Chapter 2

Afterwards, he couldn´t tell exactly why things had changed, but he could tell when the first hint of new feelings had appeared within him.

It´d been in the aftermath of an unusually easy adventure, where he himself had been set up against some kind of mutated boar from the underworld by – of course - Hades. To slay this beast hadn´t even caused him to break a sweat, and Icarus whom had followed him on his quest hadn´t even had a chance to get in and deliver some of his "help" (something Hercules secretly felt grateful for, since Icarus usually only managed to make the situation much worse when he tried to help out).

Everything went smoothly, both during the quest and during the flight back to Athens, and they arrived back to the city early in the morning when everything was quiet and still. Hercules brought down Pegasus in a perfect landing just outside their school, and watched as Icarus way too fast lowered himself to the ground. He made his not too elegant landing – lean slide down, wings folded, fumble, fall, and face first into the hard ground from a height of at least three times his own length.

Hercules couldn´t help but join in the laugh that rose from the few students that had already gathered around the school – after all, he´d seen this happen thousands of times before, but it never ceased to look funny. But his laugh died somewhere along the way when he noticed that something were not quite right this time.

Usually, when Icarus made one of these ungraceful landings, he were up and going strong again seconds after the impact, flapping his wings and glaring at the people around him that laughed at his predicament. Now, he didn´t even stood up again – he lay on the stone pavement, face down, completely unmoving.

Hercules immediately felt a cold shiver run along his spine at the sight, and he hurried to throw himself off Pegasus, suddenly angry at the students whom still stood around them and laughed, not having noticed anything off. But Icarus never were still – even in sleep, he had a habit of twisting and turning and groaning and mumbling endlessly, not to mention how he acted when wholly awake and on one of his insane hyperactive trips. Something were very, very wrong, couldn´t they see that?

Hercules reached his friends side in seconds and, very gently and with his heart pounding wildly in his chest, turned him over. He half expected Icarus to come to life beneath his hands, grab at him and shout "Booooh!", thus proving the whole thing as a very bad joke, but Icarus remained lax in his grip and rolled over in a boneless heap. Hercules felt his blood run cold at the sight of bright red fluid on his friends forehead, Icarus´ eyes closed and his face relaxed and slightly pale beneath the light bronze. For a second, the great big hero felt a flood of panic within that threatened to overwhelm him completely, and the only thought in his head were that oh god, god, Icarus was hurt, Icarus was bleeding, his friend was hurt, this wasn´t supposed to be!

By now, the other students had understood that something were wrong, and to Hercules relief the laughter died down. With it, the worst of his panic disappeared, and some of his hero training took over again. He quickly checked Icarus´ pulse, and looked him over, searching for signs of a smashed skull or a broken spine. Finding none, and discovering that the boy still breathed just fine and had a nice, strong heartbeat, he relaxed a little. But the wound on Icarus´ forehead were pretty deep, probably caused by a sharp rock somewhere in the stone pavement, and he bled a lot, the blood soon covering both his forehead and Hercules´ hands.

Deciding that the best thing he could do where to take Icarus to Athens so called hospital, Hercules gently hoisted his friend up in his arms, noticing with a new wave of worry that the boy´s left arm hung down at a really funny angle. He couldn´t see any marks or any blood on Icarus´ bony arm, but he knew all too well that didn´t meant a thing – many bad injuries didn´t left any trace on the flesh before the bruising and swelling turned up.

He hastened his steps, and along the way he came to notice how skinny and light the limp figure in his arms felt. Of course, with his superhuman strength even the wrestlers of Athen felt light, but in this case he barely felt that he held a human being at all.

Looking down, he noticed Icarus´ skinny arms and legs and his thin little face, neatly resting against Hercules´ broad shoulder for the time being. Of course he´s light, he thought to himself. He has to be. How could these stupid wings carry his weight otherwise?

At the hospital, it was easy enough to get a doctor to take a look at Icarus – in the early morning hours, not many patients were at hand anyways. Still, Hercules felt a slight shiver close to his heart when the limp form was pulled from his arms and placed on a bed in one of the rooms – a slight worry about having to let Icarus go and letting him out of his sight while he lay unconscious and helpless. Brushing it off as some kind of weird possessive friendship-feelings, he left the examination room when the doctor – a beautiful centaur woman – kindly asked him to. But he stopped just outside the door, sitting down at a bench in the clean, small waiting room.

He waited, anxiously, for about twenty minutes, all thoughts of returning to school completely absent. It was funny, really – he himself received injuries now and then during his training and during the endless battles against Hades´ minions, and he always brushed them off as nothing – that was part of the whole hero thing, as Phil had explained to him. But this was different, because well, it was Icarus. Icarus and Cassandra… he couldn´t bear the thought of any of them getting hurt. It didn´t happened often, since the three of them quite literally were protected by the greek gods, but when it did happened… Hercules could quite literally feel his nerves melting to a slimy nothing every damn single time.

He was pulled out of his thoughts when the centaur woman came out of a door about ten feet down the corridor, a door especially built to be used by her, by the looks of it. She smiled kindly at Hercules, and quickly explained that he could stop worrying – his weird little friend had a broken arm and a minor concussion, yes, but with the help of healing magic and potions it should all be sorted out within a few days. However, he´d been put asleep for the time being so that his concussion would have a chance to settle, so could he please come back later if he wanted to see him?

Hercules felt strong relief, because broken bones were something he´d seen a lot of during his days in training, and he knew the greek healers, with the assistance of Apollo, could fix those up as easy as they healed a bruise or a nosebleed. Thus, he agreed to let Icarus sleep peacefully a couple of hours, and return later to visit him. He left the hospital, intending to return to school in time for the days´ first lesson and tell Cassandra what had happened.

Still, he hadn´t noticed anything out of the ordinary within himself.

Hercules and Cassandra came to visit Icarus together that afternoon, just after their last lesson. Hercules was in a terrible mood – Adonis seemed to have his spies everywhere, because when the school´s bell rang for the first time, the snobby youth already knew everything about Icarus´ mishap, and he´d been careful to tell everybody else about it – in a way that clearly were made out to humiliate the winged boy. Hercules knew that Icarus, with his none-too-perfectly working brain, didn´t care about what the rest of the school thought about him, but he still loathed Adonis for what he was trying to do.

His mood became considerably lighter, however, when he and Cassandra arrived to the little chamber in the hospital where Icarus rested.

The little room were clean and nice, and contained a bed, a small table and two chairs. It stood clear that the room were occupied by Icarus – the chairs and the table had been lifted onto the bed and rearranged to build a little cave, the impression completed by the blanket that had been thrown on top of the construction. Icarus looked out through the "cave opening", smiled widely when he laid his eyes upon his visitors, and crawled out of the construction – tearing it down in the process and making it fall onto the floor and break to pieces.

- Aw, man! Icarus groaned, annoyed, and glared down at the mess on the floor, while Cassandra sighed deeply and crossed her arms over her chest and Hercules attempted not to laugh. It took forever to do that!

Then, with his characteristic disability to keep to the subject, Icarus grinned happily and were quick to pull his friends down at the bed.

He had two stitches on his forehead and his arm were tightly supported by a sling around the neck, but he moved without trouble and seemed to feel great. Maybe a little too great, Hercules could quickly conclude.

- Great to see you guys, it´s so boring in here! How´s school today? Adonis his old self I guess? Of course he were. But hey, when I were lying here today I had time to think, and you guys know what? I came up with a new way to dive! I think i´ll be able to dive quicker while flying if I fold my wings while starting the move down! I´ll try it out tomorrow when they let me out! Dadelus already has been here for a visit and he´s promised to make me a new pair of wings today…

- Um… Hercules started out when Icarus had to stop and catch his breath. He exchanged a glance with Cassandra, whom looked just as un-pleased as himself. He still remembered clearly the last time Icarus had decided to try out a "new move" while flying. It´d taken him and Cassandra two hours to convince Athens community for Amazon warriors that the maniac hadn´t crashed through the roof of their changing room in the training hall on purpose… and another thirteen minutes to dig Icarus out of the floor, where he´d somehow managed to get stuck after his so called landing. The Icarus-shaped imprint would probably stay there for as long as the training hall itself remained.

- It´ll be perfect! Icarus assured them, practically bouncing up and down on the bed with excitement at the prospect of flying again. I´ll evolve my flying and then Dadelus will build new wings again, and sooner or later everyone will be able to fly!

He were so exited that he didn´t even had time to flirt with Cassandra in his usual clumsy way, but his enthusiasm were completely unshared. Hercules couldn´t help but feel a little angry at Icarus´ father for a second. The man knew all too well that his son were prone to accidents and more often than not landed on his head after flying, and still he continued to provide the boy with his dangerous toys. Hercules knew that the man cared about his son, but there were days when it was hard to believe… and he could safely bet that this new move and new wings of Icarus would only serve to give the boy another concussion and make him just a little bit more insane. If that was even possible… he sighed deeply.

That night, he snuck out when the dark had fallen, and hurried towards the inventor´s house on a secret quest.

Still, nothing had changed.

The next day, Icarus were most upset when he met up with Hercules and Cassandra in school, just in time for math lesson.

Cassandra looked surprised to see him, especially since he had no new injuries – just a thin cut on his forehead and some pale bruising on the arm, which had been broken less than twenty-four hours earlier.

- I thought you were planning to try out your "new move" today, she commented dryly while the three of them waited for the lesson to start out, ignoring Adonis and his peers whom had been trying to get a rise out of the three of them.

- Well I was! Icarus exclaimed angrily and threw his healthy arm into the air – sure enough, he weren´t wearing any wings.

- So why didn´t you? Hercules pretended to wonder.

- Because some sicko broke into Dadelus´ workshop yesterday night and tore all his prototypes and wings to pieces! Icarus spluttered angrily, rubbing his half-healed arm when he felt a sting of pain in it. All of ´em! Every single one! Even the new ones that he made for me, with those new mechanisms and that fidgety-finely yellow colour that I chose myself!

His shoulders slumped in disappointment and he stared down at the table top, his face obscured by his more than slightly unruly hair.

- Who could've done that? He asked out loud. It has to be someone whom has visited Dadelus before – only those whom visit gets to see where he stores his wings!

Despite this pretty lame clue to the identity of the unknown saboteur, Hercules coughed and his face darkened several shades until it matched his hair perfectly.

- Don´t think about it, he tried to calm Icarus. You won´t find the ones whom did it, i´m sure of that, sorry. No witnesses and such, you know? Heh…

Icarus nodded unhappily – and since his gaze still were glued to his math runes on the table, he completely missed the suspicious glare that Cassandra sent over his head, at the red-haired teen.

School passed painfully slowly, and Icarus´ mood stayed sour – unusual, since the skinny teen very rarely let his many failures and disappointments keep him down for more than ten minutes at a time. Cassandra were the first one to grasp the reason – the boy were feeling uncomfortable and depressed because of the loss of his wings.

When she pointed that fact out to Hercules, he were quick to remind her that there were nothing he could – or wanted, really – to do about it.

But still, after school, he found himself approaching the sulking Icarus and asking him if he wanted to go for a ride on Pegasus in the evening. Just as a substitute for his own wings, of course, until his dad had been given enough time to create new ones.

Icarus accepted the offer, breaking into a huge grin, and forgetting his sulking in an instant. Within two seconds, he were back to his ordinary annoying and irritating ways, bringing great relief to Hercules – and also to Cassandra, even though the clairvoyant girl would never have admitted it.

That evening, Hercules more or less escaped from a late hero training session with Phil, knowing all too well that his little flight for freedom would come back to bite him in the ass big time later. But it was completely and utterly worth it, at least in that second when he fly over the night sky on Pegasus, feeling Icarus´ bony arms around his stomach and hearing his exited voice talking nonsense about everything and nothing at the same time.

Then, while they moved though the evening clouds above Athens while the sun wagon slowly started to disappear completely at the horizon, Icarus fell silent for a second and shivered slightly with cold. He pressed closer to Hercules´ warmer body, and the young hero heard a slight whimper of pain as his passenger moved his not-quite-healed arm a little bit too much.

Icarus fell silent and still, his healthy arm tightly wrapped around Hercules´ body, his wounded arm resting a bit lighter at his hip. The skinny boy seemed satisfied with just resting there for a second, his face burrowed between Hercules´ shoulder blades, his body tightly pressed up against his friends.

And in that second – with the sun disappearing and leaving them in blackness, Icarus´ small and warm body pressed against his own, and his arms resting so trusting and confidentially around him – Hercules felt it loud and clear for the first time ever.

A great warmth in his chest. An almost painful tenderness. A desperate want to protect the boy whom flew with him – to prove to him that he really were a hero, by making sure that no harm were ever done to him again, accidentally or otherwise. He had no true words for it, but…

He felt a change of emotions within him.