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I.
Eric learned the hard way that there was no honor in war.
When he took three arrows to the wing and went down in enemy territory, separated from his flock, the darkness around them all consuming. He knew he wasn’t the only one; he had heard Nayla scream in pain when her pretty black wings had been hit, and he had seen Joshua go down without a sound, dead before he was out of the sky. They knew what they were getting into by taking this assignment. They had all known, all twelve of them, when they had decided they were going to fly into enemy terrain.
Still, that didn’t take away the pain in his wing. He could hardly move it; all three arrows were lodged in and if he wanted to feel better he needed to pull them out. The only way to do so would be to break the heads off first, but Eric couldn’t reach them, not while he was still in so much pain. He needed to move.
Slowly, with his one good wing tucked into his back and the other folded as close as the arrows would allow, Eric made his way through the pitch black forest. No doubt the archers that had shot him down had sent soldiers in his direction. He could only imagine what would happen to Nayla, and Joshua’s body would likely never be recovered to be sent to his family. It served them right, all of them. They had agreed to be in this war. This was their price.
Still, Eric was fueled by the thought of his mother’s warm embrace and his father’s steady voice. He was determined to get back to them, and would not die a moment before. He had promised his father he would return a hero. He had promised his momma he would return. Eric could only afford to break one promise. Two was too many.
He had to remember his basic training. If he was grounded, he needed to lay low, keep out of sight, don’t let any enemies find him. Torture was not how he wanted to go, contrary to what the enemy would believe. Eric crept through the underbrush, quiet as could be, and managed to slip past an avian he didn’t recognize. His rough landing had conveniently put him in a mud patch, so his blonde feathers were muddied and just barely blended in with his surroundings.
The other avian was headed in a different direction than Eric had come from; they were converging somewhere, likely wherever one of his comrades had gone down. He hoped it wasn’t Nayla, she had a daughter to get back to. But Eric understood that she might not make it back. He might not make it back. Even if he fought to his dying breath to return home, there wasn’t a single guarantee he would make it.
But he was determined to. He would do his damndest to get back to his parents. Either he would make it alive, or he would be brought back to them in a coffin. They deserved to see him laid to rest. There were others, Joshua immediately coming to mind, that wouldn’t get a proper burial. The weight of that fact weighed heavily in Eric’s thoughts.
Quietly, quietly. A twig snapped beneath his heel and Eric stopped. The forest around him was completely silent, aside from the chirp of crickets. There were no other footfalls, not even the sound of wings beating the air. He held his breath, trying to discern any other noises and figure out where the enemy was.
For a single moment, the forest was entirely silent. The only thing he could hear was his heartbeat. Then, it exploded into sound.
“Bastards! Let go! Cow- AGH!” the sound of shouting and a struggle could be hard about a hundred yards away. Eric recognized the voice as another in his flock, an older avian named Martin. Martin was the more experienced one, having gone on several of these missions before. But now everything had gone wrong, so horribly wrong. Eric heard the sound of a sword being unsheathed and that was when he realized just how bad things had gotten.
“No! No! NO! ” Martin’s screams were high pitched and filled with agony. Eric could hear the sound of someone hacking at something, the noise nearly the same as the one he had often heard when he went with his father to the butcher as a young sparrow. He felt his stomach lurch as he realized the enemy avians were cutting off Martin’s wings, crippling him in one of the worst ways they could think of. If he couldn’t fly he was useless to the military and to his family. Eric knew that this was his fate should he be caught by these monsters.
He needed to leave. Now.
Eric continued through the night, practically tiptoeing around enemy terrain, blind in a sense. He couldn’t get a true feel for where he was without being able to scope the area from up high, but he did his best on the ground. Ground training was the one area he had never really cared for at the academy, but Eric recalled as much of it as possible to keep moving.
It was around dawn that he found a stream and figured he needed to get the arrows out of his wing. The pain hadn’t really subsided, but Eric was just wasting time and risking infection by leaving the arrows in. He waded into the stream and reached around, noting that it would have to be the tails of the arrows and not the heads he needed to break to get the arrows out.
Eric submerged his wing into the water of the stream, watching mud and blood run through as he got a good grip on the first of the three arrows, closer to the base of his wing. He snapped one arrow tail and yanked the arrow from his wing, barely containing a pained cry and tears. He held the bloody arrow in his hands and then shoved it down into the water, burying it beneath rocks and sand. If someone used this stream for water it was better they think an injured animal had been in it instead of an Avian.
The next arrow was further out and would cause him less pain hopefully. Eric snapped this one too and then wrenched the second arrow free. He grit his teeth against the pain, having actually prepared for it this time. Just like the first Eric buried this arrow beneath the stream, and went about preparing to snap the last arrow.
Only, this one had caught the ground at some point and Eric hadn’t noticed in his pained state, because it was already snapped clean in half within his wing. He couldn’t imagine how that had happened, but the risk of splinters and infection was higher now because of it. Eric hated the thought of needing to ask for help with it, but he would need medicine to treat his wounds if he didn’t want to end up with an infected wing.
The arrow head was already gone, so all Eric had to do was pull. This time the arrow’s sharp point ripped through part of his wing, tearing it. Eric shoved his wing beneath the cold water to try to numb the pain, but Gods did it hurt. He panted as he waded out of the stream, soaking wet, cold, and wounded. He hoped to whichever deity was watching that he didn’t pass out from his injuries.
Now that the mud had been mostly washed from his wings, Eric knew he was a brighter target in the forest. He had moved nonstop through the night so he had figured he was a few miles out from where he had landed. Injured wings or otherwise, Eric had always been the fastest in his flock on his feet. When his wings were belted down during training (the worst part of it for Eric) he had still managed to beat the others in the timed exercises. That didn’t mean Eric had ever liked it, though. Ground training was usually useless and just overall outdated; he didn’t care for it at all.
Except now it was saving his life. Eric wished he hadn’t talked down on it while he was training, because if not for it he knew he wouldn’t have been able to escape the torture of having his wings cut off his back like Martin.
A sound to his left made Eric duck into a bush, pulling his wings in tight even if his injured wing screamed in protest at the action. It fucking hurt, for lack of a better word in that moment, but Eric was more terrified of who could have been nearby. Voices filled the air and Eric was able to discern that these were avians not involved with the military but also not really on his side of the situation.
“They were practicing fucking drills all damn night! What gives them the fucking right?” a loud voice was saying.
“They’re the military, Shitty, they enforce the law as needed,” another voice sighed.
“Does enforcing the law mean waking people up at ass o’clock to run their stupid fucking exercises? Lards said she didn’t get back to sleep until fuckin’ dawn!”
Dawn? It had been dawn not too long ago, hadn’t it? Eric wasn’t really able to keep track of time and the trees made it hard to discern what time of day it was. He didn’t know how long he had spent at that stream nor did he know how long he had been walking. But he had reached a path, obviously, and there were avians walking along said path. He listened to as much of the conversation as he could, barely peeking out of the bush he was hidden in.
“Stop,” the shorter of the two avians said, halting both in their tracks. He glanced around. “Feels like someone’s watching.”
Eric cursed mentally, holding his breath and staying as still as possible.
“Shitty, someone’s always watching. The military barely lets any of us out of sight,” the taller avian said, snorting softly.
The shorter avian didn’t seem convinced, but he quieted down. They continued down the path and Eric stayed hidden in his bush until they were gone. Then, he decided he needed to follow the path as far as he could until he found someone he could overtake easily and get some medicine. He was already coming up with plans that took his injured wing into account and mentally remembering the hold he needed to put on someone to knock them out, not wanting to have to kill anyone.
Unfortunately, he didn’t move fast enough, because someone dropped onto him (and his injured wing) in the span of a second. Eric cried out in pain, going down quick and scraping his face and arms on the bush’s sharp branches. He looked back to see one of the two avians he had heard pressed down on him. Training mandated he try to get the upper hand, but the avian was pressed down on his wing too hard for him to try anything without breaking bones and the last thing Eric wanted was to lose a wing.
“You’re a spy,” the shorter avian said. He started laughing. “Well I’ll be fucked! An actual spy!”
Eric wanted to say he wasn’t a spy, because he wasn’t. He was trained in combat, and he was trained in stealth, yes, but his stealth training was mainly to avoid a fight if he had to. He wasn’t trained to get intel, he wasn’t trained to steal secrets. He was a soldier.
(It was an odd thing to remember, when he thought about it, because wasn’t stealth how he had ended up in this situation in the first place?)
But they would likely consider whatever he said lies, so Eric just grit his teeth and glared.
“What are you doing here? How did you find out about our town?” the avian on Eric’s back demanded. Eric noticed he had blue eyes; he hadn’t seen too many blue eyed avians before. Plus, the dark brown, almost black, wings were unique in their own way as well. Eric glanced at the smaller avian; he could take this one much easier than he would have been able to the taller one. Fuck, how had things ended up so bad?
“I just wanna go home,” Eric finally said. He didn’t struggle, he didn’t flail, he didn’t move.
“Jack, fuck, man, let him up!” the shorter avian yelled.
“He’s the enemy, Shits, we can’t trust him at all,” the taller avian reminded.
“I don’t want to hurt you,” Eric admitted. “If you don’t believe me check my pulse.”
It was a regular thing for the avians at the academy; check the pulse, if it was raised they were lying. But Eric didn’t know if these avians thought the same. They were willing to cut off another’s wings to cripple him, so Eric really didn’t know what to expect. Maybe they did it differently, looked for different ways to discern liars, but Eric had never been good at it. He had been in a few classes with others who could lie well but he was not one of those people. His pulse had never been steadier than when he told the truth, and never more erratic than when he was lying.
Well. When he was shot down, maybe. Or was it hearing the screams that had raised it?
The shorter avian walked over and pressed two fingers to Eric’s neck.
“Gross, Shits, what if he’s got something?” the big avian said, sounding disgusted.
Eric felt mildly annoyed at the insult, but he didn’t rustle. The smaller avian seemed to see that it all checked out. Eric wasn’t lying, but the big avian didn’t let up.
“We should take him to the military.”
Eric felt himself tense up dramatically. He couldn’t go to the military. Martin’s screams and the sound of a sword cutting into wings played through his mind. The big avian seemed to notice Eric’s sudden panic, because he tried to press down a bit harder to keep Eric from getting free, but Eric began to struggle.
“No! Let me go!” he shouted, trying to twist from beneath the avian.
“Jack, what the fuck man! You scared him!” the smaller avian groaned. He pushed at the bigger avian, who looked reluctant to let Eric go into his arms. Eric didn’t entirely know why, but he felt like he could trust this one. Like this avian would protect him and what he believed in until his deathbed. Still, his tension didn’t disappear even when the avian looked him over. Eric was able to see that he was smaller than both of them, not that it was really a surprise.
“Shit, brother, you look terrible. Your fucking wing is ripped to shit, too.”
“ Shitty ,” the bigger avian said, standing close enough to be able to take Eric down if need be. But Eric was standing now, if this big guy thought he was gonna take Eric down now that Eric was on his feet he was dead wrong and Eric would show him if he had to.
“Jack, you beautiful specimen you, shut the fuck up.” Eric figured they were mates, or close friends at least. “My name’s Shitty. I mean, that’s not my actual name, but that’s what I’m called. Who are you?”
Eric was smart enough to know he couldn’t give them his name. His identifying tags were long gone already; he had lost them sometime in the night, likely because they had been dangling from him and he dropped them.
“...You’re small, so we’ll just call you Bitty,” the avian decided. Shitty. What an odd name. “Plus it rhymes with Shitty. This is Jack.”
“ Shits ,” the big avian didn’t seem too happy about things.
“You need to get that wing patched the fuck up,” Shitty decided, and Eric had to agree because his wing was starting to go numb. He really hoped it didn’t get infected.
“Of all the crazy shit you have suggested, Shitty, this--and of course we’re going,” Jack said, mumbling the last bit when Shitty started to lead Eric away. Eric glanced back at him, seeing Jack glare absolute daggers at Eric.
“You’ll love the town, Bitty, Samwell is fucking amazing! Wait until you meet Lardo, and Holster, and Ransom.”
Eric thought Shitty may have been a bit too trusting. But Shitty had saved him from having his wing crushed by Jack, so he thought he owed him at least a bit. If Eric needed to leave suddenly he would at least spare Shitty any pain. Jack? Maybe not so much.
The path was shorter than Eric initially thought. They were in the small town in maybe a minute, two tops. He glanced about and saw people looking up at him. It looked like a modest town, where everyone knew everyone and each avian had a place and a purpose. It wasn’t unlike Eric’s own town of Madison, where his parents awaited his return. It made his heart ache. It made his mind up. Eric would not be staying in Samwell for long.
“Your wing is fucked, my friend,” Shitty said, pulling Eric from his thoughts of escape. “Seriously. You need to see a doctor. Which lead us to Rans and Holtzy.”
“This still feels—”
Shitty made a noise to silence Jack’s protest. Eric decided he liked Shitty, simply because he could make the bigger rude avian be quiet. The last thing Eric needed was someone who was going to turn him in. He might end up like Martin did and somehow that was an even worse fate than death. His wings were too precious to him.
“Jack, you know I love you, but please shut the fuck up for once,” Shitty said, a growl like noise in his throat. Jack made a responding sound, and Eric realized they were having some sort of silent communication with each other. He couldn’t fault them; it was integral to have another form of communication when the military hung heavy over your head. He and his flock had developed their own language to use around their superiors.
They had been so close, nearly a second family. Nayla’s little girl was seven years old and Eric remembered seeing the little raven when they graduated from the academy. She had been small, with pretty black wings like her mother, barely able to fly right but the apple of her mother’s eye. Joshua’s grandmother was all he’d had left, and Eric hated to think of how broken the kind old eagle would be when the soldiers walked up to her home and told her that he was gone.
Even worse, Eric didn’t want to think about Martin. If he was ever returned to his family he would be useless to them. An avian without wings was the worst; you could never truly amount to anything if you could not fly. He hated to think of what his wife would say when she saw her husband wingless, or what their children would think of their father when he returned unable to return to the sky. Truly, it was a fate worse than death.
Eric was lucky he had only been injured; a few of his flight feathers were broken and needed to be pulled for new ones to grow in, and the wounds where the arrows had gone through his wing needed to be tended to and healed, but aside from that he was still good to fly. Martin would never be able to fly again.
“Huh?” Eric blinked when he realized he was being watched, so lost in his thoughts as he was. He cursed mentally, because he could already hear his commander telling him he should never let his guard down in enemy territory, and he had been trapped in his own head.
“I said, are you prepared to meet two of the most ‘swawesome aves you’ll ever feast your eyes on?” Shitty repeated. Eric wasn’t going to respond, but then he caught Jack’s eyes, and saw the expression on the taller avian’s face. He knew he had to be careful with what he said; whoever Shitty was to Jack, he was important, and Eric’s words, or lack thereof if he was silent, would garner certain reactions from Jack, depending on how Shitty responded.
Jack already didn’t trust him. There was no reason for Eric to give him even more reason not to, especially if they were going to get him patched up. So Eric tried to seem enthusiastic.
“Sure!” he said, as cheery as he could manage with an injured appendage.
Shitty took it at face value, thankfully.
“Dude, sweet, come on!” Shitty pulled Eric into the large shop, allowing Eric to see that it was an apothecary.
It had floor to ceiling shelves with many different vials and bottles, as well as a counter behind which Eric could see many more, along with drawers of all kinds likely filled with different medical remedies Eric couldn’t entirely fathom. His town of Madison hadn’t been poor, but they hadn’t been extremely wealthy either. He thought about some towns and cities that had been taxed even worse than his own after the last war. The cowardly king had claimed it was to pay for the damages sustained, but none of that money was going towards the ones that had truly been affected by the war.
Rat bastard , Eric thought to himself, an anger bubbling under his surface. A hand grabbed and gripped his wrist, and Eric fought the urge to immediately take down the obvious threat. But he looked up and saw Shitty, eyes sparkling with worry for a stranger he didn’t know anything about, and Eric really and truly wanted no harm to come to this kind avian.
But that wasn’t the hand on his wrist, Eric realized. The hand on his wrist belonged to Jack, who had probably reacted with the urge to protect when he felt the air shift around Eric. He had never been particularly good at hiding the worst of his emotions, not like Hannah had been or how Benjamin was able to. Gods, were they even okay? They had explicit orders not to come back if any of them were felled, but Vincent was the most impulsive as the youngest, had he turned back when he saw them go down?
Had anyone else been injured? Was anyone else dead?
“Whoa, Shitty, what the fuck man? Are you alright? We can feel—who is that?” A new voice interrupted the increasingly horrible thoughts that spiraled in Eric’s mind. Now that he wasn’t running his brain was slowing down, the adrenaline no longer keeping his instincts going. He was starting to really think and it was going so horribly now.
“This, my dear bros, is Bitty,” Shitty introduced. Eric took in the sight of the two avians before him; one was tall, taller than Jack, with gold, nearly yellow, wings and blue eyes. His skin was pale, like he didn’t receive enough sunlight, but more than anything Eric’s eyes strayed to the large wings. Eric likely couldn’t outfly him if he tried, but he could absolutely out-maneuver him.
The other avian was smaller, closer to Jack in height, maybe taller? Eric noted his brown wings and darker skin; a southern family maybe? They must have migrated north. Brown eyes to go with those beautiful brown wings; wings that were made more for gliding. This one absolutely had the advantage of speed, possibly even more maneuverability. Eric didn’t want to think about trying to escape him. Not without hurting him.
“What kind of name is Bitty?” the taller (now the tallest) avian frowned.
“Is he the one with the distress coming off of him?” The smaller of the two (just of the two, Shitty was the smallest out of them—not including Eric) asked. Eric thought he sounded kind of like Jack?
“Bitty’s got a fucked up wing, my dudes.” Shitty touched Eric’s wing and Eric resisted the urge to react and smack him with it. “Rans, can you fix it?”
“I can try,” the one called Rans said (his name, fully, was “Ransom” Eric thought now, because he remembered Shitty mentioning these two earlier, which meant the other one was “Holster”—what odd names). He beckoned Eric to follow him into what was the office of a doctor; Ransom must have been an accomplished physician. He had Eric sit down and started examining Eric’s wings. Immediately he took notice of the holes in the wing, tears in muscle and tendon, as well as broken flight feathers. But he didn’t ask any invasive questions as to how Eric had gotten the wounds.
“Stay still for me,” Ransom said as he started applying some foul smelling ointment to the wounds. Eric just clenched his teeth as the ointment was rubbed in, stinging, but working to fight infection and soothe.
“Where’d you even find this guy with wounds like that? He looks like a pin cushion for the military,” Holster snorted. Jack said nothing, but Shitty forced a laugh that didn’t sound too genuine to Eric’s ears.
“He was wandering the forest. Think he might have gone for a night fly and got caught up in the military’s dumb fucking drills,” Shitty lied, “Poor guy couldn’t remember a fucking thing.”
Eric wanted to look up at Shitty, to call his damn bluff himself because there was absolutely no reason for him to be sticking his neck out like he was for Eric. The guy was absolutely, completely, way too trusting. But he was protecting Eric, even if it meant lying to his friends, and Eric would protect him just the same if it came down to it.
Ransom and Holster didn’t seem to buy it for a moment, before Jack cleared his throat, garnering attention from everyone in the little room.
“Shitty called him Bitty because he’s small. I didn’t make things better when I accidentally fell on him,” he said. Shitty shot Jack a grateful look that was nearly mirrored by Eric. Maybe he had misjudged Jack. Understanding dawned on Ransom’s face while Holster squinted. He would likely need more convincing.
“Well, we can only hope he gets his memory back soon, eh?” Ransom smiled at Eric, continuing to look over and after his wing. Once he had it bandaged and bound for healing, he let Eric go. Holster looked back at Shitty and Jack in the meantime.
“So how much of his memory is gone?” he asked.
Shitty shrugged. “Ave didn’t remember his name, or where he came from, or how he get here.”
At that, all eyes turned to Eric, who tried his best to look shy and scared this time. He needed to play the part of the amnesiac for a bit, at least until he escaped.
“I don’t know what happened,” he whispered, trying to sound frightened. “I woke up and my head hurt and my wing was bleedin’ somethin’ fierce!”
Ransom cursed softly to himself and then leaned over to check Eric’s head. Just as he thought, he found a nasty cut on Eric’s head, which surprised the hell out of Eric; he hadn’t even felt that wound until just now, the adrenaline had been pushing him so far. But now he felt it all, all the pain and the bruises and his wing was screaming at him and Eric—Eric broke down.
“I wanna go home,” he said, voice small. He wanted to go home so badly. He wanted to go back to his mother and father and bake pies and cookies and cakes and fly in Madison’s blue skies. He wanted to ask the nice boy down the street if he’d go on a date with him. He wanted to give the little sparrows at Missus Bartley’s pies on wednesdays, every wednesday, because they deserved it. He wanted to be able to help his father teach the older ravens how to fly. He wanted to go back. He wanted to go home .
The tears that ran down his cheeks were hot, scalding almost. When had things gotten so bad, he wondered, bringing a dirty hand up to try to wipe at his eyes. When had his life turned so sour?
“Whoa, hey, we’ll help you try to jog your memory, man,” Ransom reassured. If Holster wasn’t convinced before, he certainly was now by Eric’s tears.
“Yeah, Bits, count on us.” He smiled and Eric sniffed.
He was laid down on the cot, with a blanket draped over him, and the last face he saw before drifting into a dreamless sleep was Jack’s. Eric thought the concern in them was only a figment of his imagination, his mind trying to equate Jack’s ice blue eyes with his Moomaw’s sky blue. But it was the only comfort he had, and he clung tight to it like a child would a favored toy as he fell into darkness.
If a small, broken, sob left him in the process, well. No one made any comment on it and he wouldn’t either.
It was a long time before he woke up.
II.
Shitty pulled Jack aside while Ransom fretted over Bitty’s wing. Jack had already had a feeling about the conversation that would ensue.
“You know I wouldn’t ask this of you if I didn’t have to,” Shitty sighed. He brought a hand up, rubbing at the back of his neck. His wings trembled a bit, betraying the upset he couldn’t show. Jack understood.
“I know, Shits. I’ll keep him until he’s better,” Jack smiled. Shitty practically beamed at Jack and Jack swallowed.
“You know if he tries anything—”
“Yeah, you’ll snap his neck or some shit, I know.” Shitty laughed a bit, before looking down at his feet. Something was bothering him.
“Shitty?”
“He—I know I’ve got my problems with my family, but if I could never see you guys again? If it were fucking possible? That shit would eat at me everyday. The war isn’t his fault.”
Jack sighed. This wasn’t a conversation they needed to have right now.
“Go see Lardo. Tell her I said hi. Bitty will be fine here with us,” Jack offered Shitty a small smile for comfort, before sending his friend on his way. Shitty glanced back at Jack once, a soft curve to his lips that made Jack’s heart flutter a bit. Then, he took to the sky and was gone in a blur of brown.
Jack glanced back into the little room, seeing the enemy avian lying down on the bed, tears still leaking from his eyes. He was doing this for Shitty, no one else. That bird would have been turned into the military the moment Jack saw him if Shitty hadn’t saved him. The other avian didn’t deserve Shitty’s kindness or compassion, because it was not owed to someone who probably didn’t appreciate what had been done for him. He hadn’t even said “thank you” to Shitty for saving him.
It was a thought that made Jack scowl. The things he did for love.
The other avian didn’t wake again. He slept for nearly a week, healing, from what Ransom told Jack and Shitty. The small avian needed all the rest he could get to help heal his head and wing. The last thing they wanted was to aggravate his wounds. Shitty popped in and out to check on Bitty, wanting to make sure he was alright, while also occasionally bringing the three that kept watch over him food. Jack often wished he could linger, but Shitty had to be moving constantly, unfortunately.
Nearly a week after bringing him in, Jack carried the other avian to his own modest little home, a one story dwelling that was unlike most of the three and four story houses that lined the street. He was the only avian in all of Samwell with a one story house, if only because he didn’t have any need or interest in having a house bigger than that. Jack considered himself simple; he only needed a small home with a proper landing on the roof, and that was about it.
Inside, Jack laid the other avian on the tiny cot in his guest room. He had considered laying him on the bed, but had decided against it; there were other, more important people that could come and lay in this bed (not Shitty; Shitty slept wherever he wanted, naked usually, in Jack’s bed typically). The cot would have to do.
It was another week before the small avian jolted awake while Jack was changing his bandages, a sudden movement when Jack pulled away from him. He blinked his eyes open and Jack tried to school his face into a frown, if only because he did not like this bird. Small birds were dishonest (his friend, Lardo, not included) and had ulterior motives to everything.
The small avian stared up at Jack, looking around a bit before alarm crossed his features and he started to thrash, looking for a way out. Jack recognized the panic and quickly grabbed the avian before he could start tearing up the cot. Those nails were sharp .
“Where-?!”
“This is my house!” Jack shouted, trying to hold the avian down. “Stop!”
The avian stilled, taking in who was with him, and then his face fell into a cool glare. Jack figured the feelings between them were mutual then.
“Where’s Shitty?” he demanded.
“None of your business,” Jack replied, his own scowl sliding into place as easily as water gliding over his feathers. The small avian seemed displeased with Jack’s answer and Jack felt like it served him right for being demanding and. Well. Being a spy .
And he thought about it then; he had a spy in his house . Someone that could get him or Shitty or Ransom or Holster or Lardo killed . They could be thrown in prison for any amount of time because of this one bird. Jack should have turned him over to the military the moment he and Shitty had found him. It was too obvious he didn’t belong so far north, too obvious that his feathers were made for warmer climates, too obvious he was from the wrong side of the war and too obvious in Jack’s house.
They were risking their lives for some bird that probably would have killed them when he first got the chance. What were they thinking?
“I’ll be gone as soon as my wing’s healed,” the avian grit out, as if reading Jack’s thoughts.
“That’s if the military don’t find you first.” And why did Jack say that? The avian bristled, and looked away, eyes shining with more tears he didn’t want Jack to see. Jack felt… he didn’t know how he felt. He felt like he shouldn’t have let the words fall past his lips, he felt like he had said the wrong thing, he felt like Shitty might be right.
He felt like he needed to remember who he was protecting.
“Don’t make any trouble,” Jack grunted, before he left the room. He locked the door behind himself, not trusting the smaller avian to not wander his home. Thankfully enough the guest room had a window facing east, away from the rest of the town and towards the woods. No one would see the avian when he got up to look out said window, fanning one wing out in a stretch and rubbing a gentle hand through the feathers to make sure all the broken ones had been pulled out.
No one saw a thing.
Jack returned, of course, hours later with food, and found the smaller avian back in the cot. He wondered why the other hadn’t just got into the bed; Jack had never explicitly told him he couldn’t. Maybe it was just a preference? Jack had to admit that he had never met any avians south of the border that currently divided their country. His parents had been south many times, but Jack had never seen the appeal. Maybe it would have been a good learning experience, to go with them.
His staring apparently didn’t go unnoticed, because the avian ( Bitty , his mind kept saying, in a voice that sounded suspiciously like Shitty’s) looked up at Jack and a frown found its way onto his features. Jack frowned right back; he didn’t owe this bird anything. Not a smile, not a comforting word (but he had already said those, hadn’t he?), not a kind gesture. Why was he even bringing the bird food?
“...Why am I here ?” Bitty asked finally, after a staring contest that lasted mere moments.
“Because you are,” Jack said as a reply, putting the food down on the table closest to the cot. It was just a bowl of fruit and oatmeal, a simple meal that Jack had often enough.
The bird looked as if that answer displeased him, and Jack simply thought, Good. He didn’t want this avian to have anything be easy for him; he was making their lives hard by being there, and so didn’t deserve everything handed to him.
“Where’s Shitty?”
There was that question again. It was starting to really bother Jack; Shitty was kind and compassionate and this avian didn’t deserve any of that. Why was Shitty so hell bent on helping him? Why had Jack allowed himself to be roped into this? Things were going to end so badly, if they got caught.
Not if. When.
The military had already conducted their check for the month, but it was only a few weeks before the next one. He didn’t want to have this dangerous bird in his home if it would end in his own punishment, or worse, Shitty’s. Ransom and Holster didn’t deserve any backlash from it, either. This avian was endangering all of their flock.
“Eat. You need to build up strength and heal. The sooner the better,” Jack said in lieu of an answer, mumbling the last part. The quicker the avian was healed the quicker he could fly out and get shot down again somewhere else.
The avian stared down at the food he had been presented with, before looking up at Jack, an eyebrow raised, as if to say You really expect me to get better on fruit and oatmeal? Seriously?
Jack shot a pointed look of his own back, as if replying with Yup. Now eat your food.
The other avian simply shook his head, but he used the fork he had to stab at a strawberry, albeit a bit roughly. Satisfied that his current charge was eating, Jack turned to leave the room prepared to lock the door again when the other avian spoke up again.
“Thank you.”
Jack pretended he didn’t hear it as he closed the door behind himself, but his hesitation was all Bitty needed to know that Jack had indeed heard him.
And if Jack took note of how small Bitty sounded, in that one moment, how resigned and upset he truly seemed to be? Then he didn’t say anything about it, but he left Bitty’s door unlocked when he went to bed, even if he locked his own. No, the other avian didn’t deserve any of Jack’s kindness. That didn’t mean he didn’t deserve to be treated like a living being, though.
It was the least Jack could do.
Ransom and Holster showed up the next morning to check on the small avian. Really, it was more so Ransom coming to check on the avian and Holster came with because you never found one without the other. Jack just left the door unlocked while he went about preparing breakfast for four, because if Ransom and Holster were there this early in the day, there was the possibility that they hadn’t eaten.
Jack paused in his preparation of breakfast, before deciding to cook for six instead, because Lardo and Shitty would probably be hungry, too. He went over to his window and called for one of the ravens that circled in the sky, sending a message to Lardo’s house inviting her and Shitty to breakfast with them.
Inside the guest room, Ransom was changing the bandages on Eric’s wing.
“Brother, if the military really shot you down just because you went on a little night fly, then there’s something seriously fucked up going on,” Holster was saying while Ransom replaced the bloody bandages with clean ones.
“They were doing all those damn drills again yesterday morning,” Ransom mumbled, before stifling a yawn. “We’re lucky they weren’t drilling this morning too, but I guess Saturdays are lazy days for the military too.”
Eric said nothing while his wing was being bandaged and checked. He didn’t know what to say, more like. It would be easy to continue perpetuating the lie Shitty had built for him in the spur of the moment, but it would be just as easy to shatter it and tell them the truth. They didn’t need to be dragged into this lie anymore than Jack or Shitty had been.
His wing was belted back down and Eric tried not to feel upset about it. Instead, he asked if Ransom could belt the other one down as well, softly, not trying to give anything away. If both were belted he could pretend that this was all just a less intense form of ground training, when his wings were useless to him and he learned to survive in an emergency where he couldn’t use them.
Must be ground training all the time now, for Martin.
Ransom didn’t question why Eric wanted his wings belted down, instead choosing to see it as a memory that might have resurfaced in Eric’s mind.
“Holtzy, can you pass me the extra belt?” Ransom asked, not looking back as he gently pushed Eric’s other wing in. Holster reached into the medical bag and handed the second belt to Ransom, letting his hand run over one of Ransom’s wings as he went. Ransom made a happy trilling noise that had Holster grinning, the entire interaction interesting in Eric’s eyes. So these ones were mates too?
“We should probably get to breakfast,” Ransom mentioned, but he was looking at Holster, eyes soft in a way that made Eric think of his own parents. When his father landed in their yard after a long day and was tired, but his entire being was relaxed the moment he saw Eric’s mother standing there waiting for him like she always did, a smile on her face and a drink in her hand. The two of them couldn’t be touched by anything in those moments, and Eric wondered if his parents waited for him like they did each other.
Part of him recognized that they might already be grieving.
“Yeah,” Holster said in reply, though he made no move to leave.
Eric stared between them for a bit longer before he slipped out of the room, stomach rumbling and understanding that whatever was happening in there was a private moment not meant for his eyes. He stepped into the kitchen and saw Shitty sitting at the table, Eric’s eyes lighting up upon spotting him. Then, he took notice of the smaller avian with pale skin and black wings. She (was the other avian a she? Eric didn’t want to assume but the build looked feminine) glanced up when a new person entered the kitchen and her feathers bristled a bit. The air filled with protective pheromones.
“Whoa there!” Shitty intervened, when he saw and smelled the smaller (small est , Eric noted with triumph) one’s reaction. “This is Bitty, he’s the one I was telling you about the last couple days!”
The avian pulled back a bit in what Eric recognized as a protective display; she was going to keep what she thought was her own out of harm’s way if she had to.
“Sorry about that,” she smiled, soft, apologetic, “I’m not used to new faces around here. I’m Larissa, but these assholes call me Lardo.”
“I’m—” Eric paused in his greeting, prepared to give out his real name, before tossing on a confused look to try to play up the amnesia aspect. “Well, I’d tell you who I was if I knew.”
Lardo rose an eyebrow at Eric at his hesitation, but shrugged it off easily, seeming to accept his greeting. She smiled at Eric and it made Eric wonder if she had a mate of her own. A pretty smile like that had to have someone waiting for her back home. “Shits tells me they’re calling you Bitty. Suits you, kind of.”
“Lards is like, the most ‘swawesome person in Samwell,” Shitty cut in, throwing an arm around Lardo’s shoulders.
Lardo made a sound in her throat and then laughed. Eric saw a look exchanged between the two and oh. These two were mates. Eric tried to glance up at Jack, as subtle as possible, but Jack was facing away from them deliberately. Eric, however, was trained to notice the unnoticeable, and he saw the way Jack’s shoulders tensed just slightly at the sound Lardo made, saw Jack’s grip tighten, picked up on the almost imperceptible tremble in Jack’s beautiful wings.
Ah. Unrequited love.
Eric felt bad for Jack. He wanted to say something, but he didn’t want to seem suspicious for it. Instead, he did his best to give Jack his most meaningful look. Jack was an asshole, yes, but he was trying to protect the family he had, and Eric had just waltzed into their lives and interrupted their daily routine. He didn’t know if Jack saw his look, but he liked to think that Jack understood him, somehow.
“Anyway, he was telling me your wing took a few hits. Sorry to hear it,” Lardo said now. Eric shook his head, and was it getting hotter in here?
“Really, I barely know what happened,” Eric smiled. He tried to make it a confused smile, hoping that it worked. “Aside from knowing it hurt real bad.”
“An arrow to the wing is never fun.” And Eric noticed, once again, something that would have gone unnoticed to the untrained eye, and it was the way Shitty’s hand drifted towards the top of Lardo’s wings.
“I’ve learned, I think.” And he shared a look with Lardo, letting her know that he knew her pain. The look was shot back, before a bit of confusion showed on Lardo’s face.
“Breakfast,” Jack interrupted, sudden. He put plates of food down with heaps of sausage, eggs, bacon, pancakes, hash browns, and more onto the table. Eric was reminded of the big breakfast his Moomaw would make when he was younger and could fly on over to her dwelling. He was her favourite grandchild.
Ransom and Holster seemed to appear at the perfect moment, looking just the smallest bit disheveled. No one needed advanced training to know what the two of them had been doing since Eric had left the guest room. Eric tried to pretend he didn’t know, but not even amnesia could be used as an excuse.
“Really guys? In the fucking guest room? Isn’t Bitty sleeping in there?” Shitty laughed. Holster shrugged a bit.
“We didn’t do anything.”
While Holster and Shitty bantered back and forth a bit, Eric piled his plate with food, actual food that wasn’t fruit and oatmeal, and ate like a starved man. The meager dinner he’d been given the night before had hardly been enough to satisfy him, and this was something better than the rations he had been eating for so long with his flock while they were moving steadily north. This group reminded him a lot of them, albeit smaller.
Lardo made him think of Nayla, though smaller and younger. She was still obviously willing to protect, like Nayla, but she was good natured and she smiled easily. Nayla had been a constant source of Eric’s happiness when they were traveling, keeping his spirits high. Jack was lot like Martin, though much less nice. Martin would keep them on track, and typically kept to himself, but he participated with the flock from time to time and stayed light hearted. Joshua, may his spirit soar high, partnered with Benjamin (oh god how was Benjamin even taking this?) were Ransom and Holster, though not so obviously mated. Vincent would fit in well here, Eric could see. He could fit in better than Eric. And Hannah was stoic and funny enough to maybe be a mix of Shitty and Jack. That wasn’t even taking into account Walter, Connor, or Jazz.
He missed his flock so badly ; Eric knew at least four of them were downed by those arrows. And time was starting to blur together; how long had he been here? Days? Weeks? He didn’t know. He had slept for so long and he hadn’t thought to ask what day of the week it was or the date. Though, he remembered Ransom mentioning it being Saturday, meaning it had been nearly a week since he’d last seen anyone from his flock.
“...right Bitty?”
Eric was pulled out of his head by a questioning voice. He looked up to see everyone, or almost everyone if one counted Jack, staring at him. Eric tried to throw on a confused smile, but then Shitty was reaching over, and Eric realized he was crying again . Had it really been so long since he had been among civilians? Hadn’t they stopped in a town before? But that was south of the current divide…
III.
At the end of the last century, the King’s States of America cut off all trade negotiations with the Caribbean Republic. Ten years prior to the sudden cut off, the price of imported goods had shot up, due to a hurricane that swept through the Caribbean Republic. Hundreds of thousands of people lost their homes and families, many left without a place to go and having to turn to their trades and crafts to try to rebuild the islands hit the hardest.
As it was, prices for the goods exported by the islands went up drastically; sugar, fruits, even certain grains that were staples in the King’s States were no longer readily available, leaving the States to turn elsewhere eventually (the Spanish Empire in Europe had readily entered a trade agreement) and the King decided it was best to stop all trade with the Caribbean Republic. The suddenness left the Caribbean Republic floundering; where would they get gold and silver to be able to buy supplies?
The Leader of the Caribbean Republic demanded that the King’s States stop its trade with the Spanish Empire, but when the King refused, they started sinking ships filled with people and supplies. This led to the King having to declare war, something more costly than either side would have thought. Due to the location of the Caribbean Republic, it was easiest to hit the south of the great country hard and without mercy.
Before either side knew it, many towns and people were slaughtered senselessly. The King saw the way his people suffered and approached the Leader of the Caribbean Republic with a truce. A new trade agreement was drawn (without the King’s States needing to stop trade with the Spanish Empire) and the war was done, taught in history classes afterwards as the Century Turn’s War.
But the people of the King’s States were still affected by the war, heavily in fact. The King, however, did not see all of the suffering of the people, but instead the impact of what the war did to his treasury. He decided that the only people to blame were the ones that had not fought hard enough and forced them to have to admit defeat. He began taxing the South so badly that people could hardly afford to eat.
General Xavier Bullroarer saw how the people were treated and demanded the King stop his foul policies, but when the King did not, the General organized a revolt. The country was soon after divided in two; a civil war broke out only three short years after the end of the Century’s Turn War. General Bullroarer was elected Leader unanimously and he would not back down from his stance.
Unfortunately, neither would the King. Already fearing that he was seen as weak for surrendering to the Caribbean Republic, he would not let himself become the enemy in his own country or be usurped by someone who thought him unfit to lead. He waged war against General Bullroarer, expecting the South to give in easily due to the fact that Northerners had been affected less by the last war. When the war went on for four more years, the King realized it was a useless thought. Still, it did not end.
It did not end.
War at the border was the most ferocious of all, towns and cities decimated by the fighting. Eric had seen too many bodies when they’d stopped to recover a bit one night in the ruins of a small village. The house they hid in had been home to a small family of three, the little girl’s dolls still laying in the floor where she’d likely been forced to leave them, or worse, where she had died playing with them. Eric had hoped the blood in the carpet wasn’t hers.
The border had been hard to cross and they had nearly been caught, but things had grown more lax as they flew further north. That is, until they closed in on the King’s Capitol, and that was when things started tumbling down, down, down.
“I’m sorry,” Eric said suddenly, and it was hot, very immediately, it was hot and then it was cold and then Eric could barely see his food and it was all hazy and was he crying? No, he didn’t feel the familiar hot prickle of tears in his eyes, he felt water beading on his forehead, and then he thought, no, not water. Sweat .
“Shit, did you change his bandages when you were supposed to? Jack?” Ransom was talking, he was talking and his hands were on Eric’s forehead and Eric was feeling faint, he was feeling like the air wasn’t reaching his lungs, he was feeling like he would pass out.
Before he fell into Ransom’s arms, he saw the wide, concerned blue eyes of Jack, and he thought, once again, that his Moomaw was watching him, too afraid to move but knowledgeable enough that something was very, very, wrong. It was another soft comfort Eric snatched up immediately and held close to his chest, because if he pretended it was his Moomaw, he could almost hope that he would find comfort in those eyes.
Jack had thought he had done a decent job when he changed Bitty’s bandages. He wasn’t Ransom by a long shot but he had been trying, every day that Bitty was sleeping, he thought the small avian was getting better. Only, now he saw that he wasn’t. Now he saw that Bitty was getting worse , he saw that he had fucked up somewhere, Jack saw that he was the cause of this new onset of illness.
Shitty glanced at him, out of the corner of his eye, confused and maybe a bit hurt that Jack would just let this happen, and Jack felt like he needed to take responsibility for this. Like it was his fault that Bitty was sick, because he hadn’t done well enough to keep the infection out.
“I’ll carry him,” Jack proclaimed, standing up. Ransom let Jack take Bitty without any hassle, if only because he was running through the different herbs and medicines that would need to be administered in his mind.
“Put him in bed. I’m gonna fly back to my shop with Holtzy to pick up some stuff but we’ll be right back ,” Ransom stated, already pulling Holster out of the door.
“He’s gotta sweat out the worst of it,” Lardo said, “Put him under the blankets.”
Jack was already moving, headed to the guest room. He didn’t even think as he pulled back the blankets on the bed (not the cot) and put Bitty beneath them. Bitty was breathing shallowly, as if not all the air was reaching his lungs. Jack didn’t know what to do, but he knew that he needed to stay if something happened. He didn’t even want to look at Bitty’s wings.
Time seemed to blur and slow down while Bitty was sick.
Ransom came back with medicines to help ease the pain. Jack gave it to be as often as he was told to; once every hour on the hour, while keeping track of Bitty’s fluid intake. Jack found out in two days that Bitty could keep nothing that wasn’t liquid down. He threw up anything that was even remotely solid and Jack was at his wits end for a bit until Ransom explained why he kept throwing it back up.
“His body’s trying to get rid of the virus,” he told Jack, wiping sweat from Bitty’s forehead, “Even if it means throwing everything back up.”
He was growing frustrated. His friends were too concerned about Bitty in Jack’s opinion; the small avian was still a source of danger. If they got caught housing him who knew what the consequences would be? Jack didn’t want to have to think about what could happen to his flock because of the small bird.
But part of Jack knew Bitty posed little to no threat now. He was as vulnerable as he would ever be around them and if he had wanted to leave he would have. Maybe the threat of the military would have stopped him, but he could have asked for the easiest passage out and Shitty would have told him. What was keeping Bitty in their town? What was stopping him from going? Why did Jack even care ? He should have been concerned with his flock and nothing else.
“M-Mama?”
The tiny sound made Jack pause. He had taken up residence in the guest room as he was looking after Bitty. He kept an eye on Bitty’s temperature, comparing it to his own and confirming that Bitty was much warmer than he was just hours earlier. Maybe the fever would be breaking soon? Jack didn’t know. He would need to talk to Ransom and find out if this was alright if it didn’t break, because the amount of heat Bitty was putting off was alarming.
“Mama…”
There it was again. Jack looked over at Bitty and saw that his brown eyes were open, partially unseeing but staring over at Jack. Jack felt a bit uncomfortable to have that stare so focused on him, but he sat just a bit straighter.
“Mama…”
“Um. No,” Jack said, his own voice a bit tight. Bitty didn’t look convinced, but he looked away finally.
“I wanna go home,” he whispered. The words were said in a way that was so soft and broken that Jack couldn’t help but feel bad. At his very core Bitty was still only a single avian, caught in the grand scheme of war and trying to do right by his family and country. How could Jack fault him for that? He hadn’t hurt any of them even when he’d had multiple opportunities. Bitty was the enemy, but was he really?
“I know you do. Bitty,” Jack sighed to himself.
“I’m sorry,” Bitty said, sudden and startling Jack just a bit. He felt like he needed to leave the room, but he was glued to his chair. Jack couldn’t move.
“You’re. You don’t need to—”
“Mama…”
Jack stopped. He looked down at Bitty, who must have been hallucinating bad to see Jack as someone close to him. They were literal strangers to each other and hadn’t been so much as polite to one another even once. And yet…
“I’m so sorry, Mama.”
The sobs were quiet, but in the silent room they were practically like thunder, deep and rolling. They echoed in Jack’s ears long after they had subsided into little hiccups, Bitty entering dreamless sleep and leaving Jack alone. Jack couldn’t stay here, he couldn’t keep—he needed to go. Just for a bit.
He stepped out of the guest room and heard a knock at his door. It wasn’t the soft knock of one of his friends or even the frantic version of that knock that sometimes came when Holster or Shitty was excited. It wasn’t the gentle beat of Lardo’s fist on his door, twice. It wasn’t even the slight rhythmic knocking of one of his neighbors coming to ask if he’s doing alright, like they always did when he hasn’t been out of his home in a few days.
No, this was the hard, firm, four times in a row knock of the Military. Jack’s heart dropped into his feet and his wings started to tremble, because this was it, wasn’t it? This was the end of things. This was the worst outcome, come to fruition.
Jack took a breath and opened the front door, mentally making sure that the guest room door was firmly shut. They couldn’t enter his home without probable cause.
“Mr. Zimmermann,” the officer in front of him nodded. His eyes were soft, because he had known Jack’s mother, and remembered little Jack fluttering about. Jack felt himself relax a bit.
“Sergeant Banks.”
“Monthly check is coming, but it’s being postponed for another month,” Sergeant Banks said. The explanation for the visit made Jack’s shoulders relax. The tight line of Sergeant Banks’ lips didn’t make him feel better, though.
“What is it?” Jack asked.
“In lieu of the check there will be a demonstration. All are required to be in the square in a week’s time.” Sergeant Banks looked grim. Jack didn’t want to ask why; he knew the Military’s “demonstrations” could be terrifying. He didn’t want to go, but he would have to. He could only hope that Bitty would be well enough to attend as well, but they would have to keep him hidden, and he wouldn’t be able to talk, lest he be revealed immediately by his accent. No one so far north sounded like they were from below the border like Bitty did.
“I’ll be there,” Jack promised. Sergeant Banks gave him a smile, patted his shoulder, and then took to the sky where others were waiting, beating their wings in perfect time with each other. Jack wondered if Bitty had done that with his flock.
The fever broke the next day and Eric could sit up and eat. He eyed Jack wearily, even as they had breakfast together, quiet, a little awkward from Eric’s end. He didn’t feel brand new (not like he did when he got good marks on his wing inspections), but the fever was gone. There was a dull ache in his wing from where it throbbed occasionally, but other than that he felt a lot better. The pain was finally starting to subside.
“Are you finished?” Jack asked. Eric looked down at his empty plate; it hadn’t taken him long to eat, but that was in part because he hadn’t had real food since the breakfast he’d shared with Jack’s flock. Everything after was a blur, even though he remembered throwing up several times and his Mama—
Oh, Dicky…
“Yes,” Eric nodded, trying to shake the image of his mother from his mind. He handed the plate off to Jack. Jack took it and disappeared from the room, leaving Eric to sit for a moment before getting up. He felt his muscles ache and protest at the movement. It was more than he had done in days, maybe a week or more? He had stopped keeping track of the time, which was dangerous, in hindsight.
“What are you doing?” Jack frowned, seeing how wobbly Eric was.
“Getting up,” Eric said in reply, stretching his arms above himself. He wanted to unbelt his wings give them a stretch, but he didn’t know if he was allowed to just yet. He’d just spent the last week or so on his side, he knew they were cramped from so long without use.
“Be—” Jack reached for him when Eric wobbled. “Be careful. Ransom said your muscles might have atrophied—”
“I’m fine , Jack.” Eric was a little worried about why Jack acted like a mother hen now after treating him like a strange bird in his nest (which, actually, Eric was). He didn’t want to ask what might have happened while he was feverish, but he also didn’t want to address the dream he’d had where his Mama was standing over him, wiping the sweat from his brow and promising that it was alright.
Even thinking about it brought Eric to a bad state of mind, already calculating how many days he might have been away from home. It only took four days of his flock being unable to find his body for them to declare him missing in action. As far as his parents would know when they got his things back, he was dead. He kept imagining his mother, opening the door to solemn military faces, his father not even home, and being told that her son was missing. Probably dead.
“He served honourably,” they would say, handing her his folded uniform and the few feathers they had kept from his last grooming before he had been sent out. Something to remember him by. Something to bury.
Eric kept seeing his Mama breaking down into tears, right there in the doorway, not moving even when his father got home. It broke his heart thinking about it and he felt his breathing come in shorter pants, he was going to have a panic attack thinking about it—
“Bitty!”
He looked up and saw blue, first. The impossible blue of Jack’s eyes that made him think of his Moomaw. He didn’t know when he had come into the contact with the floor, he had no idea when he found himself cocooned in those big, black, raven wings of Jack’s. All he knew was that his mind immediately latched onto the memory of his Moomaw, something calm and soothing that helped him come back under his own control.
“That’s right, breathe, slowly,” Jack said, walking him through some deep breathing. Eric followed along with the in and out rhythm Jack set up for them.
“I’m sorry,” Eric apologized.
“It’s okay.” Eric felt like he didn’t deserve the reassurance. This was the one thing the academy had tried to train out of him, but he had never gotten rid of. They had let him slide through the psychological exams when he started showing signs of anxiety and depression from the training and the war, never mind the fact that he could die out in the field. A soldier was a soldier and the Military needed all the wings they could get their talons on.
“Thank you.”
Jack didn’t respond. Instead he stood and helped Eric up.
“We should go see Rans,” he said. It was an out and Eric was completely willing to take it.
“We could fly over? I haven’t used my wings in days.”
“Too risky. We don’t want your wing to tear anymore than it already has.”
So they walked. They walked in silence to the apothecary, where Ransom and Holster were looking over another patient of theirs. Well, Ransom was looking at his patient, Holster was going through cabinets for medicines and salves as Ransom requested them. Ransom glanced up when he heard the door chime and waved them in.
“Alright, April, just take this twice a day for the next two weeks and you should feel better,” Ransom told his patient. The lady, April, nodded. She stretched her brown wings and Eric watched them shimmer a bit, a bit amazed. She took the medicine offered to her and then left the apothecary.
“And tell March we’re having a reading two nights from now!” Holster called after her when she took off.
Jack was smiling as they were ushered into the back room.
“April looked a little under the weather,” he commented. Ransom shrugged, starting to unwrap the bandages around Eric’s wing.
“She got caught up in a military demo,” he sighed. “Some kind of gas. Lucky for us I could treat it just from the symptoms she was having.”
Jack’s face fell into hard lines. “Another demo? And you know they’re having one in six days.”
Holster appeared in the doorway, then. “We know. They came knocking while we were up in the nest.”
Eric tried not to imagine Holster and Ransom in their nest, likely getting frisky and ruffling feathers. He found himself wishing he had someone to nest with. It would be impossible to find someone who wouldn’t mind bedding down an avian who was fucked up mentally. Maybe Ransom would have something to keep away the worst of the nightmares when they started coming.
“You’re healing pretty well,” Ransom commented, looking at the wounds.
“Am I?” Eric didn’t know. He hadn’t seen his wing in weeks.
“Yeah. The wounds are closed now. In about a week, you should be able to fly again. Until then, you should start doing exercises to build up strength.”
“Jack could show you some if you don’t remember any,” Holster said. Jack looked a little bewildered for a moment, but then he nodded in agreeance.
“I could.”
“Thank you,” Eric replied, though a bit surprised at his own words. He looked at Jack and he didn’t see the asshole avian that had wanted to turn him in to the military, not anymore. He didn’t see a friend, not yet, but he could see someone he could trust, slowly and surely.
“No problem.”
IV.
The days blurred together faster than Eric could tell. Jack woke him up at what could only be described as the ass crack of dawn. He had Eric build wing strength with pushups and wing beats, always making sure Eric wasn’t straining himself. Even though four a.m. wasn’t a bad time to wake up (Eric remembered days when he was lucky enough to sleep until 3:30 ) he had been getting so much more sleep lately that it was almost startling.
“You’ll never get your wing strength back lying around,” Jack lectured when Eric was having a bit of trouble with a set of wing beats. He stood over Eric with his hands on his hips, his own wings fanning out in time with Eric’s to keep the tempo.
When Jack let him sleep until nine on one particular morning, though, Eric knew something was wrong. Eric hadn’t heard a single sound in the dwelling and he had been a bit afraid that maybe Jack was planning something particularly sinister for training that day. Instead, though, he found Jack sitting at the kitchen table, his expression grim. Eric had never seen Jack look so serious before, not even when Jack had been ready to turn him over to the military.
“We have to,” Jack paused, took a deep breath. Eric didn’t push. “We have to go to a military demo today. They check dwellings to make sure everyone is out and it’s safer if we both go than it is for me to leave you here.”
Eric nodded, slowly. He didn’t know how comfortable he was with going to this military demonstration (he was very uncomfortable, in fact) but he understood that the military could be very violent when things didn’t go their way.
“Just don’t speak. If you pretend you’re mute they won’t make you do anything you don’t want to,” Jack promised.
“Alright. I understand. I think,” he said.
“Don’t think. Pretend it’s more training.”
Eric eyed Jack warily, but Jack cracked a smile, making Eric smile as well. They went about their morning, with breakfast and coffee and teasing each other (with Jack teasing Eric more than anything else). They worked around each other to clean up after; Eric did the dishes while Jack put away the leftover food, all the while having Eric go through more of the basic wing stretches they had been doing.
It was almost soothing, but then came the tolling of a bell. Jack stiffened where he was putting dishes into the top most cabinets, his eyes wide. He stopped and took a few deep breaths. Eric didn’t know what the sound of the bell did to Jack, but he could tell it wasn’t good, or at least that it reminded him of something he’d rather not think about. Eric didn’t know what possessed him to place his hand on Jack’s shoulder, a move of comfort more than anything else, but Jack didn’t pull away when he did it so he left it there.
Jack gave him a small smile, a thank you, before he looked out of the window in the kitchen. Eric turned his head to look as well, and saw Avians from all over the town flying towards the center of it.
“Let’s finish putting these away. Then we have to go,” Jack said.
Eric didn’t respond. He stared out the window for a little longer before some gentle coaxing from Jack had him going back to the dishes he had been washing. There were maybe two left, and they took no time to clean. Eric wasn’t sure if he was glad or not, but the moment Jack had them put away it was time for them to leave.
He had been building up wing strength for the last week, and now he felt confident enough to fly with Jack. With a few experimental beats, Eric was up in the air. He could have cried he was so glad; being grounded was something Eric hated. Even considering it as extended ground training hadn’t done too much for his psyche, but now he was back in the air where he belonged and Jack was giving him the proudest look he could muster.
They didn’t have time to celebrate, though, before they were headed to the town square. Eric wanted to do aerial tricks; a loop here and a dive there, but Jack had him stop before they were closer, not wanting any of the other Avians to catch sight of Eric and wonder who he was. Over breakfast Jack had said they were going to pretend he was Shitty’s cousin, visiting from Europa with intentions to move to the King’s States.
“Rans, Holster, Lards, and Shitty are all gonna be going with this story too,” Jack had said, “You just have to play the part of the mute cousin scoping out the territory.”
Eric had nodded along, but now he was feeling a bit anxious. Military demonstrations back home could be just as intense, but he knew the folks up north were more violent about it. He knew he could keep his mouth shut, but he didn’t know what was going to be happening. Eric had a feeling he wasn’t gonna like whatever they were about to see.
He had no idea how right he really was.
“A month ago our ground troops caught sight of a flock of Southern Spies flying into our territory,” the obvious leader of the Military flock before them belted out, loud enough for the entire square to hear. He sounded pretentious, like he had never seen a day of combat in his life. He was obviously the type born into a high military rank, the kind of guy Eric would have purposefully angered when he was a recruit. He was the kind of person that didn’t get his hands dirty unless he wanted to, just to make his point clear.
Eric was nestled next to Lardo, surrounded by Shitty, Jack, Holster, and Ransom. It was easy for him to stay hidden with them around him.
The Avian in charge continued, “Four of them were felled by our arrows. One of them was dead before he hit the ground.”
Joshua. Hearing it only confirmed the worst of what Eric already knew. Joshua was dead and his body was probably tossed into an unmarked grave, or worse. Left to rot where it landed in the forest. His grandmother would never be able to see him again, she would never see his smile when he came home, she would never be able to bury him. She was alone now, the last of her family taken by the damned war. Eric vowed to himself to visit her every day if he got home.
Not if. When.
“Two of them were captured by us.”
Eric’s eyes snapped up and he watched in rapt horror as a cage was dragged in by horse. The tarp covering it was snatched away to reveal two figures, one of them without wings and the other in manacles.
Eric recognized Martin and Nayla with the kind of ease that he would family members. He felt his throat close up, however, when he saw Martin’s prone figure chained up. His wings were gone. The horrifying sounds of knives tearing flesh that he had heard in the forest when they were grounded came back with ease. His stomach churned when he realized the true reality; Martin would never fly again. The military had done him something worse than death itself when they took his wings from him.
Nayla looked like someone had been beating her for days on end. Bruises and cuts crisscrossed her body and her wings were patchy with broken flight feathers; feathers they left in to make sure new ones couldn’t grow out. Her left eye was swollen shut. Her wrists looked to be rubbed completely raw from her shackles and her clothing was in tatters. Eric knew she had seen many, many, better days, but she didn’t look like they had broken her spirit just yet. He didn’t think it could get worse.
Until it did.
“This is our newest weapon.”
A soldier produced something that looked a lot like a short, hollow stick. It was curved around the end and had a hole through it, it looked like. Eric had heard about this. This was the new super weapon his flock had been sent to get information on. This was what was going to change and revolutionize the war. It was what the North was going to use to try to beat the South into submission.
“Allow us to demonstrate its use.”
The Avian took the weapon in hand and pointed it at Martin. Eric found his breath wouldn’t come, fear wracking him as he realized what the Avian was planning. Nayla realized it as well, and started to thrash against her bonds, moving to cover Martin, who was barely even coherent enough to realize what was going to happen. Even if death would have been better, these monsters didn’t have the right to take Martin’s life like this.
The Avian looked inquisitive for a moment, before he pointed the weapon at Nayla and pressed some kind of lever. A loud noise Eric could only describe as a BANG! rang out in the town square, followed by an agonizing scream that could only be coming from Nayla. Her leg had been shot through with the weapon and singed, with blood pouring out and the smell of burning flesh clear in the air. Eric didn’t want to imagine the kind of pain she had to have been in now, but with the way his own leg started to ache just from witnessing the act made his stomach churn the wrong way.
“Think of it like a controlled fire,” the monster who had shot Nayla stated, handing off the weapon to one of the other birds. “We are looking for one more spy. If you see, hear, or encounter anything strange, you are encouraged to report to us immediately.”
It wasn’t a suggestion. It was a threat.
Nayla’s pained cries almost drowned out the words being said. Eric could focus on nothing but her agony. His mind fixated on the sight of her leg, practically mutilated. He didn’t want to think about what would happen to anyone harboring the “spy.” He didn’t want to think about the fact that these Avians would stop at nothing to find this “spy”; that they would harm anyone and everyone in their path to test their weapons and see the Southern Resistance snuffed out completely.
Eric tried not to consider what would happen to Shitty, and Ransom, and Holster, and Lardo, and Jack, if they continued keeping his existence a secret.
He tried not to think about how he needed to tell them the truth, and stop making them accessories in this, because the end was only going to be bad for them if they continued helping him. Eric needed to give them the out, he needed to give them the option to stand aside from him and be able to make their own choice about whether or not they wanted to continue this. No more lying. No more charades. He needed to tell the truth.
“Bitty.”
He glanced up sharply at Jack, who looked concerned for Eric. A hand came up to cover his mouth so he wouldn’t say something, but Eric felt the hot wetness of tears on his cheeks. He had no idea how badly he had been emotionally until he saw his friends , caged and wounded and in agony. It took every bit of his training not to run over and free Nayla and Martin, especially since it would only end in him being killed by that new weapon. If the military had dozens, hundreds, thousands more of those dangerous devices then the war could be over in moments. Lives would be lost on a massive scale, towns could be subdued with a single shot.
“Bitty, it’s time to go.” Jack’s voice broke through the clouds in Eric’s mind. He nodded, slowly, allowing himself to be pulled along as the crowd dispersed. He got one last look at Nayla and Martin, saw the way Martin pressed close, awake now, trying to comfort Nayla as best he could. She was sobbing horribly, her leg practically mutilated, and Eric knew that if he could Martin would have covered them with his wings to hide her vulnerability from these people. In taking them, the military had only humiliated and wounded them further.
Jack passed between Eric and the sight of his friends, purposefully shielding him with his wings from the spectacle. Lardo wrapped a hand around his arm, squeezing tightly. When Eric looked at her, she looked like she was going to be sick.
“What the fuck even was that?” she whispered, looking at Eric, and oh. Oh . She knew. He could see it in her eyes, the fear that was so obviously for him in those large eyes, and he could tell that she knew. He only took one look at Ransom and Holster and saw how grim their expressions had become, had seen the hard lines of frowns in their faces, and knew that they knew, too.
It was just a question, now, of how long they had known.
“I don’t know. I don’t know ,” Shitty answered instead of Eric. His face had gone pale and he looked just as worried as Lardo. Jack’s expression had been steeled into careful indifference.
“My place,” he said. It was the end of the conversation, for the moment, at least.
Jack was considerate enough not to make Eric fly back to the dwelling. They walked in silence, listening to the murmurs of the other townsfolk around them. Eric tried not to listen to their words, but it was hard when they were all still so close together.
Did you see what it did?
Her leg is ruined.
The other one had no wings .
Are they really keeping us safe?
There was an edge of fear in the crowd. Eric walked faster, already familiar with where Jack’s dwelling was. Holster stayed close enough behind him just in case anyone happened to glance over. Though Eric’s wing had healed beautifully in the month he had been in Samwell, they didn’t want to risk anyone asking how he got into the town, who was he related to? They were saying Shitty, but Holster seemed a much more likely candidate, and if the story changed too much people would get suspicious.
Eric remembered the breathing exercises Hannah had taught him when he wanted to hide his emotions. He knew the crowd’s general scent had to have been concern, or vague upset. His was so obviously fear ; pure and unfiltered. He kept trying to reign it in but he kept seeing the way Nayla’s leg was ripped open. It had been so terrifying to watch.
Jack’s home was a safe haven. Eric breathed in, but let out a shuddering sob on his next breath. He didn’t know he had even been holding the emotions in until he was on the floor, absolutely falling apart. Jack pushed the others towards the kitchen, wanting to give Eric a bit of privacy at the very least.
He returned and kneeled next to Eric, wrapped his arms around the smaller Avian, and held him until Eric could cry no more.