Disclaimer: I don't own anything!
Author's Note:
Finally caught a break. Currently on the hunt for a new job and finished my first brown belt test five hours ago. Well, the first portion of it anyway. This morning is the second half. I thought the test was going to be much worse, but we actually managed to get through it pretty okay.
This piece is inspired largely by Hollow and Honeycomb by antistar_e (kaikamahine) on AO3, a Captain America piece that's really pretty spectacular.
I am not what happened to me. I am what I choose to become.
-Carl Jung
The village that Yuan grows up in is a village that some people call Asgard—one day, that's what everyone will call it—but Yuan just calls it home. It's nestled in the western mountains and they are far away enough from, well, everything that no one has any qualms about showing off their wings.
Wingers—as Yuan's elderly neighbor, Cassina, calls them—are abundant here. There aren't many that don't have them and those that don't have children or relatives that do.
Yuan is all of six years old and he spends more time with Granny Cass—"I ain't yer grandmother, got that, boyo? Can you even hear anything under all that hair?"—than he does with his mama. Mama's hurting, Granny Cass says. Has been hurting since Poppi and Yuan's oldest brother, Owyn, got drafted. There's a war going on, Yuan knows, but his sense of history is still fuzzy. The war's been going on as long as the sun's been in the sky. There is no beginning to the war. All it does is take family away from each other.
He knows it's Bad to be a Winger, out beyond the borders of his home, of the fields that they herd their sheep on. Just like how, to some people, it's Bad to be a girl or Bad to use magic.
But here, in this village, Yuan grows up watching people launch themselves into the sky, wings spread and always always there is a watchful eye on their herds, whether from someone stuck on the ground or from a Winger watching from the sky. He grows up learning to make feather jewelry with Granny Cass so they can trade with travelers. They trade all manner of things, not just jewelry. They give travelers wool, still bundled up, or they give them wool-lined cloaks to help them keep warm on the road. It helps them get food and supplies and news—all hard to get, this far out from everything. Here, it's not Bad to be a Winger. It just Is.
Yuan is eight years old when the humans attack. The ordinary humans, that is. Not Wingers. His home is too far from, well, anything to have gotten any kind of warning. They don't have many warriors left—draft took most of 'em, but you try telling the women that the military doesn't want them on account of the fact they're 'weak' that they aren't allowed to fight for their home—and Yuan watches aunties and sisters grow vicious as they attack with whatever they've got. Yuan watches them get shot out of the sky.
Yuan gets clamped in chains with the rest of them and he's used to being on the ground, has never flown. The chains keep everyone grounded and if they try to escape…Yuan hears the snap of hollow bird bones more than once, and he flinches every time.
They're marched somewhere—he doesn't know where. He's not sure any of them do, being so isolated from everything, but his geography is limited to home—which is now ashy and strewn with blood and feathers and corpses—and talk of a faraway king in a capital city. He gets pushed away with the other kids and the ones without wings; they're put somewhere else.
He learns to miss the snap of bone when the screams start. He grabs tight to the person next to him—girl named Robin. Yuan used to tease her, telling her that it would be damn funny if her wings weren't like a robin's—and she squeezes his hand back, tight enough that his bones, not bird-hollow, not yet, creak. The people—can they still be called Wingers?—that come out from the Screaming Place have bloody gouges where their wings used to be and their eyes are as hollow as their bones.
For the first time in his rather short life, Yuan is fervently grateful that he doesn't have his wings yet. (Or ever, possibly. Mama didn't have wings, after all. Poppi did though, so Yuan figured that gave him even odds)
Botta asks him, one day, "How did you hide them? In your time."
Yuan glances over at him. It is one of many quiet evenings that they share, reading or working or simply having a drink. Botta is leaning back in his chair that has a modified, low back so that it can accommodate his long, white seagull wings. For a man who cannot seem further removed from his hometown of Palmacosta, his wings are always going to be a reminder of where he came from.
"What makes you think we hid them?" Yuan returns.
"Because you're not stupid."
That makes Yuan snort. Botta has a way of being very blunt that Yuan finds rather refreshing. "Depends on how much warning we had."
"Warning," Botta repeats, but it's not quite a question. He has always been good about seeing which lines are meant to be toed and which ones can be crossed.
"Yes. If there was enough warning of an attack, the families would take care of it."
Botta's eyes snap up to meet Yuan's. "You mean, cutting the wings off themselves?"
"It was kinder," Yuan says quietly, taking a sip of wine. "There is no way to minimize the suffering, but they could minimize the pain. It would be neat and you usually survived it." The ones that hadn't had been sickly or had gone mad with the thought of never flying again. The mad ones had been killed right afterwards, a break of the neck. Quick and merciful.
(Botta thought of the alternative, of being held down and your wings ripped and carved off and yes, Yuan was right. It was kinder)
"And if there wasn't enough warning?"
"There was no way to hide it if they were already growing. And you were less lucky if they weren't full grown." Because they will keep growing and molting and the humans would come again and again to gouge out the wings until they didn't grow back. "But we did whatever we could to hide it if we were already sold when it started. A lot of teamwork involved then. Extra layers of shirts, no calling attention to yourself."
Botta's eyes travelled behind Yuan, to his wings. He usually keeps them covered with a cloak, even among the Renegades. It's effective enough in public, if he tucks his wings close to his back. The black tips of his feathers that don't fit just look like trailing ends of a ragged-edged cloak. Even Botta, who knows what he's looking at, has trouble telling the difference between feathers and cloth sometimes.
The question is there. Botta can ask, he knows—Yuan might even answer, since it's him—but instead, he says, "Did you ever have to do it? Cut off someone's wings?"
"No. People asked, if I would help. I told them no."
Botta's smile was a grim, sharp-edged thing. "Your fight or flight leans a lot more towards fight, doesn't it?"
"I thought it was cowardly, giving in before a battle had even begun. I'd rather them take my wings from me than me surrendering to them." He still believes that, after having had four thousand years to think about it.
That sounds like Botta's leader, the man who'd begun this crusade, the man who Botta who will follow to death itself, if necessary. "People still do it sometimes." Botta absently circles a finger around the rim of his glass. "To hide. Because they're afraid of what the humans will do."
"You've seen them."
"Once or twice." People he's grown up with, suddenly hollow-eyed, forever staring at the sky with longing. But at least they're alive. The scars, he's seen less often. They aren't the sort of things you show off.
"Do you agree with their decision?"
It takes him a moment to put his feelings into words. "…It's giving in to fear."
Yuan laughs softly. "Looks like you're no better at the flight response than I am. A fighter until the end."
Botta tilted his chin proudly. "If there's a life where I'm not free to use these," He spreads his wings demonstratively, their black tips brushing against Yuan's desk and a wall. "Every day, I don't want it."
Raising his glass, Yuan says, "I'll toast to that."
Botta clinks his glass against Yuan's and drinks deep.
Kratos Aurion is a quiet kid, timid, but pretty smart if you can ever get him to talk. Yuan likes him, despite the fact that this kid is supposedly his new master. And Yuan excels at riling people up, so getting Kratos to talk is real easy.
They become friends one July afternoon, when Kratos' temper snaps and Yuan actually doesn't have to strain to hear the other kid's voice. Kratos looks shocked at himself and Yuan just laughs and claps him on the shoulder. "That's more like it!" he says.
They grow up together. Kratos is a clever kid, and he convinces his father that his slave can sleep in a corner. Like a dog. The words are poison in Kratos' mouth and Yuan's mind, but they work. (Not that Kratos would actually let Yuan sleep in the corner. They shared the too big bed and made sure that Yuan's corner looked slept in if anyone came knocking) They race each other to Kratos' school, where Yuan isn't allowed, but Kratos teaches him everything anyway. Kratos is a good teacher like that.
There are nights when Kratos and Yuan sit up, hands over their ears, huddled close together. That doesn't stop them from hearing the screaming. Kids always grow up and Wingers can't always hide their new appendages long enough for other Wingers to cut them off for you. Kratos looks at Yuan's back fearfully on those nights. He never wants Yuan to go through that. Not ever.
Yuan is fourteen when the itching starts.
It's horrible and in that place right in the middle of your back that no matter how you twist, you just can't reach. And Yuan knows what that means.
Kratos' eyes go wide when Yuan tells him what's going on. "We have to hide it."
That's the day that Yuan knows that Kratos is going to be his best friend for as long as they live. Because Kratos—who is human as they come, child of a man who owns Winger slaves—doesn't think of exposing him. Kratos' first thought is to help him, is to protect what Yuan holds most dear.
It takes three weeks. Three weeks of horrendous itching and Yuan resisting the urge to scratch outside of Kratos' room, lest he be exposed, and that's when his little wings push through the flaky skin. Kratos dutifully holds up a mirror so Yuan can see them.
After receiving permission, Kratos gently brushes his fingers against the puffy feathers. "They're so cute," Kratos teases. Yuan tries to make the wings move, tries to bump Kratos' nose with them, but all they do is spasm a little.
It takes a lot of creativity to hide the wings as they grow and molt. Kratos finds him old, bulky shirts to layer on and they figure out ways to bind the wings—carefully—so they don't expose themselves when Yuan isn't concentrating. Yuan gains more muscle than Kratos does during their teenage years, though his is mostly in his abdomen and shoulders, where his flight muscles are. He loses all that weight though, when his bones hollow out. (Yuan wanted it on record that bones hollowing out hurt like a bitch)
He becomes light enough that even Kratos, who isn't terribly strong, can lift him. And that means that his wings can lift him too.
They sneak away in the night so he can try to fly. His wings beat up a storm, but he can't do it from standing, not without a hell of a lot of effort. So Kratos suggests a running start. That's easier. The easiest thing is something that Yuan remembers from his childhood, watching the Wingers on that mountaintop village.
Kratos eyes him warily as Yuan clambers up a tall tree. He used to climb trees all the time, but it's harder now. "This is gonna go so bad," Kratos says.
"Hey, I don't need your negative attitude right now," Yuan calls down. He bites his lip before hurling himself off the branch.
There is no net to catch him, no soft spot. Yuan half-expects to topple into the ground, like his last few attempts. But he feels the wind stirring his feathers and he snaps his wings open, muscles locking and shifting and he's in the air.
He hears Kratos' laughter, mixed with his own and he manages to spin a little before he loses control and crashes.
Kratos is still laughing as he helps haul him to his feet, picking leaves and twigs out of his feathers. In the year, Yuan has taught him all he remembers about grooming wings and Kratos has been a diligent student. "That was amazing," Kratos tells him.
Yuan remembers at that moment that Kratos has never seen a Winger fly. He has only seen the remnants of Wingers, with their scarred backs and hollow eyes. He grins at his best friend. "Wait 'til I do it right. Then it'll be really amazing."
The first time Yuan uses magic, he's fifteen, his adult plumage not entirely grown in yet and he and Kratos are running for their lives.
Their luck has held out thus far—by some miracle—but it couldn't have held out forever. Kratos tells him to go, to get the hell away from here and he's shaking, Yuan can see it because Kratos has a very rational fear of his father, who is a pretty damn good shot with a gun and is a fair hand with a blade. Yuan hooks his hand in Kratos' collar and pulls him backwards because like hell is Yuan going to leave his best friend behind.
And so they run. Kratos is pretty fast and Yuan switches between flapping low to the ground and running. They make it to the tree line, which is their best chance of not being shot and both of them are already breathing hard.
When one of the border guards catches up to them, Yuan doesn't think, just reacts. The forest lights up for less than a second and then there's a burnt corpse of a guard lying there, still smoking. (Neither Yuan nor Kratos threw up in that moment. They wanted to, but adrenaline was keeping them going. Later, though, later when they made it to safety and they're both trembling with shock and exertion and fear, then they threw up at the memory of that guard)
In four thousand years—and various studies in genetics, thanks to Mithos' plan—Yuan has learned a few things.
The wing gene—as they call it. They're no scientists and it had taken a lot for them to even figure out what they had been looking at in the gene studies—is a single chromosome away from ordinary humans. It's not a dominant trait, but with the way Wingers tend to stick together, they've strengthened the gene pool.
Out of the total populations of both Tethe'alla and Sylvarant, it occurs in roughly thirty percent of people.
The wing gene is responsible for the ability to do magic. Magic is inherent, period, with the wing gene. Even if a person never grows wings, they might still be able to cast a spell. If the strength of that spell is affected…that part is still under research.
Yuan has also learned that affinities for certain elements are both more and less likely among Wingers. Wind magic, naturally, comes fairly easy. Depending on the region and how long Wingers have been adapting to the environment, water or fire magic can come easy too.
Botta is an oddity, Yuan has learned. The wing gene has run in Botta's family for generations and his family has lived in the Palmacosta area since his great-great-great grandparents had looked at what had then been a little village by the sea and decided that it would be a good place to settle down. (They were a scandal, Botta told Yuan once. His great-great-great grandparents. Runaway lovers. And they never got married) And here Botta is, with earth magic that doesn't come very easily to Wingers for obvious reasons. But it works for him, Yuan thinks. Better than the water magic that his sisters use with ease. Botta hadn't fit in very well in Palmacosta.
Yuan is an oddity in and of himself. Lightning magic comes more rarely to Wingers even than earth magic. Most lightning-affiliated Wingers zap themselves out of the sky before they get proper training and there goes the gene pool. And out of the handful of lightning-affiliated Wingers that survive training, only a handful of those can ever use it effectively in the middle of an aerial battle. Too easy to get distracted, too easy to lose concentration for a second and your lightning reverts back to its natural state and it strikes the highest thing in the sky. (Yuan prided himself on being part of that very small number. His control over his element is absolute and his training had been life or death)
His Renegades—and Yuan never doubts that they are his. His new flock, as they call themselves. Not flock of followers, but family and Yuan rolls his eyes at Jezarina, who is the first to say it, but he rather likes the idea—are an energetic bunch. He teaches them to fight, trains them in their magic, teaches their children to fly.
(That was his favorite part. Seeing these children grow without fear or prejudice. Their wings came in fluffy, like his had, and they raced each other—half in the air, half not—and pranks were pulled, feathers dyed various embarrassing colors. Paperweights were worth their weight in gald, in a Winger community. Shirts were cut and altered as wings grew, baggy and comfortable because the years until your wings were fully mature were uncomfortable at best. They showed off their adult plumage and groomed each other after dinner, loose feathers being collected for jewelry making and pillow stuffing. It reminded Yuan of Asgard)
There were a few Wingless, among the bunch. Wingers who'd chosen to trade their wings for safety, before they'd ever learns of the Renegades. Darian is one of those, him and his cousin, Sara. But Sara is bolder than her cousin, unashamed enough to wear shirts that leave her back exposed. The scars are old—Sara is well into her thirties now—and they are cleaner than the ones Yuan remembers. Families make it easier, he thinks. The very act is still brutal, but it's not as violent.
They can't fly outside as often as they'd like; it would give away their position. But when they travel—it's beautiful then, watching so many Wingers soar. (This was what she wanted, Yuan reminded himself. Not the perversion that Mithos believed)
Joining the military is an easy choice. At least one meal a day, guaranteed, and they get to fight for their freedom. It's easy to hide Kratos, to just tell everyone he's Yuan's friend from back home, that he drew the short straw and never grew his wings. It keeps people from being afraid of him.
There's training for aerial battle and magic, but Kratos is taught the technical stuff. The strategies and the supply lines, how to stretch the little inventory they have. Kratos is a good hand with a sword—his father is a cruel man, but he had taught Kratos well—and Kratos helps teach the other recruits.
Yuan is the one that causes problems for the higher ranks who try to teach him magic. His lightning is unpredictable and he doesn't know any actual spells. It's all been instinct up until this point. He ends up in the infirmary more than once due to recoil.
"You're lucky this isn't worse," the Healer says as her mana flows into his burned and bruised skin. "Actually, you're lucky to be alive."
"Y'know, you're the third person to tell me that today."
"Maybe you should've listened," she says tartly. "Sit up for me?"
It takes effort, but Yuan manages it, groaning as he does. He feels like the bruises hadn't been just surface wounds, that they'd imbedded themselves in his very bones.
"You landed flat on your back, right?" Her fingers are probing gently, particularly around the base of his wings.
"Yeah. Spell backfired." Luckily, it had been such a low-level of electricity that all it had done was shock him, not fry him extra crispy.
She hums in understanding. "You did a bit of damage to your wings. Nothing serious, but no flying for at least a week. No need to make a sprain any worse." He must make some kind of face because she laughs, the sound clear and silvery, like a bell. "I know, it sucks. But if you don't take care of it, you might not be able to fly comfortably ever again."
That thought is a hundred thousand times worse, so he silences any protestations he'd been about to make.
There aren't many Healers in the infirmary—Healing magic isn't easy to learn and not many can do more than the bare minimum—but the two newest ones are a brother and sister. The sister is an almost fully trained Healer, but the brother is a kid, maybe eight years old, who knows his poultices and has a steady hand with a needle. Kid's a genius, literally, and too young for wings.
The soldiers call them the Songbirds, since they're always humming as they work and singing over soldiers who have night terrors.
Yuan will know them as Martel and Mithos Yggdrasill.
Yuan tends to stumble over his words when he talks to Martel outside of the infirmary for those first awkward few weeks. Kratos just laughs at him. (Yuan would tease him—Kratos still stuttered too—but Kratos stuttered at most conversations with strangers)
"You're lucky you grew out of all your fluff," Kratos pokes at Yuan's closest wing. "Before you met her."
"Hey, don't you start. I was handsome back then and I'm even better looking now."
Kratos rolls his eyes—"Careful or your head'll explode from so much hot air."—but they both agree that Yuan's wings are quite the sight. His shoulders had come in sleek black, just like the tips, but there was a thick band of brilliant electric blue going through the middle, like a kingfisher. Underneath, they're a soft, cloudy gray. Tip to tip, they span eight feet.
(Yuan grinned the first time he saw his adult plumage, spread wide so he could see the reflection in a still lake. "Guess someone wanted me to make blue fashionable." And it's true. His hair was almost an exact match of his feathers)
Martel is recently twenty years old and her wings are a dusty gray and dirt brown at the shoulders. "A mourning dove's," Martel tells him when he asks as she's checking the muscles of his own wings for strain. Her wings are smaller than his, when she stretches them out for him to see, six—maybe seven—feet long, tip to tip.
She trains with the soldiers and when Yuan asks her why, he's surprised when she tells him that she's in the battles as often as he is. "People need battlefield Healers," she says.
"What about Mithos?" he asks. Everyone knows that the brother and sister are the only family each other has, even if neither of them will say very much about where they came from. "What if something happens to you?"
"I'm not happy about it," Martel confesses. "But I can't just leave people to die out there when I could have helped."
Yuan and Kratos end up sharing plenty of meals with the Songbirds—and their title is well-earned, they find out. Martel has a set of wooden pipes that had been her father's and she plays them at dinner sometimes. Mithos is clever and to be honest, it's hard to see a physical resemblance between the siblings. Mithos is all blonde hair and big blue eyes, skinny in the same way that they all are, in that not-enough-food way. Martel's hair is pale green, long and braided crookedly and she's got eyes brown like dirt that shine different shades of green in the sun.
Mithos is also kind of a brat, but hey, he's eight years old, so Yuan can forgive him. Not that that stops Yuan from teasing and arguing with him while Kratos just sits back with Martel, long-suffering looks on both their faces—'Can you believe little brothers?"—and only gets involved in the play-wrestling when Yuan scoops him in. (Yuan liked to remind Kratos that he was only a few months younger than him, but Kratos tended to ignore him. But yeah, they both agree—they're brothers)
The first time that Yuan gets a good look at Sylvarant's newest Chosen—the closest mana signature match they've had since Spiritua—she's soulless.
She's a pretty girl, Yuan supposes, all sunshine hair and heart-shaped face. Her eyes are currently the color of old blood, but her file says that they had been blue. She'd gone through the angel transformation successfully as well; delicate little wings, soft gray on her primaries, but at the shoulders, they were cinnamon colored with a dusting of bright, cherry blossom pink.
The 'angel transformation'—as it had been dubbed by the Church—is a painful process, just like growing wings naturally would be. But the changes come fast and hard and most don't survive it. It's joints shifting and changing, wings bursting forth. The different Trials for the Chosen break up the entire transformation. The wings are only the first Seal. At the others, the body goes through its other changes; bones hollowing, muscles strengthening as well as the other things that come with slowly detaching a soul, taste and sleep and pain.
(Yuan had four thousand years to become accustomed to the idea of Martel's resurrection. It was only now, that he's staring at this Chosen, with her wings and her stiff, still body, that the repulsion came around full circle)
Botta comes in to speak with him, glancing at the Chosen as he does. But before he gets even a word out, he must see some expression on Yuan's face. "What is it, sir?"
Yuan debates about telling him, but decides that this thought really needs to be said aloud and he cannot think of another person who he can say it to. "…Am I as much of a monster as the ones I fought against?"
Botta's brow furrows a little. "In what way?"
Yuan inclines his head towards the Chosen. "This is…unnatural. It's not right." Botta nods in agreement. "I am partially responsible for that. I know that that makes me a monster." There is no bitterness in his tone right now. He's simply stating facts. "I wonder if that makes me worse than the humans I fought against back then, the ones who ripped away people's wings?"
"I don't think there's a better or worse in this case." Yuan glances over at him. He can see the way Botta is trying to figure out the right way to word it. "…With almost every Wingless I've ever met, they're…diminished, somehow. Like their soul is gone. You've simply reversed the process. Giving humans something they were never meant to have and taking their soul as payment."
The military gives them Exspheres to help them in combat. It brings out the best of their abilities, strengthens their flight muscles so that they're powerful enough to actually take off from a standing position, strong enough to not be strained when carrying someone. Yuan's spells are a bit wilder and sharper. Martel can heal wounds that would have been a death sentence. Despite not being a Winger, Kratos keeps up with them. He's fast on foot—not quite fast enough to keep pace, but he doesn't fall behind either. He's a fearsome sight with a sword, efficient and lethal. He is even starting to teach Mithos how to use a sword; Martel isn't happy about that, but she accepts that she can't always be around to protect him and Mithos is getting to the age where he is tired of being kept on the sidelines.
That doesn't mean that none of them are bothered. There are nights that Kratos can't sleep because all he can remember are the faces of the people he's killed. He makes sure to never reduce them to just 'the enemy'. They are people, human beings, with lives and loves and something they're fighting for, just like he is. It just so happens that they're fighting for different things.
Martel cries—sometimes in front of Yuan, clutching to his shirt, but most of the time, he sees only the aftermath. Red eyes, blotchy cheeks and a chin that still trembles a little. It isn't always tears, though. Sometimes, it's anger and frustration and she needs to hit something. The ground is usually her target on those days, or an unsuspecting wall. (Was there no end to this? All these people, dying under her hands and she couldn't stop it. Any of it)
Mithos wakes up screaming a lot. He never tells them what he sees in his dreams—well, he might tell his sister—but Yuan and Kratos get accustomed very quickly to him ducking under their blankets, eyes wide and fearful, because sometimes Martel is working nights at the clinic or it's been a bad week and he feels guilty always waking Martel up. Yuan just kind of grumbles at him when he does-"Middle of the—You getting in or not, babybird?"—but he covers him under his wings too. Kratos just yawns and turns over, opening an arm to let Mithos crawl underneath.
Half the time, Yuan wakes with his heart pounding, hands clutching at the rough blankets. The nightmares come easy these days; it's the subject matter that varies. Sometimes, he sees his friends—his family, call them what they are—lying dead and broken on the ground, eyes vacant. Martel's pretty hair lying about her, stained red. Mithos in some ditch, maggots and worms crawling on him. Kratos hanging from a city wall with a traitor's brand on his forehead, his chest.
And then there are the nightmares that jerk him out of bed, scrambling for somebody, anybody. The nightmares where he feels rough, powerful hands yanking and carving into his wings, his back, nightmares where he looks in the mirror and all he has are scars. Those are the nights that he finds Kratos, curling with him like when they were kids, even though there's no space on one of their cots for two. To his credit, Kratos accepts it, never complains about being woken up.
Sometimes, Yuan finds Martel, needs a very specific Winger kind of presence. She wakes groggy and confused the first time, rubbing at her eyes. But she scoots over and lets him onto the cot, stomach down and she'll massage the joints at the base of his wings, will stroke down the feathers and it's incredibly soothing, to feel that, to have her wings half-draped over his back too.
Dwarves don't have a word for Wingers. They have a word for flying and it can't capture the act of it. Yuan can't blame them. It's their culture, their way. There are no dwarven Wingers because dwarves don't fly. They're quite content in their underground cities. The dwarves trade pretty often with Wingers, particularly the ones that live topside of the mountains in which the dwarven cities reside.
It's after one of these trades that their commanding officer, Joling—a rather intimidating man, with speckled owl wings that are huge—comes to them and says that he knows that they have been lying about Kratos.
Fight or flight kicks in really quick and despite being a Winger, Yuan has always leaned more towards fight. So he bristles and starts gathering mana for a spell—not charging it, just a warning. Like how the air becomes thick before a storm.
Kratos just stares at the man and asks how long he's known.
"It took me a while," Joling confesses. "You're very good at hiding it."
"Are you going to arrest me?" The word 'arrest' is little more than a euphemism. Kratos knows the opinion on humans; he's more likely to be taken out behind a shed and shot.
"I thought about it, but you're a good asset, Aurion. You've saved a lot of our people and put your life on the line in the process. Doesn't sound like a traitor to me."
Yuan relaxes, then. "What happens now?"
"Nothing, if you don't want it to. I would like to think that everyone trusts you, Aurion, but learning you're human might change that. The dwarves have an ore, they call it Aionis. We use it to help forge our weapons, a lot of the time. But for people like us, who never grew their wings, if it's mixed right, it can let them grow."
"You can make wings?" Yuan repeats.
"Yes. It might not even work, but I'm offering you the chance."
Kratos answers immediately—as Yuan had known he would. "I want to try."
Yuan has seen a lot of horrible things, painful things. But one of the hardest things he has ever had to sit through is watching Kratos grow his wings.
The changes happen all at once and it takes several agonizing hours. Bones hollowing, joints growing and shifting and Kratos screams at how much it hurts. Yuan lets him hang onto his hand and he fears that his hand'll break under the pressure, but he doesn't let go.
Afterwards, Martel helps soothe the skin of Kratos' back, gives him something for the deep ache that's present in every bone. She positions herself so that he can rest his head on her thigh and she strokes his hair away from his face.
"It better have worked," Kratos mutters. He's pale, still, but his color is coming back.
Yuan grins at him and runs a gentle finger over a primary feather. It's still a bit damp. "Oh, it worked."
Kratos turns his head to look at his best friend. "Yeah?"
"Mmhm. Cute little things. Like a hummingbird. Color really brings out your eyes."
Martel snorts—terribly unladylike, but she doesn't care—and Kratos makes a vague movement with his arm to try to shove at him. Yuan just laughs; the sound is a little on the high side since he's still coming down from the relief that Kratos is okay.
In all seriousness, Kratos' wings look powerful. It's hard to tell, since they're brand new and all, but they look a bit shorter than Yuan's, but broader. The undersides are barred black and gray, speckled with brown. From the shoulders all down to the backs are a darker brown, with a bit of blue-gray at the base. Predator wings, meant for agility and sharp turns and dives.
"They're very handsome," Martel assures Kratos. "You'll have to beat the girls off with a stick."
Kratos flushes then and Martel giggles. He's gotten better with people, isn't as shy as he used to be. That doesn't mean that Kratos is in any way a smooth operator. He tends to go real quiet when people flirt with him and have the sudden inability to look anyone in the eye. Well, minus one rather memorable occasion, just after a hard battle where celebrations had definitely been in order and everyone had busted out whatever drinks they had. Yuan doesn't remember a whole lot about that night, but he does remember at one point looking over and seeing Kratos with Jocelyn Careighson straddling his lap, arching into the kiss. (The next morning had been a haze of raging headaches and groans, but Yuan had smirked at Kratos and said, "Have a good night?" Kratos' ears went red and he'd been sure to slam the mugs of coffee on the table particularly hard, just to make Yuan wince)
Mithos grins when he sees Kratos' wings. "Whoa! They look amazing!"
The first time Kratos flies—properly, not half tumbling out of the air—Yuan and Martel are with him and they tease and play tag and Kratos is still getting comfortable in the air, but he joins in with a fierce grin.
If Yuan has to pick a happiest memory, that day isn't first—that would be his wedding day—but it is a very close second.
Four thousand years is a long time. It's not long enough that when Kratos asks Yuan to watch over his wife and newborn child because he's been called to Yggdrasill and he can't take the risk of it being a trap, that Yuan can say no.
Anna Irving is terrifying in the power that she holds over Kratos Aurion, in what she can inspire in him. Yuan thinks that both worlds and Cruxis are very, very lucky that the ranch hadn't broken her first, that she is not vindictive—okay, she is a bit. But not enough to ask Kratos to start a war. Because he would. For Anna, Yuan thinks that Kratos will move heaven and earth, will raze a thousand cities and offer her the world if she only asks. (Yuan knew that kind of all-consuming love and look where it had gotten them)
As it stands, Anna answers the door to the little cabin with a newborn in the crook of one arm and a knife in the other hand. Kratos had left perhaps ten minutes before.
"Paranoid?" Yuan asks lazily, keeping his hands in his pockets and going very still.
"With good reason. You're Yuan?"
"The one and only."
She lowers the knife, but doesn't put it away. Her hair is short, almost boyishly so, but that's to be expected. The ranches shave their prisoners and she's only been free for, what, a year? Maybe a year and a half? "Come on in."
Yuan hangs his cloak on a hook by the door, surveying the cabin. It's small, but then, how much space can this family need? He can see the bedroom from here and the scent of bathwater is coming from the door opposite the bedroom. The rest of the space is dedicated to the kitchen and living room. (It was domestic, almost disgustingly so, but that was the coils of jealousy, grief and anger still residing in Yuan's belly talking. He and Martel could have had this, if she hadn't been murdered)
They spend the day together. Anna has fast hands with cards and Yuan relishes the challenge when they play Desert Rat. The name had changed since Yuan had last played, but the rules are similar enough. The newborn—Lloyd—sleeps in a small cradle nearby. Yuan keeps an ear out for any trouble—not that it's likely, but Anna's paranoia has been earned in blood—and the other ear is always tuned to Lloyd, to his sounds.
Anna is not a good cook. Yuan wants this on record somewhere. Her chicken is edible, but the vegetables taste like rat poison. Yuan shoos her away so he can cook something that won't make them sick.
He feels her eyes on him the whole time he's at the stove. He turns at one point, leaning a hip on the counter. "And here I thought you were an honest woman."
Anna rolls her eyes. "Trust me, if I was going to cheat on Kratos, it wouldn't be with you. Standards, y'know?" (Oh, she was a good match for Kratos. Sharp-tongued, clever and a spine of steel) "I was looking at your wings."
"You must've seen dozens of them."
"Yeah. Yours are different. Never seen anyone with kingfisher wings before."
"You recognize them?"
"Luin has a lot of kingfishers around." Her eyes go thoughtful. "…Do you think Lloyd will have them?"
Yuan looks towards the crib. Lloyd's heart and breathing are speeding up a bit; he'll wake soon. "I don't know. Kratos wasn't born a Winger—"
"A what?"
Yuan repeats it and spreads his wings a little in demonstration. "That's what we call ourselves."
Anna's eyebrow goes up. "Not since I've been alive. My best friend's family full of wings, but I've never heard that."
"It's an old term."
She laughs, short and bright. "I can imagine. But I like it. Wingers."
When Kratos comes back, his eyes are hard and there's fresh anger in the set of his jaw, but he stops short at the sight of Lloyd in Yuan's arms, chubby hands fisted around a lock of his hair, and Anna stretched out on the sofa, laughing. (In his wildest imaginings, Kratos pictured something like this. Yuan was family, had been family since they were nine years old. Yuan was Lloyd's godfather, official or not, and it was a sad thought that neither Lloyd nor Anna would ever know the Yggdrasills. Because Martel and Anna would have gotten on so well, he knew, and Mithos would have doted on Lloyd because he liked the idea of being an uncle. That family couldn't ever happen, but this was as close as they could get)
Mithos and Kratos end up learning magic together. Yuan ends up spending many hours with them as they learn to control their spells. For Mithos, at least, it's natural, if only a bit sooner than most developed the skills. Not surprising. The kid's a genius. He's known basic Healing spells for a year now, no longer just fetching water and bandages to help out Martel. These are the first offensive ones he's learned.
Years later, Yuan will find that he shouldn't have been surprised when Kratos shows a natural affinity for earth spells. He'd been born human, an entire race trapped to the ground. He has a bit of skill with lightning too—Martel just gives him a look when they tell her about it. "Well, what did you expect? You two are practically brothers, remember? It makes perfect sense—but he doesn't have Yuan's control. Not yet, anyway.
Mithos makes witchlight as easily as his sister does, as easily as he breathes. Martel's talents lie in Healing and light magic—which is what Mithos excels at—but he's pretty good with the other elements too. Fire and ice in turn are his most favored after light.
They are quick learners, the both of them and more than once, the three of them show up in Martel's infirmary because they love to experiment or toss spells around and accidents happen.
The first time they dare use the excuse 'accidents happen' to Martel, her eyes go steely and she crosses her arms. "Not to get you into this infirmary they don't," she says and they hold still for a particularly painful session of Healing.
The day that he first kisses Martel Yggdrasill is the day that he legitimately believes that one of them is going to die. (Not that this was the first time they were facing death, but this was the first time Yuan felt it, deep in his hollow bird-bones)
They are armored and the day is off to a grim start, foggy and humid, the ground already mud beneath their feet. Mithos stands with them, only eleven years old and already a warrior, with Kratos' training and his own talent for magic. Martel is being sent with a different division, her hair braided tightly back and wrapped around in a bun so as to prevent anyone from grabbing a handhold. She hugs them all, tight enough that their ribs creak and kisses Mithos on the forehead, staring at him like she wants to commit every angle of his face to memory.
Martel has a fragile-brave smile on her face. She's well aware that the odds of all four of them returning from this battlefield is slimmer than usual, that the front lines here, with the humans' Mana Cannon aiming at the sky and ground alike, have already slaughtered hundreds. Yuan can't let her walk away with that smile.
He calls her back and she turns around—and he can see the cracks where her strength is beginning to fail—and he doesn't know why he does it, but he cups her cheek and kisses her, chaste and sweet, before leaning his forehead on hers. "We're coming back," Yuan tells her. "I promise. We're all coming back."
Her kiss is fiercer than his, a little more desperate. "You'd better," she says against his lips.
Yuan isn't there, the day that Kratos breaks. He finds him a day later.
He doesn't recognize the man, hollow-eyed and clutching at a little shoe. (The sight made something instinctive and terrible jerk in Yuan's chest. Kratos looked like a Wingless, like his soul had been stolen from him. And really, it had)
He tries to get a reaction from him, of any kind. Anger, sobbing, anything, but Kratos is simply silent and staring. Yuan remembers that little shoe on Lloyd, remembers watching the boy—his godson—toddle about with a wide grin that's all Anna.
It will take many months until Kratos is anywhere near being normal again. (In truth, he never would—could—return to the man he'd been before Anna and Yuan was a bit grateful for that. Anna had made Kratos better, as had Lloyd) Yuan checks up on him several times a week, tries to feed him more for the idea of comfort than the physical need to eat.
"Come flying with me," Yuan murmurs one day. Maybe it will help clear Kratos' head. Maybe it won't do anything at all. Either way, Yuan is running out of options.
Kratos does, soaring easily, like he'd been born to his feathered appendages, but there isn't any heart in it, no joy to be found. Still, Yuan hopes it helps.
In a way, maybe it does. A few days after that, Kratos is working again. Botta brings Yuan the information, pointing to the screen where Kratos' access code blinked at the top right. He'd gone back to Cruxis. Yuan puts his head in his hands that day; Kratos had rebelled. He'd openly defied Cruxis and now he's gone back, the perfect little soldier. (That made something in Yuan writhe. Kratos had never been a good soldier. He was a good facsimile of one. He had the training, the posture, the speech patterns, but he was terrible at following orders) Kratos is so far broken that all he's doing is going through the motions, a robot for all intents and purposes, shattered into so many pieces that there's nowhere to start from.
Yuan had been right when he'd called Mithos a genius. The kid's magic is stronger than most adults' and he hasn't even started growing his wings in yet. The kid's a summoner, apparently, and a powerful one.
Most Wingers that learn summoning magic can call little spirits, local things—sprites and whatnots. There is a small percentage of those that are stronger that can call demons—not the big things from stories and nightmares, but smaller ones, enough to wreak some havoc and do some damage.
Mithos is stronger than all of them. He can call the Summon Spirits, the very pillars of Creation. Not that they let him go to make the pacts alone. Of course they don't; he's family. They come out of those fights bruised and burned and sometimes a bit broken—the Sylph snap Yuan's left wing in two places (A reminder. They controlled the winds and no one else. They could keep Wingers in the air or they could bring them crashing down)—but they leave the Temples victorious.
The kid aches to fly though. Yuan has seen how he stares hungrily into the sky sometimes. He's felt the same. He remembers climbing the trees back home, as high as he could, to get a little closer to the sky.
The problem with their wings is that they aren't really meant for carrying another person. It takes a great deal of strength and even then, carrying another person over long distances is usually pretty close to impossible. Still, Yuan and Kratos talk and they agree that Yuan's wings are physically not meant to handle that kind of weight, but Kratos' are. They work on his flight muscles, all in his abdomen and shoulders and they get used to flying harder and longer.
It takes a few months, but Kratos takes Mithos flying. Mithos stares at them at first, not quite believing it. Yuan rolls his eyes. "Would we lie to you?"
"In a heartbeat," Mithos replies dryly.
"Well, yeah, but that's not the point. Not about this. Now let's go, babybird. Get a move on."
They don't fly for very long—even though Mithos is maybe a hundred pounds soaking wet, it's more weight than Kratos can handle for more than maybe twenty minutes.
Yuan and Martel follow and Mithos' laughter rings out in the air, light and loud.
(When they landed, Martel kissed Yuan hard, a grateful smile on her lips. "He never got a chance to be a kid," Martel told him. "Not really." She told him about Heimdall, that day, about how they were run out because they weren't pure-blooded Wingers. Her father had been human, she said. But her mother never let the elders in Heimdall know about that, always lying to them. But her father had gotten sick, sick to the point where elvish medicine needed to be done and they'd drawn blood and they'd found out. They'd let her father die and her mother had told them to run, to take her baby brother—he must have been about four at the time—leave through the back door and don't look back. Those were the last words her mother said)
Yuan is the one who finds Martel in the middle of the night. The four of them share a tent—it's cramped quarters, but it's better than sleeping apart when they're marching from a battle—and Mithos' elbow is digging into Yuan's rib, so he's shifting to get away from it when he feels the absence of someone's presence. He sits up and counts the heads. There's only three in this tent, counting himself.
Careful not to step on anyone, he maneuvers his way out of the tent. Martel hasn't gone far, is adding some kindling to the dying fire. Her hair is half out of its customary braid from sleep and there are dark circles beneath her eyes.
"Hey," Yuan murmurs as he goes to sit beside her.
Someone else might have been crying, but Martel isn't. (Sometimes, Yuan wondered if she had any tears left) Her voice is thick like she had been, like there's a knot still there. "Oh—I-I didn't mean to wake you."
"You didn't. Mithos' elbow did. I just wanted to make sure you were alright." It's a farce, honestly. There is no such thing as 'alright' out here. They burned friends today, watched and waited in a silent vigil as their bodies turned to ash because you don't bury a Winger. That's a horrible curse to give them in the afterlife, trapping them beneath the ground with no room to spread their wings. When they burn, their ashes get swept away by the Sylph to join them in everlasting flight.
That doesn't make it hurt any less.
"Yeah, I'm—I'm fine. Just can't sleep."
"I could have said that." He stands back up, going inside the tent and coming out with a brush. He sits behind her and carefully picks apart what's left of her braid. "…Is it the nightmares again?"
Martel doesn't answer for a long moment. Yuan doesn't press, simply starts to pull the brush through her hair, gently combing out the knots. Finally, she answers, "I can't stop seeing them. I—I've killed people, Yuan. And…they're not bad people. Not necessarily."
He knows that his answer won't help, but he needs to reaffirm his point. "It's not a matter of right and wrong on a battlefield. We don't have the luxury of morals out there. It's kill or be killed."
"I know that! I just—I see their faces. Every single one. Every night and they don't stop. They had families waiting for them, whole lives and potential just…gone because of me." Her chuckle is a hollow thing, a terrible sound. "…It feels like there's no end to all this."
Yuan thinks about redoing Martel's braid, but decides against it. He leans forward, careful to avoid her wings, until he's barely pressed against her back, propping his chin on her shoulder. (It was a movement he didn't think about, didn't have to think about, but this was new territory for them, a new layer of intimacy) "I have an idea," he says quietly, close enough that she could feel the vibrations on her ear. "Let's run away, today."
"What?" Her wings bump into his chest and shoulders in shock.
"Not permanently," he reassures, rubbing his hands along her waist. "Just for today. Get away from…everything. We'll leave Kratos and Mithos a note, so they don't worry and we'll just…fly somewhere. Just the two of us."
She leans back into him, turning her head until it's pressed against his neck. "I like the sound of that."
They don't fly far. They fly upwind of the battlefield that they had left—no need to smell the ashes and the corpses—and they find a stream to cool off in. Summer is dying down, but the days are still stupidly hot. They splash around in their underclothes—perhaps they should be at least a little embarrassed in front of each other, but they've seen each other in less, so this is nothing—and Yuan sweeps Martel up and around to dunk her into the water, her shrieks of laughter a comfort.
There is no danger in this place. No nightmares.
They stretch out on their stomachs, wings spread and tips brushing against each other as they dry off. (Her hair was still loose about her shoulders and face, her eyes shifting colors in the sunshine, and the sight took Yuan's breath away. He'd seen it a hundred times as they all got dressed for the day, but out here, in the wilderness with no nightmares or worries tugging at her, she was some kind of wild, fay creature, otherworldly and ethereal and yet, right here, close enough to touch)
At some point, Martel ends up in his lap. It's not sexual, but it is sensual and she curls in close, wings bumping gently against his and she is so very warm. His arms are around her shoulders, knees bracketing her body and her head is somewhere around his collarbone because he feels her place a few kisses there. He drops a kiss on top of her head, and he doesn't know when she nodded off, but her breaths are deep and even and there are no nightmares.
He snuffles a little closer, pressing his nose into her still damp hair. This is peace, Yuan thinks. This is what they're fighting for.
Yggdrasill, the leader of Cruxis, has the long wings of an albatross—easily eleven feet long, tip to tip—with the backs a wash of gray and black and the undersides purest white. Yuan thinks it's an appropriate idea of duality.
"Albatrosses are bad luck," Botta tells Yuan the day they rescue the Chosen and her friends from Yggdrasill and Kratos. "In Palmacosta, anyway."
It's late in the day and they're both on the roof of the base in Triet—Yuan tries not to spend too much time in Flanoir. Too damn cold there—and the chill of the night hasn't set in yet. The horizon is a blaze of colors thanks to the setting sun. Noana, their resident Healer, had given the Chosen's group quite the cocktail of herbal remedies and Healing magic to fix the damage that Kratos and Yggdrasill had left and they'd all likely be knocked out until tomorrow.
"Why?" Yuan asks.
"There's this old story about a sailor who had an albatross following his ship—albatrosses used to be good luck, back then. But the sailor shot the albatross down, which curses his ship. The way the story goes, the albatross felt so betrayed about being shot down that they've promised bad luck to all sailors."
A symbol of good luck until something killed it. Yuan wonders if Mithos is aware of the story and how very fitting it is.
Mithos' wings start growing in a few months before his thirteenth birthday. He's ecstatic, always trying to twist himself so he can see the fluffy little appendages.
They tease him about them, saying they're going to be embarrassing things. Martel smiles and says, "I dunno, babybird. Maybe they'll be bright yellow, like a canary."
Mithos' nose wrinkles at the thought—he's not fond of the color yellow.
"Maybe a robin or something," their comrades say. "Something that can sing."
The Yggdrasills are still called the Songbirds among the soldiers, but the army knows better now, knows they're not just pretty faces and pretty voices. They're terrifying in their protectiveness, in their vicious survival instinct and the first thing they tell the new recruits is "Listen to the Healers or it'll hurt more." After that, they add, "Oh, and don't die. They get pissed at you for that."
(It wasn't a lie. Jocelyn Careighson died from a sniper shot. Her blood rained down as she came careening to the ground. Her and Kratos weren't particularly close—"It was purely physical," Jocelyn said after that one spectacularly drunk night. Kratos agreed and it wouldn't be the last time the two slept together, but they were both realistic enough to know that they wouldn't work in an actual relationship—but Kratos raged when he found out about her death and he grit his teeth through tears as she burned. He was still angry days later about how she'd been so stupid and why didn't she wait for the all clear? When the anger burned itself out, Yuan held him while he cried and no, it wasn't fair, but nothing in this whole damn war was)
Mithos is kept off active duty the way anyone still growing their wings is. It's ridiculous that children are allowed in the military at all, but what can they do? This war has dragged everyone into it; it isn't just the adults left anymore.
They sit with him as his bones hollow and he groans at the slow ache of it, as he itches through molting feathers. Martel takes the time to cut the holes in his shirts for his wings, lengthening them as his wings grew larger. Her stitches are fairly neat—she is no seamstress by any means. Her stitches look like medical stitches—and they all agree that it's better that she do it. Yuan's old shirts from growing up with Kratos—when he hadn't been hiding his wings altogether—are just ripped and sliced open and they make for a messy picture.
(Mithos' wings would never finish growing. By the time of Martel's death and the events that followed, he had his juvenile plumage and it was good enough to flap around and fly for very short amounts of time, but that was the extent of it. What Yuan knew for sure was that they sure as hell weren't large enough to be albatross wings, even if there was still one more growth spurt left)
Yuan saves for a year to afford the wedding rings. They're made half of steel and half of gold and he has their names inscribed inside. He plans to make it an important affair, official.
That never happens.
What does happen is the two of them dozing on their two cots pushed together at some odd time after midnight. Their legs are tangled together and she's half on him, her head is nestled on his chest, her long hair unbound and spilling about them. (She could tease him all she liked, but at least his hair wasn't long enough to entangle them both, which had happened before)
Peace, Yuan has discovered, is easy to find with Martel.
He doesn't plan to say it, doesn't even realize he has said it for a minute afterwards. His hand is idly tracing patterns in between her wing joints and she squirms closer because she's ticklish and does Martel know that if she keeps squirming like that that she's going to drive him mad? She must catch on because she tugs herself even closer to him, giggling as he tickles her in earnest, hips pressing close to his.
She's breathing hard, face flushed from laughter and he's grinning and he's a bit breathless too when the words fall out. "Marry me, Martel."
He doesn't realize why she's staring at him like that for another minute. His words don't register at first, but he plays them back in his head and oh. Oh. Her eyes are on him, wide with shock.
"Are you serious?" Martel asks.
"…Never been more serious about anything." Yuan's hand falls from her wing joints to her hip. He's been trying to write down his proposal, figure out what to say, but his time's up. "I—I don't want to live a day without you by side. I can't even imagine it."
She ducks to her hide her face, like she always does when she's embarrassed. He can feel the warmth of her cheeks on his skin and he can feel her saying something even if he can't make out what it is.
"Repeat that?" His voice is a little strangled because he's put his heart out there and Spirits, what if she doesn't want him forever?
Martel lifts her head and there are tears on her cheeks and shit, he hadn't meant to make her cry. But she's smiling, radiant as the dawn. "I said 'yes', obviously."
Yuan is about to protest that no, it isn't that obvious, but she's moving up his body to kiss him soundly and he lets the protest die as she sinks into him, body settling against his. (This was real, this was happening. She would be his, for the rest of their lives. And he was hers.) The idea makes him grin silly into her lips and he tugs her even closer, deepening the kiss.
Botta dies at sea. Technically. The sea had flooded in and drowned him, him and the other Renegades that had died with him. Robert and Tuinan.
Yuan listens to Lloyd and the others tell him the events. It's not quite the clinical, detached way that he knows comes from years of learning to squish emotions down and focus on the tasks at hand. Breakdowns can always happen later. Lloyd's eyes are grim in a way that Yuan recognizes; he looks like his father more than ever.
After they leave, Yuan busies himself with what he's been told. An extra Rheaird, when all of their Rheiards are currently in the hangar. He can only busy himself with that mystery for so long, but it's long enough that Lloyd and the others are gone and the knowledge has sunk into his bones.
Botta is gone. His closest friend in four thousand years is gone.
The other Renegades deserve to know. Yuan calls them together to tell them. People cry, one or two scream, but most of it is choked sounds and people grabbing onto each other.
Jezarina finds him, after. Her eyes are red with the oncoming tears, but her jaw is set. She's one of the ones who's been in the Renegades the longest, coming in only a few years after Botta. "He deserves death rites."
"I know he does," Yuan tells her quietly. "But his body is lost to the sea. His, Robert's and Tuinan's. We'll give them a memorial because they deserve it, but we can't give them a proper burning."
After he escapes Jezarina, he takes the good whiskey from his office—a Celsius Day gift from Botta several years back—and he goes to the roof. He inhales the desert air, reveling in the dry winds and spreading his wings a little, before pouring himself a glass. He toasts to the air before drinking.
("The desert?" Botta twisted his lips in a strange grimace when he heard where the base was going to be. "Sand's a pain to get out of feathers.")
Later, Yuan will go out to Rodyle's ranch to see for himself if their bodies can be recovered. According to Lloyd, they had been sealed inside the ranch when they drowned and Yuan winces at the very thought. Not only had Botta drowned, but he'd died inside a cage, with no view of the sky.
It's that thought that makes Yuan put the whiskey down and spread his wings. The flight to the ranch is a long one—if he's smart, he'll take a Rheaird instead of risking such a strenuous flight—but he's not thinking very straight right now, so he uses his own wings. The Cruxis Crystal has strengthened his flight muscles, has pushed them to their extreme, but his wings are still not meant for long distance flights. He has to stop a few times, stretching out the sore muscles, resting his shoulders and popping a few stiff places in his spine, but he gets there.
Yuan has always avoided Rodyle and his ranch. Even Kvar, hateful a man as he'd been, had never risen the same kind of disgust. Rodyle had always inspired an instinctive kind of recoil and it had come from his wings. They had been mutilated, tortured looking things, surgically and magically changed to look more like dragon wings. The memory of him makes Yuan tuck his wings closer to his body; the idea of doing anything like that, voluntarily? Rodyle had to have been legitimately insane.
He sees the dome that Lloyd's group had spoken of, shattered at the top. And there's the hatch to get into the area, which has the bodies of dragons scattered about. There are places where Yuan can see that dragons escaped, which is good. Dragons are a rare enough creature that they don't deserve to be killed unnecessarily.
Just beyond the hatch is a metal-encased area. Yuan has no access to the inside, not when Rodyle had already begun destroying the other entryways, but he and Botta had studied the blueprints to the ranch extensively before this operation; he knows exactly what lies beyond this wall.
Botta deserves to be allowed to fly in the afterlife. As do Robert and Tuinan. When this is all over, Yuan thinks, he'll figure out a way inside. He's good at being destructive; surely he can destroy a metal wall. After that, the three of them can burn and fly in a single unified sky. They would like that, Yuan thinks.
They marry on a cliffside, per tradition. Well, per Yuan's village's tradition, but he's sure that his village of Wingers aren't the only ones who do it.
Kratos steadies Yuan with a subtle shift so their shoulders are touching because Yuan's knees go a little weak at the sight of his future everything coming down that aisle. Martel looks stunning in a dress that had been borrowed, the skirts loose and with a very low-slung back so that her wings and strong back are fully on display. Her hair is braided with flowers—Mithos' handiwork—and her little brother walks her down the aisle, proud as can be.
They braid each other's feathers in their hair as part of the ceremony and Yuan rather likes the striking black and brilliant blue against her earthy tones. Their vows are said, ribbons exchanged and then they stand facing the precipice of the cliff and they hold hands as they let themselves fall forward, waiting to snap open their wings. (It was their first leap into a married life together and Yuan whirled away from her a bit so they didn't crash and Martel let one wing dip into the icy waters below before flying up to meet him) Kratos dives after them and many of the Wingers follow. Mithos' wings aren't strong enough to carry him yet and he cheers them on from the cliff.
After they land, Yuan looks over at Martel, who is windswept, cheeks pink from the wind and the smile on her face is exuberant and he can't help but kiss her because how lucky is he that he gets to have this for the rest of his life? (Martel would tease him about what a hopeless romantic he could be, but Yuan would just grin and flutter his eyelashes at her because, obviously, only someone as wonderful as her could inspire such feelings in him. She'd blush, but still shove him playfully, sometimes making him overbalance. Those times, he'd grab her arm and bring her down with him and they would lie there, laughing until their ribs hurt)
Lives don't stop because there's a war going on. And vice versa.
They fight. Mostly the enemy. Sometimes with each other.
After a fight with each other, they'll slink back a few hours later, curling into a familiar body. Kratos is easily forgiving, Martel has learned and he'll always hug her back immediately. Mithos is a stubborn kid, but he can't stay mad at them for very long. Yuan though—Yuan is just as stubborn as Mithos and depending on what the argument had been, can keep the anger at a low simmer.
"I'm not wrong, y'know." Martel curls her arms around her knees as she talks to her husband. Sometimes, she still feels like the same girl she'd been back in Heimdall, still in pigtails and crawling into her dad's lap to listen to his stories. Things had been easier, then.
"Look—" Yuan bites down on the anger that hasn't died down yet. They'd already done their shouting at each other. "…You're not wrong. But neither am I. Some people deserve it."
"Deserve to be killed after they've already surrendered?"
"Do you know what they did?" Yuan demands before he realizes how harsh his voice sounds. The next time he asks, his voice is quieter. "Those humans, do you know what they did?"
Martel stares at him. "You know them? Well, knew?"
"I recognized them." Yuan is very good with faces, he's learned. He doesn't forget them, even if names will fade away. "…They were the slavers who sold me."
(The image hit Martel fast and hard. Yuan without his beautiful wings, with scars gouged into his back, empty as the look in his eyes and it made bile rise in her throat)
"I didn't know." Her hands curl into themselves, short fingernails digging into the tough skin of her palms. "…They were defenseless. You would kill defenseless people?"
"If they deserve it." Yuan's chuckle is an unpleasant thing. "It's not black and white, Martel. I can't see it that way. Not all humans are bad people—look at Kratos—but some are so bad that we can't just…keep them as prisoners. Not after all the suffering they've caused." He tilts a crooked, bitter smile at her. "I'm not as good a person as you are. I'm not that forgiving."
Sometimes, Martel doesn't quite recognize her husband. Sometimes, he's some darker, more twisted version of the man she loves. But it's not as if she can really be surprised. Their lives have been harsh ones in different ways and she can't hate him for how he's figured out how to survive.
"I know." She leans her shoulder into him, a small point of connection. "I—I want to say we're better than they are, morally. But terrible things have been done on both sides. I've done them too. It doesn't make it any better that my sins are done in the middle of a battle. It's still murder."
Yuan entwines his fingers with hers, the warm ring on her left hand a comforting change in texture. (They were in this together. Even if they fought each other to the ground, here they would be, helping each other back up. That's what marriage was) "We'll end this peacefully," he tells her. "Mithos' idea is a good one. We just need to get the kings together to sign the treaty."
"Yeah," she agrees. "Let's hope we can make it happen soon."
Mithos breaks Yuan's left wing in three places. It takes all Yuan has not to cry out because he's had worse than broken bones. (Yuan knew what it was to shatter apart, to be nothing more than little shards of himself. He'd picked himself back up, glued the pieces back together and added some tape for good measure. Broken bones were nothing compared to that)
"If it weren't for my sister's wishes to spare your life, I'd kill you right now."
Mithos has been insane for four thousand years. Yuan had watched it happen, watched spiral further and had known he could do nothing. But he doesn't recognize this boy right now, this shade of the Songbird boy that he'd taken as family.
He wants to fight back—fight, no flight instinct—but he knows that if he ever fights Mithos Yggdrasill for real, as he is now, Yuan has to go in prepared to kill him. Yuan has done a lot of horrible things, but he doesn't think he's capable of killing the boy whose nightmares he's soothed, whom he teased and playfought, who had displayed his first fluffy feathers with such pride. Not their babybird. So Yuan feels his fragile bird bones break and all he can do is brace for impact.
After Mithos and the other angels are gone, taking Kratos' unconscious body with them (Let him be unconscious. Don't let Yuan in a moment of instinct have killed his best friend), Yuan grits his teeth and slowly pushes himself to his knees. He turns as much as he can, careful to avoid shifting his wings to see the injured one. He sucks down air to steady himself as he takes his cape and, missing Martel with a sudden, violent ferocity, he sets about binding his wing the best he knows how.
He makes his way to Sybak and it's slow progress thanks to his broken wing and cracked ribs—in all honesty, those are probably broken too, but he's not coughing up blood, so they're the lesser concern right now. There's a Renegade safehouse in Sybak, near the docks in case a speedy getaway is needed.
A young woman named Tamara's the only one there tonight. She would be a student at the university, if the half-elf legislation allowed such things. As it is, she's just a librarian's assistant, who gets paid too little to do any good, but she always has a good ear for information in town. She's reading when he limps through the door.
"Sir?" The book falls to the floor when she jumps to her feet. "What happened?"
"Yggdrasill knows. Get the word out to anyone in the bases. Tell them to get out, go into hiding."
She glances at his wing hesitantly, but the look on his face makes her run for the phone and the small computer that they'd set up so messages can still be sent out between bases and safehouses. Yuan goes to the bathroom and carefully—very carefully—lifts his shirt up with his right hand, trying to use his left side as little as possible.
There are nasty bruises along his left side, the skin split and angry. He presses gently against them, hardly any pressure at all and—yup, those are broken. Yuan hisses out a breath and lets the shirt fall.
Tamara knocks at the door and pokes her head inside. "Message delivered. I-I also took the liberty of warning Noana to be expecting you. She's in Flanoir right now."
"Thank you, Tamara."
Her smile is small and shy. "I keep telling you to call me Tammy, sir."
"You know how it is with us old men; we have horrible memory."
She rolls her eyes and pushes the round glasses further up her nose. "Like I believe that. I already ate, but I can heat up some leftovers for you before you head out to Flanoir, if you like. Chicken and curry."
The offer's a generous one, but Yuan doesn't have much of an appetite. "That's all right. I want to get this looked at as quick as possible."
"Of course." He follows her out—she has tiny wings, speckles of white on brown feathers and she's a bit careless what her wings bump into—and she tosses him a wing pack. "You sure you're gonna be alright?"
"I'll be fine."
He's had worse, after all.
Yuan is twenty-six when he finds out he's going to be a father.
He doesn't quite register the words, at first, and Martel is biting her lip because maybe she'd been wrong. Does he not want a family?
When the words actually click in his head, he whoops and tackle-hugs his wife, who laughs breathlessly as he spins her around. He's still holding her up, arms just under her buttocks, when he grins wide at her. "We're having a baby!"
When they tell Kratos, he just kinda stares at them like he's never heard of such a thing before. Knowing his best friend, Yuan gives him a minute to really process the information. Mithos, on the other hand, his eyes go wide.
"I'm gonna be an uncle?"
"Yup," Yuan says. "You and Kratos."
That idea seems to click more quickly than the part about the baby. "What do you mean, uncle?" Kratos asks.
Yuan's eyebrows go up. "Do I have another brother?" (Well, he did, but he hadn't seen his older brother since they were separated by the slavers, since he first heard the screams of the Wingless. At this point, Yuan didn't think he'd even recognize his brother if he saw him, if he'd even survived. As far as Yuan was concerned, Kratos was the only brother he needed. Well, and Mithos, but little brothers counted in a different way)
Kratos' smile at those words is something that Yuan hasn't seen in a long time; Kratos has grown up, finally fitting into his own skin. The smile is a little shy, but beaming; it's the smile that Yuan remembers seeing on the boy's face who watched him fly for the first time.
(The baby would never be born. A little less than three months into the pregnancy, Martel miscarries. More than likely, it had been the stress of war, the other Healers said and Martel agreed. But Martel confessed to Yuan that maybe it was something wrong with her. Maybe she was incapable of having children. Yuan told her not to be ridiculous and they held each other through the night)
The peace-talks end on a Tuesday. Yuan is never sure why that seems significant, but it is. Perhaps it's because Tuesday doesn't seem important enough to have events like that happen.
The four of them are there. Mithos' wings still have some fluffy areas, but his juvenile plumage is growing in nicely. They stand there with their King and the human King and a treaty is signed, in the land of Kharlan under the shade of the large forest in which, somewhere, resides the Giant Tree.
That night, when Yuan is grooming Martel's wings, straightening them out and pulling out wayward feathers, he says, "It doesn't feel real. I feel like we're going to wake up tomorrow and nothing's will have changed."
"Just because the law changes doesn't mean people's hearts will. But I think we'll get there. It's going to be a slow process though."
Yuan hums in agreement. "But the war is over, at least. The whole thing will be easier when we're not worrying about bombs being dropped from the sky or being shot out of the air."
Martel leans back against him until Yuan uncrosses his legs so she can scoot back in between them. His arms move to wrap around her waist, lips dropping a kiss on her neck. Humming in pleasure, Martel tilts her head back so she can look at him. "I never thought we'd see the end."
He nudges his nose affectionately against her forehead. "There are some schools of thought that would say that this isn't an end, but a beginning."
"Very optimistic of you."
"I never said that was my school of thought."
"You never said it wasn't either," she counters and she feels the vibrations when he chuckles.
"True."
Yuan expects to feel it, when Mithos dies. He expects to notice something missing, like the void where Martel had been.
He doesn't.
He's not sure if he's happy about that or not.
He knows when Mithos dies, though, even if he doesn't feel it. The Tower of Salvation crumbles and comes crashing down and the world shatter-shakes back together.
Peace is a tentative concept, one that's hard for people to wrap their heads around. This War has gone on longer than people remember and everyone has grown up with the fear of humans beating inside their breast. They don't know how not to live in fear, how to walk outside without glancing at the sky every few seconds, waiting for bombs to fall. They don't know how not to keep one hand on their knives and swords.
But after a month, then two, then three, of quiet, of adjustment, and people are learning. They learn how safe it is to send their children to school—which Kratos teaches in often. Contrary to his own belief, he's good with children in that he doesn't patronize them, doesn't talk down to them. He just talks to them, with them, involves them in conversations and gives importance to their opinions even as he's teaching. They love him, even if he's not sure why.
It takes four months for all of the soldiers to come home. Martel is suddenly swamped at the clinic, not with new injuries, but checking over still-healing wounds and aches, and assisting with physical therapy. Mithos helps a lot with the physical therapy part, helps people get back in the air or on their feet.
The slaves are freed after five months and it takes them another month to get home. There are dozens upon dozens of Wingless and it brings shudders down Yuan's spine and they make him tuck his wings closer. He feels worse for Martel, who has to help heal the severely damaged tissues and joints. There are some younger kids that he sees them with their wings half-torn off, their eyes bruised and pained, but they have a chance, he thinks. Their wings will never be quite right—he doesn't need to be a Healer to see that—but Martel hopes that she can find some way that they can fly again.
Yuan doesn't know how not to be a soldier, how not to be a refugee. It's all he's been for so long. There is a lot of rebuilding to be done, so he helps with that, putting up support beams and steadying columns, building high walls and carting glass over for windows. It's tough work, but good work, watching families have a place to live again.
It's only a few months after that that the humans come visiting. Tentatively, at first, and oh, there are dozens of attacks or riots that nearly start, but Yuan knows these people, has learned to read their moods and he tries to keep them calm. These humans haven't done anything to them—yet, some argue—and they can't be held accountable for the actions of other humans.
When he sees the humans, Kratos' wings shuffle self-consciously. "I keep expecting someone to recognize me," he confesses to Yuan one day over breakfast.
That makes Yuan snort. "Please, Kratos. If anyone recognizes that scrawny kid I first met as you, I'll eat a fistful of feathers."
The peace doesn't even last a year.
In the ninth month of peace—as Yuan had begun keeping time—Martel flies out to a farmhouse near the city. It's a trip she's made a dozen times to help the elderly couple and their son, who lost a wing in the War.
She's shot down before she ever makes it. A harpoon through her left wing, yanking her down to the earth. She fights back viciously, spells spilling from her lips like water, but they had been ready. Her spells alert the city though, brilliantly bright as they are.
Yuan and Kratos come as quickly as their wings can carry them. Mithos tries to keep up, but he runs half the way, his wings not yet strong enough.
They find a slaughter. Some of the men have been burned beyond recognition, others are missing limbs. Light magic works like a laser if used correctly and Martel is a master. But there are too many of them and while they fight the survivors, Martel falls.
She never gets up.
Yuan comes crashing to his knees, blood soaking through his pants and there's a sword through her belly and the harpoon is still in her wing, rope cut with the knife she keeps on her person. Mithos and Kratos are right behind him and he can hear Kratos breathing hard, can see Mithos going pale, pale, pale and his eyes are so wide, tears welling up as he takes in the sight.
Martel manages a smile, weak and trembling. "Hey, babybird. Don't be crying now."
"But—"
"It's going to be okay." Yuan's fists clench because Martel shouldn't be comforting anyone right now. She's dying and she still has to be so damn selfless. "Fly for me, okay?"
Mithos nods furiously, unable to make a word come out past the knot in his throat.
She grasps at Yuan's hand. He grabs her tight, knowing that his own are shaking, but he can't be strong right now. Doesn't she know that he's his strength? His faith, his hope, his everything? "You—you have this habit of seeing the worst in people." Her voice trembles, but she powers through. "Don't give up on them. Please."
(It would take him millennia to see what she meant, to really take it in and that's when the Renegades were formed)
"I won't," he promises, solemn as his wedding vow.
When Martel looks at Kratos, he stops her before she can talk. "You shouldn't strain yourself."
That makes her smile, just a little. "Always…taking care of people. Let people take care of you for a change…okay?"
"I will."
She lays her head back in the red grass. "I wish I could see it. A world without fighting over race, over who's different. That…that would be nice."
Mithos clutches at her other hand. "We'll make it happen, Martel. You'll see."
Her last, soft laugh ends on an exhale. Yuan chokes on tears that he can't let happen and he reaches out a shaking hand to close her eyes. She shouldn't have to see her family hurting; she's already seen so much pain.
(The world would tumble into chaos once more after that. The Wingers riot, in arms about the death of one of their Songbirds, of the lovely young woman who shared suppers and grief with them, who played with their children and Healed their wounded. The humans retaliated, naturally, and Mithos was the one who finally said one night, "No more.")
When the worlds come together again, Yuan is flying again, but he's not fully healed. Not yet, according to Noana. He feels the Tower of Salvation falling half a world away and he takes a Rheaird out there.
Yuan nearly falls off the Rheaird as he's clambering off because Lloyd Irving has wings. They're enormous, powerful looking things—twelve feet if they're an inch—with very dark brown, nearly black, primaries and lighter brown feathers everywhere else, dipped in white. Wings for soaring high.
(He'd survived the transformation, just like his father before him. Yuan could imagine Anna's reaction. How proud she would be of her son, a Winger)
Yuan's heart stops when he sees the new Spirit of the Tree. Pale green hair falling down her back with brilliantly green eyes shifting shades in the sunlight. The gentle expression. His mind recognizes it as Martel, but then he recognizes the differences. Her skin is too pale, her features a little too angular. And then there's the case with those wings. Or rather, wing. The same shape and size of Martel's, but the single right wing is as white as clouds. A dove's wing. How appropriate for a new world aiming for peace.
She greets him and her voice is off too. Too high-pitched and unaccented to be his Martel's. "Who are you?" he asks.
"I am mana and I am the Tree. I'm a symbol of the many lives sacrificed to the Great Seed, both winged and human."
Yuan makes a sound in his throat, looking out at the small group of people who had saved the world. "And you're going to protect them? Wingers and humans alike?"
"If I can."
"I hope for your success then." He turns away from her—even if he knows it's not really Martel, it still hurts too look at her—when she calls his name.
He had never introduced himself.
When he meets her eyes—both too young and too old for the body she inhabits—he sees more than one person behind them. "She wants to remind you that this isn't an end."
(There are some schools of thought that would say that this isn't an end, but a beginning…)
Yuan looks past her, sees the lightness of relief and success in the group, sees the happiness and joy as they embrace each other. Kratos stands apart, as he almost always does, a shadow of the old world beside the new hope.
"How very optimistic," Yuan murmurs.
"Well," the Spirit Martel says and there is less of his Martel in her now. "It's a new world. Perhaps optimism is what we need."
The sun soaks into Yuan's shoulders and still-healing wings, the air dusty from the Tower's collapse. He stretches out his wings slowly, feeling every pull in the muscles and relishing in it. "Perhaps it is."