearfully using those same words she'd just uttered.
"Don't call me that." He says firmly.
Touya stares at the kid, waiting until she's squirming in her seat until he speaks again, coming up with another question that'll highlight the obvious lie she's telling.
"And you're here tellin' me all this instead of bird brains doin' it, why?" He asks, pulling a cigarette from his pocket.
"I don't think Hawks knows." She replies, yet again failing to realise how stupid of an answer that is in her young age.
"Number two doesn't know about such a huge mission?" Touya asks, rolling down his window.
Usually he'd kick her out of the car so he can distance himself a little more while he smoked, but she was shivering earlier when she'd been outside of the car, and it wasn't his kid, so it wasn't his problem.
"Maybe they don't trust him. He's been trying to side with you." She lies through her teeth again.
Touya really has to hold back a laugh at that one. There was no way any professional hero could even hint at sympathising with Tomura's cause without having their license stripped off of them, and that was if the HSPC were feeling kind.
He dead-eyes the young girl next to him, inhaling smoke and exhaling it so he can get most of it out of the window. Lord knows Hawks would have a stroke if his kid came back stinking of smoke. Touya definitely would.
"Side with me." He repeats, getting sick of himself at this point.
She nods slowly, watching his fingers rather than his face. Not that Touya could blame her for that one.
"Y'wouldn't lie to me kid, huh?" Dabi asks. "Cause, y'know, that'd be a real fuckin' stupid thing to do."
Maybe a bit too threatening, but seeing as trying to be patient with her didn't work...
"I'm not lying." She defends, despite obviously being a liar. "You did a lot for me, and I thought it was only fair I told you..."
Touya takes a moment to register what she was saying. Annoyingly, the little squirt had a point. Who cared where she got the information from? Point was she felt that she owed Touya the information, and was risking everything she had by telling him.
"When's this plan happenin' then?" He asks.
"I don't know." She admits.
Helpful.
"Right." Touya scoffs, running his free hand through his hair rough enough for his staples to snag on the strands and ground him enough to stop himself getting mad. "Alright."
He goes silent, turning properly so he can smoke out of the window a little more efficiently, feeling the teenager's eyes burning into him the whole time.
After a while of silence, she finally speaks to him again.
"Uh, why are we at the pond?" HakuchÅ asks.
"Bring Star here sometimes." He replies bluntly. "She likes the ducks."
"Oh." She replies. "That's why she draws them a lot then?"
"Yeah." Touya smirks slightly in pride at how good Star was at drawing.
"Did she paint your nails too?" She asks.
"Nah. That was Toga." Touya replies, flicking the end of his cigarette out of the car and rolling the window up again. "Star'd be too clumsy with it."
He absolutely did not trust Star with any kind of cosmetics after he'd let her do his makeup and she'd covered the clear areas of his face in lipstick. She'd been happy, but trying to wash matte lipstick off was nearly impossible. It just smeared.
The kid next to him is silent, and Touya's waiting to see if she gives anything else away about this big plan the heroes had supposedly concocted.
"If they find out I told you, I'll get in a lot of trouble." She states quietly.
"Obviously." Touya replies. May as well tell the truth then.
"If that happened, would you look after me like you do Star?" HakuchÅ asks painfully quietly.
And well, Touya wasn't expecting that.
He turns to look at her. "You bein' serious right now, kid?"
Her face is almost pitiful, a pleading kicked-puppy look on her face that reminds him so much of how he'd looked himself when he was begging his mom, anyone, to see him. To love him.
It almost makes him feel sick.
He scoffs, putting up the walls that'd kept him safe for so long.
"No thanks, already got all kindsa rumours goin' around about me 'cause I picked up Star." Touya scoffs again, angrily this time. "Not that anyone else was helpin' a ten year old walkin' around on the streets. Dumpster diving for food."
He shakes his head angrily, and his lip curls as he loses himself in his anger at the situation. How could someone so young be failed so badly?
"She was homeless?" HakuchÅ asks softly.
Wasn't Touya's story to tell. Not when Star was so easily embarrassed lately.
"Anyway. Better get you back." He says, turning the keys in the ignition again. "Before your dad starts to worry."
Wouldn't be surprising if this 'big operation' fell out of that untrustworthy asshole's mouth, and she was trying to protect the useless little hero.
"Oh. Yeah. Sure." She agrees reluctantly.
The hurt in her voice is enough for Touya to pause. She really had done a decent thing in telling him what they were planning, even if he was a piece of shit and deserved whatever they had in mind for him.
But he needed to be there for Star, and the knowledge made it so he could make sure he could continue to be there for Star.
So he looks at her again, thin eyebrows pulling together as he decides whether to lower the walls slightly or not.
"Y'know kid, even if they did find out, an' ya got into trouble, I think chickenshit would find a way ta get you out of it." He says sincerely.
He would if he were Hawks, and HakuchÅ was Star, after all.
"How'd you figure that one out?" She asks with a dry laugh, turning her head to try and hide the fact she was starting to tear up.
Touya was familiar with the look of guilt, and he now knew for a fact she was trying to cover her pops' ass.
Touya sighs as quietly as possible. She was lying to try and be a good kid, but was clearly torn between sides and scared.
He decides to bite the bullet and do something for her, too, his eyes softening on her ever so slightly.
"'Cause, between you an' me, he tried gettin' me out with him to put that Akio guy to sleep." Touya admits, miming cutting his ruined throat with his thumb.
She looks at him in a mixture of disbelief and horror. Which wasn't the response he wanted, but he was already in it now.
"What?" She sniffles.
"Yeah, he was all like 'I gotta take care of something'." Touya mocks Hawks. It was so lame. "Wanted me to torch him after he was done from what I could tell. Wasn't gonna fuck around on the phone wi' him. Hadta make sure Star had a good Christmas."
Her eyes widen even more.
"Trust me, ain't nothing like a fathers rage." Touya says darkly.
After all, he'd been the one at the other end of the rage, and the one raging. He knew it all too well.
"He won't let ya go anywhere, trouble or not." Touya says, with the certainty that Star had instilled in him with the pure love he had for the little girl he now called his own. "An' if he does, then maybe I'd consider it."
After all, a playmate around Stars age wouldn't be too bad. He'd have to get her to work on her lying, though.
Seriously, what did this kid take him for?
As he loved to say to Star, you can't kid a kidder, and HakuchÅ was just beginning. Touya had years of experience lying and masking who he really was.
"If ya remember or hear anythin' else about this big, secret mission, tell me." Touya says, putting the car into gear again. "Now. Let's get ya back to the little dope shall we?"