Flightless
by K. Stonham
first released 16th September 2022
Nine hundred years, and it came down to a sunny day in the park.
Douxie was lazing on the grass, warm and content, his sunglasses keeping the blinding light of the sun from his eyes, when the rest of the Guardians of Arcadia decided that a post-picnic game of sky-tag would be an ideal activity. "Not for me," he told them, waving them off. "I am full and happy and solar-powered like a cat."
"Liar," Archie protested.
Douxie tilted his head toward his familiar. "All right, you go play in my stead, then," he suggested. "See if any of them can catch a dragon."
Archie sniffed. "Perhaps I shall." He took to the air with the rest of them while Douxie remained below.
He lay there for a while, watching the intricate patterns that nearly a dozen fliers wove in the sky as they played their game. Snatches of laughter, of indignant shrieks, of teasing, made their way down to him.
After a bit, though, the pleasant heat on his skin shifted to prickles, letting him know that sunburn was imminent. Grudgingly, Douxie pushed himself up and found the shade of an oak tree, sitting down against its bole, closing his eyes. The lethargy and warmth of the afternoon was threatening to drag him down into a nap; for once, he found he didn't mind.
He must have drifted off for a few minutes, because the next thing he knew was a draft of air from someone's wings as they landed, and Jim's voice saying, "Hey, Douxie, come play with us."
Douxie must have still been half asleep because the words that came out of his mouth were "Sorry, can't."
"What do you mean, 'can't'?" Jim asked, laughter in his voice. "Come on, let's fly!"
Still caught in the lassitude of a dream, "Can't fly," Douxie replied, not opening his eyes.
There was silence for a minute, and Douxie nearly slipped back under, comfortable and content. Jim's voice cut through that all with a sharp, whispered "What?" Suddenly Douxie was awake again.
He blinked a few times, and raised his sunglasses up to rest on his hair. "Jim?"
"What do you mean, you can't fly?" Jim demanded, visibly upset.
Cold ran through Douxie. What had he said? Had he- hells, he must have said something while he was half asleep, because gods knew he'd never say it awake. But-
He couldn't laugh it off as a joke, because it wasn't one.
And if he tried to lie, Jim would ask for proof, demand that he join them in the game he had no way to play...
Douxie's mouth compressed into a line. He had no options.
"Exactly what I said," he said softly. "I can't fly, Jim."
"But, but you-"
Douxie pushed to his feet, leaning back against the bark of the oak. "Have you ever actually seen me fly?" he asked, hating his inability. Hating the uselessness of his own wings.
Jim visibly thought about it. Douxie could see him casting his memories back across the length of their entire acquaintance, searching for something that wasn't there. "...No," Jim whispered, staring at him. "But..."
Douxie shrugged. "But what?" he asked. "You made an assumption-several, actually-about me the moment you met me. This is just one more that you're needing to revisit and revise."
"You're crippled?" Jim asked. And in his tone was every shade of why Douxie didn't tell people.
He didn't look crippled, after all. His wings were proportionate, balanced, well-formed. He was diligent about plumage maintenance; his feathers, iridescent blue and black, were the prettiest thing about him. But for all that they looked well, they were badly damaged in ways that didn't show. Hisirdoux couldn't raise his pinions above shoulder height. Using his wings to fly, or even to glide, was completely out of the question.
"When?" Jim demanded. "How?"
"It happened a long time ago," Douxie told him. "Before your little visit to Camelot, even. Don't worry about it." For all that immortality had its distinct downsides... well, time was good at putting pain in perspective. Douxie had long since outlived everyone who'd had a hand in breaking him.
They were dust, and he was still singing.
"Why didn't you tell us?" Jim asked, pity in his eyes. "All those times you fell- we could have helped you, Doux!"
Anger suddenly sparked. "Helped me?" Douxie asked, his tone rather sharper than he'd intended. "I don't know if you've noticed, Jim, but I'm a wizard. I don't need people helping me."
"You do when you're falling from a flying castle!" Jim shot back.
"Considering I saved your life the last time you fell from a flying castle, I think this 'cripple' can manage just fine!" Douxie snapped.
Jim looked taken aback.
"You do not get to pity me, or think I'm any bit less capable than anyone else just because my wings are dead weight pulling me down," Douxie told him. "I've worked too hard, for too long, to let you, or anyone else, take away my agency or my self-respect."
"I wasn't-" Jim protested.
"Oh really?" Douxie cut him off. "Go look at yourself in a mirror, Trollhunter, and tell me you weren't acting just like everyone else who's ever patronized me because of something that happened before you were ever a light in your mother's eye."
Jim was silent, realization perhaps washing across his face.
Douxie sighed, tired all of a sudden. "The picnic was great," he told Jim quietly. "Thanks for inviting me. But I think I need to go now, before either of us say something we'll really regret."
"Doux-"
"You know where to find me," he said, "whenever you internalize that apology I think you need to come up with." And so saying, he set out, walking back to his apartment, knowing Archie would find him eventually.
Wondering how long it would be before Jim understood what he'd done that was wrong.
It was almost two weeks later before Douxie saw any of the Guardians in anything other than passing. Except that they so rarely came into the bookshop, or ate at the cafe while he was on shift, he'd have suspected them of shunning him. Which, well... it would have hurt. A lot. But he knew that Claire was flying to Mexico to visit her grandparents, and Steve and Eli had returned to Akiridion-5 with Aja, and Varvatos, of course, went where his queen did. Toby and Jim had made plans to go on a driving trip up the California coast, and Krel had been excited to go with them, to see more of his adopted homeworld in person. And Aaarrrgghh had gone with Blinky to New Jersey via the repaired gyre system. So, really, it was just going to be himself and Archie holding down the fort for a while.
"Quiet, isn't it?" Stuart asked, handing him his extra-large order of loaded chicken nachos with extra guacamole and jalapeños through the taco truck's side window.
"Almost alarmingly so," Douxie agreed. "Still, it's a nice change of pace."
"Think there'll be another apocalypse before everyone gets back?"
Douxie laughed. "I hope not," he said, dropping an extra few dollars in the tip jar. He didn't have much to spare, but what he did was best shared around.
"See ya, Doux," the Durian said as Douxie walked off, heading back toward the bookstore.
"See ya, Stuart," Douxie replied.
"Arch," Douxie called as he walked back in through the shop's door, "I've brought lunch."
"Um," he said, noticing Jim standing in the middle of the bookstore.
"Thank you, I will be taking that," Archie said, swooping down from the second floor and snatching the tray of nachos out of Douxie's hands. "If you want any, I recommend you make this talk brief, and to the point."
"Fine," Douxie called after his retreating familiar, "see if I get you extra peppers next time!"
"Piecrust threats," Archie responded, disappearing out of sight. His voice carried back after him. "Easily made, easily broken."
Douxie sighed, hating that Archie was correct.
"So. Um. I owe you an apology, I think?" Jim asked.
Douxie examined him, his hesitant stance. "How about you tell me what you think you're apologizing for, and I'll tell you if it's accepted or not?"
"Um." Jim shifted from foot to foot, and back again. "I'm sorry for calling you crippled," he started. "And I'm sorry for implying that you might need help, when you're as badass as any of us."
Douxie nodded. "Anything else?" Jim had covered the most salient points, but he was smart, and it wasn't out of the realm of possibility that he'd come up with some aspect that Douxie hadn't thought of.
Jim looked up, startled. His eyes met Douxie's. "I... don't know?" he said, obviously searching for anything else that he might need to be apologizing for, and coming up blank. "I'm sorry I made you mad at me, and hurt your feelings, and... can you just tell me what else I did wrong, so we can be friends again, please?" The last bit had a bit of desperation and whine to it.
Douxie let his breath go. "Apology accepted," he said. "But if I ever catch you, or any of the others, treating me like I can't pull my own weight, I will cut you out and not look back. Because that's the one thing I don't need in my life."
"I didn't tell anyone else!" Jim swore, wide-eyed.
"Good. Because it's none of their business. It's not properly even yours, but you know now, so there it is." Douxie leaned back against the counter. "So how was your trip?"
Jim groaned. "Eight hours a day of listening to Toby and Krel complain about and try to sabotage each other's choice in music like they were The Odd Couple."
Douxie had to laugh at the image. "So they enjoyed themselves?"
"So, so much," Jim groaned, slumping down into a nearby armchair. "I am never roadtripping with the both of them again." His gaze wandered, then caught on Douxie's useless, decorative wings. "Can you at least tell me what happened?"
Douxie shrugged and walked over, taking the seat nearest Jim's. "Some people took offense and broke my wings. Merlin tried to repair them, later, but..." He shrugged again and raised one wing as high as it could go, which wasn't very. "Magic can't fix everything."
Jim's eyes were fast on the trembling wing until Douxie folded it down and away. "Who were they?"
"Doesn't matter," Douxie dismissed. "They're long dead," he overrode Jim's next protest, "and I'm still here. And modern society has started making accommodations for the flightless, so I'm better off than I have been in centuries. Very few people know. I actually have a friend in New York who specializes in making prosthetic wings, and he's never even asked about mine. He assumes the same things you did."
"But how do you manage?" Jim asked next.
Douxie smirked and called magic forth, levitating one of the books on the nearby coffee table. "How else? I cheat, Jim."
Jim's gaze stayed on the book for a long minute, his mouth compressed into an unhappy line. "Have you had a doctor take a look?" he asked finally. "I mean, maybe there's something modern medicine can do that magic can't."
"At what cost?" Douxie asked. "I don't mean just money. Even if there's some treatment that could be explored in my case, it would at best involve breaking things all over again and letting them heal. Months laying on my stomach, hoping it might work. Might give me a little more flexibility back. And even if it did... you think I still remember how to fly? I'd wreck myself and crash the first time out, undoing everything I just spent months trying to repair. No." He shook his head. "Flightless is what I am, Jim. I don't need it anymore."
"But don't you miss it?" Jim pressed. "The freedom, the wind whirling across your feathers?"
Douxie shrugged. "After nine centuries? I barely remember it," he says, which was only half a lie. "Besides, the world offers so many other pleasures, the lack of that one's easy enough to ignore."
"Even when everyone else around you gets it?" Jim asked softly, as astute as ever.
Douxie met his gaze head-on. "Other people get lots of things I don't," he said quietly, a warning not to push harder. "I get lots of things they don't. It balances."
Jim nodded, backing off. "All right." He had the grace not to ask that Douxie request aid if he needed it; they both knew Douxie wouldn't agree. "Um. So," he said, obviously casting about for a change of subject, "can Archie really eat that many nachos?"
Douxie grinned. "He's one part dragon, one part bottomless pit. You'd be amazed at how much he can put away."
"I heard that!" rang out from the break room. "You're hardly one to talk!"
"Come on," Douxie said, standing and offering Jim a hand. "We'd better hurry if we want him to leave any for us."
"Good talk?" Jim asked, like he needed confirmation they were solid again.
Douxie nodded. "Good talk."