Chapter Text
It's storming hard. Rain isn't an oddity in as temperate climate as the one in this city, but Jude can't remember the last time the sky clouded over so thickly that it turned the afternoon light into indistinguishable gloom. The water comes down in solid sheets, slapping him over the head and soaking his clothes so much he could've been tumbling around in a washer for all he knows. He hopes his backpack can hold off the deluge for the few minutes longer it'll take to get to his dorm. It was described as waterproof when he bought it, but in this weather he'd be hard pressed to think of anything as waterproof outside of anything made of at least half a metre of solid material. Concrete, preferably.
He really should make a habit of carrying an umbrella with him.
The weather forecast had said it'd be fine today! Sunny for the most part with a bit of cloudiness in the early afternoon. But then the rain started pouring and predictions for all the other hours of the day turned into "storming, 100%". Jude would normally head to the library after his last class to study, but it wouldn't have been worth it at that point. Getting there in the rain, studying, and then getting back home through the rain. Might as well skip the middleman and make one trip instead of two.
After a few more minutes of trying to evade growing puddles and slippery pavement, the blocky silhouette of his residence hall emerges through the haze. His bangs are plastered to his forehead, running rivulets of water into his eyes no matter how hard he tries to brush them aside, and the rabbit ears on his hoodie are stuck to the straps of his backpack, much like how the rest of everything on him is clinging to every bit of skin they can reach.
With a sigh of relief, he ducks under the overhang before the door, fumbling in his wet pocket for his student card.
That's when he sees the wet trail on the concrete.
The ground in front of the door is darkened with water, stamped into the pavement by damp shoes and speckles of droplets shaken off from umbrellas. But a second stark line joins the main one, leading from the grass and drawing a jagged path to one of the hinges of the door where it ends in a puddle around a sopping pile of… feathers?
Jude pushes his hair out of his eyes again and this time, without the rain pelting down, he manages to clear his vision somewhat. It's a bird - a crow - beak tucked into its shivering body, feathers gathered in spiky clumps in all directions. One wing is crooked at an angle Jude is pretty sure wings are not supposed to be in, and the puddle beneath it is turning increasingly red as blood mixes with dark water.
Now, he's heard plenty of times from plenty of sources that interacting with wild animals could be dangerous. Injuried wild animals, even more so. But the crow looks absolutely pitiful with its single beady eye staring up at him, its body trying to curl in more on itself as he steps closer to the door. He could call the RA and ask them if there were any animal services that could come help, but the bird was losing blood quick and Jude has always had a soft spot for small animals.
Before he can think better of it, he's slinging his backpack to the side to peel off his soaked hoodie. He wriggles it over his shoulders and tries his best not to take his shirt with it, soaked and stuck together that they are. Once it comes off, he crouches slowly, holding the hoodie between both hands as he reaches for the crow.
It squirms, pushing itself into the wall behind it, talons scrabbling at the wet ground beneath it.
"Shh," Jude coaxes. "I'm trying to help."
A gust of wind whips by. Spray jets down from the overhang, sending water into his eyes and showering the poor bird. With his hands occupied, he tries his best to blink the water from his vision and focus on the rescue. The closer and closer he inches, the tighter and tighter the bird curls its head into its feathers.
"I gotchu," he murmurs, and covers the crow with his hoodie in a swift move. He feels bad that it's going to have to deal with the soaking wet cloth, but it's not like he has much to work with at the moment. The cloth wriggles between his hands, and he is careful not to hurt the creature inside as he tugs his hoodie into a bundle shape before lifting it.
Okay. He has a bundle of wet cloth and bird in his arms. He shifts the whole thing to one elbow so he can use his other hand to flip open the top where the crow's beak was already poking through. It has stopped moving, to his great relief, though it now stares at him with an intensity that's becoming more and more unnerving by the second.
"Let's get you out of the rain and cleaned up, okay?" Jude tucks the sleeve that had flopped loose back in place, and carefully shifts his backpack back in place. His pant pocket refuses to work with him, tangling around his fingers, until he finally grasps his way past the cold metal of his keys and finds his student card.
One swipe, beep, and an elbow to the accessibility button has the door swinging open, admitting him and his new companion to the lobby. Paradise, as far as he is concerned. Nice, dry air, even with the bit of moisture following him in through the open door - he can feel the dampness rising from his skin already, but he has no time to enjoy it. He beelines it to the elevators, grateful that one is on the ground floor, and takes it up to his floor where he yanks his keys out of his still-uncooperative pocket to unlock the door.
It isn't long before he has the crow transferred to a dry towel on the table in the shared kitchen area. Loosely bundled in fresh, notably not wet material, it looks a lot better, less like a torn up dishrag and more of an actual bird that had gotten rained on a little too hard. Somewhere along the way it had tucked its injured wing back into its side without Jude's intervention, though the angle still makes it look like it's dislocated pretty badly. If it could move its wing, hopefully none of the bones were broken. For now it nestles itself into the folds of the towel, using its beak to pull the fuzzy fabric around it into a snug cave, and withdraws its head inside. In the shadow, only the glint of its eyes are visible.
Jude fishes out his phone from the bottom of his backpack. Good call on stuffing it in as deep as possible, since all his pockets were soaked through and the rain was getting through the top layers of his bag; his phone remained dry through the rush home. Keeping one eye on the crow, he shoots off a message to Lopezz and Lettuce. They specialised in feline care, but they were pre-veterinary students, so maybe they'd know something about birds as well? While he waits for their message back, he rolls up his drenched sleeves and tries not to get water on his screen as he googles how to care for an injured bird.
Oh, right. He'd best get a medkit.
—
Turns out he doesn't need a medkit.
What he needs is to contact a local vet or wildlife rehabber, which Lopezz helpfully points out that their school's veterinary sciences department has both of. So he calls them, and after answering a series of questions about the crow's current status, it's decided that a worker will come pick it up tomorrow, since the current storm is too dangerous to navigate in. They leave him with a few instructions about how to take care of the crow until then, and that's that.
He sets his phone face down on the table with a heavy sigh, then props his chin up in his hands to look at the crow peeking out of the bunched up towel. "I'm not qualified to help you with that wing of yours, but I'll do my best to keep you safe and fed until someone who is comes along, alright?"
The crow continues staring at him.
One of the websites he'd read said that birds might appear calm when being rescued, but it's really a stress response. Poor thing. He rummages through the drawers and cupboads until he finds a ramekin which he fills with some tap water, and a half-eaten bag of sunflower seeds behind a stack of cereal boxes. Offerings acquired, he places the water near the bundle and tips out a handful of seeds next to it, within reach of the crow.
"Best I can do for now," he says, backing away so it doesn't feel intimidated by his presence. "We don't have any berries or grain or, what was it, peanuts? I can boil an egg for you later, though."
Did he imagine it, or did the crow nod at him?
It's inside a towel. He can't see its head.
Definitely imagining things.
The chill is seeping into his brain - he hadn't changed before trying to help out the crow, and now he's dripping water everywhere, the slight coolness of the kitchen turning into an icy cold through his wet clothes. He should probably deal with that and mop up the floors before Parker gets back and starts going on a dramatic monologue about slipping on wet kitchen tile and cracking his head open or something.
With one last look at the crow, he gathers up the unused medkit and his sopping wet backpack he'd left leaning against the entrance hallway, and hauls them to his room while trying his best not to splatter even more water on the ground.
—
He'd just gotten out of the shower and changed into his pyjamas - it's 5 pm but sue him, he doesn't need to go outside anymore today - when he hears the door to the apartment open and close.
And then-
"Holy shit, is that a bird!?"
An alarmed squawk follows, and Jude bursts out of his room.
Parker, looking like a drowned rat, is standing at the entrance to the kitchen staring at the dining table. Jude catches the end of a black tail disappear into the towel bundle, before it shifts and there's beady eyes peering out of the darkness again. He allows himself to relax.
Parker's gaze snaps toward Jude. "Jude?"
Jude stares at Parker. "Aren't you supposed to be in class?"
"No fucking way I'm sitting through a 2 hour class to walk home in the dark, in the middle of a storm," Parker says as his eyes flick to the table, then Jude, then back to the table. "I'll just watch the lecture recording but that's not important right now- why is there a bird in the apartment?"
"Ah," Jude says. "That."
"Yes, that." Parker shrugs off his backpack and goes to set up his umbrella by the heating vent. It's slick with water - seems like the rain had been so bad it had gone through the canvas entirely, which explains Parker's miserable state.
"It's hurt," Jude says as he walks over to the table and leans down so he can peer into the towel cave. The crow opens and closes its beak at him. He's glad to see some of the seeds gone, and the water level in the ramekin lower than he'd left it. "I found it bleeding outside our building, and I couldn't just leave it there."
"It's… hurt?" Parker draws closer, but still keeps a distance as if he was afraid the bird would come bursting out at him if he got too close. "It was walking around on the table when I saw it. Then it ran back into its… nest… thing."
Jude straightens. "Dislocated wing, I think? And maybe a flesh wound under the feathers somewhere. It seems to have gotten better, though."
"Oh. That explains why its silhouette was a bit wonky."
"Don't insult the injured bird."
"I didn't insult it! I was just saying it looked wonky!"
"It'll look less wonky when its wing gets fixed." Jude crosses his arms and casts a glance back down at the towel. The crow is still snuggled inside, refusing to come out. Parker must've scared it - it had been so quiet when he was handling it earlier, with not a single peep coming out of its throat, and the squawk it just let out could pierce walls. "Wildlife rehab will come get it tomorrow."
"Okay," Parker says slowly. "It's not going to wreak havoc on our dorm, is it? Or spread bird flu? Or shit all over-"
"If it does somehow shit on you, you deserve it. And I'm not helping you clean up."
"Jeez, I was just kidding." Parker raises both hands in surrender with a sheepish smile. "Anything I can do to help?" He bends down. "Hi there, little guy."
The crow turns its face into the towel.
Jude giggles. "Looks like it doesn't want your help."
Parker frowns. "Ouch."
"You did freak out at it, say it looked wonky, then slander it right to its face."
"I thought a bird got into our apartment! Whatever. Let me know if you need anything, then. I'm gonna go take a shower." Parker begins the same trek Jude had gone through half an hour ago, a trail of water droplets in his wake.
"Are you not gonna tune into class for at least the first few minutes?" Jude hides a smile behind a hand. "Orbital mechanics is the one where the prof makes you do an attendance poll, right?"
Parker's eyes go wide. "Fuck." Several heavy footfalls later, the door to Parker's room slams shut.
Jude turns his gaze back to the bird. It's head is out now, beak and eyes and a bit of its small forehead. "Don't worry about him," he tells it in a stage whisper as he gestures to Parker's closed door. "He's more of a hazard to himself than to anyone or anything around him."
From the corner of his eye, he swears he sees the crow smile.
—
Jude boils an egg for the crow, as promised. It lunges as soon as he gets the shell off, before he even has the chance to mash it up with a fork like people on the internet said to do. It starts tearing at the egg white with such fervour that Jude takes a step back and decides you know what, the crow knows best.
It has left the towel now, exploring a small radius around it - a radius that Jude had placed the dish holding the egg into, which meant that the dish and the egg in it now belonged to the crow. One wing is still hanging limp, but otherwise it seems about as lively as a bird should be, with reference to the other crows Jude has seen around on campus.
With the crow's dinner comes Jude's dinner, which is leftovers he tosses into the microwave. The crow approaches curiously, but he extends an arm to bar it from getting at his food - all the oil and MSG in the takeout cannot be good for it. It stands at the edge of the table, head tilted, when he gets up to do the dishes. He gets the distinct feeling that it's watching him - truly watching him, observing and scrutinising in a way that seems far too intelligent for an animal.
It's nothing, he tells himself. Corvids were of the more intelligent type. They were about as smart as a 7 year old or something, if he remembers that article he read way back. Tool use, self-awareness, understanding of numbers, something something. But when the crow stands beside his laptop, watching the characters he types flow across the screen, he can't help but think there's something more to this one.
When he finishes the section of his lab he'd set out to complete today and stretches, his spine pops all the way down. The crow is still there. It had gone to go drink water and peck at seeds every now and then, but it had always come back, circling his hands and laptop and occasionally plopping itself down over its talons in a way Jude can only describe as loafing.
He'd usually do his homework in his room, but he'd elected to stay close to the crow in case something happened. And honestly, it probably kept him sane through the hours.
"Alright," he says quietly. It's close to 1 am, and he has to rub his eyes to clear the growing blurriness at the edges of his vision. "Fuck that. Fuck operating systems. I'm heading to bed now." He drags a hand down the sides of his face. "And I have linear optimisation tomorrow, urgh…"
A peep breaks his spiraling line of thought.
He stares down at the source of the sound. And it comes again, straight out of the crow's open beak.
"… I thought you guys cawed."
The crow, somehow, looks offended.
"Okay. I'm losing my grip on reality," he mutters. "Please don't screw around while we're asleep, okay? And definitely don't do all those things Parker mentioned earlier-"
The crow squawks. Quietly. Then it hops back into its towel and turns its head.
Jude can't help but chuckle. It seems so human like this, but it's that time of the night where he's starting to anthropomorphise just about anything - for example, gcc was definitely out to get him. When he'd decided to take a break from the OS lab and work on his problem set for computer architecture - excellent "break", he knows - the fucking compiler kept optimising out the functions he needed to inspect with gdb. Whatever. The world hates him. The major hates him.
"Have a good night," he says, and heads off to go unconscious.
—
The storm blows over fast. In the span of one night, it's gone, and the next morning is full of bright sun and glistening dew. A few patches of small flowers have even sprung up around the entrance to their residence hall. If not for the tree blown over on the quad, the several street signs that now hang crooked at their posts, and the random bits of unsecured objects scattered through the streets, yesterday could've been nothing more than a rain shower.
It's a wonderful 11 am when the worker from the veterinary sciences department shows up at Jude's door for the injured crow.
One small, minor detail-
The crow is gone.