This was written for the Animagus training Assignment (Write about someone willingly going through an uncomfortable experience. Be sure to include the why) and the Daily Prompt Inspiration Thread (February 14th: Dystopia!AU) at Hogwarts, as well as Aldira's Portal Challenge ("Politeness is deception in pretty packaging" - Veronica Roth, Divergent).
Word count: 2777
there are wondrous things
The candle John was carrying only gave off a dim orange light that cast terrible shadows on the packed earth walls of the tunnels he was being lead into. It was barely enough light to see, and had he any less agile he would have stumbled a dozen times at least by now.
The melted wax burned his fingers as it dripped down the candle his guide had handed him when they had first stepped into the man-made caves, but John didn't care. He was being lead to Amelia, and for her, for the woman who had given him back the sky, he would do anything. Ignoring a little pain paled in comparison to what Amelia herself must have gone through to free him anyway, and so he would do it gladly.
Being underground again was tough though, and definitely the greatest hardship about all this. The walls were pressing down on him and the damp heat of the tunnels made his clothes stick uncomfortably to his skin.
It brought back memories he'd rather forget too, memories of being stuck working in the mud, wings clipped and useless, hanging heavily on his back, the feathers his parents had been so proud of dirty and broken. The pain in his hands grounded him in the present in a way, kept his mind in the present instead of the past, and that was truly for the best.
The last thing they needed was for John to get lost inside his own head while they were executing a rescue after all.
"You good?" It wasn't until his guide paused that John realized he had fallen behind, and he hurried to catch up.
John didn't really much about the man personally, but his name – Alastor – had been whispered in the barracks John had been kept in years ago in fervent hope, while their captors had cursed it and the Rebellion every opportunity they got. If there was anyone John could trust to help him get Amelia out, it would be Alastor, never mind how gruff and off-putting the man came off at first glance.
"I'm fine," John replied tersely, tucking in his wings closer to his body, his fingernails digging into the wax of the candle. He had to force himself to relax his grip less he break the only source of light he had. And then, because Alastor deserved to know what he was getting into, he added: "Just… The tunnels. I don't like being underground."
Alastor scoffed. "Yeah, tell me about it. These places are no good for us flyers, and the Earthlings know that as well as we do. That's why they keep us down here – after a while, we even forget how to fly."
The man's wings puffed on his back as he talked, the only true outward sign of his disgust and anger, and John nodded, swallowing past the memories of his own time in the camps.
Amelia had had to reteach him nearly everything, when she had dragged him out. He had seen twelve summers by the time the Earthlings had gotten to him, and then had spent half as long locked underground, only allowed to see tiny glimpses of the sky while they were moving him from one camp to another.
Many of the Winged kind John had been kept with hadn't lasted that long, wilting as surely as plants without sun the longer they were kept away from the sky. Sometimes, when he let himself, John thought that he would have ended the same way had Amelia not found him.
John was one of the Rebellion's best flyers now, but there had been years where he had thought he would never see the sky again, never get to feel the breeze beneath his wings.
It was a cruel thing, what the Earthlings had done to the Winged kind, but the worst part was that no one really knew why. John had been young then, but he could still remember the delegations coming from the surface to the high mountains where the Winged kind lived. They had come with kind smiles and fairer faces, hands carrying gifts and promises of trade, and they had been trusted.
And then one day, everything had changed: people started disappearing, tufts of bloody feathers left behind. They were rumors of flyers being shot down from the sky, of Earthlings digging beneath the Earth they lived on for something, of camps where their own kind where kept from their element like the worst of criminals.
And every time, the Earthling came back, innocent smiles on their faces, saying that there was nothing they could do about the attacks, that they were only rumors, that there was nothing to worry about. Their leader, a man named Tom, was the best and worst at this. People believed him when he spoke, and by the time they saw true his masks, it had been far too late.
John's mother had grabbed him and flown away, and for a while that had worked. In the end though, they had been found, and John hadn't seen his mother since that day. He didn't think he ever would.
"We can't trust Earthlings," John stated. It was a truth that had been branded on his soul through pain and loss, and he would never forget it.
Before him, Alastor nodded in agreement, before he stilled. He gestured at John to come closer, as John did the light from his candle combine with Alastor's to cast a greater light on what stood before them.
It was a great chasm. The tunnel continued on the other end, and it looked like the path had collapsed in on itself some time ago. John stepped forward, his wings already spreading – it might be a tight fit, but John had trained in close quarters with this kind of situation in mind – when Alastor's hand on his arm stopped him.
"It's a trap," the man whispered harshly, his fingers wrapped painfully tight around John's forearm. "See the edges? They're too smooth – this was made by the Earthlings. I'd bet you anything that if you try to fly across, something will shoot you down faster than you can even spread your wings."
Swallowing thickly, John took a step back. It took him a few moments, but he cursed as he saw what Alastor had noticed instantly.
"So, how do we get across?"
"Same way an Earthling would, I suppose," the man answered, not sounding too happy about it. "We climb down, and then up." And then he put one foot forward, above the chasm that even the light from their two combined candles failed to pierce significantly. It hovered there for a moment, before Alastor, with a pleased grunt, took the step.
John was about to drag the man back, but what he saw was so odd it made him pause. Alastor was clearly fine – not about to fall to his death anyway – but his right foot seemed to be missing, cut at the ankle by what seemed to be a blade of darkness.
"Light manipulation," John breathed out in wonder, eyes open wide. He hadn't seen that in years, not since that first Earthling delegation had turned their mountain into an ocean with just a few of their machines.
"Yup," Alastor agreed, sounding far less impressed than John was. "Obviously, real Earthling would know their way around it, but we'll just have to guess where to step, at least until we pass through the veil on top."
John nodded, and followed swiftly as more and more of Alastor's body seemed to be swallowed up by the darkness.
The staircase down was narrow and steep, and from the way the metal groaned with every one of their steps, it was old. Still, it held perfectly, even though John couldn't help but tense up every time he heard it creak. He was very glad when they got to the bottom.
It occurred to him then that he was now even deeper underground, and he couldn't hold back a shiver, his wings drawing in even closer, almost as if they wanted to sink back into his body.
For Amelia, he reminded himself, and took a deep breath to calm himself. The mantra helped, but the cloying smell of damp earth that permeated the air made him wish he didn't need air quite so badly.
"How close are we?" John asked his guide curiously, hoping to distract himself. Surely Amelia couldn't be far now, not with how much ground they'd already covered.
The only warning John got before Alastor shoved him into a corner out of the way, his hand pressed tightly against John's mouth in a way that let no sound pass, was the way the man's eyes widened.
John didn't see them as much as he heard them, not at first. They were loud, their footsteps heavy and echoing on the walls the way a Winged kind's never would. Honestly, John couldn't say how they weren't seen. For a heart-stopping moment, he was convinced they had been made and that he'd be dragged back into a camp, wings clipped and useless again, never to see the sky again.
He'd rather die, and thank the stars for his guide's foresight, because the keening noise that escaped his mouth would have signed their doom.
But the two of Earthlings passed them by, hair brown and dull, bodies outfitted in the black uniform they were known for, and didn't notice a thing.
John didn't realize he had stopped breathing until Alastor slapped him in the back, right between the shoulder blades and above his still quivering wings, and told him to start again.
"Thanks," John said once he had finally gathered his bearings.
"Don't mention it," Alastor answered gruffly. "And to answer your question, we're nearly there."
He handed John his candle after that, having grabbed it at the same time as they had ducked into their corner, and lit it up again. The small flame that bloomed in the darkness, casting a small halo of light was the first truly welcome sight John had seen in a while.
Alastor lit his own candle next, and they resumed their slow trek through the tunnels. More than half of their candles was gone now, and John knew they'd have to use their back-ups on the way out.
They reached the cells rather quickly after that, only having to duck and hide two times on their way there.
It quickly became apparent that this place wasn't guarded half as well as John's old barracks had been, and John thanked the sun and stars for it. When he had first heard that Amelia had been captured, he had feared for her life. Her position in the Rebellion, while not one of the most important or noticeable, was still one that meant she had gotten more exposure than most, and so John had feared she would be transported to Azkaban directly.
No one escaped Azkaban, everyone knew that, and though John would have attempted a rescue anyway, it would have been made near impossible by the fact that no one knew where Azkaban was.
But no, instead Amelia had been sent to one of the more common detention centers, and John had nearly collapsed in relief when he had realized that it most likely meant they didn't really know who she was, and as such wouldn't care much for her escape.
That wasn't to say that planning it had been easy, but it had at least been feasible, which meant that John had had the support of the Rebellion.
Considering how many times Alastor had already saved his hide in these skyless tunnels, John didn't want to consider how things would have gone had he been forced to attempt a rescue on his own.
They decided to check the cells together. No sense splitting up when that would only double the risk of discovery. From how few Earthlings they had seen, they could take their time, and as long as they didn't run into anyone, they'd be safe.
Opening the heavy metallic doors was the hardest part, but even for that they had come prepared: those doors opened remotely through a very particular frequency transmitted through an Earthling-made device, and it just so happened that the Rebellion had acquired one of those. Getting the right frequency had been slightly harder, but the Winged kind had always had a knack for that kind of thing.
"You really love her, don't you?" Alastor asked him as they checked their fifth empty cell.
For a moment, John considered not answering. "Do you love the sky?" He asked instead, keeping his tone even.
"Of course," Alastor answered immediately.
"Then that's your answer," John replied, voice going impossibly soft as his eyes roamed every inch of the tiny room. This was the sixth cell they had found empty, and John's heart seemed to beat a little faster with every door that opened onto false hope. "She gave me back the sky."
Alastor stayed silent after that, but John thought he understood anyway.
They finally found Amelia in the tenth cell. She was sitting on what passed for a bed there, eyes strained toward the mockery of a window the Earthlings installed in all of their underground constructs. It only gave a view of more earth, and it was undoubtedly yet another way to torture the beings who yearned for the sky. Her wings drooped on her back, but apart from dirt and a few bent feathers, John saw no signs of clipping. He was selfishly glad that she, at least, had been spared that pain.
"Well aren't you a sight for sore eyes?"
Amelia jumped at him the moment the door opened, mouth opened wide in a snarl as she tried to skewer him with what looked to be the broken ends of her own feathers.
He ducked, side-stepping her with the ease that came from years of sparring with her, but he hadn't really needed to.
"John?" She asked, her voice sounding awfully small and confused. Sun and sky, how he hated the Earthlings for bringing her down. Though, he thought, grimly amused at the sight of the dark flecks of blood that still stuck to Amelia's makeshift weapons, they hadn't managed to take the fight out of her. "What are you doing here?"
Already, she was regaining her composure, shoulders and wings straightening, eyes sharpening with determination. That was just another thing he loved about her: this was she had to always focus on what mattered in the moment.
"We're rescuing you," he explained, feeling suddenly a little uncomfortable. They stood there in silence, staring into each other's eyes, for one beat, then two, before Alastor's gruff voice cut through the awkwardness.
"Just kiss the man, Bones, he went underground for you!"
Amelia's eyes twinkled as she laughed, shooting back a remark at Alastor that John didn't catch. He was so entranced by her that he almost lost his balance when she grabbed the front of his tunic, tugging him closer.
"Hi," she said, eyes still twinkling as their breaths mingled.
"Hi," John echoed, the words catching in his throat.
"Oh, for the love of…" Was all that John heard before something pushed him, just once, between the shoulder blades.
He crashed right into Amelia, their lips mashing painfully until he managed to lean back a little, tilt his head just right, and then it was perfect.
In the end, Alastor had to separate them so they could hide from the next patrol, but John still felt so giddy he almost didn't mind being underground anymore.
They left immediately after that, Amelia barely stopping to grab her makeshift weapons on her way out of the cell they had been forced to duck back into. He tried to offer her a candle too but she refused, instead deciding to walk between him and Alastor, broken feathers held as tiny blades in her hands.
The trip back to the surface seemed to go by faster than it had the other way around, even though John knew it probably didn't. It felt like it though, though knowing that they would see the sky soon probably helped quite a bit with making time seem to go by faster.
John had rarely been more exhausted and relieved as when they finally stepped out of the tunnels and he was finally able to spread his wings like he wanted to again, but the sight of Amelia's face as she saw the sky again made everything he had gone through underground to get her back worth it.