Chapter Text
Light wings of a canary land on a windowsill.
My feathers rustled far too loudly than I wanted them to as I folded them against my back, carefully tucking them under the grey fabric of a cape. Shoeless feet found the smooth wood floor behind the open window, letting the cool feeling seep between my toes as I slowly lowered myself to the ground. The wind tried to reach for me once more, whispering some sweet nothings into my ear to coax me back to the sky. I inched away from its caress, letting my curls part with the fingers of the wind.
The room was silent and dark, save for the starlight through the window. There was only one sound that broke through the darkness, and that was the soft whistle of a snore. A dark mass near the side of the room harbored the sound.
The man.
My target.
A rapid heartbeat wormed its way into my ears. My heart tried to crawl out of my throat, fear running through the hollow bones inside of me. I shook off my worries, it would be quick. I swore to him and to myself and to the man over there in that bed that I wouldn’t be here more than a minute.
Still, my joints locked, leaving me to second guess all of my actions.
With one of my hands in the other, I wrung them together until I could work up the nerve to start padding my way across the floor. The thumping in my chest grew with every step and I could only hope he couldn’t hear it. Though I had seen plenty of fearful men who had hearts beating out of their chests, and not once had I heard it till I placed my ear to their torso and heard the thumping of scared, dying soldiers.
There were more that I had watched die than I had ever saved.
That thought drew me back to the man who I was standing just inches away from now. His chest rose and fell with every slow breath that whistled through the quiet room. His eyes fluttered just slightly, from what I could see, still in sleep but thinking one too many thoughts for the rest to be peaceful. His face was drawn in a neutral frown, light hair sprawled beneath him like a muted halo. Every few seconds a worry line would form and dissipate along his forehead, stuck in some dream he didn’t approve of.
I envied how he could still sleep this peacefully.
But bile still crawled up my throat, telling me to turn back, to let it go, and to fly so far away from all the carnage that it could be as if it never existed. That would require more energy than I had yet to gather, so I resolved on the first option, my only option.
To kill the emperor of the Antarctic Empire.
I hovered my elbows over his shoulders, bringing myself to move, letting my joints creak after standing and debating everything I had ever done with my life. I could hear the tired bones pop as they were moved with such delicacy and precision, barely cutting through the whistled snores of the man in front of me.
With fingers splayed out and elbows ready to come down on the man’s shoulders, I sucked in a breath and grabbed.
I grabbed for his neck, elbows coming down hard on his shoulders to keep his hands from reaching me as his eyes popped open with blue pigments that seemed to shine.
The man began to panic, immediately trying to scream but couldn’t get the breath in to do so. I held tighter, closing my eyes so I didn’t have to see the ever-crushing guilt I would gain later. He began to heave, to wheeze, trying to get air in and only pushing the air out. His limbs thrashed beneath his heavy comforter, but I pinned him, feeling his struggles, feeling the fear and the panic set in.
I turned my head to the side, suppressing the urge to look at him, to feel the pity seep into my soul. His wheezes turned to gargles, hoping, pressing for air, reaching for my hands that were just an inch too far. I held him, squeezing the life out as I would the juice of an orange.
His struggles became weaker, his thrashing fading into sudden twitches. Rasps of sound tried to escape, just muffled by the vocal cords I held tight in my grasp. I didn’t realize until his silence came that there were tears rolling down my face, droplets that I was sure he had seen.
I couldn’t bring myself to let go, even after he went quiet, holding it there for a unit of time that I had yet to process.
He made one last sound at the back of his throat, one that echoed in my ears.
A soft muffled warble, a bird's final cry.
Help , it said. Fear .
It was like he had punched me in the jaw. I stumbled backward, my hands losing their grip and finding their own way up to my own throat to suppress the cry my body tried to make in return. My own panic-filled veins overflowed as I clawed to keep the chirp down. It wanted to break, it wanted to be let free .
A gasp was louder than anything else had been, deep and shaky before coughs rammed at my eardrums, forcing their way into my head. Over and over and over they sounded, all from the man in the bed.
The man that was alive.
Coughs and wheezes and more gasps filled the room as I stood there, wide eyes set on the man who was heaving his lungs into his throat. He choked, his coughs expelling old air and gasps bringing in new. His arm was failing widely at his bedside table, reaching for the silver glint of metal.
“ Tech -” was all the man could get out, but it was enough.
A flash of light spilled in from the hallway of the now opened door. A flare of red struck a place in my vision as a rough hand seized me by the back of my neck and slammed me against the stone wall. A sickening crack sounded and replayed in my ears as I sunk to the floor, the surprise just enough to push up what my body had been making.
A startled chirp emerged from my throat and immediate panic soared through my chest.
Help is here , it said, an ironic answer to the current situation.
And for a moment, I thought I heard a hitch in the man’s coughing.
My dizzy spell was far from over, the room not focusing in the slightest. I could see another man in the room thanks to the light, a muddled mess of pink and red against my tears. He was talking softly to the emperor, whose coughing had resorted to shaky breaths, broken whispers, and, every so often, a warble.
Help, safe, flock, and various others bubbled up from the man’s throat, my instincts drowning my thoughts in the hope to answer him.
More footsteps shook the floor in my haze, I felt them more than I could hear them. Everything spun, including my thoughts, a mixture of panicked bird-brained responses and half-created solutions to the mess I was in.
“He’s down,” I heard from a deeper voice. “Keep him there.”
But rough hands still found my wrists, turning me over against my very will and pulling the knife from my belt.
My knife . Why had I been so stupid? I could have covered his mouth with his own blankets and stabbed him through the bedsheets. There would have been no recovery unless the Lady of Death decided to spare him.
“Listen, Tech-”
“Phil, don’t.”
The emperor's voice was still broken, just a wavering wisp of a tongue.
“You don’t need to kill him, Techno.”
Another warble built in the back of my throat. I urged it down even through the panic. I had known death would have been a punishment for failing by either party, but I hadn’t considered it an option. It was supposed to be so easy . I was to take a man’s life at his lowest, where he wouldn’t even be able to defend himself. I had taken countless lives on the battlefield, how would this be harder?
And I had still failed.
“Phil,” the deeper, less broken voice chided, “He just tried to kill you .”
“Hear me, friend.” The cracks in his voice only got wider the more he used it. I tried to open my eyes again, to try and see what was happening between them, but the world spun again, and I forced them shut. “Bring him down, put him in chains if you need-” he coughed, the sound like another punch to my skull. “If you need to,” he finished his previous sentence. The other tried to cut him off, to tell him what he was saying was outrageous, but the emperor wasn’t finished.
“Just give him some food, water. Something , Techno. He’s a boy.”
My fingers curled into fists at that. So I was to be given pity because of my age? I was far from a child, I had seen and done things grown men had wept at. My years did not define my age. I was more than a boy. I was a man, a soldier, a-
“And don’t take off his cloak.”
…What?
The thought rang in my ears. He… he knew. From one little chirp, he knew.
And he didn’t call me out.
Stronger than ever before, the mixture of bird noises wanted to emerge from where I kept them chained down. I wanted to scream at him, chirps and whistles and birdsong of all different exclamations. I wanted to dig my fingers into soft feathers, pry at them, raking my hands through the downy to keep them healthy. I wanted to go to the man who was just like me, who I had looked up to as a role model my whole life for keeping his wings out in the open.
And I wanted to stuff those same feathers down his throat for everything he had done against me.
I hadn’t realized I was holding my breath until it hitched in my throat, sending me wheezing and curling up against the wood floor. Another chirp came from the man over by the bed, wanting me to breathe and to be safe .
But I couldn’t. It was too hard. Things were closing in too fast. Stars raced across my vision as the edges faded to some blackness. Heavy footsteps and tight hands grasped my shoulders, but I couldn’t hear them with the ringing in my ears.
Without my breathing being steady, I floated my way into some kind of void, my head throbbing and hands hurting from where my fingernails had dug into my palm. I had nothing left in me to fight.
A final sound pushed its way past my throat, a sweet birdsong, a quiet whisper.
Sorry was all it said.