Work Text:
The problem with wax wings was that they always melted, eventually. It was a risk you had to take. If you flew them near the cold and wet, you would fall immediately; if you flew them up high in the heat, you could get farther, but you still fell eventually, covered in hot wax and feathers. If you were lucky you died on impact. If you were unlucky you drowned. If you were luckiest of all, you survived the fall, landed in the water, and were immediately picked up by a passing ship, where you had the chance to recover and heal—or you would be imprisoned under suspicion. Either way, though, you were alive. Lucky.
This was somehow the situation Nanase Riku was currently in, though neither he nor the first mate were aware of this quite yet. Riku was considering his leg, which had broken upon hitting the surface of the water but which luckily was the only one of his limbs to have broken, and his wax wings, which were at this point totally unusable due to the seawater and the heat of the sun. It would be easier at this point to totally remake them, though Riku wasn’t sure if there was any way he could get the supplies he needed out at sea. When he and Iori had first built the wings, in their tower at the center of the labyrinth, they had only used what they had in abundance—wax from candles, feathers from birds, wood from the furniture and from the firewood the king deigned to deliver from time to time. There were still birds out at sea, probably, but Riku doubted they visited the ship as often as they visited the tower window, and it was likely they wouldn’t leave behind feathers that were anywhere near as nice. It would be hard to catch up to Iori, at this rate…
Maybe they’re heading for the same harbor Iori and I were going towards, Riku thought. If that’s the case, maybe he’ll wait for me there…
Except Iori definitely knew the chances of surviving a fall into the middle of the ocean were just about zero. He had warned Riku a hundred thousand times of the dangers of flying too high or too low, had sworn over and over that if Riku fell Iori wouldn’t catch him.
He’d seen Iori, as he was falling. They’d met eyes, and Iori had screamed like a dying animal and flung an arm out to Riku, but they hadn’t quite been able to reach each other. Riku had fallen past and into the ocean spray, and the last thing he’d felt before waking up sodden on this ship was a blinding pain in his leg as it took the brunt of the force of water. Now his leg was in a cast, and his broken wings next to the bunk he’d been laid up in. He’d taken one of them in his hands earlier, examined the wood that he’d bound together, the feathers that Iori had meticulously placed. They were all ruined, now: most were missing, and the ones that remained were no longer carefully arranged but rather mussed all over the place. If Iori saw them looking like that, forget about the fall and the waves and the sun. He would throttle Riku before anything else got the chance to kill him.
Which is Iori’s right, Riku thought. We made our agreement. He gets all of me. He gets to control me, and in exchange he’ll never leave me behind…
I really miss Iori.
Though there wasn’t much he could do about that now. They had gotten out of the tower at the center of the labyrinth. They had gotten to freedom—the freedom of flight, at least. Things were supposed to be better from here on out. At the very least, neither of them would be stupid enough to construct an impossible labyrinth again. They had lost years to that legend, and hadn’t even seen it to completion. The inventor Daedalus builds a labyrinth to imprison the minotaur, the son of Queen Pasiphae and the white bull. Every year afterwards, eighteen virgins—nine girls and nine boys—are sent into the labyrinth for the minotaur to feed on, until Theseus is given a ball of string from the princess Ariadne to find his way out of the labyrinth, and he successfully slays the beast and flees alongside the princess.
Well, they’d built the labyrinth. There was a minotaur in there, too; Riku had seen it when they’d flown away and left it all behind. Their manager would be happy with that, even if they hadn’t seen it through. Legends were resilient enough that you could probably leave them alone once you started them off and they’d be fine—but that wasn’t enough. Their manager would still be disappointed. Legends were the bedrock of magic, after all. They continued on unbroken time and time again—but sometimes they crumbled, just a little. Sometimes they cracked. Sometimes they buckled under the weight of the power demanded of them, as magic became more commonplace, as more and more people used it for more and more things. And when that happened—or, preferably, before it could happen—the Takanashi family stepped in and provided assistance.
It used to be that the family could handle the legends on their own. Once or twice a year one or two members of the family would drop down into the bedrock of magic and enter a legend and walk it to its inevitable conclusion, and that would be enough. But then one legend started buckling unexpectedly, and then another, and then another, until the family could no longer keep up on their own. So they’d started a magician’s guild, each member hand-picked by the head of the family, led and managed by his only daughter and heir. This guild’s only purpose was to help legends along to their inevitable ends and keep the foundation of magic strong and solid. Its members would slip into the shades of those figures of legend and bring life back into their steps day by day; so Iori and Riku had built a labyrinth for a minotaur. So Iori and Riku had built wings of wax and wood and feathers to fly above the labyrinth and away from the kingdom. So Iori had warned Riku of the dangers of flying too high or too low; so Riku had flown too close to the heat of the sun and had fallen to his death.
He had made a mistake. He’d forgotten that they were still within the legend and not back out in the real world, that things didn’t work the way he was used to, that the air did not get colder the higher up you got but instead got warmer, that the sun was not a ball of fire impossibly far away but was instead a flying chariot that warmed you more the closer you’d gotten to it. He hadn’t heeded Iori’s warning, and look where that had gotten him.
I wonder if the people who rescued me saw me as “Icarus” or as somebody else, Riku thought. If I’ve fallen into another legend, that could be a problem. But if I haven’t, then that would be even worse. “Icarus” is supposed to die at the end of his legend, after all, and if I broke the legend’s end…
If a legend broke, whether from the weight of the magic drawn out from it or from outside interference, that was it. It was gone. One more chunk of the bedrock supporting magic itself would vanish forever, putting a greater burden on every legend touching it. If Riku had died as Icarus, that would be fine; he would immediately return, whole and hale, to reality, and Iori with him. It would be troublesome if they were in the open ocean, but their manager would be able to summon them back regardless. But Riku was alone on a ship with a broken leg and ruined wings. That wasn’t how the legend was supposed to go, and it wasn’t how you were supposed to exit a legend either. He and Iori should have come out together—which meant that he wasn’t out yet. He couldn’t be. It was impossible.
“—just floating out there, a kid, unconscious!” came a voice from outside the ship’s infirmary. “What else was I supposed to do, let him drown?!”
“Yes,” said another voice, cold and angry and just a little bit familiar. “Obviously, yes, Gaku. We’re on the open ocean a tenday’s journey from the nearest land, and you think someone just happened to wash up by our ship for totally innocent reasons? Sporting—what was it you said? Long feathered sticks tied to his arms?”
“You think that an enemy spy would show up about to drown with a broken leg and a weird feather contraption?” said Gaku. “That’s an insane gamble.”
“Which is exactly why it worked—for a time. And now we’re dumping the spy back into the ocean where it belongs.”
“You’re way too paranoid, Tenn.”
—Tenn?!
“And you’re not paranoid enough.”
“Guys, guys, calm down,” said a third voice. “It might just be a shipwreck survivor.”
“Then where’s the rest of his wreck?” snapped maybe-Tenn. “And what’s the deal with those sticks Gaku mentioned?”
“Wax wings, maybe? Like from the legend of Icarus.”
“Don’t be stupid, Ryuu,” said maybe-Tenn scathingly. “This is the real world, not fantasy land. Such things could never fly. Besides, we have magic.”
“Now, now, Tenn,” said Gaku. “Most people can’t whip out a flight spell at the drop of a hat.”
“Then should they even be calling themselves magicians?”
Riku balled his fists into his blankets, hands trembling. Tenn. The legend of Icarus. This is the real world.
This was the real world. He’d returned from the legend, somehow without Iori. He’d been scooped up by something even more impossible than a legend, by someone he’d been searching for for years. He and Iori had meant to shepherd the legend of the minotaur and had shepherded the legend of Icarus instead; it was possible that, since Daedelus survived the legend, Iori was still in there. Riku had to contact the manager right away. Riku was supposed to contact the manager right away. But…
“Don’t be so harsh. Not everyone’s a prodigy like you, you know.”
Maybe-Tenn sniffed. “I’m not a prodigy, I’m a hard worker. Get it together, Gaku. We’ve got a spy to kill.”
“Maybe not a spy. We don’t know for sure,” said Ryuu. “Shouldn’t we wait until he wakes up and then question him then?”
“Too dangerous.”
“No, Ryuu is right,” said Gaku. “Spy or no spy—and there’s still no way that’s a spy in there, it’s a kid, a fucking baby, like your age, Tenn—he still owes us a life debt. The least he can do is repay us with honesty. And you’ll notice if he’s lying, right—”
Tenn? Because Tenn-nii had always been able to see through Riku when they were children, Riku had never ever been able to lie to him—
“—Ryuu? You’re so honest, nobody’s deceived you when lying under oath.”
“He’s so honest he never expects anyone to be lying to him, though,” argued maybe-Tenn. “He’s been deceived literally hundreds of times in our daily lives.”
“Yeah, that’s what we’ve got you for, you lying bitch,” said Gaku. “You’re stone-cold. Butter wouldn’t melt in your mouth. Just look for whatever you have in common with this guy and those things will probably be lies.”
Riku winced. He and Tenn-nii weren’t completely identical, it was true, but they had still been confused for each other as children. They looked almost like mirror images of one another—Riku as Tenn’s flushed, ill, weaker reflection.
This is reality. I’m out of the legend. I really should be getting back, he told himself. I should be reaching out to the manager. I should be teleporting home. I should be getting back.
But if that really was Tenn-nii on the other side of the door, how could Riku let him go? His hands tightened on his ruined wing. More important to him than anything else—the Takanashi family, his place in the Idolish7 guild, the bedrock of magic itself—was finding Tenn-nii again, being a family again, getting answers for why he’d abandoned Riku all those years ago. This was one chance in a million, an impossibility, a trick of the fates that could never happen again. How could Riku waste it? How could Riku leave now?
—But Iori was still caught up in the legend, probably. This one-in-a-million chance had also separated them at the end of the legend, and Riku didn’t want to abandon his partner. He didn’t want to leave Iori behind. They’d made promises to each other. They were going to stay together. Riku was supposed to be under Iori’s control, and Iori would never leave Riku behind, but here they were, separated, and now Riku had to make an impossible choice. Stay here, where I might be reunited with Tenn-nii, or go back and try and save Iori. What do I do? Tenn-nii, what do I do?
It should have been easy. Iori was in danger, probably, and the person who might be Tenn-nii actively wanted Riku dead. Still, he found himself paralyzed, stuck in place like wax that grew brittle and broke underneath the cold seawater.
It should have been easy. He should have left already, slipped back between the bedrock and used the strengthened legend to carry him back to the Takanashi manor where the manager was waiting for his and Iori’s safe return. It should have been an easy choice to make, but it felt like it was taking all of Riku’s willpower to pull up the crust of the magic’s earth even before he left.
Do not fly too high, or the feathers will melt off of your wings and you will fall to your death, shattering like glass against stone. Do not fly too low, or the seawater will weigh your wings down and drag you under to your death in the watery abyss.
The door opened, revealing three people—a grown-up Tenn-nii and two others. His eyes met Riku’s and widened in horror; Riku’s hands twisted on the wing and snapped it in two, leaving behind splinters of wood like flakes of bone as he vanished back underneath magic itself, wrapped in wings of warm wax and feather, keeping under the crust (not too high) but above the mantle (not too low) , avoiding the bedrock as a whole to keep from touching the other legends. It was as simple as every other time he’d used this magic, which hurt more than Riku could ever have imagined. It shouldn’t have been this easy to flee and leave Tenn-nii behind. It shouldn’t have been this easy to abandon just like Riku had been abandoned…
Not too high. Not too low. In the space between regret and the blink of an eye, Riku emerged back in Takanashi Tsumugi’s study, gritting his teeth against the pain in his leg as the wing he hadn’t snapped clattered to the floor beside him.
“Riku! You made it back!” said Tsumugi, hurrying over as Riku braced himself against the couch and tried to pretend that his leg wasn’t broken. “Where’s Iori?”
“—I don’t know,” Riku admitted. “Something happened at the end of the legend…earlier, probably. You sent us to guide the legend of the minotaur, but somehow we ended up guiding the legend of Icarus, instead. We constructed a labyrinth and were locked in a tower, and then we escaped by building wings…like this one. I fell to my death, and returned to the real world with just a broken leg and was found by…by a passing ship, but I haven’t seen Iori since. Do you think he might still be in the legend?”
“I…don’t know,” said Tsumugi. “Your wings came with you when you returned to reality?”
Riku nodded. “I left one behind on the ship that picked me up,” he said, “but they did.”
“How odd…” Tsumugi frowned at the wings. “This hasn’t happened before. Maybe Iori’s still flying?”
“What?” said Riku. “Like, here? In reality?”
“In reality and with wax wings,” said Tsumugi. “I’ve never heard of such a thing before, but…it might happen. Especially if you left the legend with your wings still. He might not know that he’s back in reality already.”
“So you could call him back?” Riku asked, a little desperately.
“Yes!” said Tsumugi. “And hopefully his wings too. Then you guys need to figure out what ship it was you left your wings on, and we need to get them back as soon as possible.”
“Why?” said Riku. “It’s just an extra broken artificial wing…”
“It’s a wing that you brought out of a legend, Riku,” Tsumugi said. “We don’t know what kind of power it holds, or what it means for the legend of Icarus as a whole, so…”
“…Yeah, that’s true.” Riku paused, swallowed. “I did…recognize one of the people on the ship,” he said. “My older brother, Tenn. He abandoned our family and disappeared five years ago, but I saw him there along with two other people named Gaku and Ryuu. They were magicians, I think…and they were worried about me maybe being a spy.”
There was a flash of recognition in Tsumugi’s eyes, though she stifled it as quickly as it came. “I’ll ask Dad and Banri if they know anything about them once Iori’s back,” she said. “You guy should look into them too, though.”
Riku nodded as Tsumugi closed her eyes, silver light rising in patterns from her feet and swirling together into a portal that Iori tumbled through seconds later, windswept and exhausted with two perfectly good wings strapped to his arms.
“Iori!” said Riku. “You made it back!”
“Nanase-san,” Iori gasped. He stood up shakily, unbinding the wings from his arms, and then stalked across the room, slapping Riku across the face. “You idiot! Never do that again!”
“Hey! I didn’t actually stay there with Tenn-nii, did I?” snapped Riku. “And you’re the one who took longer getting back!”
“With Te—How on earth did you go from falling to your death to spending time with your missing brother ?!” Iori demanded.
“Wait, that isn’t what you’re mad about?”
“I’m mad that you fell to your death, you idiot!”
“I’m not an idiot, you’re an idiot! And anyway I didn’t die, and anyway anyway it was your idea to be Daedalus in the first place!”
“Because you were supposed to be Ariadne!”
“Well, how was I supposed to know? We built the labyrinth together! Stupid Iori!”
“Well, you shouldn’t have helped!” Iori snapped. “I thought you were dead!”
“You thought I—”
“It doesn’t matter,” he said. “Anyway, what was this about your brother Tenn?”
“If you’ll excuse me, I need to report on your safe return,” said Tsumugi. “Please compare notes on your return from the legend so that you can make a coherent report to me when I’m back. Alright?”
Iori snapped out a quick, “Alright,”; Riku gave their manager a quick smile and a wave before turning back to his partner.
“I ran into Tenn-nii on the ship!” he said. “Well, sort of. I was unconscious when they fished me out of the ocean, and I just overheard Tenn-nii talking about it with his friends. He thought I was a spy and wanted to kill me.”
Iori groaned. “Nanase-san, are you stupid?” he said. “Are you actually stupid. You were mistaken for a spy?! You could have thrown our whole guild into danger!”
“Like that was my fault?” said Riku. “I had no way of knowing they’d scoop me up or suspect me! I was unconscious the whole time!”
“And whose fault was it that you were unconscious?!” demanded Iori. “You should have put up a shield—”
“I didn’t realize that we weren’t in the legend anymore—”
“Then you should have been more observant!”
“Did you notice that you were out of the legend before the manager summoned you?!”
Iori flushed. “That’s none of your business.”
“So you didn’t notice either!”
“I’m not the one who was found by a modern ship,” Iori pointed out. “Nothing out of the ordinary for the legend happened to me until the manager summoned me back here.”
“Hey, I came back once I figured it out! …Or, a little after…”
Iori sighed. “Nanase-san…”
“It was Tenn-nii! I couldn’t leave until I figured out whether or not it was really him.”
“You’re going to drive me to an early grave,” said Iori. “Alright. Let’s compare notes before our manager gets back and find out why we left the legend differently this time.”