Chapter Text
Lucretia took a deep breath, giving herself a moment to recover. Only a moment though, she still had so much to do and she barely managed to get everyone to the new lives she’d set out for them. Or well, almost everyone.
Davenport was still with her, and it would have to stay that way until she could figure out if he would recover from this.
She’d tried to be so careful, but she couldn’t predict how the voidfish would affect everyone. There was no way to know how exactly it would handle erasing so much information. There was no way to test it beforehand. Despite the pain it caused her to see them all so broken and confused it was what she needed to do.
The years passed and there was no sign of improvement from her captain. Despite how much she hated seeing him like this, in a way it was a good thing. It meant that Fisher’s powers didn’t diminish over time. None of them would be able to remember what she’d taken from them, not until she let them.
It didn’t make it any easier watching him though. The gnome she was so used to being in charge and put together couldn’t hold a conversation anymore, or even take care of his own wings.
The wings had been hard to edit around, it was something she was uncertain about the entire time she made her redaction. This plane was so much like their home world. After the hundred worlds they’d seen, they were beyond lucky to end up in a place where they could fit in so well.
Of course, one thing that made them stand out as distinctly different from everyone on this plane were their wings.
On their home world all the humanoid races possessed wings, although there were differences between them of course. They’d been a simple fact of life though, and it wasn’t something any of them had thought about until they first came to a world where the humanoids were earthbound.
This final world was one without wings, and Lucretia had struggled to find a way to blend them in without complete erasure. In the end she had erased that it was a factor of their home world, and she was fairly certain it had done the job. None of the people she met throughout this plane, the ones she had brought into her newly developing bureau noticed the deep blue wings pressed against her back. No one mentioned the large white ones Davenport often let drag along behind him.
He didn’t fly anymore, even though Lucretia struggled to think of times when he’d stay on the ground for an entire day in the past. Often she’d have to sit him down and comb and clean his wings, because he never would himself.
It hurt to see, but she had to do this. She had to save this world and her friends.
It would just be a little while longer.
—
What Magnus loved about Raven’s Roost was how high up it was. It was something he always appreciated, standing on the edge of one of the giant pillars and letting the wind blow around him. It felt natural, like he was supposed to be up in the sky.
“If you’re not careful you’re gonna fall,” Julia called, sounding more amused than anything. Magnus grinned widely and turned back towards her, not moving any further away from the edge.
“What do you think that would be like?” he asked, and he could see the fond exasperation on her face now.
“Falling to your death? Probably not great,” she said, and Magnus shook his head.
“No, like flying,” he clarified, and this time Julia got a thoughtful look on her face. She looked out over the vast expanse of planes down way below their home as she mulled over the question.
“I guess if we’re talking flying that would be pretty nice. Find a powerful enough wizard and you could find out,” she said, and Magnus moved from where he was standing on the edge to join her.
“That’s not a bad idea,” he said, already trying to remember if he heard of any powerful wizards in Raven’s Roost. None that he could think of off the top of his head, but he could always look around.
He never got around to it, the next week he caught some sort of nasty bug. He was left sore and miserable and itchy for a week. Julia said there wasn’t any rash, but he figured he must’ve had an allergic reaction to something. By the time it passed, he’d forgotten about his want to go find a wizard to cast fly on him.
And then the Governor started to abuse his power, and Magnus found himself in the middle of a revolution, and silly little things like wanting to fly had to be put by the wayside.
—
Merle sputtered when a hand swatted him in the back of the head. When he turned towards the source Hecuba was stalking away in annoyance. Not exactly an unusual sight, but usually he at least knew what it was he’d done. For once he was genuinely clueless.
“What was that for?” he asked, and usually his inability to sound sincere was funny, or at least it was to him. This time though it actually felt kind of bothersome.
“That’s the third time today you’ve knocked into me,” Hecuba snapped, and Merle frowned.
“I never ran into ya, we were a foot apart!” he argued. He knew he wasn’t the most observant and didn’t have the best memory or any idea what was going on half the time, but he figured he would have at least noticed if he kept running into someone over and over again.
“The third time, ” she insisted, the tone of her voice that one she got when she was silently keeping count of how many times he’d screwed up. “And yesterday you knocked that plate out of my hands,” she added.
“I’m pretty sure you were just a butterfingers there,” Merle tried to argue. “Sure, maybe I’m packing on the pounds a little but I ain’t that wide yet,” he said, trying to turn this into a joke. Instead of finding it amusing his wife huffed and left the room. Merle sighed, grumbling to himself as he turned to head outside.
A crash sounded next to him, and Merle looked down to see a vase that had held some of the flowers from his garden shattered on the floor.
“I swear if you broke something else!” Hecuba’s voice shouted from across the house.
“I’ll fix it, I’ll fix it!” Merle yelled back. At least Mavis and Mookie were down at the beach right now. Slowly, Merle started cleaning up the shards of glass and plant bits.
Maybe something was going on here.
He was starting to feel pretty cooped up in this place.
Might not hurt to find somewhere bigger.
—
“Sazed, damn it… fucking… Sazed!” Taako shouted, brushing a few stray feathers off his prep station. After a minute Sazed made his way into the small room.
“What now?” he asked already sounding fed up, which Taako didn’t feel he had any right to be. He’d barely done shit around here lately.
“I fucking told you to check up in the rafters for the birds, there are feathers everywhere again,” Taako complained. This always happened, and it always had the joy of springing up whenever he was already stressed as fuck.
“I don’t- god fucking damn it Taako, how many times do I have to tell you? We don’t have any rafters, this is a stagecoach,” Sazed snapped. Taako grumbled, not turning to face him as he continued to smash the garlic cloves he’d need for tonight.
“Not the point my dude! I don’t give a shit where the bird is I just want it out of here,” he said, dumping the garlic into a bowl after checking it for any errant feathers.
“I’ve looked a million times, I’m telling you there’s no bird,” Sazed said. Taako huffed, and he knew Sazed had looked for the cause of the feathers before, but he never found shit and the feathers kept showing up and it was frustrating as hell.
“Whatever, if you can’t do one simple thing then at least make yourself useful and get rid of the feathers,” Taako said. Grabbing a broom across the room with mage hand he jabbed it at Sazed. He grabbed it roughly and started sweeping up the orange and brown feathers littering the floor.
“I swear, we gotta keep this place clean. Do you have any idea how bad for business it’d be if someone ate my food and got sick?” Taako grumbled, starting to finish up with his prep.
“Yeah, that’d be terrible,” Sazed muttered, but Taako ignored him.
It turned out that keeping a clean prep station didn’t mean shit. Forty people ate his food that night, with elderberries he’d transmuted into nightshade, and every one of them died.
As they spend away from glamour springs Taako sat in the back of the stagecoach. He was pulling at his hair, clothes, everything as he tried to keep himself together.
And he watched as a steady trail of orange and brown feathers flew out the back of the stagecoach.
—
Lucretia was all excitement laced with nerves when she confirmed that Taako, Merle and Magnus were coming up to the moon base. She had to keep her cool though. She couldn’t give herself away. That’s what she was nervous about, that somehow her plan would backfire and her friends would be harmed in the process.
But she was still excited, because she was going to have her family back. Not entirely and not all of them, but it had been so long. With this she was one step closer to finishing her plan once and for all.
The excitement she’d felt died in her throat when she finally got a look at them however.
There was a moment where she tried to tell herself it must’ve been battle damage from what they’d gone through, but no. The state they were in wasn’t something you got in a day or even a few weeks. She’d seen their wings mangled and broken after battles, and this wasn’t it.
This was the result of years of neglect, and another flaw in her editing came crashing down around her.
She’d tried so hard to leave them aware of their wings, but it was clear as day now that she’d failed.
She fought back the desire to say something, didn’t let the want choke her from where it was lodged in her throat. She sent them through the test of initiation, paid them their reward for bringing in a relic.
“Oh, one last little bonus before you go,” Lucretia said, pulling out three coupons she’d conjured earlier. “This is a bit unconventional but we also haven’t had anyone successfully bring in a relic yet either. So here are three coupons for a spa treatment at a location on base,” she said, handing them the slips.
“Nice,” Taako said, and with that Lucretia ended the meeting.
It took a little bit of finagling, but it wasn’t difficult to find out exactly when the three were planning to use their spa coupons. As soon as she knew she headed over there, starting to set up the appropriate supplies before they arrived. Once she was certain everything was ready she did the last piece of prep.
Standing in front of one of the many mirrors, she cast disguise self. Her appearance changed from that of an older, dark skinned human woman to a deep purple tiefling, short horns sweeping back with equally short hair.
Once it was done she headed out to the front, and it wasn’t long before the three reclaimers walked in.
“Hello, how may I help you today?” she asked, pitching her voice to be higher and more youthful than her normal one.
“Hey! We got these uh, special coupons from the director for free treatments or whatever?” Magnus said, holding out his coupon. She took it and made a show of looking it over before nodding.
“Yes of course. This is a very high end treatment, we’ll send all three of you to the spa room and I’ll take each of you one at a time for the massage,” she explained.
“Why one at a time? Doesn’t this place have more than one employee?” Taako asked, and she supposed she should’ve expected that. Taako was always questioning things.
“As I said, it’s a very high end treatment and I’m the only one qualified to give it,” she said. It wasn’t technically a lie.
“Wait, is this a sex thing? I’ll pass if it’s a sex thing,” Magnus said, and Lucretia supposed she also should’ve expected that.
“No, it is not a sex thing,” she insisted.
“Can it be a sex thing?” Merle asked, wagging his eyebrows at her for good measure.
“No, and ew,” she said, letting herself make a look of disgust as well.
“Fucking seconded, grosseronni old man! Yuck! I’m going first to get away from you freaks,” Taako snapped, and it was hard for Lucretia to keep herself from laughing at that. She missed their ridiculousness.
“Alright then sir, come this way. You two can make your way down the hall, the first door on the right is open and ready for you,” she said. Merle and Magnus went without any more comments, and Taako followed after her. It didn’t take long to get him lying down and situated, on his stomach with his wings splayed out to either side.
“Now just relax,” she said as she got out a few supplies to start on his wings.
“Alright there sister,” he said, and it was impossible to tell if he was being truthful or not. Not just because he was lying face down but because it was so hard to read him at all anymore.
She didn’t say anything though, instead starting to inspect his wings and try to find the best way to help them.
The biggest thing about his wings were how patchy they were. Taako had always been a nervous picker, pulling out feathers and shedding whenever he was stressed. She’d never seen it anywhere close to this bad before. There were also small burn marks. Whether they were from spells that had hit his wings or cooking incidents, she couldn’t tell.
She set about combing out any loose feathers that Taako has somehow yet to pull out first, cleaning the wings with cool water as she did. She trimmed out as many of the burned feathers as she could without feeling like she was stripping him even more bare than he already was.
“Holy shit lady, I dunno what you’re doing back there but fucking approved, keep it up,” Taako mumbled after some time. Lucretia couldn’t help but smile a bit at that. At least she could help them out the slightest bit now.
Once his wings were as cleaned and straightened and patched as much as she could manage (they weren’t anywhere close to the silky, vibrate wings she was used to seeing on the elf. Taako and Lup had always prided themselves on their looks, their wings included in that) she did a cursory back massage. Finishing up with that she carefully helped Taako sit back up.
“You can go rest in the spa with while I finish up your two friends, if you could send the next one in,” she said and Taako nodded. He looked so much more relaxed than she had seen him so far.
“Hell yeah, fucking expect me back too. Free coupon or not,” he said.
Magnus came in next, and she went through the same process as she had with Taako’s wings. As she started she took note of all the ways his had been damaged and bruised over the years.
They weren’t as patchy as Taako’s, but there were still thin areas. Instead of an overall bareness there were spots where Lucretia could see old wounds that were never treated. Places where the wings had been slashed or stabbed and left to heal on their own, scars where new feathers wouldn’t grow. She carefully straightened large feathers bent out of place and felt a sense of relief once she finished. Despite the battles they’d gone through, she still felt certain that he’d be able to fly with them if he tried.
Merle winked at her when he came in, but thankfully that was the extent to his teasing.
Lucretia was so used to seeing his wings with flowers poking out between the feathers, matching the ones in his beard. They had always been a little dirty, a little scruffy. There had been a deliberateness to it though.
This was beyond that. Where there used to be flowers were sticks and brambles snagged in uncomfortable ways. his feathers tangled up in dried mud (and not so dried mud from his time waiting in the spa). She carefully pulled out each broken bit, washing the dirt from his wings slowly.
Once she was finished with all three of them she led them out to the front of the spa.
“Thank you for coming, I hope to see you all again soon,” she said. Their wings almost looked healthy now and she told herself they would be alright. They’d heal and grow again, now that there was a way for her to take care of them.
“Absolutely, that was fucking great,” Magnus said, the other two voicing their agreement.
As soon as she was sure they were gone, she went into the back room and dropped the disguise self.
It was going to be okay. She was helping them now.
It was just for a little bit longer.
—
The Red Robe had wings.
It was one of the first things that stood out about him when they’d first seen him in Captain Captain Bane’s office. It was a vibrant red specter with two wings stretched out behind him. They were black and mostly bones, brittle and dead and clearly not the source of his flight.
The Red Robe figure in the statue at Refuge also had wings.
These wings were different from the wings the other Red Robe had. They weren’t broken and skeletal, barely giving the hint of something that could once fly. The wings in the statue were alive and full, the feathers meticulously carved into something beautiful.
They were bigger than the other Red Robe’s too. Magnus had no doubt that they were powerful enough to let the Red Robe fly, even without the use of any sort of magic.
And that was about as much as he thought about it. They were too busy going through loop after loop, trying to figure out how to save Refuge to focus much on the fact that a Red Robe was herald as a hero here.
Or at least, that was as much as he thought about it, until June gave him that paper.
He was in his room and he couldn’t stop staring at it. It was him.
It was a picture of him for the statue in Refuge.
It was a picture of the Red Robe for the statue in Refuge.
Those two thoughts wouldn’t sit together in his mind.
He had wings in this picture, whoever that was in the statue, both him and the Red Robe, had the same strong wings.
Glancing behind him, Magnus wasn’t sure what he expected to see, but there wasn’t anything there. Sighing, he put the paper away, his brain hurt too much trying to figure it out.
Despite his better judgment, Magnus reached an arm back behind him. He already looked, he knew there wasn’t anything there, he wasn’t expecting anything to happen.
He reached back, and felt his hand brush against a wall of feathers. His first instinct was to jerk his hand back and forget all about it. Magnus forced himself not to let go, clenching his fist into the feathers.
This time when he looked back, it felt almost like he had to wait a moment for his eyes to come into focus. Like one of those magic eye posters, you have to squint and cross your eyes.
He could see them though. There plain as day were a pair of large, powerful wings.
He didn't know whether to hole up under his covers, or go jumping off the edge of the moon base to test their flight.
—
Taako had been hoping to rest when he got back from Refuge. Sure, he hadn’t died in that last cycle, but it sure felt like he did with how exhausted he was.
That wasn’t an option though, because when he walked into his dorm the grim reaper was waiting for him. He reasonably wanted an explanation on the fuckton of deaths that had appeared for them.
And Taako was trying to give him that explanation. Sure he wasn’t the smartest dude, but he was trying to best to keep things straight (or at least, his story straight, he actively wasn’t trying when it came to other aspects of himself) as he told Kravitz about the Relic. Which, the dude was being a lot more open to conversation than the last time they talked.
Kravitz had explained it as ‘the amount of bullshit going on with you all has passed the point of me being angry. Now I’m just confused.' Which Taako could respect.
What was annoying about all this was that Kravitz kept seeming to get distracted.
“Like something you see my dude? Because normally I’d be down but cha’ boy’s fucking exhausted and I kinda figured we should decide what’s going down with all the deaths first,” he blurted out after the fifth time Kravitz’s eyes seemed to wander. The reaper sat up with a start, clearly flustered.
“No, well no not like- I mean not not like-” he stumbled out, and Taako let a large grin spread across his face at Kravitz’s floundering. Even with how tired he was, it was still funny. After a moment the dude took a deep breath before continuing speaking.
“Sorry if I was being disrespectful, it’s just that I’ve been around a long time, you have to understand,” he said, and Taako nodded.
“Yeah no I’m sure this millions of repeated death stitch is old news to you,” he said, waving a hand dismissively. Kravitz shook his head though.
“Well no, it’s very much not. Nothing about this is normal and so I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised by anything with you at this point. I’ve just never seen an elf with wings before,” he said, and Taako blinked in confusion.
“Uh, is that the start of a pickup line? You must have wings because I’m looking at an angel?” Taako asked, letting the amusement in his voice show. Now Kravitz was looking confused though, and that didn’t make much sense.
“No, that would be a pretty bad one anyway. I mean I’ve never seen someone with wings before,” he clarified, which didn’t actually clarify anything.
“And? Just stating that fact for no reason or what?” Taako pressed.
“And you have wings? It’s not- I’m not judging you or anything but it is surprising,” Kravitz said. Taako was frowning deeply now, frantically searching Kravitz’s face for some sigh that he was fucking with him. He didn’t know the dude super well, most of their encounters up to this point had been trying to kill each other, but Taako was good at spotting bullshit.
He couldn’t see any here.
“I have wings?” he asked, a disbelieving laugh escaping him as he spoke.
“Yes? I don’t- are they new? I hadn’t seen them in the lab, but I was assuming they were under those strange suits you were all wearing,” Kravitz said. Taako was still grinning in amused disbelief, because there must be something wrong with this dude’s eyes. Taako was pretty damn sure he’d know if he had a couple of extra limbs hanging about.
“They aren’t new! They aren’t real, do I look like a bird to you?” Taako said, hand fidgeting with the couch cushion next to him.
“They’re illusions?” Kravitz asked, and Taako shook his head, starting to get frustrated.
“No, there’s nothing fucking there I don’t know what the hell you’re talking-” Taako started to insist, cutting himself off when he saw a clump of small orange and brown feathers clutched in his hand. “They’re not-” he tried, turning to look and there were feathers all over the couch now. Which happened. After a while, Taako came to accept it. It wasn’t like he was cooking anymore, the feathers weren’t much of a problem.
They were all over the couch now though, and it took a moment for Taako to process what he was seeing. For the image of loose feathers to congeal into an actual wing spreading from his back, dusty and beaten from his time in Refuge.
It was patchy too, like similar clumps of feathers as the one in Taako’s hand had been pulled out every so often.
“What the- what the fuck?” Taako snapped, jumping up from the couch and practically twirling to try to get a good look at the wings.
“Taako, is everything okay?” Kravitz asked, and he sounded concerned but Taako couldn’t focus on that. He reached out to touch the wings and they were solid underneath his fingers. They were real and he didn’t- how the fuck- he’d never.
“Fuck… holy fuck,” he muttered, and they were the same brown and orange as all the feathers. They’d always been there. How did he never notice them before?
“Taako, maybe you should sit down,” Kravitz suggested. Instead of bothering to move back to the couch or anything he slumped to the ground. “I suppose that works,” he added, sounding like he had no idea what to do. Which was fair.
Taako was trying to keep himself together, keep himself from having a goddamn breakdown in front of this dude over something that didn’t make a lick of sense to him. He wasn’t doing great in that regard though.
He had wings, beaten up patchy wings at that. They couldn’t even bother to be beautiful. They had the base to be, they could probably be gorgeous if taken care of, but it was hard to think about something like that right now.
Part of him wondered if he stopped looking at them they would go away again. Curling in on himself, he fucking tried. He could feel them now though, like slowly regaining feeling in a limb that was numb from sitting on it for too long. They were there and real and he didn’t know what the fuck he was doing.
“Taako, please just breathe,” Kravitz said, and Taako had almost forgotten he was there for a moment.
“I’m fine- I’m-” he started, cutting off when the sound of the door clicking open resonated in the relative quiet.
Glancing up, Merle was standing at the door, a surprised look on his face. Taako felt the wings on his back curl even further around him on instinct. Merle expression when from shocked to suddenly grabbing at his extreme teen bible.
Taako realized he was crouched on the ground, definitely not in his best state and had the dude who had previously tried to kill them all hovering above him.
“Well… this looks a lot worse than it actually is,” Kravitz said, voicing exactly what Taako was feeling.
—
Merle wasn’t expecting much when he walked into his dorm, thoughts somewhat preoccupied. He was distracted when he saw that grim reaper fellow standing over a crouched Taako, Magnus nowhere in sight.
He said it looked worse than it actually was, and without thinking twice Merle cast zone of truth.
“Hey there buddy, whatcha doing here? I thought we had a deal and all,” Merle asked, moving further into the room.
“We do, I didn’t come here with the intention of hurting any of you. I simply needed answers about the many, many deaths that happened,” Kravitz explained. Taako was uncurling somewhat from where he was on the floor.
“Damn it Merle, did you fucking zone of truth us?” he snapped, still not seeming to be completely put together again.
“Yes, yes I did,” Merle answered, realizing that he had failed his own save.
“I’m having a slight panic attack but it doesn’t have shit to do with Kravitz so can you go?” Taako said, before cringing slightly. “Ugh, I hate zone of truth, that’s a fucking fact,” he added.
“You’re not gonna cart him off to the underworld or anything, are ya?” Merle asked Kravitz, still suspicious.
“No, I don’t have any official bounties out for any of you, I just need to know what’s going on,” Kravitz insisted. Merle stared at him for a few long, quiet moments before shrugging heavily and dispelling the zone of truth.
“Works for me, you two kids have fun,” he said, starting to head back to his own room.
“Hey old man,” Taako said before he could leave, slowly climbing back to his feet. “When were any of y’all going to mention the fact that cha’ boy’s got wings?” he asked. Merle frowned, turning back to look at the elf to see if he’d magic’d himself up some in the seconds where his back had been turned. There wasn’t anything there though.
“Uh, when you get some probably?” he guessed.
“Is… is this a bad time to mention that Merle Highchurch also has wings?” Kravitz said, sounding very uncertain as he spoke.
“Oh, you must be confusing me with Della Reese,” Merle waved off. Taako didn’t say anything, instead seeming to steel himself before stomping over to Merle and waving his hand a bit frantically behind his back.
“Ouch!” Merle said when Taako managed to grab a hold of something and pull. For a moment he thought it was hair, but then it felt like it was pulling him way too forward to one side. After a moment he could hear Taako muttering, almost on the edge of another panic.
“What the fuck? What the fucking fuck? Wings? Why the hell are there wings? Where the fuck?” he said. It was a little uncomfortable with how he was being held, but Merle twisted around and he could feel something coming from his back now. Deciding to go with it, he tried to pull whatever it was away from Taako’s grip and it seemed to work.
It took a few more moments, but after a bit Merle could see the thick, scruffy wings on his back. This time when he looked, he could see the tall, elegant looking ones on Taako’s back.
“Well I’ll be damned,” Merle said, taking a moment to let that all process. “This is… weird,” he added.
“Yeah no shit,” Taako snapped.
“I feel like this is probably a bad time to talk,” Kravitz said, taking a step back from the two of them. Taako sighed heavily, and Merle could see how tired the wizard looked.
“Yeah, shit’s whack, you got a way for us to get in contact with you when things are less fucked or what?” Taako asked.
“I’ll let you two figure out all that,” Merle said as Kravitz started to pull out a stone of far speech. “I’m just gonna go,” he added.
“Please do I have this completely under control,” Taako said. Instead of heading to his room, Merle left the dorm again. It could probably wait until morning, but he was pretty sure the Director wasn’t an early to bed early to rise person.
Heading to her office, he wasn’t surprised when he knocked on the door and he got an answer. “Come in,” she called from inside, and Merle did as such.
“Merle, is everything alright?” Lucretia asked, seeming surprised to see him here again. Which made sense, he’d been in here a few hours ago to destroy the relic and all that.
“Oh yeah, things are fine. Check this out!” he said, and started to haphazardly flap the wings on his back. Her eyes widened and he figured they must’ve suddenly appeared for her like they had for everyone else. “Pretty rad, right?” he asked, and she sat there for a moment, looking stunned.
“I- yes. Merle, when did you…” she asked, looking like she could barely find her words.
“I don’t have any idea,” Merle answered honestly. “Walked in on Taako talking to one of his uhhh, dead buddies, and he mentioned I have wings and now I do,” he explained. It looked like she was struggling to figure out what part of that to ask about first. “Oh, pointy hat’s got a pair too, but I think he’s a little sensitive about them so maybe don’t bring em up,” he added.
“Right, I’ll be sure not to do that,” she said, before sighing heavily. “Well, this is certainly… unexpected.”
“I’ll say! I got wings,” Merle agreed.
“Yes, well, I don’t- I suppose we could look to see if it’s some sort of curse? Or magical effect?” she asked, and Merle shrugged.
"Eh, I’m not gonna go knocking em before I try em,” he said, before thinking a moment. “Taako was kinda freaked by the whole thing though, might be a good idea to ease the kid’s peace of mind,” he said.
“I’ll look into it then,” she said, and Merle nodded.
“Well, I’m going to go see if I can get some sleep and see if these babies are still there in the morning,” he said.
“Of course, goodnight Merle,” Lucretia said.
“Night,” he said, leaving the office. When he got back to his dorm no one was out in the living room and Merle was able to head to his room uninterrupted. Climbing into bed, he thought he’d have to be careful of his new wings, but he seemed to situate himself without any issue. It was like the way he was lying before had always been done with them in mind.
And maybe it was. It would certainly explain some things.
He was too tired and not anywhere close to being the brains of the operation to figure this one out. That was fine with him too, all of these things, though odd, were fine by him.
—
Lucretia sighed heavily once the door to her office was closed and Merle was gone. That wasn’t what she expected. Things had been going so well, better than she had expected.
Once she was able to do check ups every so often on their wings, she’d stopped stressing about them so much. They still weren’t taken care of as well as they should be, but they were manageable. They weren’t going to get into the state she’d seen them in when they first arrived at the Bureau again.
And with that issue out of the way, there was no reason for them to remember their wings now. They’d be almost impossible to explain, and might clue them in on the fact that there was so much more being kept from them than they could ever imagine.
Somehow though, (Merle had said ‘one of Taako’s dead buddies’ and she’d have to parse that later) they had managed to remember. Or not remember, it was impossible to remember something the voidfish had taken without being inoculated.
Somehow they were made aware that their wings were there at all, and she had no idea what to do about that now.
She’s have to keep playing dumb. She couldn’t let them know she had any idea about why they might have wings. Hopefully their awareness of their own wings wouldn’t spread to awareness of hers or Davenport’s. It didn’t seem to be the case yet, Merle would’ve mentioned something if he’d seen hers.
Giving herself a moment to gather her thoughts, she spun her chair around. With a wave of her staff, the portrait behind her shifted. She tried not to let herself indulge in longing for what she’d torn apart herself too often. Sometimes though she needed the reminder, and despite having ripped her family to pieces, she was doing this for them.
Looking over the painting, she slowly took in the appearance of each of her friends, despite having memorized it long ago.
Merle was up front, his wings small given his dwarven nature, but thick and sturdy. A speckled patchwork of grays and browns with bright colorful flowers strung throughout the feathers. Davenport was smiling next to him, his large wings never quite able to fold up elegantly behind him. It was easy to see the white undersides outlined with bits of black.
Lup and Taako’s wings were as identical as the rest of them, although after knowing them so long it wasn’t hard to spot the small differences. They were both large, elegant wings typical of elves, despite the muted brown and orange color palette they shared. There were differences though. Where Taako’s wings were meticulously kept as silky and smooth as possible, wings that looked like they hadn't done work a day in his life, Lup’s had more signs of use. They were still cared for flawlessly, but her feathers were often ruffled, some of the lighter patches covered with soot from explosions.
In contrast to the twin’s beautifully kept wings, Barry’s own wings, while a vibrant blue, were almost always ruffled and unmanaged. They were smaller than typical of someone his size, reflecting a lack of use. Despite, or perhaps more because of all that they fit him perfectly.
From where Magnus was behind everyone, he had a wing stretched out and framing the group. Strong and large, clearly able to carry someone as large as himself and able to glide for great distances. They were a solid brown and had the occasional nick from previous fights.
Her own wings were barely noticeable in the portrait, held close to her back and bunched up, wanting to make as much room for her family to crowd around. There were still bits of white and blue that could be seen peaking out from behind her shoulders. The sight of her own wings didn’t matter much there though. They were still something she could see every day. She had never lost them.
She had lost so many things, but she supposed it was only fair considering what she had taken from her family.