I wanted to fly

So I became a bird

Test after test had been run over the past several days, doctor after doctor coming in to Danny's tiny room, examining him like the centerpiece if some twisted medical collection, following the bullet's path through his living flesh and documenting the damage with a eye that didn't seem to mind if he was alive or dead as long as they got to watch.

Danny seemed to take the news of his shredded and useless vocal cords well, nodding at the correct points and even smiling when his latest doctor cracked a joke about speech therapy meant to lighten the mood. Despite that, Steve could see the strain on his face, the tightness around his eyes and his gently clenched hands.

He was getting stronger, his grip strength returned almost to normal after many days of physical therapy and he was already taking short walks up and down the hospital hall under the hawk-like eye of a nurse. He was also hurting. It was obvious to Steve if it wasn't to anyone else. For the past couple of days Danny had been asking, with signs and the past day on his whiteboard, when his speech would return. Every time Steve answered, "let's wait for the doctors to know more."

Now Danny had been deemed strong enough to receive the news. The doctor told him, gently and with the practiced ease of one who breaks bad news often, that it was likely he would never speak again.

And it hurt him. It hurt him almost more than Steve could bear to watch. He kept repeating to himself that Danny was so much more, so, so much more than just his voice, but he couldn't quite bring himself to believe that this wouldn't change everything. It had to change everything.

And then the doctor was making his goodbyes and Danny was closing his eyes and retreating into himself and Steve was losing him. Steve was losing the person he cared most about it the world and he didn't know what to do.

He had caused something. Something huge and inescapable and terrible. And he

Could

Not

Fix

This.

And he told himself he would never do something so stupid again, he would listen to Danny and he would wait for backup, and, and, and...

And the damage was done.

And then Danny was crying, fat tears rolling down his cheeks in little rivers, sobbing for what he had been, for what he couldn't be.

And Steve tried to comfort him, to apologize for the unforgivable, for betraying him. And he tried to tell him that everything would be fine, that everything would go back, back, back to the way it had always been...

But he could not lie.

This was Danny and he

Could

Not

Lie.

And then Danny was reaching up to wipe the tears from Steve's cheeks, and that was wrong, that was so wrong, and Steve couldn't breathe and he was drowning in the wrongness of it.

He loved Danny and he could not lie.

And so they did the only thing they could do. They held each other in that tiny, white room and drowned in the wrongness of that moment, of every moment since that first moment.

They clung to each other.

And they wept.

Fin.