lol i read this and starting typing out some reflections about parallels between their characters and it got super long so i'm tucking it under a read more
whenever I think about how their experiences of abuse are contrasted in the narrative, I feel like a lot of it boils down to triangulation and how each of them make sense of their lives
like, endeavour is very much the omnipotent abuser: he positioned himself as a god-figure in the household and that really calcified in dabi's mind after his 'death' since endeavour didn't change and maintained his social capital. seeing that he didn't experience any consequences at all must have fucked with dabi.
hawk's experienced his dad's constructed omnipotence was obliterated by endeavour in front of him. so that influenced some stuff for him.
taking that out of the equation for a sec, I think his situation plays out in a really common way: he feared the man who was abusing him, and the parent who was less unsafe (i.e., more abstract neglect-related abuse vs. more clearly definable physical/verbal abuse) might have been a target for his resentment. kids tend to place more blame/onus on the parent who is somewhat predictable or less actively violent.
because both of his parents mistreated him and there weren't any other members of the family (and also everything about the way he is as an adult), I think that hawks also internalized a lot of the abuse. "you didn't care enough to protect me from him, and you didn't care enough to keep me in your life after someone else protected us both" may have showed up more like "I wasn't good enough for you to protect me/keep me." there are lots of pieces of this that inform his rock-bottom self image
in either situation, placing full blame on the offending parent is not conducive to surviving in an abusive environment. young kids tend to try to keep themselves safe by appeasing or trying not to provoke their abuser. will they feel negatively toward the abusive parent? yeah. is the abusive parent a safe person to direct their anger and resentment toward? definitely not.
so kids will often triangulate with another person (usually another member of the household) to be able to put their feelings somewhere. this might be at another parent, or a sibling. (sometimes they'll position the other person as a victim or justify the lack of intervention so they can direct the anger at themselves, a la "I didn't do enough to protect you" for a sibling or "I'm the problem and I am being treated this way because I'm inherently bad" to absolve the other parent or explain abuse from both)
I could be wrong since the todoroki family's backstory is fuzzy in my brain (i read it while i was concussed so i'm filling in the blanks with attachment theory and family systems stuff), but I think that dabi triangulates himself with endeavour and shouto. his mom doesn't seem like a major part of this narrative for him (likely because she was external to the abuse narrative itself)
so the way this plays out is that dabi views himself (1) as not being good enough and (2) needing to earn his dad's approval (i.e., needing to earn not being abused). shouto becomes the sponge for his resentment and anger. when dabi talks about endeavour's abuse, I feel like the idea of shouto as the "perfect child" who took away dabi's ability to earn endeavour's love (and thus keep himself safe) is always there. there's the "even though I burn hotter than you -- his masterpiece" line that reads so much like "I should have been able to do what you did, and it's your fault that I failed." so shouto is a symbol -- he's endeavour's perfect child (in dabi's eyes), he's a symbol of everything that hurt dabi, and everything that dabi couldn't be.
for hawks as a young child, this triangle likely involved himself, his dad, and his mom. however, I don't imagine that he compares his parents to each other vis-a-vis "who was worse/responsible/etc." after being saved. I think that the abuse from both of them consolidated and he view himself as the catalyst.
so this transformed into a different triangle involving himself, his parents, and endeavour. hawks' dad was defeated so he lost his veneer of omnipotence and he ended up becoming completely disconnected from his mom. I think it's a really interesting parallel to dabi's experience that endeavour also took on a god-like position in hawk's life (just in the opposite direction). I think his parents (or perhaps just his mom) are a symbol for him, but not in the same way as shouto is for dabi since his initial triangle has been broken up. like a lot of kids who experience abuse from both parents, I imagine he believes that he was abused because he provoked it/deserved it/etc. which can result in feeling disconnected from a sense of self (his perpetual persona), feeling like he has to earn care or love (his need to be useful, his need for approval), and feeling like being treated well is a result of others' altruism because he's not otherwise deserving of kindness (his unshakeable faith in endeavour, him putting endeavour on a pedestal)
so I imagine that hawks' resentment toward himself for not being good enough is comparable to dabi's resentment of shouto for inhibiting his chance to be good enough. hawks internalizes primarily (blames himself) and dabi externalizes primarily (blames shouto, his dad, and to a lesser extent society/other Heroes).
hawks was rescued from his situation and he went on to worship the most powerful person in his life. dabi had to take care of himself and scrape through alone -- his abuser remained the most powerful person in his life.
it's "I didn't get the chance to earn love from my family -- so I have to prove to endeavour that I was worth it, I need to spend the rest of my life earning the way he saved me" vs. "I didn't get the chance to be worthy of endeavour's love, shouto took that from me -- so I have to prove that I could have earned it, that I became more powerful than shouto and more powerful than endeavour, like he always wanted me to be")
