Chapter Text
He awoke, face down on an operating table, the soothing tingle of the medibeam on his back, bandages tight around his chest. He wasn't dead. Good! There was always a chance of that, even with the best surgeon performing the operation. He pushed himself upright, noticing, as he stood, that his center of mass had shifted. It was only to be expected after the operation. He stretched carefully, testing his muscles and joints, all seemed to be in working order. Now for the bandages. Practiced hands removed the outer layer, rolling up the faintly blue tinted fabric to be washed and reused later. Relieved of the restrictive binding, he stretched again, bracing himself against the table as he got used to his shifting center of gravity.
"Doc what the hell did you do to yourself this time." The voice behind him is resigned, surprised and yet not all at once.
"Ah.. I must have overslept." he said, slightly embarrassed. "My apologies." he turned to face the other man, careful not to knock anything over.
"Is that why my sentries went offline last night. You called up Blu didn't you."
"Ja, that is correct. As you can likely tell, performing this operation on myself would be impossible without another pair of hands." The second man crossed his arms as the first one grinned.
"Well I suppose the only question really worth asking is: Do they work?" There were a lot more questions, but most of them he already knew the answer to, having been working with him for years.
"I'm not sure yet. He did implant an extra brain to handle the extra nervous input..." Tentatively, he spread the snow white wings newly grafted to his back, so as not to either hit anything or overextend anything before it was fully healed. Without a visual, he had no way of knowing if they were properly attached. They probably were, seeing as it was technically he who'd performed the surgery, as he was the only person he trusted with such a procedure, but it still would've been nice to have a visual to confirm.
He gave a hesitant flap, and then a stronger one, immediately fascinated by the way the air became an almost solid thing, resisting the way water does when you swim. And like swimming, he could grasp how best to hold himself, and managed to lift off the ground a few inches. He faltered briefly, lost balance, and fell onto a table with a crash and a cry.
"Shit, doc, you alright?" the other man asked as he rushed forward to help.
"Just a little bruising, not to worry. I simply need to adjust to the change in balance." he says as he extracted himself from the table and its contents. "A calibration error, I believe you would call it." he smiled, and laughed it off. "Humans are adaptable. I shall be fine in time." He folded the wings against himself as the other man looks at him, skepticism in the line of his mouth and jaw.
"If you start craving birdseed I'm kidnapping Blu and making him take those things off you. Also, don't you need a tail to steer?"
"..." He smacked his forehead with the heel of his hand and swore in German.
"And that's why you need me around." the other man chuckled. He did a circuit of the first man, rubbing his chin in thought. "I reckon I could put something together, maybe stiffen up the tail of your lab coat to serve... You'll need to modify it anyway to keep those wings free. Can you still wear the medigun with them?"
"I believe so." He spread the wings again, shaking them to settle the feathers in place after the fall. "Really, they're more for appearances than actual practical use, not to mention proof of concept. I suppose they would help mitigate the damage from falling..." He grimaced. "Ah, do you think you could straighten some of the feathers for me? I cannot quite reach them and they are quite uncomfortable."
"That could be real helpful in our line of work." the second man said as he approached and straightened the feathers closer to the body.
"Danke," the first man said after the feathers were fixed. "Or they might make me a bigger target. We shall see." He stood. His wings were folded back, and a blanket was draped over them for a dramatic reveal to the others. He did briefly consider dyeing the tips of the primaries red, but that would take too long.
The second man accompanies him as he walks towards the common area.
"You gonna take the rest of those bandages off?" the second man asks.
"Mm... not just yet. With grafts such as these it can take some time for the connections to solidify. There may be some extra bleeding, even with the medigun therapy. The vessels don't quite know how to connect properly. The larger veins and arteries would've been connected by hand, but the capillaries just sort of go any which way." He shifts the wings. "Fortunately my blood does have a minor healing property from prolonged close exposure to the medigun, so it shouldn't be an issue."
"Right."
The two of them entered the common area of the facility, where their coworkers were finishing up breakfast. He immediately assumed a hunched posture, shuffling along as his companion put a supporting hand on his arm.
"Oh jeez doc are you alright? Ya look like shit!"
"My god man what happened to you?"
"Doktor. What did you do to self this time." From the big man, there was no worry, simply resignation.
"What makes you think I did something and didn't simply wake up like this?"
The big man gave him a look that simply said 'I know you too well to believe that'.
The first man scoffed, and tossed the blanket off as he straightened up and spread his newly acquired wings. And felt a slight tearing and a warmth soaking through the bandages.
Seems he didn’t have the full range of motion quite yet.