Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

“I’m cashing in my favour.”

“Fine. What do you want?”

“I want out.”

**********

“Twenty, on your feet!”

Nineteen missed the days when Smile hadn’t been there, when Flame and Goggles had been left in charge of their group. Twenty, a boy next to her in a barred cell of his own, stood in dirty clothes. His bone-thin arms, covered in a thin layer of fuzz, circled his waist in anxiety as eighteen pairs of sunken eyes singled him out, daring him to say something back to the man who had stripped them of humanity and left them desperate. Desperate to feel more than sandpaper cloth on their skin, desperate to taste more than staling bread and water, desperate for whatever world existed outside the walls of their prison.

Smile watched with soulless eyes and an unfeeling grin as Twenty approached his door, slender wrists clicking into the cuffs that Flame held before freedom would be dangled before his nose; a clear pathway between himself and the exit if his hands weren’t cuffed and his captors weren’t obstacles. It was intentional, of course, everyone knew the Team had designed the space to give them the crushing sense of freedom, so close they could almost catch it on their tongues, yet a million miles away.

Twenty flinched when he neared Smile, defensive body language revealing his expectations of pain. It was no secret that the man was violently unstable after coming back from a long break, if the maniacal laughter they heard almost every day was anything to go by. So, it was a shock to everyone, especially Twenty, when Smile pulled him close and walked the rest of the way from the room with an arm slung around his shoulder. Nineteen followed the group with nervous eyes, meeting Twenty’s frantic glance and then letting her eyes land on the only other empty cell in the room as the trio passed it. It was a strain to see in the darkness, but when she focused on it, the red paint on the wooden board was hard to miss, shining in the dim light in a large ‘X’. The meaning was obvious, and it made her sick to her stomach.

The tension in the room, thick after Smile’s behaviour, began to diffuse after several minutes. She was almost dozing again, a usual choice of activity to help pass the unmoving time, when a sharp cry echoed through the walls and embedded itself into her bones, startling the entire room into alertness. Eighteen sets of fearful eyes turned to the exit, the source of the sound, then to each other, until another hair-raising screech reverberated through their skulls. Hands moved quickly to press against ears and pull at dirty hair as a third sound ripped through the walls, cut short by the whistle of a blade through the air, a thump as it met its target, and a pathetic gurgle to accompany the sinking feeling of dread, universal to everyone left in the room.

No words were exchanged when only eighteen plates of bread and eighteen cups of water were handed around to each person, choked down dry throats and washed down with the pitiful amount of liquid they were allowed each day. She refused to let her eyes close, afraid of what might happen when she wasn’t awake, staring at the shine of her padlock in the dim light of the lantern, until there were footsteps. She watched Flame enter the room, emotionless despite the items in his hands. He hung the sign on the central bar of Twenty’s cell door and lifted a paintbrush dripping with a familiar colour to the board, painting a symbol onto the wood. Even as he left the room, locking eyes with her momentarily, she still couldn’t find it in herself to shed her tears. It was only when she spotted Nine, the pale-haired boy with shining blue eyes in the opposite cell, staring fearfully at the sign on Twenty’s door, that salty droplets finally stung her cheeks.

***********

Goggles was Nineteen's favourite member of the team, she decided. He'd shown the most pity to the group after Twenty had died, and whenever she had been taken for tests, he had been the most gentle with the cuffs, leaving enough space for comfort. This was why she felt guilty.

"You're wanted for training," he had said to the neighbouring girls closest to the door, Two and Three. They had looked anxiously at each other before offering their wrists to be cuffed. Goggles had them both secured, beginning to walk with them from the room. Before he could get far, he staggered, crying out as Two leapt on him in a struggle for power. At her extraordinary height, it was easy to hold him down for long enough to allow Three to take the keys from his belt and open the cells one by one.

By the time Goggles had thrown off Two, there were several more people to overpower him, which they did. Four had taken up the duty of a guard, pointed, blue-tipped ears quivering as she watched with glowing green eyes for Smile or Flame. Goggles was crowded by the remaining seventeen people from their cells soon enough, flailing uselessly as he was dragged and pushed into Twenty’s old cell, the padlock clicking as it latched into place. Nineteen spotted the symbol painted on the sign - a large red X to match One’s cell - and quickly pulled her eyes away, willing them to stay dry.

"What's happening?" she asked Nine, wary of the dark corridor from which anyone could run in.

"We're leaving. Smile's out of control, and we can't have another of us die, not after One and Twenty."

Cautiously, the group crept from the hallway, the reality of their situation setting in. It was far too late to do anything but fight for their lives if it came to it - that, or face unbearable punishment. Nineteen shuddered as she ran at the back of the group, thinking of the pain she'd been through any time she'd stepped out of line, leaving a meek and nervous shell of a human behind. Would they tie her and whip her until the stumps on her back swelled red with welts? Would they hold her underwater until she sucked in mouthfuls of water, leaving her spluttering in the seconds of relief before she was pushed back under? Would they—

Oh.

This was bad. 

The group had come to an abrupt stop. Towering, even above Two's eight-foot frame, was a wall of dark bricks. She put her face in her hands, tangled hair falling around her features. This couldn't get any worse.

"Where do you think you're going?" 

It got worse.

Smile stood, anger pouring off him in hot waves as he observed the group before him. Goggles watched them all alongside Smile and Flame, seething, which did nothing to curb the fear that spiked collectively in the group.

"You've been pissing me off recently. You can either come in now, or we'll make sure you don’t last long enough to climb that wall."

Two, a natural mother figure, fiercely stepped to the front of the group with clenched fists.

“No.”

“No?” he said, voice amused despite the obvious anger. “Fine then. You’ve dug your grave—”

An arrow whistled through the air, finding its mark in Three’s chest. A quiet thud echoed in the group’s ears as she hit the ground, red drops painting the perfectly white layer of snow in a stark reminder of what was to come. Two lifted her eyes to Goggles, who had already nocked another arrow in his bow.

“—now you can fucking lie in it .”

Nineteen’s surroundings blurred as sixteen other bodies began to move, swept up in the hoard as anger filled every crevice of her mind. She wasn’t angry, she was furious. She was pissed.

The people around her began to advance towards Goggles, who immediately armed himself with his axe, bow now slung across his back. Nine was the first to claw at the man, distracting him long enough for Thirteen to leap onto him from his side, dragging her sharp claws across his body, dark hair falling over her face. Goggles swung out with his axe, blindly knocking down the nearby girl, Sixteen, with a deep cut through her abdomen. Six caught her, and Nineteen watched her desperately pushing against her stomach in failed attempts to stop the bleeding, dark skin turning red.

She brushed softly at the red hair in her closest companion’s face, tears dripping onto the skin she’d dreamed of touching until this moment. The blood from her fingers didn’t look dissimilar in shade to the hair she brushed them through, but she couldn’t bring herself to feel happy when she looked at the girl she’d grown to love through the trauma of their lives so far. There was a screech behind her and Nineteen ripped her gaze from the mourning girl, too delicate for the world in which they lived, in time to see Thirteen flying through the air and hitting the wall, a motionless heap when she crumpled to the snowy ground.

Goggles pulled his bow from behind him and hastily nocked an arrow, releasing it as Twelve charged to tackle him. There was a gasp behind her as the arrow embedded itself firmly in Six’s throat and Nineteen watched, transfixed, at the way she fell backwards in defeat, hands leaving her love’s hair to sit, unmoving, with her palms turned up to the pink clouds, unseeing eyes reflecting the sun setting low over the horizon.

Screams around her brought Nineteen to her senses as she watched bodies drop defenselessly to the ground at the feet of their better-skilled opponents. More than half of the group had already been slaughtered, and only a few others remained to fight desperately against the Team. Even as she watched, Twelve, who stood protectively over Thirteen’s stationary form, fell to his knees as Goggles’ axe found its place in his skull and came away coated in a fresh layer of blood.

Nineteen charged at Goggles with a renewed sense of purpose, landing an elbow into his gut as he aimed at Ten, who was struggling to maintain her advantage over Smile. Goggles turned after sending the arrow at his target, slamming the side of his fist into her cheekbone. She yelped as she hit the ground, turning to face the sky as the glint of his axe’s blade filled her vision, freezing her in place. As he brought it down upon her, the intent to kill clear, she felt a tight grip on her bicep and winced as she was dragged away. It wasn’t quick enough to avoid Goggles’ axe altogether, she found out, as a blinding pain spread through her skull and she saw red - literally. Nine was over her, wiping at the blood in her eye and delicately dabbing at the wound across her left one. She was shaking with adrenaline, gripping at Nine’s bloodied vest in a panic. Goggles was tugging his axe from the ground, glaring at the pair mere metres away with a dark eye, visible through the smashed lens of his goggles as he stalked closer.

Nineteen pushed away the boy, intent on helping him dodge the incoming blow from the man, but instead it positioned him perfectly to meet the swing of her enraged enemy’s weapon. Nineteen howled, rushing close to watch the concerned eyes she had seen just seconds before fade to a dull blue. She crouched over his body, knowing these would be her last moments and not caring any longer about what was beyond the wall - not if she couldn’t see it with the people she had grown up with, fought with, and now died with.

It was over.

Chapter Text

Opening her eyes was pure pain and, when she did, the world spun around her. The ground below her felt wet, for want of a better word, but her hazy mind produced nothing. She could see nothing, either, eyes barely open, and her damp fingers wiped at whatever covered them. Her right eye was open soon enough in a squint, left eye pulling a hiss from her exhausted lungs as she touched the deep gash across it, tender on the swollen skin around it that forced it shut. Now able to see, albeit through tears of pain, she observed her unfamiliar surroundings through the darkness.

No , her thoughts insisted. This is familiar…

It was, Nineteen realised, looking to her right at the bodies of seventeen other people. Unlike her last images of them all, alive, then dead at the hands of the Team, they were spaced with half a metre separating them from the next person, a neat row of dolls to be played with and then discarded.

With a jolt she realised that she wasn't dead, or didn't seem to be, judging by the very real pain she felt. Everyone else was alive, surely?

"Hey," she whispered, leaning close to Eighteen next to her. She brushed away navy hair, revealing an azure-tipped ear and bending to whisper into it. "There's nobody here, we can get up now."

Silence.

"You're really good at this, but we don't need to anymore. Smile isn't out here."

More silence.

Nineteen frowned, reaching out to squeeze the girl's hand and recoiling when it was cold, far too cold, in her palm. She touched her own chest to feel for the thumping that she often felt when she panicked, making sure to memorise the feeling before putting a hand in the same place on Eighteen's chest. She strained to feel something, anything, but there was nothing pushing back at her hand.

"Nine?" she whispered, making her way down the line to the boy. She fell to her knees at his side, watching his dull eyes for a flicker of movement as she clutched his too-limp hand in hers, only for her heart - beating so hard and yet frozen in her chest - to be crushed as there was no reaction from the closest thing she had ever had to a friend. 

She next hurried to Two. She was their protector, the top of the group ever since One had left them as a young child, now as still as the world around them. It had all been for nothing.

Why did I survive?

The sun began to rise slowly over the dark area, casting a shadow when it caught the wall. The sunrise filled her mind with colours as it shone through her closed eyelids and she released a pained sob into Two’s dark hair. She was supposed to get them out, to get them to freedom, to get them over the wall. The wall was all that had stood between them and a new life.

The wall!

That was her way out, she realised, neck aching as it craned to look up at the unyielding structure. That was how she escaped.

Panicked at the possibility of Smile returning, she hurried to try scrabbling up the wall, scolding herself when she realised it was completely useless to even try. How would she be expected to escape? What had Two planned to do?

Searching for any advantage she could get, Nineteen began to walk along the wall with a hand on it. There were few imperfections in the brick, and as she curved around and entered the smaller gap between the building and the wall, she began to accept her fate. She was half blind already, no hope of healing her left eye by the feel of her cut, and she was supposed to be dead by the look of the rest of her group. When Smile found her, she would be dead.

As soon as the hope had blossomed in her mind, it shrivelled up, leaving only despair. She decided she'd much prefer to spend her last moments of peace away from the corpses of the people she'd grown up with, sitting down in the small gap she stood in and relishing in the cool air against her face. The outside world - or what she had seen of it - was nice, she decided, propping her feet up on the wall of the building opposite to shuffle into a more comfortable position.

Wait—

She frowned, pushing harder against the wall and trying to move her feet against it. They scraped against the bricks, friction keeping them in place.

Yes!

Smile wasn't going to win this battle, she assured herself, standing and pressing her back to the wall with shaking breaths. Not wanting to waste another second or risk Smile finding her, she began to climb the wall with her back to it, feet walking slowly and carefully up the building as she strained to keep her legs straight for just a moment longer . It was painful against the stumps on her back, but it was working and she was going to be free!

The roof brushed against her head, shorter than the wall with a large enough gap between to fit through, so she kept climbing until she could grab whatever she could on the top of the roof to pull herself onto the flat surface, collapsing heavily with a wheeze.

That hurt.

A few minutes of breathing time allowed Nineteen to plan her next steps, which were to grab the edge of the wall from the roof and pull herself up onto it.

Fragile fingers grasped at the top of the wall, stretching further until they caught the other side of it, and her shoes scrabbled at the bricks to assist in hoisting herself up onto it until she rested on her stomach, arms and legs hanging on their own sides of the wall as she caught her breath. Slowly, she swung one leg over to sit on the wall as though on a horse, wiping the sweat from her brow before finally looking up.

The view sent her breath from her lungs again. In awe, she looked over miles upon miles of land, covered in a pure white blanket (a stark contrast to the trampled and bloody snow inside the wall) almost as far as she could see. In the distance, a group of mountains overshadowed the forest, their intimidating size making her almost shrink away from them. Instead, she focused on the other side of the landscape, where the white and green of the snowy trees fell away to tall oaks and birches, emerald grass and winding sapphire rivers. Even further away, a tall black wall with glinting golden highlights loomed over the forest, smoke rising from inside - civilisation .

The drop between Nineteen and the ground pulled her heart to her throat with nerves. Was she nervous for the drop, or for the freedom it promised after a lifetime behind the bars of her cell? As she dangled herself down the outside of the wall, she decided it was most definitely the first option - the latter would come after. With nowhere to go now, she realised her only option was to let go, so she allowed her fingers to slip from the brick and waited for the impact of the ground on her knees, bending them when she collided with it and sprawling on the earth below. She was winded, ankle throbbing, wheezing on the ground as she watched clouds pass in the sky, realising with a jolt that she was out and free and—

A door slammed on the other side of the wall.

—and in danger.

She was on her feet, thinking of those glinting walls in the distance, that rising smoke, and running from the sounds of conversation behind her. Her ankle screamed to stop, but she couldn’t risk it, couldn’t risk being found by Smile and the Team, couldn’t go back. She could never go back after seeing that smoke, that promise of a life, so she gritted her teeth and ran until her breath was pained and her feet were numb, collapsing onto the ground and staring up at the blue sky as she waited for the pain in her limbs to subside. Then, as she watched a large, black bird land on a branch above her, feathers gleaming in the sun shining through the leaves, she allowed a cry of laughter to leave her lips, then another, until she was laughing just as hysterically as she had heard Smile do since he returned. She was free!

**********

Nineteen had begun traipsing through the forest again, more slowly than before, the consequences of her escape creeping up on her as her throat stung with each breath, sandpaper tongue licking dry lips. She didn’t know how long she’d been ‘dead’, waiting patiently to be disposed of with the rest of the group in a neat row, but with little water in her body anyway paired with the blood loss, it hadn’t taken long for her to need water. She’d found a pond early on in her journey, but it had been frozen over along with the ground beneath her feet. She’d seen birds and a strange four-legged creature, orange and white fur coating its body and a pointed nose that twitched with curiosity, triangular ears turning when she’d snapped a twig beneath her foot. Its eyes had been amber, matching its fur closely, and she’d locked with them briefly before the creature had run off. Its dainty features and bright fur had reminded her of Twelve, tentative curiosity similar to his mannerisms. As the creature’s tail disappeared around a bush, she blinked away the images of an axe dripping in red, lodged in a head of ginger hair and coming away with another person falling victim to its sharpened edge.

As the orange glow from the sunset illuminated the area she’d decided to settle in, she hoped the creature from before would come back, its uncanny resemblance to Twelve a comfort as she shivered in her isolation. Her situation finally sank into her skin. The thought that she’d woken up two days ago as one of eighteen, and had been the only one of them alive this morning, was scary. The thought that she was the only survivor of a group that all deserved this newfound freedom far more than her, surrounded by an unfamiliar world that she could only hope would be kinder to her than it had been so far, was scary. The thoughts raised goosebumps on her skin, made her pull her limbs into her chest, made her feel so much smaller in the huge forest, and she was afraid .

A blur of green, a flash of a smile, and she was running again, running away from Smile and the blade that was sure to follow. She wasn’t free, not yet, and every time she saw the green cloak and the shine of an axe in the moonlight, she was reminded of just how vulnerable she was out in the world, just how much she had relied on Smile. He was always going to be there, always a threat to her freedom, and through her adrenaline-fuelled mind, she considered surrendering herself, falling to her knees and begging him to spare her life in return for her white flag, her compliance, her promise to never consider running again. As fast as her thoughts came, they were gone, and she ducked behind a tree as she gasped for stolen breaths, knowing he would always be there around the corner each time she closed her eyes.

Chapter Text

It had been days since her escape, and Nineteen had not slept.

Everywhere she turned, Smile was there, lurking in shadows and sending her running. She’d dozed a few times in trees but that hadn’t amounted to much sleep overall, and she was incredibly deprived of rest.

The ginger-furred creatures had passed her a few times in her moments of rest when she felt safe enough to stop running and she’d watched them guzzle on shining red berries from small patches of bushes until they were ready to continue through the forest. With curiosity, she had knelt before the bushes, reaching to pluck one of the fruits from a branch and placing it on her tongue. She had chewed on it, apathetic to her own possible death if it would turn out to be poisonous to a human. However, when the flavour had burst in her mouth, she had spat it out in shock that something could taste so… transcendent.

After getting over her initial surprise, Nineteen had picked a handful of berries and devoured them by the mouthful, addicted to the flavour on her tongue and relishing in the juices as they soothed her throat. She had sat for several minutes at each bush she could find until the ache of hunger ebbed away and she felt more alive than she had in her life, prepared to run with renewed energy when Smile inevitably showed himself.

**********

Roughly eight days after leaving the walls of the facility, she was collecting more of the delicious berries from a bush and sitting to eat them calmly when a voice rang out, loud and clear, across the clearing she was currently concealed in the edge of.

“Hey!”

Shit. Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit—

She cowered in the bushes, head down. She’d been seen , she was going back, but she couldn’t go back, not now, not after coming so close to civilisation that she could almost taste it—

Laughter filled her ears next, but it wasn’t like Smile’s, no. It was genuine laughter.

“Give that back!”

She peered from her place in the bushes and watched as a taller figure emerged into her line of sight, not paying attention to her in the slightest. Instead, he looked up at the sky with a grin on his face, and he looked kind, and she decided to watch on instead of retreating further into the forest. Blond locks fell into his eyes and he huffed, tucking them behind his ears as he kept watching the skies for whatever was so fascinating to him. She took in his clothes, a long, grey cloak over his shoulders that brushed the floor with each step, which he adjusted at the front with a silver clasp. Green clothes beneath the cloak did nothing to camouflage the sparkling emerald gem resting on his chest, circled by gold and hanging from a chain around the man's neck. His blue eyes turned back up to the sky and he spoke again through another laugh.

“No, I need to get wood, I’m not coming up there!”

There was a rustling and she jumped as a large black bird landed on the man’s shoulder clutching a hat in its beak. The man took it, pushing it back onto his head of golden hair, and stroking the chest of the bird before it flew away. His hat was striped with green and white, a single black feather sticking out of the green band and a wide brim shielding his face from the sun. He busied himself, whistling softly as he collected wood from a tree before turning away from Nineteen’s hiding place and making his way back across the clearing to a parting in the trees where there was a path, and she felt curiosity get the better of her.

She began to skirt the edge of the clearing he had walked through, remaining safely behind the trees as she followed him, hoping that the next time she saw Smile wouldn’t be while she was observing the stranger, for his safety. She knew she should turn away, but his was the first face she’d seen without aggression baring his teeth in a snarl and pulling his eyebrows inwards, or without fear widening his eyes and parting his lips.

When they reached the end of the path, she halted to watch him continue into a wide clearing where, in the centre, there was a large cabin on thick stilts. He climbed the stairs to the front door, checking the leaves of a plant in a large pot affectionately before entering the cosy looking home and shutting the door. She waited for a few minutes for him to exit again, but he seemed to be staying inside, so she sat on the forest floor.

A few birds, the same from earlier, landed on windowsills and roofs and squawked, but it was playful and peaceful and for the first time since she could remember she felt safe and protected, as though Smile wouldn’t be able to touch her if he came close to her again when she was near this man’s house. With that thought fresh in her mind, she scaled the tree she had been leaning on and looked over the landscape, searching for the walls of civilisation and spotting them in the distance to the left of the man’s house. She would go there tomorrow, it was decided, but for now all she wanted to do was sleep.

Nineteen was settled on a branch halfway down the tree, comfortable in the wide scoop of it and, she hoped, at an advantage if Smile tried to ambush her. Eyes drooping at last, she pulled her arms into her stomach to fight off the breeze as the sun set low and it got dark, the glow of the stranger’s cabin keeping her company as she finally drifted off, thankful for the darkness that caught her.

**********

“CAW! CAW!”

“Wha—”

“CAW! CAW! CAW!”

She frantically whipped her head around, finding one of the large black birds from the day before standing near the end of her branch, squawking angrily at her and looking at her with one beady eye.

“Shh! Stop—”

Two more of the birds landed on nearby branches, joining the first one in its angry cawing. She flapped her hands at the birds, doing nothing to stop their agitated verbal attack on her. More and more birds joined until she was surrounded by the sounds of them all, climbing down the tree and watching the birds begin to circle over the cabin, unrelenting in their noises. She watched curiously as the man from yesterday emerged looking disgruntled as he dragged a large sack onto the deck.

“Okay, okay, I know I’m late, calm down!”

From the sack, he threw a handful of small grains at the clearing, frowning when it landed in the snow, the birds continuing to circle overhead. Had he seen her? Were the crows acting strangely? He squinted and scanned the line of trees ahead of him.

“Who’s there?”

That was her cue to leave.

Nineteen turned on her heel and began to run back towards the clearing the man had been in yesterday, veering onto the path so she could run faster without tree roots beneath her feet, not caring that he could see her if it meant she would be gone faster. Running on more sleep was a lot easier, but her limbs still burned with fatigue as she heard him call after her. She was across the clearing and in the forest again, past the berry bushes she’d seen him by the previous day, civilisation barely on her mind as her adrenaline fuelled thoughts simply screamed at her to escape!

Nineteen turned back, scanning the forest behind her for the man, running faster and faster when she looked ahead of herself again. Before her was a clear path, unobstructed by branches and roots. It was clear - until she blinked. It was clear - until it wasn’t.

In his green hooded cloak and mask, Smile finally faced her head on for the first time since she’d escaped, the first time she hadn’t seen him as a blur in the shadows, and she skidded to a halt, a scream caught in her throat.

“No—!”

Chapter Text

Dizzying rays of gold fell through her eyelashes and burned away the cobwebs in her mind. The silence was comforting, acting almost as a padding between her brain and the headache that dug at her skull.

A shadow blocked the sunshine above her, allowing her pained squint to disappear, and she found the energy to look up at whatever was providing the helpful shade. Bright blue eyes met hers, shining with concern and framed by golden locks of hair under the brim of a striped hat.

Nineteen was upright within seconds, fear-filled umber meeting bemused cerulean as her mind ran in circles to figure out an escape.

“Be careful, mate,” said that kind voice from yesterday, now laced with heavy concern as his eyes swept over the restless movements of the girl’s hands digging into the forest floor. He held out a hand towards her, but she flinched from the action and moved back. A sharp pain stung her hand, and she hissed as she dragged it to her chest, feeling blood seep from the injury.

“There’s broken glass. I’ll help you.”

She lifted herself to her feet with a pained whine, stumps sore from their impact on the ground when she had fallen, and she was reminded of why she was there in the first place.

“Wait,” she rasped. The man paused, cautious not to startle her.

“What’s wrong?”

“Are you him?”

He frowned. “Who is he? Are you in danger?”

She choked in stuttered breaths. “Are you Smile? You both wear green and— and I’ve never seen his face behind the mask. So, are you Smile?”

Realisation seemed to dawn on the stranger’s face. “Dream?”

Nineteen was taken back to a time when Goggles and Flame had been stepping up in Smile’s absence, not long after he left, whispering about dreams of a prison cell and it clicked into place in her mind that they hadn’t been talking about their dreams, but of Dream, of Smile.

“Does ‘Smile’ wear a mask?”

“Yes,” confirmed the girl.

“And he’s in prison right now?”

Silence.

“He’s— is he not in prison any more?”

The lump in her throat pulled her head subtly from side to side, and at last she looked to the glass scattered around the forest floor below her, looking back up to find an outstretched hand, calloused from a lifetime of experience, beckoning her to take it. Her uninjured hand was small in his and the rough skin radiated with a reassuring warmth, which she focused on as he guided her through the glass shards and away from the area. He let go when he was certain she was safe, beginning to walk and talk to her so that she had no choice but to follow in order to hear.

“I’m Phil. Officially Philza, but you can call me Phil.”

“Phil.” She nodded, eyebrows furrowed in concentration until she looked back up at him. “I’ve never met anyone called Phil.”

“That’s okay, mate, you have now.” Phil reassured her. Then, “What’s your name?”

“Uh— it’s Nineteen. My name, I mean. Nineteen.”

Phil frowned in confusion, but decided he would ask her about the fact that her name was a number later.

“I’ve never met anyone called Nineteen,” he said, watching her face light up with a tired but genuine smile.

“That’s okay, Phil, you have now.”

Glad she was clearly less nervous, he continued.

“Why are you worried about Dream, Nineteen?”

“He’s…”

Did she trust him?

He looked down at her inquisitively, sensing uncertainty. “I have a long history with Dream,” he offered sympathetically. “He’s done unforgivable things to my kids, my friends, he just…” He shook his head, his sentence trailing off into silence.

“He did this to me,” Nineteen finally said nervously. The man, who had been lost in his thoughts, was now looking back at her.

“He hurt you?”

“He did worse to the others. I was only Nineteen, I could usually stay out of his way and he’d ignore me most of the time.”

“Others?” Phil settled on.

“There were nineteen of us- well, twenty at one point, but only for a little while, and now there’s just me.”

His eyes were wide. That probably explained the number-for-a-name situation.

“Twenty kids?! And Dream killed everyone else?”

She bowed her head at the tone in his voice; it was angry. Remembering long nights of yelling and pain after any of the Team got angry if she didn’t answer, she spoke quickly. “Not just him, he had Goggles and Flame, too. We all put up a fight, but they’re strong and skilled and we were no match for them in the end.”

They were on the path now, far more comfortable under Nineteen’s feet, and she listened to the sound of the cloak Phil wore brushing along the ground, sweeping small pinecones and brown needles from the trees away to settle elsewhere along the length of the path.

“Goggles must be George. That leaves Flame to be Sapnap.”

“Dream, George and Sapnap…”

“That’s right.”

The forest they were walking through opened out into the clearing where the man’s cabin stood, sturdy. He was at the top of the stairs, instinctively reaching to check his plant with a familiar fondness before realising he was reaching across her body, turning to apologise - to an empty space. At the bottom of the stairs, the girl stood with a worrying stillness, eyes unfocused. Phil was by her side once again, gently pushing her forwards with the same calloused hand that had guided her through shattered glass earlier. She firmly stayed put.

“Smile— sorry, Dream found me right before you did. He was there, I got knocked out, then you were there instead of him.”

“Did he hurt you any more than that, mate? Are you injured?”

“No, no, I just don’t want him to target you. If you know him, then he knows you, and he knows where you live.”

“That’s not an issue. He knows not to mess with me.”

“I’m the only one left, he’s going to come after me. What if he hurts you? What if he kills you to get to me?”

At last, understanding softened Phil’s already gentle demeanor.

“I promise that I won’t let anything happen to either of us, okay, mate?”

Eventually, dark eyes swept up the staircase, noticing the light dip where each step thinned, their centres worn down from years of daily use. Could she really set foot into this kind stranger’s home? At the feeling of another light push on her back, her brain offered an answer.

Yes, she could.

**********

“Let’s get you cleaned up, mate.”

The door swung open easily to show a room of smooth white surfaces, glossy and reflecting the light of the lamps in the ceiling that Phil turned on with a switch, leading her over to the large tub. It reminded her of the tubs that Dream had used to punish everyone with, kneeling people alongside it or even in it so that their heads could be pushed under the water with great ease. Hastily, she stepped backwards to leave, met by Phil’s chest.

“It’s okay, mate, I promise.”

She was already panicking, shaking her head as tears blurred her vision. Phil was holding her steady as her knees trembled, sending her swaying on the spot. Her stomach dropped through the floorboards, taking with it the moisture in her mouth and the little strength left in her legs, and she sagged against Phil.

“Why don’t I help you with it, okay? I’ll be right there, making sure nothing happens, and I’ll keep you safe, okay?”

“You won’t let me drown?”

Phil’s heart cracked at her voice, but he nodded as gently as he could. “I promise, I won’t let you drown.”

He set her down on the floor, bending to fill the tub and constantly checking the temperature. After a while, he turned and helped her stop shaking for long enough to undress and settle in the warm water, seeping through to her bones and calming the girl soon enough. Phil knotted her tangled mess of hair into a bun before doing the same to his own, lathering up both of their pairs of hands with soap.

Within a minute, the water was murky and near-opaque with dirt, so he rinsed his hands and pulled the plug, watching the water drain to leave a thin layer of dirt at the bottom which he washed away. Soon enough, the bath was filled with clean water again and they repeated the process, scrubbing gently at her skin until the water came away cleaner. As he worked, Phil was careful around the stumps that jutted from her shoulder blades awkwardly on either side of a long scar down her spine, which he inspected with tentative curiosity. Between the stumps, over her scar, was an ovate bruise coloured in purples and yellows.

“How did you get this bruise?”

She glanced up from her distorted reflection in the water, hiding her flinch as he lightly pressed on her spine. “I didn’t know I had one.”

“Oh. It looks pretty painful, mate.”

He observed the shape and size of the stumps, looking over to the wall where a mirror hung on the wall, then back to the girl. He would wait for that until she was more settled.

“Let’s get that eye cleaned up before it gets any worse, okay?”

**********

“You can stay here for as long as you want,” announced Phil, stepping aside so Nineteen could look into the room. The walls were painted white, but a lot of it was hidden by various pictures. 

A young blond boy holding a wooden sword and fighting a young man in his twenties with messy pink hair and sharp, drooping ears. A curly-haired brunet holding a curved wooden object with strings stretched across its length, smiling with mahogany eyes sparkling behind circular, gold-rimmed lenses. The blond with the pink-haired man, along with a strangely… transparent man who looked uncannily like the brunet, even down to the yellow jumper he was wearing, as well as Phil and two other boys who looked similar in age to the blond - one was shorter than the others, with short horns poking through his messy brown locks, the other awkwardly tall, with black-and-white skin and hair split down the middle.

“Whose room is this?” she asked, leaning close to the picture frame with the various people in it. Phil approached, pointing to the blond.

“This is my son, Tommy’s room. He doesn’t live here anymore, but I hope he’ll come to visit soon.”

Tommy. The name suited him, she decided.

“This is Wilbur, Technoblade, Tubbo and Ranboo,” Phil continued, pointing to each person in turn. “Techno’s my eldest, Wilbur’s next, then Tommy’s the youngest. Ranboo and Tubbo are his best friends.”

Her eye was drawn to Technoblade, the tusks protruding past his upper lip, and the unsettling feeling of dread in her gut made her nervous. Forcing her gaze back to Phil, she smiled softly, the feeling still unfamiliar on her lips.

“I’ll leave you to get some sleep, mate,” he said, turning on his heel and leaving the room. She watched him walk down the stairs and out of sight before closing the door as quietly as she could, turning back to the room he had been kind enough to let her stay in.

There was a wooden desk by the window, covered in various papers, which Nineteen put into a pile at the side, and pens that she quickly sorted into their various pots. The grey carpet, she noted, was soft under her feet, and she sat on top of the red blanket on the bed to swing her legs and brush against the floor.

She left the curtains open to let moonlight stream in through the window unfiltered, preferring to sleep with the light so that she would know from the moment she woke up that she was safe. She removed the thick, yellow jumper that Phil had given her, left in comfortable bottoms and a soft t-shirt that had been borrowed from the wardrobes of his sons. They were all too large for her, but she enjoyed the comforting smell of clean fabric and soap, the way it relaxed her thoughts and panic was relieving to someone who had suffered from it her whole life.

The blanket was by her chin as she settled in the bed, sinking into the mattress and huffing out a tired laugh at how comfortable it was. She was more comfortable than she had been in her whole life and she was happy to take full advantage of this moment of peace. When her eyelids slid shut, one behind a soft white bandage, sleep gladly pulled her below.

Chapter Text

The warm glow on Nineteen’s face from the sun was welcome and perfect to accompany the heat under the blanket. She kept her eyes closed for a moment longer, savouring the effects of the best night of sleep she had ever experienced in her life. Her uninjured eye slowly fluttered open to meet the sunshine.

She was met instead by a beady eye.

Phil was in the room within seconds, doubled over in laughter upon seeing her. She had screamed out at the bird on her pillow, inches from her face, and fallen from the bed tangled in the bright red blanket, squirming to be free from it.

“Crows are intelligent creatures,” he said, reaching to take her hand. She let him pull her to her feet.

“Crows?”

Phil scooped up the bird, letting it sit on his shoulder as he guided the girl from the room.

“These birds are crows. They’re needy as fuck, though, which is why this one came to harass you.”

Nineteen helped Phil drag the sack by the front door onto the deck and watched him reach inside to grasp a handful of the grain inside. She did the same.

“Just throw it, they’ll catch some of it before it even hits the ground.”

They did catch some of the grain, swooping down to ride the currents of wind beneath their wings, honing in on the food. She was sure they were just catching it by luck half of the time, but it was still impressive that they could even manage to catch anything before it hit the snow, falling through the powder to create small holes in the otherwise perfect blanket of white. They watched in silence as the swirling cloud overhead became a crowd of black on the ground, cawing and pecking at the snow and each other. Phil threw another handful a short while later and Nineteen watched in amazement as the crows hopped about, a rippling sea of shining onyx.

“I wish I could fly,” she said. Phil looked over at her in his peripheral vision.

“That should be enough for them, the greedy fucks,” he said, a chuckle in his throat.

**********

“Nineteen, could I talk to you?”

The girl, who had been curiously looking through the several shelves of books Phil had, looked over at the man. Saying nothing, she followed him from the room and sat awkwardly where he told her to. He settled across the room from her in a soft armchair.

“I think Dream gave you a potion yesterday.”

Her growing frown deepened.

“But I fell unconscious. I think he hit me in the head.”

Phil produced from his pocket two small bottles of liquid, faintly glowing in his hands and highlighting the angles of his face.

“With most potions, you can either drink them or absorb them through the skin.”

He downed one of the bottles, disappearing before the girl’s eye before he could look back at her.

“Phil?” she called nervously.

“I’m still here, mate. Give the potion a moment, it's only weak.”

She squinted, watching empty space for a few seconds longer before a hand and golden hair started to flicker into existence, followed closely by the rest of his figure. Phil sat in the same position he had been in before, smiling at the girl reassuringly.

“Now, if I just do this…”

He rolled back one of his sleeves, pale forearm turned to the ceiling. He poured the second bottle of liquid onto himself, resulting in the same effect from before, and Nineteen slumped in place, jaw slack with shock.

“So, what did he give me?”

Phil didn’t answer her question, instead responding with one of his own. “How long have you had those stumps, Nineteen?”

“For as long as I can remember,” she answered warily.

“How much have they been aching?” 

“A lot at the moment…” 

“How much have they grown since you’ve been here?”

Nineteen paused. Phil continued.

“May I look? I have a theory.”

His theory was confirmed before he even lifted her clothes, but he checked anyway. Sure enough, they were bigger, jutting outwards more than they had been when he'd first seen them as he helped her bathe the previous night. With a sigh, knowing what was to come, he pushed the clothes back down her spine and returned to his original position on the other side of the room.

"I don't want this to freak you out, okay, mate? If you feel overwhelmed, I'll stop."

She was nervous, but nodded, thinking he would touch her. Instead, he began to undo the shining clasp of his cloak. He'd been wearing it any time she saw him, but now he shrugged it from his shoulders and caught it in one hand, slinging it over his arm before taking in a breath. Something behind him expanded, easily wider than his arms would ever reach, even within the confines of the cabin. It took her a moment to realise that these things, covered from the top to the tips at the bottom in long, black feathers, were wings. It didn't take her much longer to figure out that these wings belonged to Phil.

"Why— How do you have wings?"

“I’m a hybrid, an avian one, so I have wings. I think that Dream has made you one too."

"How?"

"Those stumps on your back, they only just started growing. I'll bet my own wings that they're the starting point of yours, and the growth was triggered by that potion Dream gave you, if they've only just started."

She was stunned into silence. Phil neatly pulled his wings back into himself now that she'd taken them in.

"Nineteen, I think you're growing wings."

**********

The faint sound of popping and crunching bones rattled in the girl's skull and she sucked in another breath. Clammy hands wrapped around the opposite upper arms, fingernails digging into the skin there. Pain was all she felt as she struggled to decide whether it was more relieving to arch her back or hunch over in a ball. She was in the bedroom Phil had allowed her to stay in, kneeling on the floor with her forehead pressed to the red blanket. She had chosen to take off the top she wore in case it ripped when her wings grew.

"Nineteen?"

She rolled her head along the blanket slowly, just enough so that she could peer up at Phil with her one teary eye.

"I'm just going to get some snow from outside. D'you want to come downstairs and I'll hold it on your neck?"

She looked at the floor, shivering at the thought of the cold. Phil saw her hesitation, and offered an explanation. "It helped a lot when my wings grew."

He was helping her to her feet soon enough, letting her hold onto him on the way down. Phil picked up a small towel and disappeared outside for a moment, returning with snow. He sat on his squishy chair and helped her sit sideways in his lap, placing the soothing item on the back of her neck as promised.

Whenever a small, cold droplet traced it's path down her back, if it hit the base of one of her half-grown wings, she would sigh softly with the satisfaction the cold water gave her and she found it was easier to breathe, if only for a moment. The coldness helped to distract her from the pain, seeping into her bones and through her veins until every crevice of her body was freezing and she began to shiver.

"I'm sorry," she whispered, her need for comfort overriding her nervousness about Phil. He'd already proven himself to be trustworthy, she knew, but she had never had anybody trustworthy before, not anyone she could rely on.

"What for, mate?"

Huh?

"Being here…" 

"Mate…” he said softly, rubbing soothing patterns into the bare skin of her back, fingers twitching subtly every time they passed over prominent bones, a series of highs and valleys making the surface bumpy. "You don't need to be sorry for that. I let you stay because I wanted to."

Too weak to argue, especially with someone helping her ease her pain, she leaned her head on his shoulder and let her eye flutter closed, lashes brushing against the side of Phil's neck delicately.

**********

Sitting hunched over the bowl of the toilet, the girl coughed up more of nothing. There was some food to come up, at first, but now with every burst of pain through her body from the half-formed wings on her back she was simply heaving and choking on painful bile. Phil had pulled her hair into another bun, each one becoming ruined with sweat and needing to be redone. She was grateful for him.

"It's okay, the last bit is the worst. You're getting through it so well, mate."

Another sob echoed through the room before she was sick again, beginning to cry pitifully. Her nose stung and her throat ached, wings hurting too much to think straight. Against the skin of her back, they felt fluffy, which Phil explained was not all that different to real birds. She wasn't a real bird, though, which is why she was certain this wasn't supposed to hurt this much. If she were a real bird she wouldn't have been taken by Dream in the first place. She hated what Dream had done to her, all the pain he was causing.

Phil's snow-filled towels were less effective now, making her too cold despite the relief and the sweat that covered her body, so there was nothing he could do now but watch and reassure her. Luckily, her adult feathers would grow in much like adult teeth, pushing the baby feathers out to make room for themselves, and by the time it was over the residual pain would be gone, too. Then, she would be done, and she was so ready to be done. Both parties were pulled from their thoughts when Nineteen coughed up more bile, establishing without doubt that her pain was far from over at this point.

**********

Sun streamed in through the window and onto her face. Nineteen was on her front, clutching a pillow to her chest and resting her head on it. She felt unbelievably dizzy and tired, disoriented by the fact that she was asleep at midday. She pulled herself to her knees, still facing the headboard, feeling heavy. Oh, right. Wings.

"Phil?"

Silence. He was probably downstairs. She looked to each side of herself, to the wings weighing her down, and found it hard to believe that the beautiful, glossy, feathered appendages were on her own back. When she touched them gently, her hand and wing flinched away from each other, able to feel the sensations herself. This was most definitely real.

The wings remained drooped even as she bit her lip, hard, in concentration as she tried to move them. She wanted to pull them into herself like Phil did so that she could get out of bed and find him, but for the moment she sat, trapped, waiting for what was seemingly impossible to happen.

"Heh?!" An unfamiliar voice made her jump and her wings instinctively fluffed up much like the fur on the tail of a cat, drawing inwards slightly. "Phil, she's not asleep unless she sleeps sitting up!"

She turned to the source of the voice, scared of the deep and powerful sound.

So that's why the doors are so tall…

Towering easily above Phil's height at seven feet was a pale-skinned man, waist length braid a pretty shade of pale pink, rivalled only by the flowers in Phil's vases downstairs, and vibrant red eyes to match the blanket at her hips. His ears, inhuman, stuck out past his hair, several small, gold hoops hanging from each, a small green gem dangling from a chain that connected the priceless jewel to one of them. Her eyes flicked over to the photo on the wall of the whole family, the identical image of the piglin hybrid, albeit with fewer scars. Technoblade.

Phil appeared in the doorway, panting slightly.

"Oh, Gods, okay. Um, Techno, this is Nineteen. Nineteen, this is Technoblade."

Her eye locked with his almost glowing red ones, the same uneasy feeling from before settling in her stomach. His carefully constructed walls betrayed none of his emotions, a deliberately blank look.

"It's nice to meet you, Nineteen."

Chapter Text

Nineteen sat still on the floor, almost dozing from the feel of fingers adjusting her feathers to sit comfortably, pointed downwards. She was listening to Phil explain the last couple of days as he sorted the feathers on her wings from his place on the armchair.

"So your feathers took about two days to grow and Techno arrived this morning."

Technoblade sat on a sofa across the room, scrutinising Phil's work from afar. Nineteen studied him back. His eyes lowered to hers as though he knew she'd be watching him, and the lack of emotion in them chilled her to her core. She looked down at the floor and pulled a forgotten baby feather from her trousers, rubbing the soft item gently between the pads of her thumb and forefinger.

"I was asleep for two days?"

"Mm-hmm."

The room filled with heavy silence.

"That's a nasty bruise you've got. Who kicked you?"

She looked up sharply at the stranger. Technoblade’s expression was unreadable, as it always seemed to be.

"Kicked me?"

"Heh, yeah. Must have been a pretty hard kick. You’re lucky it didn’t break your spine if it left a bruise like that."

Technoblade had seen her back when she’d woken up, she recalled, understanding his question now. She cast her mind back to the battle outside the facility, how she'd woken up in the line of people, the only survivor of eighteen. Clearly, whoever had ‘killed’ her hadn’t done a good enough job.

"George," she said simply. Technoblade's eyes now showed incredulity, lifting to Phil's.

"George Lore, from the Dream Team?"

Phil's movements ceased momentarily.

"The one and only."

There was thick tension now as the older avian busied himself with her feathers again. As he finished, he pulled the hairband from her hair, letting the tangled mess fall down her back. He sighed hopelessly and she knew it would be difficult and painful to brush out the thick tangles.

"Can we cut it?" she piped up, hoping the change of subject would put a pause to the silent argument that was obviously going on around her. "I mean, it's still really tangled and I doubt those knots will ever come out." 

Phil's fingers were on her head now, brushing down until they met the knots. He pulled his hands away, then patted her on the back gently, pushing himself off the chair. 

"Sure we can, mate."

**********

Metallic clicks filled her ears as Phil used small shears to cut off chunks of hair at a time, leaving her head lighter. He had a mirror set before her, leant against the outer wall of the house as she knelt on the deck. Each clump of hair from her head felt like freedom and after Phil had done, he ruffled the short mess left on her head. It was unevenly cut with vague symmetry over her ears but the wild locks made her feel freer than she'd ever been before, as though the hair had tied her down to Dream's rules in painful knots. Phil separated the clumps that he’d dropped at his feet to the best of his ability and threw them over the fence of the deck so that the crows could take it for their nests.

She was still getting used to what she looked like, bony cheeks and a dark eye to match her hair. She was sure she wouldn't remember what she looked like with the forgettable features of her face, but was more confident that she'd recognise them as hers the next time she saw a reflection. Phil walked with her up the stairs to make sure she was aware of the controls of his shower before leaving her to clean her hair.

In the shower, she was glad that the water didn't feel bad on her wings as she scrubbed handfuls of soap into her hair, grimacing at the dirty brown of the suds she rinsed out onto the shower floor by her feet. Phil had tried washing her hair a bit when she had first arrived but wasn't successful due to the knots. Now, though, she felt truly clean and towelled her hair dry quickly, almost excited to see what it looked like when she next saw those forgettable features in the mirror.

Wearing the clothes that Phil had lent her due to her wings, she made her way back downstairs to see Technoblade with his head in his large, scarred hands, fingertips massaging his hairline where the pale peach of his skin met the pretty pink of his braided hair, far more intricate than she had first realised. Now, as she watched him silently from the doorway, she could see small amounts of gold jewellery woven into smaller braids that all bound together into his larger one, glistening softly in the light of Phil’s lamps and fireplace. Phil sat across the table from him, face similarly grave. They were both quietly talking between themselves but when she stepped on the creaky floorboard, they stopped immediately to look up at her.

"Why are you called Nineteen?" he asked, an almost crazed look in his eyes. The girl in question looked down to the long sleeve on her right arm, pushing it up to reveal small black writing tattooed on the inside of her wrist. It read 0019 , the memory of getting it done causing her pain even now, despite barely remembering the day itself. Sometimes, she could swear that it still twinged with a ghost of her pain. Both men peered closer at the number, jaws tightening in anger almost simultaneously, and Technoblade’s hand gripped his own right wrist absentmindedly as he stared from the window, lost in thought until he looked back to her with protective anger swirling in his eyes. "I'm not calling you that. You deserve a real name ."

Phil looked over. "Do you have any in mind?"

Instead of answering Phil’s question, Techno bent and lifted a book from the leather bag beside the table, showing the title - Mythology of Greek Gods and Goddesses - before speaking. “There’s a goddess in this book, the goddess of Perseverance even in hard times. She follows Kairos, the god of Opportunity, and helps people who give up opportunities to persevere,” When no one uttered a word, he continued. “She was exiled from her home when she was young, but she persevered for years until she was brought back and given the powers of a god and thus, followed Kairos.” 

His words hung in the air, implication heavy in his tone, and Nineteen watched Phil for a reaction, quickly met with a small smile. Technoblade spoke again.

“Nineteen, how do you feel about the name ‘Metanoia’?”

Chapter Text

"Techno wants you to learn to use your wings before he trains you to fight."

Metanoia looked over to the man in question. He was sat on the deck, eyebrows furrowed deep in concentration as he studied his game of solitaire.

"What does that involve? Learning to use my wings, I mean?" she asked nervously.

Phil stretched his own wings casually while he spoke. "I'm not going to make you do anything yet, don't worry. We just need to get you moving your wings until it's second nature, like an arm or a leg, then we can get you in the air."

“No. No, no, I’m not going up there,” she insisted, hands waving frantically with palms exposed as she backed away.

"Come on, mate, it's not bad after the first few times." He pulled his wings to his body. “Try tucking your wings in so you can walk around normally.”

Still hesitant, she began to try mirroring his actions with her own wings, but when they remained heavy on the ground, she realised her efforts were futile. This would take a while.

**********

"Come on, mate. I won't let you get hurt."

Metanoia pulled her wings further into her body nervously, looking up at the fluffy clouds where a crow occasionally passed with distant cries. She stood in the snow before Phil, shivering with heightening nerves at the thought of letting him do what he’d said he would.

She glanced helplessly at Technoblade in terror, trying to wordlessly ask him to get her out of this, please . However, he didn’t meet her gaze as he sat on the deck, apparently disinterested, with a book titled The Art of War written by someone whose name she couldn’t ever hope to pronounce, eyes behind gold-rimmed rectangular glasses furiously passing over the text for the umpteenth time since he’d arrived and, probably, since he’d had it. Judging by the worn pages that he carefully thumbed through, he had owned it for years . He had been quoting the book every so often over the past week, and she was certain she could practically recite the entire publication from memory by now. 

Pulling her eye away from Technoblade, she looked back up at Phil to see him smiling encouragingly. "Okay," she said finally, stepping closer and letting Phil wrap his arms around her. She was off the ground in seconds, gripping tightly on to Phil as the world shrank rapidly beneath her feet.

"Phil, it's too high, Phil, please, put me down—"

"It's okay, mate. If you get too close to the ground I'll be there to catch you."

Metanoia looked up at him briefly.

"How close is too close?"

He didn't answer.

"Phil—"

"Face the ground flat and spread your wings. You'll start gliding forwards when you've got it."

"Got what?! Phil, wait—"

Phil let go. 

The man quickly disappeared from her sight as she flailed, falling through the air and struggling to hear much over the whistling wind and her own heartbeat in her ears. This was very, very bad. In an attempt to slow herself down, she flipped in mid-air until eventually she managed to hold the position of a star steady and began to spread her wings as Phil had instructed. The wind below them ruffled the feathers slightly but her main concern was getting them spread and fighting against the drag of the wind to get them flat.

The ground was coming closer and she gritted her teeth, pulling down her wings until finally she felt a cool breeze brush her feathers and she opened her eyes to see the ground moving along rather than towards her. Technoblade began to cheer, book forgotten, as she circled the treetops surrounding the cabin and she laughed with him, all terror forgotten in her immeasurable relief.

She was coming closer to the ground now, realising with a jolt that she had no idea how to land. She had to figure it out quickly, she realised, coming in to touch down in the clearing and using the length of it to allow her the time to experiment. Metanoia began to lift her shoulders, coming to a 45° angle with the snow and intending to stick out her legs to catch her upright.

Instead, she caught her foot on the ground and found herself sprawled face-first in the snow. Two sets of laughter rang in her ears and she rolled onto her back to stare up at the sky, face white with the already-melting powder. She was pulled to her feet by Phil, shaking the snow from her body.

"You did really well, mate," he praised, helping her to brush the snow from her feathers. "This time, you want to flap your wings a bit when you come in to land and that way you'll get your legs in front of you without tripping."

Metanoia nodded, more prepared for the ascent as Phil took hold of her, flying her higher and higher.

"Try getting into position with your head pointed at the ground and swoop into being horizontal this time, okay, mate?"

The girl nodded, not expecting to be released at that point and taking a moment to thrash in the air again. Pointing herself towards the ground with her wings out was easier and she felt the change from diving to gliding as the wind beneath her wings began to push them upwards rather than past them.

Ready to try her landing again once she was closer to the earth, she flapped her wings once to right herself, looking down and realising she had lifted herself far too high from the ground. Her legs gave away beneath her when her feet hit the ground and she winced with a hiss at the electric shocks that ran up her limbs. Phil was beside her soon enough, helping her to her feet once again.

"You sort of want halfway between the two."

She nodded, gripping him tightly, and they flew towards the clouds once more. They practiced again and again until she was able to land with few mistakes. By the time the sun began to set over the trees that she had once hidden in, her wings were aching but she wanted nothing more than to be in the golden glow of the sky again.

**********

If she had thought Technoblade was intimidating before, it was nothing compared to how he looked now. Instead of his usual, intricately decorated braid, his hair was in a simple bun, a few locks falling around his ears, which stood upright as they quivered almost excitedly, now bare of their usual embellishments. In each scarred hand he held a sword, one of which he was holding out for her to take. In Metanoia’s grasp, it was heavy and pulled her shoulders to sit awkwardly lopsided, but in his it acted as a backbone, forcing his already excellent posture to perfection and strengthening him as though it were simply an extension of his arm.

She shook her wings to relieve herself of the nervousness she felt and as she did so, a single feather landed between the pair. Technoblade’s eyes followed it and he stepped forwards to pick it up, tucking it into the thick fabric around his middle that cleanly separated his puffy, white shirt and dark trousers.

“Your goal is to take your feather back from me. When you have done that, you have won.”

She gaped at him incredulously.

“That’s not fair, Technoblade, you’re so much taller than—”

She blinked, finding herself staring up at the clouds she had flown amongst earlier that morning before breakfast. Her breaths left in weak wheezes.

“‘Attack him where he is unprepared,” Technoblade started, holding out a hand to help her up. She gratefully took it, hoisted to her feet, only to be knocked to the ground again a second later, “‘and appear where you are not expected’. Sun Tzu. Use the element of surprise as an advantage, or you’ll be killed in seconds. Every opponent you fight will be at a vertical advantage, so get used to it and learn to make them underestimate you.”

She opened her mouth to protest, deciding against it when Technoblade raised one eyebrow. She eyed the hand he held out again, standing on her own and struggling to stand in the same position as the towering man who had already knocked her down twice in her first minute of training.

Twice became thrice as she looked down at her feet, sword somewhere behind her when she landed in the imprint she'd already left in the powdery snow.

The fourth time he knocked her over, Phil came outside.

"Maybe it's time to teach Metanoia more than the art of being knocked over, mate."

His tone betrayed his amusement, but Technoblade understood and turned back to her. She flinched heavily when he adjusted her position, expecting to end up face-first in the snow this time, but he simply chuckled.

"Oldza is right, I need to train you more in the art of war than the art of falling on your ass—"

"Hey—!"

"—so, I'll be teaching you to defend yourself against attacks," he continued, paying no mind to Phil's outburst, gripping her hand tightly around the sword to make sure she had it securely. He walked back to his original position before her, striking the handle of his own weapon with his hoof, catching it when it flew into his hand, clicking softly against the golden rings he wore.

He outlined how he was intending on attacking, showing a few angles to defend from, before slowly working through a mixture of all of them and gradually increasing the frequency and speed of attacks. She was getting quicker, but it was exhausting and Technoblade hadn't even broken a sweat.

After several minutes she began to notice the pattern he used to attack, expecting each one and matching it almost like a dance. He seemed almost bored and her eyes flicked to the feather in his belt each time he lifted his arm to attack her from above. The next time he did, she knocked the sword from his hands before it reached hers and darted towards him. He tried to grab her but she was already past and he picked up his sword with a small smile.

“Clever. You getting bored?”

“Oh, no. I think you’re just getting lazy.”

She held up a single black feather, spinning the quill between her thumb and finger thoughtfully.

“I learned the pattern you used to fight. It’s like you said, right? If you know your enemy and yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles.’”

Technoblade looked to his own midsection, noticing the feather in his belt of fabric was absent, and he grinned back up at her and laughed heartily, genuinely, freely. It was deep and loud .

“You’ve got a lot to learn, Metanoia, but you win this time.”

He took her sword from her hands and sheathed them both in their discarded scabbards, following her inside with a promise to teach her strategy while they ate, explaining how it would irritate Phil and quoting Sun Tzu as he went.

**********

One of Metanoia’s favourite ways to spend her time around training was to fly around, high in the sky, and watch the world below her. Today, a month since Technoblade had arrived, had started out like any other day so far, and was currently looking as though it would end that way, too. She scanned the gaps in the trees over the path Phil had built between the snowy biome and the green one, faltering mid-flight when she saw people . There were three of them, walking towards Phil’s cabin, and she stopped in a tree to breathe, questions and scenarios filling her mind as the distant voices of the strangers echoed through the forest. She needed to get Phil and Technoblade, she realised, knowing she wouldn’t be able to fight these people on her own with limited training and strength, flying back towards the cabin as quickly as possible.

“Phil!”

“Yes, mate?”

He appeared from the room full of bookshelves, around the corner from view. At the sight of her pale face, his smile dropped and he strode over quickly to ask her what was wrong.

“People, there are people. Three of them, coming this way. I can’t fight them on my own, not if they’re with Dream. What if it is Dream? I didn’t see their faces, oh gods- ”

“Calm down, ‘Noia, let’s go see if we can spot them and if they’re dangerous we’ll know by the time they get here.”

She nodded, wrapping her arms around her middle in an attempt to stop the shaking and following Phil. Technoblade was at the bottom of the stairs, understanding the situation, sword at his hip already. She followed the pair down the steps and pointed wordlessly down the path. They were all watching, concealed by bushes, before both Phil and Technoblade stepped from safety.

“It’s the Blade!” called a voice.

“Hello, Theseus,” responded Technoblade, voice booming out across the path towards the group, arms spread wide with his palms facing the clouds.

Theseus?

A blond boy, familiar only from the pictures in his room, walked into view, a cocky yet genuine smile plastered on his face. His hair was longer than in the photo, tied into a short ponytail at the base of his skull, but he was wearing the same red and white shirt, along with the same green bandana (though it now had a purple patch on one side from one too many tears in the fabric). 

Two others followed. She recognised both from the photo - Tubbo and Ranboo, Tommy's best friends, according to Phil - and yet Tubbo looked uncomfortable as he approached, the complete opposite to the permanently grinning boy from the photograph.

I thought they were all friends? What happened?

He was wearing a fluffy coat the same shade as his dark hair, which covered his eyes so much that she wasn't certain he could see. Distorted and twisted skin covered half of his visible face and curved to avoid his chin. It was a burn scar, she realised, recognising the mutilated skin from her years at the facility. She was glad to have been Nineteen, glad that it made her smart enough to stay quiet, especially around Sapnap. The man's usual choice of punishment for acting out had been to hold the person in question by the arms tightly as his hands slowly heated up, leaving sizzling blisters to outline the shape of his powerful hands and, after some time, scars. It was an everlasting reminder of why they all behaved.

Tubbo was not much taller than her, roughly halfway between her and Phil, and despite his obvious hesitation he stood upright, though that could simply be his preparedness to run for it. Ranboo, however, loomed over his companions (even Technoblade) with a much more comfortable expression on his two-toned face, casually slouched with hands in his pockets. When he held out his hand for Metanoia to shake, she noticed a green and brown ring on his finger, and glancing at Tubbo again, she could see a similar black and purple one on his horn. 

She shook his hand cautiously, ring cool against her palm, but he didn't seem to notice her wariness, tail (tail?) curling as he spoke in an accent similar to Technoblade’s.

"I'm Ranboo, this is Tubbo. Who are you?" 

She smiled hesitantly. "I'm, uh, Metanoia. It's nice to meet you Ranboo." She glanced over to the blond, who had somehow already managed to steal a golden apple from Technoblade’s pocket, and was running away from the piglin hybrid. She already knew who he was, but couldn't bring herself to believe it unless someone else told her. "Who's that?" 

Ranboo let out a quiet trill, dissimilar to any noise she'd heard a person make before, but she still recognised the sound as amusement.

"That's Tommy."

Chapter Text

"Can you fly?" asked the blond abruptly, eyes twinkling pale blue. Metanoia's wings pulled in naturally as she self-consciously nodded. Tommy gasped, dragging her through the front door to stand on the deck. She squinted against the beginnings of the sunset.

"Do a flip," Tubbo yelled out, standing beside the impossibly tall Ranboo with their little fingers hooked together. Tommy nodded eagerly in agreement with the brunet. Metanoia took off, nervously thinking about what she could do as she flew higher into the air.

Staying in one spot, she turned back to the trio and leaned backwards at the moment she stopped flying, tucking herself tightly into a ball as she flipped backwards again and again on her way down towards the ground, catching herself by spreading and flapping her wings once to swoop upwards before she reached the snow. Tommy cheered as she landed again and she breathed out a sigh of relief. Everything was going well so far.

"Can you fly me around?" he asked, bouncing on the spot with child-like excitement. Metanoia didn't answer, unsure. She wanted them to like her, right?

Right?

So, she nodded at Tommy and he leapt into action, promising to be right back and disappearing into the cabin. When he was back, he carried a coil of rope that he'd found in a utility cupboard. As he tied one end around her waist, he spoke again.

"This is so exciting, man, Phil never flew me around when I was younger," he explained. Tugging on the loop around her waist, he seemed happy, so tied another loop at the other end of the rope and led her to the fence on the deck. She found herself standing on the outside of it, Tommy near the ground and sticking his foot into the loop so that he could hang below her, gripping the rope tightly with both hands.

"Ready?" she asked, masking her nerves.

"Ready!"

Here goes nothing…

They were off. She found it difficult to keep him above the ground first, flapping her wings twice as hard as usual and eventually flying higher and higher until Tommy swung behind her above the trees. She kept her direction constant so that Tommy's placement in relation to her would be too.

Now above the trees, she stopped moving in any direction and allowed Tommy to swing backwards and forwards around her like a pivot. He was screaming with laughter until it ran cold and fearful, sending the girl higher as the added weight left the rope to dangle freely. Tommy had fallen, he was plummeting towards the treetops, and she yelled after him as she began her rapid descent.

Metanoia's wings were tucked tightly into her body to accelerate the dive she had fallen into and Tommy's figure became larger the closer she got. Swooping beneath him, she was winded when Tommy landed on her back, but his weight was now a comfort if it meant he was safe and no longer falling to his potential death.

Victory was short-lived, though, when a sharp tug at her waist forced her to a stop. Tommy hadn't established his grip on her shoulders yet, so she desperately strained to keep moving when she watched Tommy fall into the clearing in front of Phil's house, powerless to stop his descent. She glanced below herself, the loop that Tommy had tied for himself now hooked around a sturdy branch of a tree, tethering her in place. She was stuck, incapable of doing anything other than to watch Tommy fall towards a life full of crippling injury, or worse, a life cut short.

A dark blur swept over the snow in the clearing, taking Tommy with it, and she followed the shape as Phil sent a powerful gust of wind in her direction and came to a stop a short distance away at her side, wings keeping the pair from the ground. Tommy was cheering, Phil's elbows under the teen's armpits with his hands fisted by his chest, keeping him safe from plummeting.

"Yeah! Philza Minecraft, the bravest man I've ever met! Philza Minecraft—"

The thumping in her chest sent blood rushing past her ears, drowning out the cheers as she met Phil's eyes. He was unfazed by the hyperactive behaviour of the boy in his arms, icy blues almost painful to look into. Wordlessly, Phil turned and flew to the ground, putting Tommy down and pushing his taller figure to sit against one of the horizontal logs that supported the deck of the cabin, glancing briefly back up at the girl now perched on the treetops. Metanoia fumbled to untie the rope and her eyes had already begun to sting when she landed on the ground to lean next to Tommy, awaiting her punishment while she anxiously coiled and uncoiled the rope, subtle warmth building where the rough material moved along her fingers.

"Tommy, why did you think this would end in anything but disaster?"

The blond bowed his head, fluffy hair in his eyes.

"I'm sorry, Phil—"

"You should be, Tommy. I never flew with you, especially not like that. Why did you think someone smaller and younger than me would be a better option when I'm saying no?"

Metanoia's panic was building rapidly. Her heart caught in her dry-cotton throat, blocking the airway, so she gripped the rope tighter. She held it too tightly, wincing when she pulled hard and left her palm red from friction.

"Metanoia."

She looked up, realising she'd missed Tommy's lecture, and with it, her chance to prepare for her own. The boy in question was halfway up the stairs, apologetic smile tugging on his lips before a thunderous look from Phil sent him scurrying inside without another glance.

"I'm sorry—"

"What were you thinking?"

None of the usual warmth that Phil radiated was between them now. He was colder than the snow beneath their feet.

"I just wanted them to like me," she whispered.

"You think they would have liked you if you had hurt Tommy?"

Ouch .

Phil sighed.

"If I hadn't been there, you would've injured him badly. It was a stupid thing to do after I've told you what you should and shouldn't do with your wings."

"I'm sorry."

"'Sorry' doesn’t cut it, Metanoia. Why did you hear Tommy talk about me never flying him around and yet decide to do it yourself? Don't you think I had a reason? I have had years, a lifetime of experience with these wings, you have had a month!"

She shrunk away at his voice. Phil was mad. He was mad at her. She had made Phil mad.

"Why did you have to try to defy all the logic and lessons I've given you? Not only with a living being, but with my son?"

Tears threatened to spill down her cheeks but she refused to let them; couldn’t let them. Not here, not now.

"If you had hurt Tommy, if I'd known that you would hurt Tommy, I never would have taken you in. He is my son, he takes priority over anything ."

Don’t cry, don’t cry, don’t—  

“I’m going inside. Take some time to think about what would've happened if I wasn't here to clean up your mistakes.”

As the door clicked shut, a sob finally spilled from her mouth. Her wings curled around her as she sank to the ground, hands coming up to clutch at the dark feathers. She was tempted to rip them away. She would deserve it.

Phil's words rang in her ears. I never would have taken you in . She could make this easy for him, easy for both of them. Her purpose had simply been to fill the gap left by his sons, and now that Tommy was back, alive ( no thanks to you, her mind reminded her with a sharp hiss), he had no use for her. He had two of his sons back. She stood up, wincing as the movement ripped out a few feathers, and she flapped her wings once, then twice, before jumping into the air and letting them carry her away. Away from Tubbo and Ranboo, away from Tommy, away from Technoblade. 

Away from Phil.

**********

“Mate?” Phil called, two steaming mugs of cocoa held carefully in his hands as he walked outside, wings drooping slightly with guilt. “You never came in, and I just wanted to apologise for yelling at… you…” 

The words died in his throat as he saw the empty space in front of him, and the two mugs dropped from his hands with a crash. Hot liquid spilled across the ground, melting the snow in its wake.

“Metanoia?” His only answer was the wind whistling in his ears, but he knew exactly what had happened. 

Dropping to his knees beside the stilts that held up the cabin, exactly in the place he had left her, he scrambled to pick up one of the black feathers scattered around the area before he could risk the wind picking it up. No footprints trailed away in any direction and there was no sign of struggle in the snow, so he knew she hadn’t been taken by Dream. Only one option was left, and he felt sick with the realisation that he had caused it, that he could have prevented it .

She was gone.

Chapter Text

Metanoia was far from Phil's cabin, the landscape below her now green and shiny with dew in the glow of the moon. Her wings ached from the cold, from a day of exhaustion, both physical and emotional, followed by her frantic flight from the family. She wanted to go back, wanted to turn and fly until her wings couldn't handle it, wanted to be back in the warmth of the cabin. It wouldn't feel right, though. The memory of his tense jaw, anger freezing the ocean eyes over, made her remain with her back turned to them all. With the exception of his second son, Phil now had his family and close friends back under the same roof. She was superfluous.

Now, she could see civilisation, walls that had looked almost small and insignificant before now towering above all the trees around them by what looked like miles, sturdy and unrelenting in their powerful presence. She came in to land now, giving her wings a final stretch before tucking them neatly behind her back. The long primary feathers ghosted along the ground as she walked but as she approached the walls that melted into the night sky, it was the least of her worries.

Could she go in?

Goosebumps raised on her skin as the wind whipped around her, ruffling her feathers and leaving them at awkward angles. It was cold and she was now regretting leaving, if only for the fact that she would be warmer at the moment had she stayed. As another gust of wind nearly threw her back into the air, she decided that she would reconsider her options tomorrow once she'd slept somewhere warmer, tucking her chin into her chest and approaching the entrance to civilisation. It was dark inside, most likely because everyone was asleep at this time, so she kept her head down as she walked through the unguarded entrance.

Then, she stopped.

Jaw dropped as she looked up, she crumbled to her knees, desperate for some way to explain why before her was a gaping crater in the ground where there should have been homes, why there was destruction where there should have been community. What had happened here?

Another rush of wind reminded her why she had come inside in the first place when her hands hit the ground, so she stood and skirted the edge of the crater, searching the opposite side for platforms and recesses that could be considered shelter. Why hadn't Phil told her that civilisation was in ruins? Why was it in ruins in the first place?

In her trek around the edge of the crater, she noticed a stone structure that was half buried in the ground and as a result looked simply like a raised platform littered with holes, which she peered down. It was a room. Confused, she looked around it, searching for a way in, spotting a gaping hole that was concealed from the outside by overgrown vines. She would stay in this room.

Once she had found the entrance and made her way inside, she took the chance to look around. The walls were covered in scratches, and messy words were carved into the stone. An abandoned sword sat in the centre of the room, leaning against a half-charred chair, and it was covered in—

Covered in—

Covered in blood . 

She shrank away from the weapon, backing slightly into the corner to find a large piece of fabric, black and yellow at the top not unlike the walls surrounding the wreckage of civilisation, with blue, white and red stripes to the bottom. A flag?

This room would be her only chance at warmth for the night, but the sword made her sick to her stomach. After a brief inspection she concluded that the handle was clean and used it to carry the sword out of the room and back to the surface, dropping it beside the visible outer walls of the room before hurrying back inside and allowing herself the chance to look more closely at the room, fingers brushing the words engraved into the wall.

I heard there was a special place…

Whose blood had been on that sword?

Where men could go and emancipate…

Was it the person who had left civilisation in ruins?

The brutality and the tyranny of their rulers…

What was the meaning of that flag?

Well, this place is real, you needn't fret…

Where had everybody gone?

With Wilbur, Tommy, Tubbo, fuck Eret…

Her blood ran cold. She recognised those names.

It's a very big and not blown up L'Manburg…

" My L'Manburg… " she whispered softly, stumbling backwards into the seat. Phil must have known about this. His sons, his son's best friend, had built the very room in which she was standing, carved these words into the stone. Who had blown it up? Why had it been blown up?

The flag on the wall was in her hands now, wrapped around her shivering figure in the next moment. She was still wearing Phil's older clothes, better for the pair of avians since they accommodated their unique needs for large holes that their wings could fit through. They didn't help much against the windy cold, though, especially since she wore only oversized under-layers; Phil had been planning to travel to their most local village with her to get her some better-fitting clothes of her own.

Metanoia curled up in the corner of the cubic room and pulled the damaged flag around her shoulders more tightly. She could make it work, she decided, at least until she was ready to find a village to hopefully seek refuge in - preferably not the one that Phil went to from time to time, though. She knew the questions in her mind would go unanswered for a long time, maybe even forever, assuming she lived long enough. The thoughts did nothing to soothe her thumping head but she was too exhausted to allow herself to ponder them now, slumping into the unyielding stone as restless sleep took her at last.

**********

Since her arrival four days ago, Metanoia had eased quickly into life alone.

A small patch of vegetables near the wall had survived, lucky to have escaped the wrath of the explosives that had caused this destruction. She was sure the owner of the patch had considered themselves less fortunate to have owned the home attached to it, but their bad luck had been the turning point of hers when she discovered that the potatoes they had been growing were well-grown and ready, if Technoblade had taught her anything. There was a forest nearby, the plants of which she could now categorise as dangerous or safe after Phil had shown her his books, but she decided to take advantage of this person's vegetable patch first.

In the daylight the morning after arriving, she had seen a black stone grid to contrast the pale blue of the sky, held up by the walls as they expanded over the entire area, thicker at each overlap in the pattern to form platforms. A trip up there had shown chests nailed down to each platform and in each chest there were small amounts of grey powder that she didn’t dare touch. A few fires burned away in the crater below, a horrifying drop from this height, sending smoke rising into the air to deceive anyone on the outside looking in into thinking that the walls stood around people living happily and healthily, not a border-to-border symbol of war.

Her food and water supply were certainly not as much of an issue now with the nearby forest, so as she stepped down precarious stone that vaguely formed steps at the edge of the crater, armfuls of berries and mushrooms, she had that brief thought, that everything was going well, that she was adapting well to her situation of being alone, that she didn't want or need another person. She had established a small pile of soft things in the corner to sleep in, which she was looking forward to curling up in after putting her food in the chest that she had acquired from the grid above the large crater - she had discovered that the nails holding it in place were rusted and redundant, leaving it loose.

When she stepped inside, though, she stopped. Sitting on the semi-blackened chair and staring at the words on the wall was a man, dark curls brushing the collar of his trench coat as he hummed a slow tune, completely oblivious to the girl behind him - or so she thought.

"Hello," he said, not turning. Several of the items in her arms scattered across the floor and he stood up. He was tall, shorter than Technoblade but taller than Tommy, towering above her. His hands had been in his lap, the left now stuffing itself into his deep pocket and the right lifting to his face, coming away a moment later, and Metanoia watched as white smoke rose with the man's deep exhale, curling around the ceiling as it searched for the small holes to escape through.

"I knew someone had been here."

His accent was like cleanly cut glass. He turned to face her now and he was too familiar, the curls of mahogany (albeit with the white streak in his fluffy fringe), the gold-rimmed glasses settled on his nose, the dark eyes that were now scrutinising her, sizing her up. She felt frozen. The boots on his feet thumped heavily on the floor as he took one confident step forward, closing the gap that it would have taken her three to do, and she backed into the sharp corner between the wall and the opening into the crater. It dug into her back, pressing a crease into the skin between her wings.

"I'm Wilbur," he said finally, putting a small item between his lips before offering his hand to shake, which she did with hesitation. His slender fingers were long, easily encasing her whole hand, and she wondered how he ever managed to do anything when there was so much of each finger to control and account for. After he'd pulled away, the man removed the item from his mouth, and she watched as the same smoke from before came out in a thin stream when he tipped back his head, long neck bared. She wanted to ask him what that thing was that made him breathe smoke like that, but her throat had gone dry and she was nervous in his unstable presence.

Luckily for her, he had sensed how thrown off balance she had been, so continued. "I come here about once a week, so you must be a fairly new addition."

He watched her expectantly and she realised he was expecting an answer, nodding as he repeated the action from before with that small item between his fingers. When he blew out the smoke this time, she reached for the object. Wilbur handed it over.

"It's a cigarette. I never used to smoke, but some things change."

It was paper wrapped around something brown, crunching softly when she squeezed it lightly. One end of it was burning slowly and the miniscule amounts of smoke smelled strange, so she handed it back to the man. Expecting him to leave, she walked across the room after sending him a small smile, but he sat next to her when she settled in her pile of things. She looked over, confused.

"I have nowhere else to be."

She looked back down at her lap. All the soft things she had found were flags on the walls, so she handed over the most easily accessible one to Wilbur and he sent a grin her way, continuing to smoke and talking occasionally. She had eased into life on her own, enjoyed it, even, but that didn't mean she had to continue alone.

**********

"If we make a fire and put this over it we can make more diverse foods than plain mushrooms, you know."

Wilbur had brought a few things from wherever he had been keeping the tent he stayed in, spending a full day out to get them, and it had made it a lot easier to light up the room and make food for the last couple of days since. When she sat down to watch the pot of brewing mushroom stew, Wilbur dragged over the chair.

"Your wings are a mess."

She looked up at him, faux hurt twisting her features.

"Oh, come on, it's fine. I knew someone else who had wings, I can help you out if you want me to."

She remained still. His voice softened from the joking tone to a more sensitive one.

"I know it's quite an intimate thing, requires a lot of trust, so I understand if you don't want me to. The offer's there, though."

She looked up at him, the impossibly tall man, and realised that she trusted him immensely. Whether that was due to the fact she'd heard about him before he'd shown up remained unknown, but what she did know was that he was a good companion (and, dare she say it, friend?), and that she trusted him more than enough, even after such a short amount of time. Eventually nodding, she turned back to the pot of stew and settled as he began to brush through the feathers and correct their positions, shaking loose any that needed to come out. He talked about the person he knew with wings. She knew it was Phil.

"He's older than me, really nice, but we don't see eye to eye at the moment."

As Wilbur poured out his heart, his past, she listened with undivided attention. Wilbur missed Phil, that much was obvious, but he seemed to be holding himself back from going to him. Phil missed Wilbur, too.

The way she saw it, she was a connection between the two. Maybe Phil would always hate her, maybe he would never forgive her, never want to see her again, but he did want to see Wilbur, and Wilbur wanted to see him, too. The way she saw it, she was a link. The way she saw it, she could help them find their way back to each other.

The bubbling stew broke Metanoia from her thoughts and Wilbur from his monologue.

"Sorry, I got a bit carried away there," he said, coughing awkwardly at his vulnerability. "Your wings are done."

They had been done for quite a few minutes. Wilbur had been absently smoothing them, but it had felt quite relaxing for both parties, so she didn't mind. He stood from the chair, spooning the meal into the bowls he had brought with him. They began to eat in silence and the thoughts from earlier still rang through her mind. When Wilbur stood to take her bowl, she stood up too, nerves sending her stomach through the floor and her heart to her throat. He gave her a concerned look.

“Are you okay?”

She couldn’t sit and do nothing while Wilbur and Phil were both clearly in pain, not when she could change it. He had earned her trust by now, too.

“Wilbur,” she said, swallowing thickly. His eyes went wide when she spoke; it had been the first time she had done so since they had met a week ago. For the person who had quite literally done all the talking, he was pretty quiet now.

“My name is Metanoia.”

Chapter Text

It had been hours.

Metanoia's throat was hoarse from talking so much after a week of silence, even through the sips of water she had between sentences. Wilbur was sitting next to her, repetitively smoothing the feathers on her wings again and again as she spoke rapidly. Everything spilled out, things she had never even realised herself before the words passed her lips, and Wilbur was dutifully silent as she talked.

She told him of her only memory from before she was at the facility, a sunset and warmth and bright laughter from someone who she cared for, someone who cared for her. She told him of the facility, Dream’s absence, his unstable nature since returning. She told him of the sleepless nights in the forest, how she’d never slept as deeply as she had until Phil took her under his wing, both literally and metaphorically.

She told him of Technoblade, how he insisted she call him ‘Techno’, how she never did because she didn’t want to disrespect him. She told him of her training, of The Art of War, of Phil’s unrelenting kindness and generosity when she couldn't keep food down in the beginning. She told him of the way Phil’s gaze lingered on the family photographs on walls and cabinets when he dusted them.

She told him of Tommy and his friends, how energetic and lively they had been when she met them, and then came the worst part, the most fresh wound, bleeding crimson with vulnerability and blood from the crescent indents in her palms. Wilbur wiped away escaping tears sooner than she could as she recounted the way she had almost hurt Tommy, how scared she had felt, how angry Phil had been. The pads of his thumbs were warm as they smeared droplets across her cheekbones.

“He said he never would have taken me in, so I left and I came here, but I didn’t know that it was blown up. I couldn’t go back, not when he was so mad at me, I couldn’t wait there just so he could come kick me out himself—”

“Hey, hey, stop, Metanoia, don’t do that to yourself.”

It was the first time that he’d spoken since she had sat down next to him, curled up and sharing their body heat under the largest flag from above the entrance to the nation. He was stroking her dirty hair, not caring how gross it must have felt beneath his fingers.

“It’s true—”

“It’s not, I promise. Phil would never do that. I know as well as you do that he says things that he regrets when he’s angry, but he’s only angry because it involves the people he loves, and that includes you.” he assured. Metanoia’s eyes stayed teary and she looked away. Wilbur sighed. “If he had been intending on kicking you out, he would’ve done it, not tried to educate you, even if he was doing it in a hurtful way.”

She shook her head.

“I’m not going back, I only told you because there’s still a chance for you two to work it out.”

“There isn’t a chance for us, too much water under that bridge.”

“He misses you, Wilbur.”

He fell silent then. She frowned to herself, worried that he was mad.

“I’ll make a deal, ‘Noia.” Confused, she urged him to continue. “I’ll go back if you come back with me.”

“You want me to walk you home?”

“No, you’re not understanding,” he said. “I want you to walk us home. As in, you’re staying.”

Metanoia huffed. “Phil doesn’t like me!”

Wilbur sighed. “Do you want me to drag you back?”

She gritted her teeth. “Fine, I’ll come back with you, but when Phil doesn’t want me there, you have to promise to stay with him.”

“Deal.”

Metanoia sighed; at least Wilbur and Phil would be reunited, even if that would be the only good thing to come of it. She was willing to deal with Phil turning her away if it meant she had pushed the estranged father and son in the right direction. She was willing to deal with it if she had done some good.

“Let’s go tomorrow,” Wilbur decided.

“Alright, Wilby,” she returned, smiling slightly when he turned red. Even with his embarrassment, neither of them moved, too comfortable in the close warmth.

“Dream is the reason I’m alive.”

She tilted her head. The sound of that name had sent chills down her spine, to the tips of her wings. “He is?”

“He is. I used to like him, thought he was good, that I had been wrong about him before, because he saved me from hell."

She remained silent, an invitation to say more.

"What he did to you… I’m just mad that I didn’t realise sooner that he’s playing some higher role in everything, how awful he is. He’s a puppet master. He saved me from hell, but he put you through it so much that it’s all you know.”

“I would feel good about someone who saved me from hell too. It’s okay, Wilbur.”

Neither of them spoke much more. Nothing more needed to be said.

**********

Wilbur had estimated that the journey would take them a day, starting from the sunrise and ending when it began to set again. They took it in turns to carry the heavier things they were bringing, setting everything down briefly to eat an apple each when the sun was directly above them and they were about halfway back. She had managed to push away her apprehension for the most part, but the reality of what they were doing became clearer with each step and it was getting harder to swallow the nerves behind a smile. For Wilbur, she was happy to be there to support him, but she was unsure about how far she would have come if Wilbur hadn’t insisted and put her in a corner.

This was such a bad idea, coming with Wilbur. She should have made him go then left L’Manburg the moment he had disappeared from sight so that she couldn’t be found. Something made her want to stay at Wilbur’s side, though, and as he talked about Tommy as a younger child, she allowed him to distract her.

It was only when they hit a slight curve in the path that Metanoia’s legs stopped moving, freezing her in place. Wilbur, eyes on the cabin, on the man halfway up the steps, didn’t notice that she wasn’t at his side any more. She barely managed to dive behind a tree before she heard Phil’s voice, quiet from her point behind the thick trunk.

“Wilbur?”

There was indistinct conversation, too quiet for Metanoia to pick up on, even without the blood rushing in her ears and the heart in her chest, thumping loudly in time with each shallow breath. She couldn’t breathe. This was a bad idea. She couldn’t breathe, Phil was there and she was behind this tree and the world was collapsing around her, crushing her chest as though it were the centre of a gravitational field, as though she were pulling everything closer and closer and she couldn’t breathe—

“Metanoia?”

She couldn’t deal with him, she couldn’t look up at him when she could hardly breathe, couldn’t do this. She couldn’t do this. She was going to die, she was sure of it. She couldn’t die here, not so close to Phil’s cabin, not when he was angry at her, so she stood up and stumbled along the path towards L’Manburg again. She was met by Phil, who had rushed to block her path and finally, finally , she looked up at him with her wet face and salty tears and shaking hands, struggling to string together enough words to complete a thought around the screams in her ears that she was going to die , and she couldn’t decipher his expression.

He simply stood, watching her hunch slightly in place as though she didn’t know what else she could do. In that moment, she was cold, scared, feeling the way she had felt back when she wasn’t Metanoia, but Nineteen. In that moment, she felt scared and alone and vulnerable, and in the next—

“Phil—”

—she felt warm and safe and secure and cared for and loved.

“Metanoia, I’m so sorry,” said Phil’s trembling voice, muffled in her dirty hair. His significantly larger wings shielded her from any outsider's view as he whispered apologies and promises over and over again into her hair, dropping to his knees as she fell to hers, whispers of forgiveness on her own lips. Her hands shook as she twisted his tunic in her grasp and she felt like she could have stayed for hours in the safe bubble they had created, broken when they were both calmer and Phil had started shivering from the cold. When they parted, the sun had set and Wilbur was nowhere to be seen.

“I’m sorry for running away, Phil, and I’m sorry about Tommy.”

“You don’t have to be, I’m sorry for saying all that stuff to you in the first place. I was just coming back from looking for you when Wilbur got here, actually.”

"You went looking for me?"

"Of course. Every day."

They walked inside, Phil reassuring her along the way that he wasn’t upset with her in any way, stepping inside to the living room full of tension, and her euphoria diminished as quickly as it had appeared.

“—come in here, and expect me to accept your stupid apology?” Tommy was angry, the teen in front of her a polar opposite to the one she had met before.

Wilbur, one of the kindest people she had met, seemed… scared of him, stood just inside the living room. He had shrunk back as his brother screamed at him, trying (and failing) to blink away his shock from behind gold-rimmed glasses. Still, though, he managed to nod, albeit shakily. “I told you, Tommy, I’ve changed. It’s been months since I was revived, and I’ve been getting back some of Ghostbur’s memories— please , Toms—”

“No, you don’t get to call me that! I went through hell because of you - we all did! You think Phil wanted to kill his son, Wilbur? You think that was the highlight of his life, holding his own son's body in his arms?”

Phil tried to interject at the mention of his name, seizing the brief opportunity. “Tommy—”

“What, do you think Tubbo wanted to be the President of a fucking crater?” The boy in question took a step back, clearly not wanting to be put in the spotlight. Wilbur sparked, but Tommy shot him back down.

“I didn't do it this time—”

“ Shut it, Wilbur! He had to exile me, his best friend, he had to execute Techno! And all because of— what? Because you thought it couldn’t be saved? It couldn’t be rebuilt? It could, Wilbur, it did!”

“No, it didn’t.” Wilbur finally hissed out, tears still stinging his eyes. “It couldn’t be rebuilt, not without being destroyed yet again. You’ve seen what it looks like now, and I sure as hell didn’t do that much damage with a few stacks of TNT, so even if it did get rebuilt, it didn’t look like it worked very well, did it? Gods, Tommy! I've changed, why can't you just give me a chance?!”

With that, Wilbur walked through the still-open door, making sure to swing it shut with a slam that rattled the entire cabin, making the still-quaking Metanoia flinch at the loud noise. As soon as he was gone, Tommy rounded on her with a glare, and she stepped back. Nobody else spoke and even Technoblade seemed to be struggling to keep his expression blank.

“Did you bring him here?” She didn’t answer, quivering at the sight of him. “You did, didn’t you?!”  

Hastily nodding at Tommy’s yell, she stepped back more as he advanced, nearly tripping on her own feet, and felt her wings then her back hit the wall, curling the appendages around herself defensively. Still, he continued, coming closer still. “He’s a manipulator . He lies , and he kills , and everyone who associates with him is just as bad as he is.”

At those words, her fearful expression turned angry and red, pent up nerves flooding her senses with rage. “Oh, I'm as bad as Wilbur, am I, for associating with him? I guess that makes me just as bad as Dream too, since I 'associated' with him too. So, Tommy, let me ask you this,” She laughed, hysterical, yet she was terrified her voice would waver, “Do you think so little of me that you think I'd kidnap innocent children like he did? Would I experiment on them, give them numbers instead of names?!”

She yanked back her right sleeve, revealing the small tattoo to Tommy. His jaw went slack. She continued, in too deep to stop now. “Would I do this, Tommy? You think we're as bad as that— that sadist? Open your eyes! I was called Nineteen for most of my life, for gods' sake! And yet I'm as bad as him? Wilbur, too? I’m a ‘liar’ and a ‘manipulator’ because I was kidnapped, and because your brother found me in a time of need and helped me?”

Tommy was speechless. “Metanoia, I—”

She had already turned away, not interested in hearing the boy attempt to redeem himself. As soon as she had closed the door behind her, far more gently than Wilbur, tears welled in her eyes, and she walked back down the stairs that she had climbed not even five minutes ago. When she spoke to the air, her voice was shaky with adrenaline. “Wil?” 

Her question was answered by a sharp intake of breath, and she looked around to see Wilbur curled up under the stairs, round glasses a few feet away in the snow, and tear tracks on his cheeks. He held out his arms as they locked eyes, and she ran to him, wings coming to curl around them both in a poor imitation of Phil. 

Only when the two of them had finally calmed down slightly and were curled up together did she speak again, whispering four simple words that had Wilbur tightening his grip around her protectively.

“He sounded like Dream.”

Chapter Text

By the time Metanoia had persuaded the taller man to come inside, the sky had darkened and taken the sun with it, leaving the younger a shivering ball in the elder's arms. Wings did little to protect either of them from falling snow, blown towards them to settle innocently on noses and eyelashes. If she hadn't been so preoccupied with her pitiful attempts at warmth, she would find the flakes melting on her feathers rather beautiful, but in the moment they only assisted in making her colder. Wilbur had finally caught on to her situation when a particularly well-aimed gust of wind sent snow down his collar, and it was not much longer before the pair was climbing the steps and stamping snow off their shoes.

Phil, despite the ever-rising moon in the sky, was waiting for them both, ushering them into seats at the table so he could disappear briefly to the kitchen. Returning swiftly, he set down a tray stocked with four steaming mugs, filled to the brim with saccharine cocoa. Much to Metanoia's relief, Tommy was upstairs with Tubbo and Ranboo, likely taking the time for a much-needed cool down. Wilbur was tense, though beneath his trench coat she could see his shoulders steadily relaxing as he realised that Tommy was unlikely to make a reappearance until tomorrow.

Technoblade, ever the introvert, said nothing until Phil struck up a conversation.

"It's good to see you, Wil."

The revolutionary busied himself by rotating the mug in his hands before taking a sip. "You too, Phil."

Technoblade snorted. "Not everyone thinks so, clearly."

The girl rubbed a rough fingertip over an imperfection in the paint on her mug as a silence expanded over the group like a blanket that only served to keep warmth away. She knew Tommy meant well, of course she did, but his hot-headedness had still left her wounded. She supposed it made sense, his anger. She hadn't known Wilbur, hadn't known any of them, not back when all this had happened. Maybe she should have left Wilbur in L'Manburg, maybe he had been a bad person. Maybe he'd been on Dream's side; maybe he still was. Tommy's warnings had plucked a string in her mind, a string whose vibrations were drowning out all others, rumbling in her core as his words reverberated around her skull again and again. Of course, she didn't believe that Wilbur was a bad person, not after all he'd done for her, but there was a reason for Tommy's outburst.

She sighed; He sounded like Dream, she'd said. Dream, a master of manipulation and control. Tommy wasn't Dream, of course he wasn’t, but how could she not think Wilbur was a good person after he’d helped her, even before knowing anything about her relationship with Phil? After he'd not heard so much as a squeak from her lips, and yet still decided to help her? She had to believe that Wilbur had somewhat changed from what Tommy believed him to be. Tommy had to believe that, somehow, and yet he didn’t. She had to know why.

Only when a deafening screech permeated her mind was her train of thought derailed; Wilbur was already by the stairs once she'd recovered, mug left mostly untouched on the table. Now left alone with the two who had taken her in, she felt the silence was invitation enough for her to begin undoing the damage she'd done, standing apprehensively. She turned to Technoblade, the relaxed figure leaning against the sofa as he nursed his own mug, creating a facade of broken down walls where she knew there was brick.

“Technoblade, I'm sorry—”

Technoblade flinched, mug on the table, hands instinctively curling into fists as he shook his head. “Don’t—” a pause, “—please don’t apologise. I’m the one who should be sorry. Even if I wasn’t the one who yelled at you, I still made you think you were only a replacement for Wilbur and Tommy. I did so many horrible things, I’m—” 

He cut himself off with an uncharacteristically shaky breath, sinking to his knees, and Metanoia almost stepped backwards in shock at the sight of Technoblade, the man who never bowed down to anyone, kneeling before her of all people. This wasn’t Technoblade, she realised - not the fearless warrior who quoted Sun Tzu and could take down even Phil in a fight, no. This was just Techno - the young man who had cheered when she first learned to fly, the one who carried her to Tommy’s room when she fell asleep in the snow after flying, the one who she could hear almost imperceptibly sobbing on the nights where she just couldn’t fall asleep, praying to a Godless universe for mercy from the people he had hurt.

She didn’t know how she could ever be angry at him. She didn't know if she even had.

Eyes shining with tears and forgiveness alike, Metanoia slowly stepped forwards to wrap him in a hug, and he grabbed onto the back of her torn and dirty shirt tightly. Dark wings surrounded the two, and tears soaked her shoulder as Techno pleaded for forgiveness. Metanoia was more than ready to grant it to him.

**********

“With Tommy back, we don’t have a spare room anymore, so you’ll have to share with someone, if that’s okay? Or we can get Wilbur and Techno to share, and you can have one of their rooms?” 

Metanoia shook her head, smiling softly. “It’s alright, Phil. I trust Wilbur.” 

“Of course.” Phil almost seemed guilty at her words, but he continued talking. “His door is third on the left, it says his name on it. I’ll leave you to get settled in.”

His retreating footsteps were slow and heavy on the staircase, an indication of how long this day had lasted. Metanoia turned from the landing to face the hallway, beginning to walk down it as she tried to shake the feeling that she was not welcome here anymore; Phil had said it was okay. He had said she could stay. 

She passed the familiar red and white door first, glancing apprehensively towards it as the hushed muttering from behind it cut off with a startled whisper. Carefully, she slowed her pace to glide along the floor soundlessly. Next, she walked past Phil’s door, smiling faintly at the familiar sight of five variously sized handprints scattered on the wood, but eventually moving past. Only a few seconds later, she found the door she was looking for - plain white, with only a wooden sign spelling out Wilbur’s name in dark woodstain, and the ghost of a blue handprint smudged on the brass handle. 

She knocked on the door, and a muffled ‘Come in!’ answered. Wrapping her hand around the handle, she furrowed her brows at the way the blue handprint peeked around the sides of her much smaller grip, then pushed the door open. The light squeak of the hinges, complaining after months of disuse, rang in her ears and she huffed at the sudden sleekness of her feathers when they flattened at the sound. Behind the door was a room that was smaller than Tommy’s, painted cream with dark wooden supports to contrast. Wilbur was sitting in the corner, curls and dark eyes behind glasses visible over the bed frame.

She glanced around the room with curiosity, unfamiliar with the different set of photos that covered his walls. Next to the bed was a pretty curl of blue fibres secured at the centre in a knot, beside a picture of a much younger Wilbur, Techno, Phil, and a young woman she didn’t recognise (yet was somewhat familiar). The pictures on the walls showed Wilbur with his family before whatever had happened to give him the white streak in his hair, through various stages of life.

Tommy, Wilbur, Tubbo, Technoblade and three others, standing before the walls of L’Manburg with matching blue coats and grins. Wilbur, skin grey and transparent, sat cross-legged beside a sheep with thick wool to match the knot on the bedside table, one hand resting on the soft coat of the animal and an innocent smile creasing his eyes. A younger Technoblade, hair brushing his shoulders, standing beside Wilbur with an elbow on his head, pressing the curls down to cover his eyes, leaving only a pout that pushed out the boy’s lower lip - in contrast, Technoblade showed a toothy grin, eyes pulled into crescents with a clear look of triumph.

“Are you going to look at me or just snoop around my room?”

She startled, turning back to the man in the corner and awkwardly stepping closer when he simply smiled. He had moved to sit on a mattress, pulling apart one corner of a L’Manburg flag thread by thread, but as she neared he patted the spot next to him and dropped the flag.

“Is it weird? Being here, I mean?”

He swallowed, Adam’s apple bobbing sharply, then nodded jerkily. He shifted in his place, moving to tighten his coat around his shoulders and knocking something beside him in the process.

“Simone,” he said softly, picking up the guitar to put it back on its stand, a miniscule smile on his face when he turned back. Metanoia piped up.

“Play something.”

“What?”

“Play something on the guitar.”

Wilbur had briefly spoken of the instrument when they were in L’Manburg, clearly in love, but now he looked at it as though it would pull back an arrow on one of its taut strings and put it through his throat with a discordant twang.

“I don’t remember anything.”

The girl stood, picking up the instrument with uncertainty, but her voice was firm as she held it out.

“Play something.”

The buckles on his coat knocked softly against the wood as he tucked the curved body under his right arm. Wilbur’s shaking fingers hovered over the strings before bending themselves slowly into position. His right hand moved uncertainly to play the chord, immediately silencing the noise with his palm and a wince.

“She’s out of tune.”

Metanoia said nothing, listening to the notes wind up slowly through the semitones until finally, finally, a cautious chord filled the room, echoing around her mind in the silence after. He was calming down now, plucking at the strings with a tentative familiarity.

“Wilbur?”

“Yes?”

The melody continued.

“Do you regret coming back here?”

It took him a few chords to ponder the question.

“I regret making Tommy mad.”

The music never wavered.

“Wilbur?” she asked once again.

“Hmm?”

She paused, momentarily.

“Who’s Ghostbur?”

A cacophonous chord rang through the room, abrupt, and Wilbur stood up.

“I’m sorry—”

“I told you that Dream saved me from Hell.”

Metanoia fell silent, and she nodded.

Wilbur paced as he spoke. “Ghostbur went to Hell in my place.” He dragged a hand through tangled hair, spreading white through dark curls. “When I died, he was here in my absence. Dream hauled him down there when I came back, the poor, defenceless ghost. Sometimes I just wish he hadn’t so that Tommy could be happier. I deserve to be there in his place. I’ve done nothing, nothing, to deserve this world over him, even before I died."

She thought of the pictures on the walls of the semi-transparent Wilbur.

“Tommy will be happy with you, Wilbur.”

“Not as happy as he was with Ghostbur.”

His fingers still curled loosely around the neck of his guitar, letting it swing at his side, mere inches from the floor. Simone was silent. The melody he had played before was long gone, along with his willingness to talk.

Metanoia stood to approach Wilbur, taking Simone to put her down on the mattress they had been sitting on. He was staring at a photo on the wall; seven people, framed in smooth wood and a blanket of dust. Wilbur brushed it away.

“That’s me in the middle, General Wilbur Soot of L’Manburg,” he spoke, before letting out a bitter laugh. “Gods, that was ages ago. What a twat, thinking I could make something that wasn’t destined to die.”

His hair was a consistent shade of dark brown, missing the white streak and the bags under his eyes. He looked younger, despite his physical condition remaining mostly unchanged.

“That’s Tommy. If I had been, what, twenty-four years old, he would have been about fifteen, sixteen here. Look at him, still all lanky and hyper. Tubbo is next to him, of course, and Technoblade is at the end.”

Tommy’s face looked youthful, unbroken by the scars that aged him now. Tubbo, between the blond and the piglin, looked to be in a similar state. Shaggy hair concealed barely-there horns, but was now short enough to reveal an unblemished face with two brown eyes. It was refreshing to see his face, however different from current reality it was; she supposed his scar, his whitened right eye, was the reason he seemed so eager to hide. She understood.

Technoblade stood proudly at the right edge of the photo, shorter hair settled on the blue cloak that hung from broad shoulders. A mask that too closely resembled a skull rested on his face, piercing eyes still visible through the gaps that had once been the creature's eye sockets. Below it, his smile was unrestrained and proud. She wondered why he never smiled like that now.

“And then here,” he pointed to the left end of the frame, “this is Niki, and Jack."

The pink-haired woman, Niki, reminded her of Eighteen. The same shimmering scales that had first appeared on a young Eighteen’s face in blue years ago were clearly visible on the woman’s cheeks, cherry-blossom pink to match the fins that peeked from the sides of her hair where her ears should be. The two had the same smile too, though Niki’s was brighter than Eighteen’s had ever been. Perhaps they could have been friends, even sisters, in another world. She blinked those thoughts away before they could pool in her eyes.

The man at the very end, Jack, looked to be only a little older than Tommy and Tubbo, and his eyes - both the human blue one, and the robotic crimson one - still sparkled with childlike innocence, even despite the dirt and jagged scars that littered his face. She wondered where the group had ended up, why L’Manburg had been left in ruins, why the team that was so enthusiastic had turned its back on the nation. After seeing its state, she wasn’t sure if she could blame them. 

Wilbur’s voice pulled her back to the present as he introduced the final member of the group, standing there next to past-Wilbur, dwarfed by his height. “This,” Wilbur announced, covering his grinning doppelganger with his fingertip as he pointed out the stranger, “is Fundy, my son. He's a fox hybrid, if his tail didn't give it away."

Metanoia cast her mind back to her days in the forest after she had escaped the facility and the Team, of those orange-furred creatures that had led her to the berries she survived off before meeting Phil. A fox, fox, fox, fox, they were foxes. This boy and Twelve were fox hybrids. She swept her eyes over Twelve's, Fundy's, figure as she noted too many similarities. Ginger hair shone red in the sun like Twelve's never had the chance to, pale streaks much like his father's contrasting with the bright hue. His canines were blunt with disuse, revealing too easily his gentle nature, much like those creatures in the forest she had seen before. He had the same eyes as his father, dark and mischievous (he looked so much like Twelve—) and simultaneously betraying nothing and everything about what he was thinking. A bushy tail blurred behind him, fanning out against the dark wall that contrasted the group's clear youth, which gleamed on their skin easily with so many hopes and dreams of the future.

Before she could stop herself, she spilled her thoughts. “He reminds me of Twelve.” 

“Twelve?”

“He was one of the people with me in the facility. He was a fox hybrid, like your son.” Wilbur nodded encouragingly, undivided attention on her now. “Even though Dream tortured him and forced him to fight Nine, he was so— just so positive. He always managed to cheer us up, even if he had just come back from Dream bloody and bruised, and he loved the music George brought in when Dream was away, but now he— he’s—” She cut herself off, and Wilbur wrapped his arms around her, patiently comforting her as she cried.

“Oh, ‘Noia,” he whispered, fingers rubbing soothing patterns down her spine, coaxing wave after wave of dejection from the depths of her mind, scraping it from the deepest corners until she was calming down and sagging in his grip. If he judged her, he said nothing about it, and she was grateful.

As she wiped away the evidence of her emotions, Wilbur crossed the room to a dark wardrobe in the opposite corner, leaving her to settle on the mattress beside Simone. She glanced down to the L’Manburg flag beneath her, the sounds of his rummaging simply background noise, until he was beside her again.

“You said that Twelve liked music, right?”

She nodded lightly, images of his smile flashing behind her eyelids with each blink. 

A guitar was pushed into her hands, smaller than Simone and fitting nicely into her lap just as Simone fit into Wilbur’s. She matched his stance as he pulled his own guitar back to himself.

“This is my old guitar from when I was younger. I’ll teach you, then we can play a song for Twelve, okay?”

“I don’t know how to—”

“I’ll teach you.”

**********

When Tommy pushed open Wilbur’s door in the early hours of the next morning, he found them curled up to rest against the mattress near the foot of his brother’s bed, though Wilbur’s legs were sprawled across the floor to accommodate his excessive height. Why would he be as tall as that when he could be the perfect height that Tommy was? He would never know, but it was irrelevant to what he planned to do today.

“Are you guys seriously both sleeping on the floor when there’s a perfectly good bed right next to you?”

The pair were on their feet in seconds, sheepish at having been caught where they’d fallen asleep the night before. Wilbur was staring with wide eyes at his younger brother, the events of the previous evening almost forgotten in Simone (who now lay haphazardly by his feet) and her strings. When Metanoia followed his gaze to Tommy, though, the teen’s eyes disregarded Wilbur entirely, instead staying firmly on her.

“Tommy, I’m—”

“Can I talk to you, Metanoia? Outside, alone?”

At Tommy’s interruption, she looked back to Wilbur, watching his heart break and pool in his eyes.

“Please?”

She turned back to Tommy, nodding, and he was halfway down the stairs by the time the door to Wilbur’s room had shut with a resounding click. She hurried after him, skidding to a halt when she almost passed the blond in the living room. He was watching her with piercing blue eyes as she stepped in front of him, glued to the floor under his gaze. When he opened his mouth, she expected anger, but instead he was rambling faster than she could hope to understand.

“Metanoia, I’m so sorry for what I said yesterday, it was really harsh and when Tubbo said that it was mean I realised that it was actually a horrible thing to say and I’m just the worst person on Earth, I just wanted to apologise—”

“Tommy—”

“—and I didn’t even realise about that whole Dream thing, I mean, when he had me in exile I thought that was bad but the whole time, he was doing that to you and I’m so sorry for what I said, I really hope you can forgive me one day but I completely understand if not—”

“Tommy—”

“—but I’m just so mad at myself for saying that, you know? I mean, I’m sure you can understand somewhat about emotions getting the better of you but still that’s no excuse for how I treated you, and—”

“Let her speak, Theseus. You’re looking a little blue. Have you ever heard of, like, oxygen?”

Technoblade, hair tied in a simple plait and light bags dragging his eyelids half-closed with sleep, finally put a stop to Tommy’s babbling as he passed.

She turned to him, a small yet genuine smile pulling the corners of her mouth upwards. “Thank you, Techno.”

There was a pause as he turned to her, eyes wide when he realised what she’d called him. Then, face twisting into the subtlest hint of a smile, he disappeared into the kitchen before the boy had even caught his breath.

“I’m sorry, Metanoia. I really am.”

Still processing Tommy’s frenetic speech, she was voiceless for a moment, her face blank as though trying to understand a foreign language. Nobody had ever spoken to her like that before.

“Dream kept you in exile?”

He hung his head.

“Yes.”

“And you said your own brother was like him?”

“I— yes. Heat of the moment, I didn’t mean it.”

“Really?”

“Of course I didn’t mean it! I didn’t mean he was like Dream in that way, just that he wasn’t nice after he got revived. Not that he wasn't manipulative, but I definitely didn't mean— okay, I'll stop, oxygen sounds like a good idea.”

There was a beat of silence. Tommy’s eyes were desperate as he tried to keep them in contact with hers.

“Okay.”

Flabbergasted, Tommy watched her move back to the staircase.

“Okay?!”

“I forgive you, on one condition.”

“Yes, anything, what is it?”

She hesitated, but turned back to face him. “Wilbur deserves an apology, too.”

Tommy was past her before she could blink, thundering footsteps racing up the stairs and socks slipping on the polished wood of the landing as he turned.

“Wilbur! Get out here!”

She was up the stairs in time to see Tubbo and Ranboo peering from Tommy's door, pinkies linked as they groaned at the loud teen. Half-lidded eyes revealed their clear exhaustion. By the time she had joined the couple, Wilbur had come to his door, nervous that the sight of him would inspire his fiery brother to continue the previous night's feud. 

Tommy's ensuing apology was promptly cut off as Wilbur seized him in an uncharacteristically long hug, whispering forgiveness that was enmeshed with apologies of his own. At last, when they parted, Tommy pulled a face.

"Get in the shower, Wilbur. You too, 'Noia. I'm sorry to tell you, but you smell like shit."

**********

“We are doing it right this time, got it Tommy?”

Tommy looked up at Phil ruefully, nodding. Metanoia stood beside him in the snow, wings tucked in to avoid the cold on her feathers.

“If you so desperately want to go flying with Metanoia, she needs to be able to carry you on her back safely. I will not let her feet leave the ground with you attached to her by a piece of string—”

“It was a rope—”

“—that could easily break, or get caught, or send you flying off the end of it with the lightest breeze. You both got that?”

The pair nodded synchronously.

“Metanoia will not be flying anyone around unless she can give the person in question a ride on her back from the cabin to the edge of the clearing. That is without dropping them when she gets there too. No running either. There’s no point in cheating at this unless you want to look Death in her eyes again, okay Tommy?”

The teen looked over at Metanoia, down and up again, then turned back to Phil.

“Phil, look at her! She barely reaches my knee! Why can’t you just do it?”

“What is it you’re always calling me, Tommy? ‘Old Man Phil’? Surely, an old man needs his rest? All that lifting wouldn’t do this old man’s back any good—”

“If you want her to fly you around, don’t you think respecting her huge muscles is a good start, Theseus?”

Techno showed a gratified smile, watching realisation dawn on Tommy’s face that all his teasing of Phil had finally come back to bite him in the arse.

“Come on, ‘Noia, let’s show them your huge muscles, you can probably carry me eas— agh!”

Tommy had, without warning, leapt onto the girl’s back and as a result, had sent both flying face-first into the snow.

“You were saying, Tommy?”

He shot Wilbur a look before lifting himself off the avian beneath him, allowing her to gasp oxygen back into her crushed lungs.

“We’ll let you get on with it,” Phil said, a smug grin on his face as his youngest son shook the snow from his clothes. The pair did nothing as everyone trailed inside, leaving a crow on the fence as their only company. Metanoia was sure they were being laughed at by the corvid as they continued long into the afternoon, returning only when the sun was set low over the trees, marvelling at the colours and grumbling at the cold as snow began to fall.

**********

Over a handful of weeks, the family had fallen into a comfortable routine. For a while, Metanoia hadn't understood what was going on, the way the dynamics between people seemed to settle into a congenial rhythm. Of course, Techno and Tubbo still actively avoided one another, but their sworn hatred had dissolved into milder rivalry, at least for now. She and Tommy continued to practice with her strength daily, and between that she was still training with Techno, getting better day by day.

Phil had also managed to find a tailor in the nearest village who had taken the time to create clothes for Metanoia, much like Phil's in style, but in a lovely shade of dark blue with a cloak to match. A neighbouring blacksmith, well-skilled after years of being Phil’s provider, had created armour to accommodate the wings that had grown from the stumps on her back. Thick leather straps fastened a chest plate to her front, crossing over her shoulders to intercept at the midpoint between her wings and securing the bottom in a similar manner against her hips.

Each day, she was getting stronger, cheeks less hollow and dark eye sparkling more with each hour. Wilbur had traded his trench coat for softer yellow knitwear, and though she knew the sight of his ghost counterpart's sweater had caused him immense guilt, she could only feel relief that he was finally allowing himself to heal from his death and subsequent revival. Everything was beginning to look up without any whisper of Dream on the horizon, and Metanoia thought that maybe, maybe, life could be better. Each night, she settled on the mattress in Wilbur’s room with only thoughts of what the next day would bring, just as she did now.

**********

"You thought this was over?"

She sat up, dread settling in her stomach. She was in the clearing down the path from Phil's cabin, flat on her back in the snow. She could see very little, the moon merely a curved slice in the sky.

"Phil?"

"That's right, go crying to Phil. He'll protect you."

The voice was behind her and under her and above her, everywhere at once, and she wrapped her arms around her midsection to fight the cold as she stumbled towards the cabin, hoping it couldn't get to her inside. The lights were off, she realised, which wasn't unusual. Maybe she had been sleepwalking? She hadn't even known that was a possibility. As she stepped inside, pulling off her shoes carefully, she walked upstairs to return to Wilbur's room, hoping this had all been some bizarre dream.

Dreams aren't this vivid, her mind reminded her. This has to be real.

Phil's door creaked as she passed it, which was odd. Phil always slept with his door shut - he'd want her to close it for him, surely? As she reached into the room to take the door handle in her grasp, she heard soft cries. Phil was hurt? Or, maybe upset? She should check, she didn't want him to suffer alone, so she pushed the door further and stepped inside. The lamp was on, revealing the group of people around the avian's bed. Techno stood at the foot, Wilbur and Tommy on either side by the pillows, with Ranboo and Tubbo between the siblings. The cries, she realised, were not Phil's - they didn't even belong to one person alone. Everyone, even Techno, had small rivers running down their cheeks, glistening in the dim light.

"Where's Phil?"

Sharply, everyone's eyes turned to her.

"What are you doing here?"

"What's wrong—?"

"You know what's wrong!"

Wilbur was in front of her now, anger sharpening his features, and she finally caught a glimpse of who was in the bed: Phil.

"What's wrong with Phil?" she tried again, backing away as Wilbur came closer.

"You know what's wrong with him! He's dead! Don't be so fucking oblivious!"

She stumbled backwards, hurrying back down the stairs and out of the door, but when it shut behind her she realised that she was surrounded by— what could she call this, other than a void? She took a step, tripping over something at her feet, and she recognised the weapon from her fight back at the facility, one that George had wielded with expertise as he slaughtered the closest thing she had to family. 

She scooped up the bow and the quiver of arrows, slinging the bag over her body with mild difficulty. A pale face appeared in the darkness— no, not a face, a mask, and she flinched, hands scrabbling to grasp the bow as she pulled an arrow from the quiver cast over her torso. Struggling to draw it back on the string, she aimed straight at the mask and released her grip. 

When it was snatched out of the air with a snap, she heard a low laugh, squinting as Smile emerged from the darkness and stalked closer. She shuddered, beating her wings to lift herself from the ground, gasping as he reached towards her with grotesquely lengthening fingers, lightly brushing at the soles of bare feet as if to taunt her, I've got you! She had to stop him, had to get away before those loudly popping joints could move to curl fingers around her ankles. More frantic now, she flew higher as fingertips fumbled for another arrow. The string creaked lightly as she tugged it to her cheek, aiming right for the centre of Smile's, Dream's, mask and letting go.

Time moved slowly, too slowly, as the void around her began to melt, dissolve, change. Black beneath her feet gave way to white snow spotted with crimson, the darkness above her now an innocent pale blue, and the man, the monster, before her donned a striped hat, pushing locks of golden hair around his ears. Someone was crying, she realised, crying for the man whose chest was rising to meet the deadly tip of her arrow as he morphed from monster to paragon, from devil to angel—

From Dream, to Phil.

Someone was crying.

Her breath caught in her throat, and she realised it was her.