Safe

They had left the Rowdy Boys in the observation room. No one came to get them after Riggins left and no one bothered them. After a while it was almost easy to ignore the fact that they were being watched from the observation deck above, hidden behind the large, one-way glass panes. Martin could still smell them, but even his focus was redirected by their newest brother.

He was small, but he had the boundless energy of a recently fed psychic vampire. The hesitation that he'd had when the link had first clicked into place didn't last long and Vogel was bouncing all over the place. He leapt up on Gripps' back for a piggyback ride that the older Rowdy readily gave, and when he tired of that he jumped over with surprising agility for all of his awkwardly long limbs to swing from Cross' arm, the tall Rowdy lifting him fully off the floor so that his feet didn't touch. The howling laughter from the kid filled up the whole room and drowned out even Blackwing's foul stench. He was happy and Martin could feel it spreading. They were whole. They hadn't realized that they weren't before, but now that three had become four, it was a truth that resonated through them.

If there was one thing he'd learned in Blackwing, though, it was that happiness didn't last. Even those brief moments of utter joy could be crushed out by the higher ups that held their lives in their hands.

The hiss of gas caused all four of the Rowdy Three to freeze where they were and Martin loosed a low, dangerous growl as his gaze flickered up towards the vents above. That white smoke was filling up the room. It was a big enough room that it would take a few minutes to knock them out, but the moment it touched their skin, the second it filled their lungs, they'd be paralyzed.

"No no no no!" Vogel screeched at the top of his lungs, panic spiking hard, and took off for the door. He slammed into it like he thought his slight frame would be enough to take it fully down. He bounced off of it, eyes wild as he looked back at the smoke and tried again.

"Hey." Martin waited until he looked over and offered what he could of a smile for the frightened child. He needed to keep him calm. He needed to make sure that they didn't hurt him. "This is what they do. They're movin' us. We ain't gonna let anythin' hurt you, Vogel. You trust me?"

Vogel nodded slowly, but the fear didn't fade from his eyes even if the barest edges of the panic eased out. However long he'd been there, whatever he'd seen, it'd been enough to know to be scared of this place. Even as the gas filled his lungs Martin found himself thinking of all the ways that he was going to make Priest pay for hurting his family.

Martin came around slowly. That was always the way it worked after he'd been gassed. He found himself lying on his back, staring up at the ceiling from his mattress, and the sound of muffled crying reached his ears. He blinked hard and sat up, squinting towards the source of the sound.

Vogel was curled up at the foot of the three mattresses that were laid out on the floor, sadness and fear rolling off of him in waves. Martin reached back for his glasses that were sitting exactly where he kept them by the mattresses at night, and slipped them up his nose so that his baby brother came into focus. The boy had turned those large, dark eyes on him, and he saw that they were rimmed red, snot bubbling out his nose. He pulled in a shaky breath and relief was added to the mix of emotions before he ran his arm across his nose. "Thought they'd hurt you."

"Just the gas. You've seen that, right?"

Vogel gave another sniff. "Nobody woke up."

Martin looked over to where Cross and Gripps were still sleeping off the effects of the gas. "Takes a while to wear off, but they're okay," he promised, watching the boy carefully.

There were too many emotions pouring through the newly formed link. Vogel didn't know how to process them, so he sure as hell didn't know how to filter them before they slammed into the blond Rowdy, nearly overwhelming him. Martin drew in a deep breath, trying to push his own focused calm over to balance it out, and he motioned for the kid to move closer. As soon as he did he put and arm around him and Vogel readily folded in as Martin laid back down on their makeshift bed. Gripps inched closer and wrapped an arm around their newest brother too, never opening his eyes. From behind him Cross' sleepy, mumbling voice could be heard. "We gotcha, Vogel."

Slowly the raging emotions settled out and Martin felt the boy relax, wrapped up between them, and something else drifted through the link. Safe. The feeling was so strong that Martin could almost hear the word, and he made a silent promise that he would never let Blackwing hurt their new baby brother. They were going to keep him safe.

Notes: And it's back! Sorry this took so long to update. I took what I thought was going to be a brief detour to another story that wouldn't leave me alone and it grew to over 80K words long. Oops?

We're working up to their escape now that Vogel's here, but I expect that there will be at least a handful of scenes before that happens. I've waiting a long time to dive into adorable Rowdy moments with ten-year-old Vogel XD