Part 1:

I watched the city from my perch on the roof of the New York Public Library. I puffed up my feathers a little against the chill breeze. The autumn had been unusually warm, and many of the flocks had waited until much later than usual in the season to south. But it was now late October and the weather was finally starting to get cooler. Something in the air told me that this winter was going to be particularly nasty once it got started. The nights were already quite cold - too cold for a little bird like me. I would have to go south this year and soon, but I was loathe to leave New York, as I always was.

I watched the people come and go from Bryant park. The big pigeons flicked around the park benches and their occupants, quarreling over scraps and seed thrown to them by the humans. The people and pigeons, both would be around all winter to keep each other company through the winter. No matter how cold it got, the plump pigeons would be all right. I however, was liable to find myself frozen to a gable somewhere by spring. In my youth I did a fair amount of traveling during migration, but I've never found another place quite like New York. Now I mostly stayed in New York, year round if I could help it. Only leaving to go farther south when the coming winter threatened to be too bitter.

I loved the library. It was terribly dangerous to go inside - as it was to go in any maintained human structure – but I loved being around all the books. The smell of all those pages of print and old bindings, the quite rustle of paper when the humans leafed through them. I have sat for hours, perched out of sight on the dusty tops of tall shelves. Its risky sneaking in and out through old, damaged vents in the rafters but it was worth it to be surrounded by the books. Even out on the roof, the smell of the library filtered up and soothed me. Just being nearby filled me with happiness.

As much as I loved the library though, it was time to stretch my wings, and maybe get some food. I spread my wings and flapped my way over the park and into toe corridors of buildings that made up the lattice work of New York City.

I winged my way Southeast down 5th Avenue for nearly a mile, just feeling the wind and the rush of the city bellow me. It was near rush hour and people and traffic thronged through the city streets. I cut across Maddison Square Park, stopping briefly to alight in a tree for a quick rest. I fluttered down to the sidewalk and plucked up a cricket I happened to spot crossing the open concrete, making a light snack of the crunch critter. I headed down Broadway, watching the colorful flow of people on the sidewalk bellow me, bustling along without so much as a passing glance as I soared above them. I followed Broadway as far as Waverly Place, then turned off and lost myself mindlessly in the crisscross of streets to the west, towards Washington Square Park. I stopped following the roads, instead flapping my way up, and over buildings and blocks as it pleased me. I stopped occasionally to catch my breath and a few times to snatch up a particularly unfortunate insect that caught my eye.

Pleasantly full, I continued to flit from street to street. I knew I still had a couple more hours of daylight left and I could easily find a place to perch for the night somewhere in Washington Square.

When I needed to rest my wings again, I found a nice fire escape in an alley, and perched there. As I was catching my breath I took a moment to look up at the clouds being stained pink as the sky slowly darkened. I let out a happy trill to the sunset.

I was understandably surprised when I got an answer.

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John took another swig of whiskey, relishing the rough burn of the cheep alcohol sloshing down his throat. He kept half an eye on the traffic beyond the mouth of the alley. He wasn't looking for anything in particular, and at this point he didn't particularly care about what anyone in the rest of the world was doing anymore. Old habits died hard though. Even years out of the service, sitting in an alley smelling of the cheep booze he was attempting to drown himself in, he was constantly aware of his environment.

The hand not holding the paper-sack-wrapped bottle was lying limply, palm up in his lap where he could stare at it intently. John could still imagine the blood that had stained his hands, both real and figurative. So many lives had been snuffed out by his hands. Many had probably deserved it but perhaps no all. Even when the hits had been ordered directly by his handlers in the CIA, he doubted their motivations in many cases.

In the beginning he had been sure he was working for the good guys- that he'd been serving his country. As time wore on though, he became less and less sure. It became just a job that had to be done. Maybe- he thought, maybe if he hadn't been doing that job he could have saved Jessica. Instead he'd gone off on another mission for the damned CIA and they had betrayed him.

John had barely escaped what was meant to have been his grave – a demolished, burnt-out complex somewhere in China. The CIA thought he was dead. Everyone though he was dead. And Jessica – the one person he might have finally confided in, that he might have told that he wasn't dead – she was dead herself.

Now he made himself at home in alleys and homeless camps, only venturing out to find more alcohol in a desperate attempt to numb the pain – and drink himself to death if he was lucky.

John turned his gaze to the slice of the sky he could see between New York's buildings. He watched a flock of pigeons fly overhead, dark shapes against the stained glass sky as they returned to the rooftops to roost. John took another swig of whiskey and spared one last glance to the sky.

A single small shadow caught his attention this time. Unlike the pigeons, this bird flew alone, and it flew towards him. The smaller bird drew closer, and closer, slowly resolving to form a black silhouette to a small, brown bird. John watched the little bird land on a fire escape only a stone's throw away. The creature sat quietly for a minute after folding its wings. It too seemed to be watching the sky. Suddenly I let out a bright, happy sounding trill.

On a whim, aided by his partially inebriated state, John pursed his lips and gave a high whistle back. The bird's head snapped around to face him quicker than the blink of an eye and its tail feathers flipped up to attention behind it. It stared down at him with its dark, beady bird eyes, absolutely still. Jon made no move, holding perfectly still and staring right back. After several frozen moments the bird blinks, hopping to turn its body towards him. It twitches uncertainly for a moment before fluttering down to a lower landing of the fire escape. It was still far out of reach, but John is none the less astonished at its actions. The little brown bird seemed just as unsure, bobbing and turning its head every which way, as if trying to get a better look at him.

John suddenly doesn't quite know what to do, so he just keeps sitting still and watching the little bird steadily. After a minute or so he decided to see what happens if he whistles again. Before he can though, the screeching of old hinges echoes through the alley like a shot. The bird and John both snap around to look at the source of the noise. A worker in a grease stained apron has pushed open the back door to one of the buildings farther down the alley and is heaving a full to bursting plastic garbage bag into the nearby dumpster. Even as he registers this, John hears the panicked flutter of wings and looks back just in time to glimpse tail feathers disappearing over the rooftops.

John inexplicably found himself with a distant sense of loss. The bird was the first thing that had captured his attention in a long time. The first creature, animal or human, that had shown any interest in him in even longer. "Oh well," he muttered when the aproned worker had returned to work and slammed the door behind him, "It's gone now." He took another swig of whiskey.