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The first avian had wings of rainbows. Every feather was a different color, each one gifted to her from a different bird. She enjoyed both the sky and the ground, but could not find a home in either. It is dreadfully lonely, to be revered by some, scorned by others, and considered a peer by none. She could hardly stand it, so the first avian began to hatch a plan.
Wilbur is, once again, in Las Nevadas. He is not supposed to be, but Wilbur has never been one to care about supposed to . Especially not since he was revived.
His feet slip across the sand, kicking the little pieces of rock in every direction. The worst part is how undignified it feels to waddle like a toddler just learning to walk. Wilbur is honestly relieved that no one can see him yet.
He spots a path, one that leads to the building housing Quackity’s penthouse, and he gladly makes his way to more solid ground. Wilbur is hardly even to the fountain when someone clears their throat behind him. Slowly, smirk plastered on his face, Wilbur turns around.
“Quackity!” He exclaims. Quackity looks unimpressed. Wilbur doesn’t allow himself to be cowed, this is par for the course. “I wasn’t expecting to see you here. Why, whatever could I do for you?”
“I don’t feel like doing this today, Soot. Get out of my country.”
She asked the gods for help. Many of them turned her away, for they did not care for the whims of a foolish, lonely young avian. One, however, was moved by her plight. And so, when the first avian asked the goddess of fertility and growth for help, she accepted.
Wilbur pouts. “Aw, come on! I just wanted to stop by for a bit!”
Quackity’s expression doesn’t change. Usually he’d at least roll his eyes or something, but now it’s… nothing.
“Go away, Wilbur.”
Oh, that’s a first name. Wilbur watches Quackity closely. Something is off.
Dull wings flutter, shifting. They open, close, open, close. Quackity tucks them close to his body, splays them out, repeats. The feathers, once a bright, lively gold, are now too dull to catch the light of the sun. Quackity’s face is pinched, and his feathers are a mess. His lips look cracked and bloody, and his shoulders are more tense than Wilbur is used to.
“The fuck is up with you, Q?” Wilbur crosses his arms. He is not worried , just confused.
“It will not be an easy process, what you wish to do,” the goddess told the avian. Her fingers brushed gently across the girl’s face, voice soft but cautious. “It will put you through much pain, and you will lose many pieces of yourself.”
“Other than pests in my fucking country? Can’t think of a thing.”
Quackity’s voice sounds tight. Like a tightly coiled spring, or a rubber band stretched and ready to snap. Not the annoyance that Wilbur has come to expect from him, but something else, something that makes Wilbur narrow his eyes.
“No, something is up with you. What is it?”
“Wilbur. Go.” It’s short, not a meandering opening to continue pestering each other.
Wilbur frowns. “Is it something with your wings?”
Close. Open. Close. Open. Flare feathers. Close . Quackity’s mouth twists.
“There is nothing wrong with my fucking wings,” he spits out, digging his heels deeper into the sand. Open, flare, close tightly .
“Okay, so that’s clearly a lie,” Wilbur says with an eye roll. “Just preen or something. It’s easy.”
Quackity grits his teeth, making Wilbur’s head cock, just a little bit.
“I know,” said the avian. Her voice was as steely sharp as talons. She did not allow herself to be swayed. “But it cannot be any more pain than what I am going through now.”
“What do you know about preening?” Quackity asks, voice low and threatening. Wilbur doesn’t step back. Open, close.
“Plenty. You think I grew up with Philza and don’t know how preening works?”
The sand shifts beneath their feet again as Wilbur takes a tiny, shuffling step forward. His hands spread out wide, nothing left protecting his vulnerable middle. Quackity’s arms and wings stay wrapped tightly around him, like a hug to himself, outside of when his wings open.
“Okay, well, I’m not Philza.” Quackity huffs out of his nose. “So get out of my country.”
Wilbur huffs in return. “Let me preen your wings.”
Quackity freezes. His wings are mid-flare. The light doesn’t catch on the feathers the way it should.
“Excuse me?”
So, the goddess began to drag her fingers through the avian’s wings. It was new to the avian, who had not been preened by anyone else before. She cooed and chirped as her goddess pulled old feathers from her wings, fingers other than her own running through her wings for the first time in her life.
“Let me preen your wings,” Wilbur repeats.
Quackity bristles. Open. Flare. Hesitate. Close again.
“Absolutely not,” Quackity says, “I am not letting you anywhere near my wings.”
Wilbur steps closer again. Quackity doesn’t step back. “I can help.”
“You can’t.”
“Jesus Christ, Q, just let me take care of you.”
A soft red creeps up Quackity’s face. His wings spread, and don’t close this time.
“Why should I?”
“Because you clearly need it, asshole.” Wilbur steps closer, gestures to Quackity’s wings. “You’re a fucking mess, and I refuse to be rivals with someone as unkempt as you.”
“Says you,” Quackity retorts, but it isn’t a denial. He holds eye contact for a few more seconds, then sighs and turns. “Fine. But I won’t hesitate to kill you again if you fuck with me.”
Then, the delicate combing was replaced with a sharp tug, and the avian squawked as a feather was plucked from her sensitive wing. She squeezed her eyes together tightly, clenching her jaw as the goddess easily took away pieces of her.
Wilbur dutifully follows, trudging through the sand. He’s not even sure what it is that makes him want to help so much, but once there is an idea in Wilbur’s head, it won’t go away until he acts upon it. So he follows through sand, then on pavement, all the way to Quackity’s penthouse.
“You compensating for something, Big Q?” Wilbur asks with a smirk as they enter the building. It towers over everything else, casting an impressive shadow. Wilbur suddenly has a face full of feathers, sputtering as he tries to get the taste out of his mouth.
“Oops.”
“I am sorry, dear one.” The goddess combed her fingers through feathers, then plucked them again. Blood began to well up, dripping down and coating the feathers below. “But you know it must happen. If you want to accomplish your goal, you must go through the pain.”
The elevator ride is longer than any elevator ride should ever be, but they both survive. Quackity leaves Wilbur in the lounge area, unwilling to let him into the bedroom. Which is whatever, Wilbur doesn’t care so long as Quackity stops looking like a mess.
Quackity leaves to remove his shirt and retrieve his jar of wing oil. Wilbur doesn’t even try to joke about collecting it from Quackity’s tailfeathers himself. His self-preservation skills may be lacking, but they do exist.
When Quackity comes back, he drops the jar in Wilbur’s lap and turns to face the opposite direction as he plops down on the couch. An expanse of bare skin, and even more feathers, splay out in front of Wilbur. He twists the lid off the jar, dropping it onto an end table.
“I can do it,” said the avian. She allowed the blood to trickle over her tender flesh, wincing as the goddess pulled another feather, adding it to the growing pile. “I can bear with the pain. So long as I am not alone anymore.”
“Do you even know how to do this?” Quackity asks. He stretches and rolls his shoulders as Wilbur rubs oil over his fingers.
“Obviously,” Wilbur shoots back. “I’ve done this for Phil, like, a billion times. Nothing new.”
Without warning, Wilbur begins to drag his fingers through Quackity’s wings. He starts at the base, where wings meet back, and slowly moves outward. Quackity shivers, leaning back into the touch and sighing.
The goddess nodded, and she continued to remove the avian’s feathers, until not a single one remained. They were in a pile next to the pair, all different colors outside of the new coat of crimson over most of them. She ran her fingers across the damaged limbs, healing them enough to stop the bleeding, though the pain remained.
Feathers start to lay more flat. Grime is stripped from the surface. Barbules lock back into place. A handful of loose feathers fall out, into Wilbur’s lap and onto the couch cushions.
“Man, why don’t you preen yourself more often?” It is more to himself than to Quackity. Rhetorical.
Quackity rolls his shoulders again. “None of your damn business.”
That makes Wilbur’s eyes widen, and a sly grin creeps across his face. He can’t just let that go, absolutely not.
The goddess and avian carefully collected all the discarded feathers, leaving not a single one behind. They were all washed of blood, then the avian departed to give the feathers to humans who were with child, a blessing from the dear goddess.
“Awe, c’mon. Tell me all your woes, Big Q.”
Another mouthful of feathers. Which… yeah, Wilbur should have expected that.
“Man, could you fucking stop that?” Wilbur tugs a little bit too hard in retaliation, making Quackity hiss.
“Stop trying to pry, you dick.”
“Absolutely not.” Wilbur resumes his normal preening. “You can’t just say something like that and then stop talking. Gotta explain yourself.”
Before the avian could begin her task, however, the birds caught wind of what she was doing. They were angered, as their feathers had been a gift, and she was giving them away. The birds found her, walking a path instead of flying, and crowded around her with raucous caws and chirps.
“Fuck off.”
Wilbur does not fuck off. He keeps pressing, keeps pushing. Obviously. And, eventually, he makes Quackity give in.
“There’s not a fucking point, when I know they’re just gonna end up irrevocably fucked up. There’s nothing I actually get to keep.”
“How dare you,” cried the Raven, flapping his wings indignantly. “We offered our wings to you, and you reject our gift, give our feathers to someone new and unworthy!” The Mockingbird nods along, hopping in place behind the Raven.
“Before your dumbass election,” Quackity continues, “I was friends with Tommy. And Tubbo. And then somehow, we all ended up pitted against each other because of your dumbass ideas about running a country. Your rigged election meant that they were suddenly against me.”
“After all we have done,” sighed the Vulture, hungry eyes watching her scarred wings, “you scorn our gifts? Pieces of ourselves, offered to you?” He shook his head, disappointed.
“And then after? Fuck, I was vice president to Schlatt. Schlatt . And then more, and somehow less at the same time. That bastard didn’t give a shit about me, beyond what I could do for him. At least I had my country out of it, except he ran it into the fucking ground. Then even that was gone.”
“What was the point of honoring you with our feathers, if you only decide to give them away one day?” The Hummingbird and the Falcon asked together.
“Then, finally, I had Karl and Sapnap. They were sweet, promised me shit. I promised them shit, too. And I thought, maybe, that I had people who gave a shit about me. But they didn’t, either. Left me to go start their shitty Mushroom Kingdom knockoff with George. Which, what the fuck, right?”
“Please, you must understand,” said the avian, clutching the feathers to her chest. She tucked her wings close to her body, missing her glorious rainbow of feathers. “I love your gifts, which is why I must share them! It is lonely, with no birds or humans as my friends. It is lonely, soaring above towns where I do not know a single soul. Can I not share my love for the skies with those on the ground?”
“I have Las Nevadas. But I know this fucking place. I know that it is going to be fucking taken. There’s no way it’s not. I’d rather put my focus into keeping Las Nevadas running for as long as I can, not my fucking wings. They don’t matter.”
The birds grumbled, but allowed the avian to pass. She walked up to a house, to which she was guided by her goddess. She knocked, a bright blue feather in her grasp. When a young woman opened the door, close to bursting with how pregnant she was, the avian passed her the feather.
You do matter , Wilbur doesn’t say. He keeps the same slow pace, preening Quackity carefully as he listens.
“Let this feather steep with your tea,” the avian promised, “and your child will have the most beautiful wings, that of a blue jay.” The mother accepted the feather, and the avian moved on. She delivered feather after feather to expecting parents, until there were no more parents. In her bag, there was one leftover feather, stained bright scarlet and apparently skipped over when cleaning all the feathers.
“Damn,” Wilbur says. He lets out a little puff of air, lightly ruffling some of Quackity’s feathers, which Wilbur smooths out again. “That’s… rough.”
Quackity laughs and shakes his head. “Yeah, I fucking guess. Rough sums it up pretty well.”
“What do I do with this?” The avian turned it over in her fingers. “I have delivered to every family that needs a feather, how can I have one left?”
“So…” Wilbur combs through a particularly bad patch of feathers. “What, you’re just never gonna take care of your wings again? Sounds like shit, to be honest.”
“I don’t have the time. And-” Quackity cuts himself off. His shoulders tense.
“And, what?” Wilbur obviously is not going to let him drop it.
“It’s just difficult. Like, to reach and shit.”
The goddess suddenly appeared, smiling at the avian. “That one is for you. It is your feather, so you may have your wings back, and not be stuck on the ground. Steep it in your tea, just as you have instructed everyone else, and you shall wake up with your wings once again whole.”
“Easy, I'll do it for you.” Wilbur says it like it’s nothing. It definitely is something, but Wilbur doesn’t mind letting his tone lie a little bit.
“What?” Quackity asks. He tries to turn around and look at Wilbur, but is stopped by hands on his shoulders.
“I’m not fucking done.”
Quackity looks forward again, muscles still tense. “The fuck are you saying, Soot? Did you manage to sneak into the bar before I found you?”
Wilbur laughs.
That night, the avian did as told, and she awoke to beautiful, bright red wings. The feathers shined and shifted, and they were entirely unlike any of the birds she had ever seen. When she turned, she could see some of her rainbow glimmer beneath the red. With a giddy laugh, she took flight, soaring in a way she thought she never would again.
“Maybe I’m just sick of you being a bitch because of your wings being gross as fuck.” Wilbur pauses. “Well, more of a bitch than usual.”
Quackity doesn’t shoot back a retort. He doesn’t make a sound at all, until a low coo leaves his mouth. His hand shoots up to cover his mouth.
“Well, what was that, hm? Did you just coo? Awwe, we’ll have to change your name to Big Coo.”
“I’ll eat your fucking heart out.”
“Cute. Anyway, I’m done.”
Wilbur’s hands leave Quackity’s wings, making Quackity shudder.
“Oh, thank you, my goddess!” The avian cried to the heavens. She wove through trees, flapping her wings to push up, up, up and burst through the clouds. It is a freedom she never thought she would feel again, a comfort that she would never be able to truly explain.
Quackity turns around, stretching out his wings. He looks at Wilbur appraisingly, and doesn’t seem too upset about what he sees.
“Thanks, Soot.”
A path opened up through the clouds, sunlight filtering through, and the wind whispered, urging the avian to follow with a voice that sounded like her goddess’s. She followed, flapping her wings, straining her weakened muscles until she found herself able to perch atop the fluffy white, suddenly in the heavens among the gods.
“Yeah, just know that you owe me now.” Wilbur’s smile is intentionally smug, and met, once again, with oil-slick feathers. “Jesus- stop!”
“Stop being an asshole.”
“You first.”
Her goddess approached, glowing faintly. “Hello, dearest,” she said, reaching out her hands. The avian wrapped her fingers around her goddess’s warm hands. “We are quite impressed with what you have managed to accomplish, along with what you were willing to sacrifice. Because of this, we have a proposition for you.”
Quackity glowers, then stands. He stumbles a little bit, and Wilbur jolts to steady him.
“Fuckin’ legs fell asleep,” Quackity grumbles. He lets Wilbur help him into his room, and perches on the edge of his bed.
“Skill issue.” Wilbur makes sure he is out of wing range this time.
The avian watched carefully, eyes flicking to the large pantheon before returning to her goddess. She did not speak, electing to wait for whatever the proposition may be.
“Fuck off. Go grab me a shirt from the closet.”
“Why the fuck should I do that?”
“You’re the one who wanted to preen me, that means you have to deal with everything that comes with it. Now, get me a shirt. And an extra blanket, so I don’t get oil all over my sheets,
“We would like you to join us in the heavens,” said the goddess. She looked hopeful. “As a watcher of all the other avians you have helped to create. And, if you do well enough, perhaps you will become one of us yourself.”
Wilbur grumbles, but he does go get a shirt and a blanket. The shirt looks suitably big, and the blanket looks like it will cover the whole mattress. He carries the bundle back to Quackity, who tugs the shirt over his head then works to get the blanket exactly how he wants.
It feels awkward to leave, so Wilbur just watches. This time, when Quackity spreads his wings to maintain balance, his feathers do catch the light. Wilbur’s chest puffs with pride.
The poor avian was shocked into silence. She stared at her goddess, who squeezed her hands gently, something like pride on her face.
When Quackity is content in his bed, Wilbur finally moves. He washes off his hands in Quackity’s bathroom, then goes back to the bedroom.
“Anything else you need, princess?”
“So,” the goddess continued, “will you accept our offer? Will you remain here, among the gods, and watch over the many avians who will benefit from your guidance?” Her voice dropped to a whisper.
“Fuck off, I never wanna see you again.”
Wilbur chuckles and heads to the door, then pauses and turns back toward Quackity,
“Will you stay?”
“Will you let me come back?”
“Yes.”
“Yeah.”
From that day forward, the avian was a member of the heavenly court. She watched over the many avians who came after her, and continues to do so to this day. Her sacrifice allowed many wings to spread, and she sits in the heavens even now, a goddess willing to lose her wings in order to share her gift.