Archive of Our Own

Mark’s Prius is the same as it’s always been.

It’s got a little pine tree shaped air freshener dangling from the mirror, making the whole vehicle smell like some nondescript scent like fresh laundry or mountain air or whatever the fuck. He can’t really tell. Old reusable shopping bags are littered across the backseat. There’s a survival kit tucked in the corner, unused and untouched. Well, save for that one time three years ago when their engine got fucked up while driving from New Haven to Freedom City in the winter, and Mark spent twenty frigid minutes fucking around under the hood while Ashe sat wrapped up in a heated blanket in the passenger seat.

Four years. He forgot it’s been a full year since he’s been. Yeah.

Anyway.

Mark’s plugged his phone into the aux, and it’s on a playlist Ashe doesn’t recognize from Mark’s usual music. Usually it’s Vanessa Carlton and other chipper pop singers, but this one is full of My Chemical Romance and Pierce the Veil, among others. All stuff Ashe used to like.

When it starts playing Paramore, he realizes Mark put this playlist together of stuff he’s heard Ashe playing in the car when it’s been his turn to choose the music.

His throat feels tight at the thought.

He gazes out the window as the speakers switch to... god, is that Twenty One Pilots? When was he into them? Had to have been, like, four years ago. Five. Did Mark remember that after all this time? He’s not going to dwell on that.

He shifts in his seat. His wings twitch where they’re pressed against the back of the seat.

Of all the fucking things that had to stick with him, did it have to be the wings?

They hurt.

He tries not to think about that.

His hair sticks to the window as he leans his head against it. It crackles with static. There’s an energy in the car, a palpable charge that makes the old receipts on the floor stick to the soles of his boots. It’s gonna be a pain to peel them off. He’ll have to do it himself, because if Mark tries, they’ll just stick to him instead and that’ll piss him off.

Mark doesn’t speak. Neither does Ashe. He wraps his arms around himself. What’s this next song? Is that fucking Hollywood Undead? Holy fuck, how much of Ashe’s old ass music does Mark remember? This song is ass. This is embarrassing.

The only reason he doesn’t reach over and shut off the music is because the silence will be worse than listening to six white guys badly rapping about drugs and sex. Can it go back to MCR?

They leave the highway and enter New Haven. It’s playing Olivia Rodrigo now. That fucking song about being seventeen and hating life. That feels fucking targeted. God. Fuck you, playlist queue. He wants to throw Mark’s phone out the window.

They pull up to the house and those angry drums are still blasting from the speakers. He wants to punch something.

Mark doesn’t even let the song slow down and fizzle out before he shuts the car off and the music stops abruptly. He almost snaps that he was listening to that and there were like twenty seconds left, he could have left it on for a bit longer, but he bites his tongue.

Neither of them move. Mark clenches his fists on the steering wheel. The static energy in the car makes Ashe’s hair raise as if someone rubbed a balloon on it.

“You, uh...” Mark clears his throat. “You need help out the car?”

Ashe thinks of the last time Mark carried him out of the car. How long ago was that? Nine years? He was eight, he thinks. He was asleep in the backseat. Mom carried in the souvenirs they bought from their trip to the zoo, and Dad opened up the door to the backseat and picked Ashe up in his arms, careful not to jostle him too much, trying not to wake him. Mom kissed him on the forehead as Dad carried him to his room and tucked him into bed. His parents thought Ashe had been asleep that whole time, but he was just pretending. He liked when Dad carried him to bed. It felt safe.

Ten years ago. He’s—he’s fucking eighteen now.

Shit.

Ashe unbuckles his seatbelt and shoves the door open. “No.”

He clambers out and stands up, and—

his legs buckle beneath him. He sprawls across the driveway, wings smacking painfully against the concrete like a bird on a windshield. He doesn’t even try to get up, because everything hurts and it’s worse when he moves. He feels like he’s been put in a food processor.

“Shit,” Mark curses from the car, and he hears the driver’s side door open and close, footsteps hurrying across the pavement. “Kid? Ashe?”

“I’m fine,” Ashe tries to snap, but he’s not even sure if he manages to put any venom behind it at all. There’s a lingering ache throbbing in every muscle and joint in his body. He hurts in places he didn’t even know he had.

Something touches one of the Trickster’s wings and his entire body flinches, that single brief touch burning his nerves like fire. The wings flap of their own accord, jerking away from Mark’s hand and carrying Ashe’s body with them, making him half roll over from the momentum. He forces the wings to stop, stay fucking still, folding them tight to his back and ignoring how much they scream out in pain.

He scrambles onto his hands and knees. Every limb feels as sturdy as paper. Including the wings. (He hates that he can feel them at all.)

 “I’m good,” Ashe says. He ignores the way his voice cracks on the second word.

He grits his teeth as he pushes himself to his feet. The dead weight on his back threatens to tip him backwards. He leans forward, hunched over like an old man to combat it.

He hobbles up the driveway, legs shaking. Mark hurries along next to him, not even bothering to close the car door, and that should tell Ashe something—Mark is always paranoid about the car, locking it when he leaves it out of his sight for half a second, putting it in the garage when they’re home, terrified of someone putting trackers on it or something, and him leaving it open and turning his back on it to put out a hand for Ashe to take should register in Ashe’s head as weird, but his entire spine flares with pain and his thoughts disappear before he can make sense of them.

Without thinking, he reaches out and grabs his dad’s hand to steady himself. Static sparks between them. The feathers on the Trickster’s gross fucked up wings stand on end. Ashe doesn’t let go.

Mark’s other hand comes up to rest on Ashe’s shoulder, carefully avoiding the wings. “C’mon, kid,” he mutters.

Ashe grips his hand as tight as he can. Which probably isn’t that tight, considering how his thin fingers shake as they wrap around Mark’s palm.

They make their way up the steps to the door. Mark keeps holding Ashe’s hand and uses the other to open the door. It’s dark in the entryway. The shoe rack is covered in a thick layer of dust, Ashe’s converse and platform boots sitting next to Mark’s old beaten runners. The coat closet is wide open, giving Ashe a view of his old denim jacket covered in shitty homemade patches hanging next to Mark’s windbreaker.

He probably can’t wear any of his old jackets now. On account of the wings. That sucks.

The entrance hall is too narrow for both of them to walk side by side, especially with Ashe’s unwanted new additions, but Mark doesn’t let go of him. Ashe doesn’t want him to.

They hobble sideways through the short hall and into the living room. Ashe hits his leg on the coffee table and hisses, stabbing pain lancing through his entire shin, and his leg buckles. Mark keeps him upright, wrapping his arm around Ashe’s front to catch him.

“Couple more steps, kid, we’re almost at the couch.”

Ashe clings to that like a life preserver. He takes an agonizing step, then another, then another, gritting his teeth through his muscles screaming out in protest, and as soon as he’s within reach of the couch he lets himself go limp and collapses on it. The wings flail without his input, smacking the wall, the windows, the coffee table, and every point of contact hurts like hell, but he just buries his face in a throw pillow and lets out a deep, shuddering breath.

“Shit, kid, you okay?” He hears Mark’s knee hit the floor as he kneels next to the couch.

“Yeah,” Ashe grunts. “M’good.”

Mark squeezes his hand. He didn’t realize he was still gripping Mark’s hand like a lifeline. He doesn’t let go though. “Okay. Uh, your friends and Tide should be done helping with cleanup in Deadwood soon. They might be on their way. I can call.”

Ashe nods. He’s done talking. He just wants to rest.

“Okay.” Mark gives his hand a small squeeze again and then lets go. He hears Mark walk to the door, but he doesn’t leave the room. He starts quietly talking on the phone.

Ashe turns his head to look. Mark is looking right at him. When he sees Ashe looking, he turns to face the wall as he makes his call.

Ashe doesn’t even listen to what Mark is saying. He doesn’t care. His thoughts move at sluggish speeds, every word swimming through the air filtering itself through ten layers of exhaustion, and by the time he processes one of Mark’s words he’s halfway through another sentence. He can’t be assed to parse through it.

Mark hangs up after what feels like half an hour but is probably just a few short minutes. He turns back to Ashe and his shoulders relax, as if just looking away from Ashe for a handful of minutes made him scared that Ashe would be gone when he turned back around.

“They’re on their way,” he says. “It’s, uh, it’s a long drive, so Tide says they’ll stop by tomorrow. That okay?”

Ashe nods slowly. That’s fine. He’s. He’s fine.

He shouldn’t fall asleep on the couch. He should get up and get changed and take a fucking shower and brush his hair because the Trickster didn’t do any of that shit while he was possessing Ashe’s body and he feels gross.

He’s still wearing his old hero costume. It’s more the Trickster’s costume than it is his, really. The Trickster spent more time in it than Ashe did.

It still has William’s blood on it.

He doesn’t recall how that got there, but he knows it’s William’s from the way he’d looked at it.

Ashe noticed that William’s got a new scar, one that goes down the length of his face like lightning and disappears into the collar of his shirt. He wonders if that has anything to do with it.

He doesn’t want to know.

He sits up, his spine groaning in protest, the wings flopping uselessly to the side. Why does he have them now? He didn’t have wings after the first time the Trickster possessed him. Maybe because last time was so short? He doesn’t know. He wishes they didn’t stick around this time either.

“I’m going upstairs,” Ashe mumbles.

Mark nods. “Okay, okay. Yeah. You, uh, need help, kid?”

Ashe shakes his head. He’s fine.

He stays hunched over as he walks to the staircase. If he straightens up, the wings will surely make him topple over backwards.

He reaches the stairs. They’re not that tall. He’s ran up and down these stairs a million times before.

He lifts his foot. His entire leg burns with the effort.

His foot lands on the first step and he lets out a shaky breath. He braces one hand on the railing and pulls himself up onto the first step.

Cool. Alright. Just thirteen more to go.

He hears Mark take a few steps across the floor, and he knows without turning around that he’s standing maybe a foot away from the bottom of the stairs, ready to catch him if he falls or help if he asks for it. But he’s not going to need that, because he’s fine, he can climb a set of stairs by his damn self, thanks Mark.

He pulls himself up another step, then another right after it, not giving himself time to rest. The railing is doing a lot of fucking work here. If he didn’t have something to hold onto, he’d collapse.

Eleven more steps.

It’s agonizing. Every step feels like he’s pulling his muscles apart, ripping the tendons off his bones. He glances down, almost afraid he’ll have somehow torn his own skin open somehow from the effort, but his legs remain intact, and he trudges onward.

He has to pause halfway up. He feels like he’s run three marathons in a row with no breaks.

“Bit more, kid, you’re doing great,” Mark’s voice says right behind him.

Normally the sound of someone at his back would make him jump, but this doesn’t surprise him. In fact, he almost expected Mark to follow him up, ready to extend a hand if Ashe only asked. He won’t. He doesn’t need it. Part of him is annoyed at Mark’s hovering. The other half wants to ask him to carry Ashe up the rest of the stairs.

He takes another step.

Making his way up the rest of the stairs feels worse than the first half. Maybe it’s because he’s almost there and he’s eager to get to the top just to collapse on the floor and take another rest. He’s not sure. Either way, he fights through it, clenching his jaw so hard he’s sure he’ll have shattered a couple teeth, gripping the banister for dear life, and then he finally sets foot on the carpet of the upstairs living space.

He takes a deep breath. He keeps holding onto the railing, having nothing else to really keep himself upright. He glances behind him at Mark.

“Uh.” He doesn’t... want to ask for help. He got up the stairs on his own. He should be able to walk down a short hallway.

But he’s afraid if he doesn’t have something to support his weight, he’ll fall over. Fuck these stupid wings.

Thank fuck Mark seems to get it without him saying anything. He jogs up the rest of the steps, easy and light on his feet, and then he’s standing next to Ashe, one hand extended.

Ashe takes it and lets go of the banister. Static pops between their hands as soon as they make contact. He leans heavily on Mark’s arm and hobbles down the hall. His bedroom is on the right, but instead he veers off to the bathroom. He reaches the doorway and leans against it.

“You good, kid?” Mark asks.

Ashe nods. “M’good. Gonna shower.”

“Right. Right. I’ll, uh, make dinner. I’ll be right downstairs, okay? Yell if you need somethin’.”

“Kay. Thanks.”

Mark gives his hand a squeeze. He doesn’t move to let go.

Ashe does it first. He pulls away, leaning his full weight against the doorframe. Mark takes a step back. He doesn’t walk away, just stands there and watches Ashe limp into the bathroom. He braces a hand against the sink. He glances out the door at Mark, who’s just standing there looking at him.

Ashe shuts the door.

He leans against the sink, pointedly looking down so he doesn’t have to look at the shape in the mirror with scraggly silver hair and gross crooked wings and bloody tattered clothes. His hair falls in his face. He wants to cut it all off to get rid of the knots and the blood that congeals in the greasy strands.

He’s not even sure if it’s possible to detangle some of that mess. Fuck.

He hears Mark’s footsteps outside the bathroom, slow and hesitant as they walk away, like he’s afraid to leave Ashe alone, like Ashe will disappear if his eyes aren’t on him for five seconds.

Ashe looks over the bathroom counter. There’s a hairbrush, a pair of scissors, a tube of toothpaste, a rattail comb, tweezers, nail clippers—so much random shit just scattered across the surface. Too much to choose from.

Just pick one. Start somewhere.

He grabs the nail clippers. His nails are like claws on his fingers, uncut for over a year. Some of them have broken off, leaving just a short, jagged semicircle sticking out over his nailbed. Leaves him less to clip, he guesses. He’ll have to file it down anyway.

Clipping his nails is hard. His hands shake, trying to keep one still while the other tries to shear off the claws the Trickster left growing on his hands. He’s not sure how long it takes. Longer than it should. He used to do this in like two minutes, tops. It feels like ten before he finally manages to put the clippers down and look at his hands.

Not perfect. But it works.

He looks out over the counter. What next? He started, he needs to keep the momentum going, he needs to right something else before he collapses on the bathroom floor from exhaustion.

He looks down at his clothes.

He tears off the scarf and throws it to the floor. It’s black, and he’s glad for that, because that means he can’t see whatever blood and gore stuck itself to the fabric.

He lifts his foot to take off the shoes, but he evidently overestimated his balancing abilities, because he topples over and nearly hits his head on the side of the toilet. The Trickster’s wings flail out in a fruitless attempt to keep his balance, smacking against the walls and nearly taking out one of the lightbulbs. He spits out a curse, muffled into the bath rug.

“Ashe?” Mark’s voice yells from downstairs.

“I’m okay,” Ashe yells back, his voice hoarse, breaking on every second syllable. He grimaces as he pushes himself up, sitting on the floor, leaning against the bathtub.

He reaches down and unbuckles the boots. The leather is sticky with something he doesn’t want to know the source of. He throws them at the door with all his might. They thud against the white painted wood. A red smear is left behind when they make contact.

His fingers tremble as he unbuttons the overcoat. The purple fabric is almost black with grime. As soon as it’s unbuttoned, he tries to whip it off over his shoulders, but they catch on the wings and he grimaces.

How the fuck is he meant to get this off?

He scoots over to the counter and manages to prop himself up on his knees enough to peer up at the stuff scattered across its surface. The scissors glint in the overhead light.

This is a terrible idea. His hands are too unstable. He’ll end up cutting himself.

He reaches up and grabs the scissors.

It’s hard to cut through the fabric. He’s twisting around, trying to wrangle the wings into a position where he can get at the fabric around them. He manages to cut through one wing hole after a lot of maneuvering and has to rest his arms back at his sides to let them rest, pain radiating from his bones.

His shoulders hurt. His everything hurts, actually but his shoulders especially.

But he’s not done. He can’t rest.

It takes a lot of wriggling around and bending his arms in strange ways to cut through the other wing hole. He jabs the top of the wing with the scissors by accident and he flinches. He doesn’t care if it bleeds. They’re not his anyway.

He rips the overcoat off of him and throws it with the boots. He’s left in just the Trickster’s pants and the undershirt. Both have red splotches of blood on them.

He has to cut through the undershirt too, and somehow its harder than cutting through the overcoat despite the thinner fabric. Maybe he’s just tired.

He manages to get it off and he flings it across the bathroom. He doesn’t look down at himself. He doesn’t want to see the blood that’s soaked through his clothes and coated his skin, or whatever scars he’s gotten from shit the Trickster did, or how thin he is because god knows the Trickster probably didn’t think to eat while he was using Ashe’s body. Or maybe he did eat. If he did, Ashe doesn’t want to know what it was.

He wrangles his pants off and just sits on the floor for a second, looking over the various stains on the fabric. Fuck. He used to love that costume. As soon as Richie handed it to him and he put it on, he really, truly felt like a hero. He felt like he was almost worthy of being one of the Prime Defenders.

He can’t even look at it without wanting to throw up.

He takes a deep breath and hides his face in his knees. He needs to clean up. Shower. Something.

The Trickster’s wings twitch against his back.

He grabs the edge of the bathtub and pushes himself to his feet. Most of his weight is braced against the ceramic, and his legs shake like a newborn deer’s, but he manages to clamber into the tub and sit himself down leaning against the wall. Without even thinking, he reaches up and turns on the water.

Freezing cold water pierces his skin. He jumps, wings flaring out, knocking bottles of shampoo and conditioner off the shelves. He cries out as a half empty bottle of body wash lands directly on his knee, whipping his arms up to shield his head as random shit crashes down around him.

“Ashe?” He hears frantic footsteps making their way up their stairs through the sound of running water hitting the basin. “Ashe, you okay?”

“I’m fine,” Ashe calls, forcing the wings to curl back in. Fucking nuisance, those things are. He hates them. “I’m okay, just dropped the shampoo.” Technically not a lie.

He hears the footsteps pause outside the bathroom door. “Okay. Alright. Let me know if you need me.”

“I will.” He won’t.

Mark’s footsteps walk back down the hall and to the stairs. Ashe turns to the side so he can look at the wings and glare at them. Look what you did, he wants to say. It’s just cold water.

They don’t respond. He almost wishes they would somehow.

Regardless, he scoots over so he’s sitting in the stream of water. It’s slowly warming up, so at least it’s not frigid as he shuts his eyes and shoves his head under the stream. He can’t run his hands through his hair, as knotted as it is, so he just grabs handfuls of it and lifts it up, moving it around so all of it gets wet. The water is warm now, which feels heavenly on his aching bones. He slumps against the wall, keeps his eyes shut, tilts his head back, and lets the water wash over him.

This is the nicest thing he’s felt since the Trickster left his body. He lets out a sigh.

He raises a hand to shield his eyes from the water and opens them. The water running down the drain is tinted red.

He shuts his eyes again.

He doesn’t open them again for a while.

When he finally does, the water is running clear, and when he looks down at himself his body looks more or less clean, the steady stream of warm water rinsing away most of the grime. He tries to sit up, but the wings behind him are heavy, heavier than they were, bogged down and waterlogged, and he huffs in frustration.

Fuck those things. If he could chop them off without it hurting, he’d do it.

He’s half tempted to do it anyway.

He glances out at the bathroom. It’s a mess, the Trickster’s old clothes tossed haphazardly onto the floor, water splashed across the walls from the flapping of his wings, the red stain on the wall from his boot, and a stone of guilt settles in his stomach. He just got back, and the first thing he does is make a fucking mess.

He reaches over and shuts off the water. Silence falls over the bathroom like a shroud, the sound of dripping water echoing against the basin.

He should get out of the tub.

The wings flare out to the side as he pushes himself up onto his knees, trying to help him keep his balance. It doesn’t help. They’re too heavy, soaking wet, dragging him down, but he grits his teeth and grabs the edge of the tub and pulls himself up.

The floor of the bathroom hurts when he collapses on it, feeling like a drowned rat. The wings drip water everywhere, soaking the bathmat, the floor, the clothes he tore off himself and threw at the door. He should clean this up before Mark sees. He doesn’t want Mark to have to clean it up for him. He’s not—he’s not going to be an inconvenience, he can pick up after himself.

There’s a towel hanging off the towel rack. He grabs it and drags it with him to the floor. His arms hurt, but he gets to work trying to dry himself off as best he can.

The wings are pretty much unreachable. They flinch whenever he tries to touch them. He’s not making them do that.

He grabs the edge of the counter and starts pulling himself up. He grimaces, his legs screaming in protest, the wings bogging him down, but he manages to get himself up on his feet, leaning most of his weight against the counter.

He glances back out at the bathroom.

Fuck, he’ll clean it tomorrow.

Shit, he doesn’t have a change of clothes. He’ll have to run across the hall to his room to grab something. He takes a deep breath, bracing himself for more fucking walking.

He wraps the towel around his waist, using one hand to hold it up and the other to open the door, leaning against the counter, not looking forward to leaving a trail of water behind him as he makes a mad dash to his room, or as mad of a dash as he even can make like this, but then he stops and looks at the floor right outside the door.

There’s a pile of folded clothes on the carpet.

He leans down and picks them up, setting them on the counter, which is the dryest surface in the entire fucking bathroom, thank you wings. There’s a pair of flannel pyjama pants, some clean underwear, a pair of socks rolled up into a ball, and on top is a purple t-shirt with the word “SOUR” printed in blocky white letters across the front.

Dad must have found his band merch.

Cool. This is—this is fine.

He puts on the underwear, the pants, even the socks, despite how wet the floor is, he’ll just do some acrobatic ballerina shit to avoid stepping in it, it’s fine, but. The shirt.

It won’t fit over the wings.

He looks across the hall to his room.

Holding the shirt, he steps out of the bathroom, wings dripping on the carpet. As an afterthought, he grabs a second towel and brings it with him so he can attempt to dry them when he’s not sitting on the floor in a puddle.

Walking feels a bit easier now. Maybe all his muscles needed were a good soak in some warm water. They still hurt like nothing else, yeah, but less like he’s getting repeatedly stabbed in every muscle in his body. He manages to reach his doorway without falling over, leaning against the doorframe with his wings dripping on the carpet.

His room looks exactly the way he left it, his bed pushed against the wall, unmade, the sheets hanging off the side. Clothes pour out of his dresser, band tees and black jeans and baggy sweaters. There are notebooks stacked on the floor next to the bed, earrings and chains and rings and makeup covering the entire surface of his nightstand and dresser.

If not for the layer of dust covering everything, it would look like he was here just this morning.

He takes a deep breath.

Okay. Okay, this is... this is okay.

He straightens out his sheets, smoothing the comforter over the mattress, and he lays the towel down over it. He turns around and sits on the floor, leaning against the bed, lifting the wings to rest on the surface of the bed so the towel catches all the water. He reaches for his nightstand and opens the drawer, grabbing a pair of scissors. He lays the shirt out in his lap, back up.

He doesn’t want to cut the shirt.

He has to if he wants to actually fucking wear it.

Whatever. Olivia Rodrigo would understand.

Actually? He needs a soundtrack to this. He’s doing some angsty teenager shit. He needs some angsty teenager music.

He rummages around in his drawer for a second, poking through cases of CDs, and he grabs a purple one. He’d love to crack open his Ice Nine Kills CDs, or Pierce the Veil, or something along those lines, but he hasn’t listened to them in so long and he’s loved those bands for his entire fucking life, and if his time away has somehow made him hate them or something he doesn’t think he can handle that possibility. He can listen to Olivia. It’s just teenage girl pop about high school drama. That’s safe.

He opens up his stereo, puts in the CD, shuts it, and presses play.

The swell of violins fills the room, and he shuts his eyes and leans his head back against the bed for a moment. Something in his chest tightens when the drums and guitar suddenly come in.

He opens his eyes and looks down at his shirt. With a grimace, he starts cutting out a large square in the back of it. He gently bops his head to the beat, and as he decimates the back of this t-shirt with a teenage girl screaming about how being a teenager fucking sucks, he thinks something rights itself in his brain. Something clicks in there. He’s not sure what exactly, but it does.

If he ignores the weight on his back and the ache in his bones, he can almost fool himself into thinking he’s doing this so he can use the fabric to make new patches for his jacket, and he’s just sitting in his room staying up late and working on something, not cutting up an old t-shirt just so he can make it wearable because the demon that stole his body decided to leave him with a couple of new unwanted additions.

His hands shake as he cuts through the fabric.

He could make new patches out of this, actually. He can’t wear his jacket anymore though. Maybe he can give it to William. He likes a lot of the same bands that Ashe has made patches for.

The CD cycles through a couple songs. Normally this would take him less than a minute, but his hands tremble too much to cut the square straight without straining. He finally cuts through the last of it and holds up the shirt to look over his handiwork.

He remembers when he got this shirt, secondhand at a thrift store. Mark didn’t understand what about it was related to the artist Ashe liked, but he bought it for him anyway.

He feels kind of bad cutting it up like this. But he couldn’t wear it as it was.

He flaps the wings. They seem kind of dry. Sort of. He reaches back and rubs the towel over both of them as best he can.

Once he deems them dry enough, he turns back to the shirt. He goes in from the bottom, shoving his arms through their holes before pulling the bottom of the shirt over his head. He ends up poking his head through the big square wing hole. Not the goal, but maybe it’s best if he wriggles the bottom of the shirt over the wings and lets them out through the back before he focuses on getting his head where it belongs.

It takes a lot of wriggling around and squirming, but he pulls the wings in as close to his back as he can get them and the bottom of the shirt slips over them. They flare out back over the bed, and he manages to get his head through the head hole, and he looks down at himself.

He’s wearing his shirt. He looks normal. He looks ready to go to bed.

The only things that suggest anything different are the weight pulling down on his back, the ache in his bones, and the gnarls of silver hair he hasn’t brushed out yet.

He probably should have done that when he got out of the shower.

Whatever. He can do it tomorrow.

He leans back against the bed. It’s playing one of those sad songs he never bothered to figure out the name of because he doesn’t look at the back of the CD case when he listens to her, just sits there and lets himself feel like a sad teenage girl whose only problems are boys and high school drama for a few minutes. It’s something about a toxic relationship, he thinks. Some kind of back and forth between her and some guy.

God, he wishes whatever happened with the Trickster could be described as easily and simply as “back and forth.” It was, just not in the way this song means it.

He remembers fighting. A lot. He remembers nightmares, and screaming, begging to be let go, begging to die, agony like he’d never felt before, trying to force his way back into his own body to do something, anything.

Back and forth, my ass.

He reaches up and presses pause. The room goes quiet.

The little square of purple fabric sits on his lap.

He hears footsteps in the hallway and looks up. Mark appears in the doorway, holding a small pot of something in one hand a paper plate in the other.

“Hey kid,” he says. “You hungry?”

Ashe’s stomach growls. He nods.

Mark steps into the room. He holds the plate out to Ashe. He reaches up and takes it. It’s a plate of Kraft Dinner with a fork stuck in the middle.

“We don’t have much, this is kind of all we got,” Mark says apologetically. “I’ll go see what I can pick up tomorrow.”

“Thanks,” Ashe mutters. He picks up the fork and shoves a scoop into his mouth. The noodles are a little  undercooked, but it’s not that bad. It’s hard to fuck up mac n’ cheese.

Mark scoops some into his own mouth straight from the pot. He’s still standing, looking down at Ashe, half turned to the door like he’s unsure if he should leave or not.

Ashe pats the floor in front of him. Mark takes the invitation and lowers himself down to sit cross-legged on the carpet. “So, uh...” He swallows his mouthful of mac. “How ya feeling?”

He winces, as if suddenly aware that it’s a stupid question, but Ashe just shrugs. “I’m okay.”

“C’mon kid, don’t lie to me,” Mark says, his voice soft. “If you don’t wanna talk about it, I’m—I’m not gonna push if you don’t want, okay, I just—I wanna make sure you’re... I wanna know if there’s anything I can do for you.” He takes a deep breath. “I haven’t seen you in a year, Ashe. I just... I wanna make sure you’re alright.”

A lump forms in Ashe’s throat. He looks down at his plate of mac n’ cheese. “I—” He nearly chokes on the words, tears thick in his throat. He’s been gone for a fucking year, he should—he should at least say something, let Mark know he’s not fucking dying or something, that he’s still here after being possessed, but all he can force out is

“Do you think a surgeon could remove the wings for me?”

Mark’s eyes widen a little, and Ashe lowers his head so he’s not looking, choking a weak sob into his hand. He shouldn’t be fucking crying right now. He’s fine. He’s alive. He should be grateful for that.

But the wings.

They’re not his. He doesn’t want them. He wants to rake his hands through the feathers and rip them out handful by handful. He wants to grab them by the joints and snap them off his shoulders. He wants to grow claws again and dig them into the skin, rend the flesh from bone, snap the tendons and tear the limbs off. He didn’t ask for this.

“Uh, maybe,” Mark says, quietly, hesitantly. “That, uh... that Cross guy seemed crazy enough. From what I heard, he’d probably ask you if he could do it instead of the other way around.” There’s a pause. “I think he stole that Vyncent kid’s kidneys or somethin’.”

Ashe chokes out a wet laugh, rubbing his eyes with the heel of his hand. “Yeah, yeah, Vyn mentioned that. He, uh, Cross seems cool.” He sniffles. He shouldn’t be crying. He’s fine.

“Maybe you can ask him sometime,” Mark says. “But for now, you’re—Ashe, I think we gotta get you back on your feet before you can jump right into fuckin’ surgery.”

Ashe nods. Yeah. Yeah, he should probably get used to being alive and walking around and being himself before he goes under the knife for anything.

Mark leans to the side to look at the wings splayed out over Ashe’s bed. “I mean, they’re kind of cool. Looks like they’re... I don’t know, raven wings? I ain’t no bird expert. Now lizards, I could probably tell you about them, but I don’t know shit about birds.”

Raven wings? Okay, that’s objectively the coolest kind of wings he could have gotten out of this. They don’t look exactly like any kind of normal wings, a few too many joints and little horns sticking out of the bend of them, but raven wings...

Yeah, okay. He can live with that. For now. He still wants them off, but he could be like... like from those Maximum Ride books he read when he was twelve. He had a brief phase where he wanted to have cool wings, like that emo love interest guy. He got over that phase the moment he got fixated on something else, but still. Maybe younger Ashe would be excited about it.  

“We can talk to someone about it though,” Mark adds. “I’ll—I’ll figure somethin’ out for you, kid.”

Ashe nods. He keeps his head lowered so he doesn’t have to look at Mark in the eyes.

The mac n’ cheese is definitely not the best thing he’s ever eaten. He clears his plate in less than five minutes anyway.

“You want any more?” Mark asks when Ashe sets his paper plate aside.

Ashe shakes his head. He’s tired. He wants to sleep.

Mark picks up the plate. “Okay,” he says quietly. “I’ll, uh, I’ll go clean up. You wanna go to bed? Get some sleep?”

Ashe nods. He looks at the square of purple fabric on the floor. His back feels cold.

Mark pushes himself to his feet. “Okay. I’ll be back up in a few, okay?” He steps out the door and lingers a few seconds longer than he typically would before he disappears down the hall.

Ashe listens to his footsteps as he goes back downstairs. He hears the gentle clattering of dishes in the kitchen downstairs.

Fuck.

He didn’t—he wanted Mark to stay here. He wanted Mark to sit on his bed and tuck him in like he used to when he was a kid and turn on Ashe’s bedside lamp so he doesn’t have to sleep in the dark. He doesn’t want to be alone. He wants to go stand at the top of the stairs just to listen to his dad mess with the dishes in the kitchen so he knows he’s still here.

Maybe he’s not here.

Ashe feels like all the air in his lungs leaves at once, and when he tries to breathe in, he barely gets any before his lungs contract and push it all out again. Fuck. Fuck. Maybe Mark isn’t here. Maybe Ashe is fucking dreaming again.

Maybe he’s not free.

Maybe the Trickster still has him.

Maybe that’s why he can still feel the fucking wings, because he’s still possessed and he’s just somewhere in a corner of his mind that’s trying to project a fantasy that he’s free and his friends are alive and he’s home with Mark in some last ditch attempt to comfort him so his entire mind doesn’t break at the horror that his body is doing. Maybe he’s killing entire cities of people and he doesn’t know it, maybe when he ate that mac n’ cheese earlier he was actually digging into the corpse of an innocent mother and shoveling her guts into his mouth—

He can’t breathe.

He scrambles to the door, stumbling on aching legs, wings smacking against the walls. “Dad!” he shouts, voice hitching on the single syllable. “Dad!”

Something falls downstairs, and that could just be the sound of the Trickster wandering around this corner of his head, trashing shit just because he can, and when he sees Ashe he’ll laugh and taunt him and then block him off in another obscure corner of their shared consciousness just to do it all over again—

Footsteps hurry up the stairs. He braces himself for red skin covered in runes and ghostly silver hair that’s his but not and gnarled hands and dark wings

It’s Mark.

His eyes are wide, one a normal blue and the other a bright reptilian yellow, and he scrambles up the last few steps like’s he afraid Ashe is dying, nearly tripping over his own feet in his haste. He stops in front of Ashe’s doorway, where Ashe is clinging to the doorframe like he’ll fall through the floor and disappear if he lets go.

“What’s up?” Mark asks. “What’s wrong?”

Ashe’s throat feels too thick to speak. A sob rips itself from his throat when he tries, and he lunges forward and wraps his arms around his dad.

Mark hugs him back immediately, tight and strong, hands landing between the Trickster’s wings. “Hey kid,” he whispers. “I’m here, I got ya.”

Ashe buries his face in Mark’s t-shirt. He’s going to stain the fabric with his tears. He doesn’t care.

He’s here.

“You’re okay,” Mark mutters, gently rubbing Ashe’s back. His hands are warm against Ashe’s cold skin. “You’re okay, Ashe.”

Ashe chokes a sob into Mark’s shoulder. Mark is here. Ashe is here. The Trickster is not.

Fuck, this is stupid. This is fucking stupid. He’s an adult. He should be fine.

He presses his face into Mark’s shirt and cries harder.

“I gotcha kid,” Mark mutters. “That fuckin’ thing’s not gonna get to you again, okay? If it comes back, I’ll fucking kill it. I swear I fucking will, Ashe.”

The Trickster is an otherworldy being with unlimited power, but when Mark says he’d kill it if it came for him again? He believes it. Mark would find a way.

He takes a shaky breath. He pulls away just to wipe his eyes and his nose. There’s snot on Mark’s shirt. Gross.

“You okay, kid?” Mark whispers.

Ashe sniffles. He nods. He’s fine.

This is stupid. He should be able to be alone for five fucking minutes.

Whatever.

“You want me to leave my door open when I go to bed?” Mark asks.

Ashe sniffles. He feels stupid. He’s an adult. He’s eighteen. He doesn’t need to keep his door open or sleep with the lights on or call for his dad after literally one minute apart.

But. You know what? He’s been away for a year. Completely gone. Therefore, technically, he thinks he should still be considered seventeen. Still a child. So maybe he’s allowed to be a little bit pathetic about this. He’s allowed to cry for his dad and get sad about having to cut open one of his favourite shirts just to wear it and keep the lights on when he goes to bed.

And also...

“Actually, can I sleep in your room?” he asks.

He’s allowed to sleep in his parents’ bed if he wants to. He’s still a kid, technically. And he feels like he just woke up from the worst fucking nightmare of his life, and he used to always open the door to his parents’ room and climb into bed between them when he had bad dreams, and Mom would always hug him tight and Dad would kiss him on the forehead as he fell asleep safe under their covers.

He didn’t have a year to adjust to growing into an adult. He’s allowed to do a few stupid kid things if he wants.

“Of course,” Mark says without hesitation. He gently pats Ashe on the back. “Let’s get ready for bed, okay? You look dead fucking tired, kid.”

Ashe snorts. Yeah, he’s sure he does.

Ashe pulls away, a little hesitant, but Mark stays standing in the doorway as Ashe steps back and turns to his bed. He grabs a stray blanket and wraps it around his shoulders over the wings, feeling like a stupid little kid.

He looks at his old stuffed animals. He keeps them all on his bed at all times, because yeah, maybe he’s too old, but he still likes having them around, dammit.

Fuck it.

He grabs the one in the corner, a giraffe that he got when he was eight from that trip to the zoo. He named it Peanut Butter. He can’t remember why.

He holds Peanut Butter under one arm and uses his other hand to hold the blanket around his shoulders. Mark steps aside to let him out of the room, and Ashe shuffles across the hall into his parents’ room.

He rarely comes in here, and when he does it’s usually just to grab something off Mark’s dresser that he asked for, or sometimes to rummage through some of Mom’s old things when Mark is out of the house. Most of her stuff is packed away in the closet, but there are a few things out, like an old half empty bottle of perfume, her jewelry box, old photos, stuff like that. Mark would have had to have put all that there himself. They moved into this house after she died.

But. That aside.

Mark pulls the covers back. Ashe clambers onto the bed, and he really does feel like a kid now, he feels small, because this bed is much too big for one person. He tries not to think about the clear absence that must haunt his dad every night and how he’s the cause of it. That’s—that’s ten years ago, that’s in the past, and he doesn’t—he doesn’t need to think about it.

He collapses on Mom’s side of the bed. He goes to pull the covers over himself, but Mark’s beats him to it, tugging the comforter up to Ashe’s chin. The wings hang over the side of the bed. It’s a bit uncomfortable just having them hanging there like that, but he doesn’t have a lot of options. Besides, he’s exhausted. He’s still going to sleep no matter how uncomfortable he is or how much his muscles hurt.

Mark climbs in, sitting up against the pillows and turning on the bedside lamp, filling the room with a warm glow. “I’m gonna be up for a bit,” he says, pulling out his phone. “That okay?”

Ashe hums and nods. He watches Mark starts to type something, and he’s always got his ringer on which means Ashe can hear every little tap tap tap from the phone, and then he hears the whoosh of a message being sent.

“Who’re you texting?” he asks quietly. “Is it Tide?”

Mark glances at him from the corner of his eye. “Hm? Uh, yeah. Why? Wanna say hi to your friends?”

“Just tell ‘em I’m okay.”

Mark nods and starts typing again. Ashe hears the ding of a text being received, and he hears Mark snort softly before typing back.

“So, like, what’s up with you and Tide?” he mutters.

Mark furrows his brow and glances at Ashe. “Whaddya mean?”

Ashe studies his face. He looks confused. Oh, he is clueless clueless about whatever the fuck he and Tide have. Just like Vyncent with William. Okay, he sees how it is.

“Nothing,” Ashe mutters. He hugs Peanut Butter to his chest and shuts his eyes.

Mark huffs out a soft laugh. “Go to sleep, kid.” He reaches over and gently ruffles Ashe’s hair. “Your brain’s probably scrambled from today.”

Scrambled from the past twelve months, more like it, but. Yeah. It probably is.

He hears something moving, and then he feels one of his wings touching something and he opens his eyes. His right wing has moved to drape itself over Mark’s lap, completely without his input.

Mark doesn’t say a word. He continues texting with one hand and rests the other on top of the wing. He gently runs his fingers through the slightly damp feathers, straightening out crooked ones, picking out small bits of dirt that didn’t quite wash away in the shower.

It feels nice. Like the way Mom used to run her hand through his hair when she hugged him.

He takes a shaky breath. He shuts his eyes again.

For the first time in about a year, he feels safe, and he drifts off to sleep as his dad gently runs his fingers through his new feathers.