Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

He wishes his wings were free. If they were, Philza fanaticizes, he would wrap them around himself, tight and dark, for even the smallest illusion of privacy. 

It's a pathetic reason to want that. Full access to his precious, beautiful wings, and he wouldn't even fight; he has no daydreams of escape. He just wants the comfort of darkness and to have no one fucking looking at him, for just a little bit. 

Philza presses his forehead more firmly against his knees. This has been his life for so long that he is nearly used to it. His wings, twice-fettered and aching. Bars against his back. The sting of eyes and eyes and eyes, people talking about him as if he isn't there or he can't understand him. He's nearly numb to it. 

Maybe, Philza thinks, distantly, they really have broken him, after all this time.

He breathes. His hair is greasy and unclean, and clings to his cheeks. He thinks about getting some sleep. He tries not to think about anything else, or feel anything else, or panic. 

Hunting birds aren't in style anymore. He's no longer young. There's no telling where he'll end up, this time. 

Philza wishes his wings were free. 

.

He manages to doze. Around him, he can hear the voices of the traders and hunters rising and falling, but he's floating enough that he doesn't really process the words. 

That's good. He doesn't know the next time he'll really get to rest. He's certainly going to need it. 

Philza comes more fully to himself when he hears the door to the cage open. He stays still, keeps his face hidden in his knees. Waits to see what's going to happen before he reacts. 

Something heavy hits the floor of the cage. Philza tenses. The voices of the hunters surge with mirth and the call congratulations to each other, and that's never a good sign. In his many years of experience, Philza's learned that anything that makes hunters happy is likely something worth dreading.

They don't stick around; the voices fade. It doesn't do much to calm him. They left something behind, and it could be anything from a feral dog they think it would be funny to watch him fight to a bloody and half-rotted animal carcass he'll be expected to eat. Philza has seen both. (He tries to forget the frantic screams of the Ender hybrid as she frantically tried to kick the beast away, her teleport fizzling and burning her each time, the roar of laughter from the gathered spectators; the resigned whimper of a Rabbit hybrid as he dug his fingers into raw, bloody cow flesh and brought it hesitantly to his lips, knowing it would make him gag. Not much of a choice; was the middle of the winter. The human who owned that estate hadn't bothered feeding them in days.)

Philza can hear movement. He exhales slowly through his nose. Carefully, he tilts his head up, hoping that it isn't enough to draw an immediate attack if this creature is going to—

Oh. 

It's a kid. 

Crumpled on the ground, eyes squeezed shut and inhaling heavily through his teeth—a kid (or, more accurately, a teenager. Maybe an older teenager? Philza had never been any good with ages and he sometimes wishes he was worse, because it's so much worse to see what he sees while being aware of how fucking young some of them are) with matted, straw-blond hair and white-and-red patterned wings, fettered once at the base. An avian, clearly. 

The kid blinks up at him. His eyes, liquid blue, bore into Philza's for a split second. 

Philza tucks his face back into his knees. His wings twitch in their fetters. He wants to wrap them around himself and hide. He is never allowed to hide. 

The kid says nothing. 

.

"You a priest?"

Hours had passed. Philza hadn't been able to doze off again —he had long since lost the ability to sleep in the presence of others—but he's drifted, listening to the sounds of the world outside. The traders and the hunters are asleep. Tomorrow is market day. 

This is the first time the kid has spoken. His voice is so hoarse it sounds painful. 

Slowly, Philza lifts his head. He looks at the kid, who has taken up a similar position to him, knees pulled up to his chest and his chin on his knees. The kid looks back.

Phiza opens his mouth. "What was that, mate?" he croaks. It hurts to talk. He can't remember the last time he did it. 

The kid repeats, "You a priest?" He shifts uncomfortably, as if unused to the bindings. "My mum always said—" here, his voice breaks for a moment, but he pushes on, "that having big black wings meant that someone was a priest."

Philza stares. It takes a moment for him to process the full implication of the statement. The fact it's a question. My mum always told me.

The boy doesn't remember the sky cities. 

Philza's eyes hurts as he blinks. It makes sense, given how young the kid is, and how long it's been since the cities fell. But Philza has never really considered it before—that there are Avian children, probably many Avian children, who know nothing of their home. Who have nothing but stories of where they came from. 

A part of him wants to laugh, but not because it's funny.

"Nah, mate," says Philza. "I'm no priest." 

Maybe, in another life, he would have been. The kid—or, rather, the kid's mother—isn't wrong, about what his wings used to mean. Black and expansive and sleek as the Void itself. Every Elytrian is an Avian, but not every Avian is an Elytrian. Philza remembers the stories, of course; Elytrian have a closer connection to the Void that grants them all the sky; that's why they're stronger fliers, can fly longer distances. They could bring everyone else closer to it, too. He remembers the temple he was raised in. He remembers the prayers. 

None of it matters. Not the prayers (he hasn't prayed in a long, long time), not the fragments of rituals he can recall, not the strange mark on his sternum that resembles a twice-pierced heart. He has a memory of one of the priests assuring him that they would tell him what it meant when he was older. 

Before he had a chance to be older, the humans came. So the mark is just something people tsk over when he changes hands, like his wings or his hair or the scars that make him less pretty.

A priest. Him. Imagine. Priests don't have bound wings or scars on their wrists from shackles. Priests can advise and comfort and do more than tear things apart with their talons. Priests can fly. 

Philza is about to duck his head back to his knees when the kid speaks again.

"Who're you, then?" he— he nearly demands it, loud and brash. Gods above, when was the last time Philza heard any hybrid be brash?

He shouldn't answer. He shouldn't encourage this. 

He does anyway, because he's a fool. 

"I'm nobody, mate," says Philza, tongue heavy with resignation, "same as you." 

The kid's breath catches. "I'm not nobody," he snaps. "I'm -" 

"Don't tell me your name," Philza hisses. He doesn't want to know. He refuses to get attached. He's going to watch this kid be sold at auction tomorrow; he can't get attached. 

He remembers what happened last time he got attached. Once, he was in a place that encouraged it. It was one of the very worst places he's ever been. 

The kid stares at him as if the words scalded. There's so much spirit there. The gears in Philza's head turn. 

"Are you—are you new?" He shouldn't ask, but, once again, he can't help himself. 

"New what?"

"Newly fucking caught, mate." Even as he says it, he can't believe it. There's just no way. Right? 

"Oh." The kid swallows. "Well. Y-Yeah. Guess so."

Philza didn't know there were still free Avians at all, after the cities fell. He hadn't let himself think about the possibility. 

He thinks about the kids words again. My mum always told me.

"Fuck," says Philza, and the kid scowls at him. 

"Yeah, well, fuck you too," he spits back and, oh, skies above. This poor kid is going to get chewed up and spit out and beaten. 

And Philza can't let it be his problem. 

He rests his head back on his knees. The fetters clank and jingle as his wings twitch again. He hears the kid take a hiccupping little breath at the noise. 

He's a fucking fool. He looks up again.

The kid has the single set of fetters on his wings, near the base, which is standard for Avians. (Philza has two sets, because of how big his are. The second are at the first joint.) It looks like he's been straining against them. The feathers around them are bent, broken, out of place. Philza can see the skin under it, already rubbed raw. 

The rest of his wings—don't look much better. His feathers are out of place and misaligned. They're matted with dirt and blood. Some are so twisted they're pressing into the skin the wrong way.

That's bad. It's bad in a way that makes Philza's own wings itch in sympathy, but also in a way that makes something ping obnoxiously in the back of his head. It's like watching someone chew on a knife—incorrect and dangerous.

He shouldn't say anything. He shouldn't.

"You need to fix your feathers, mate," he says to the kid. 

The kid stares at him, blank. "Kinda got bigger fucking problems right now, you'll notice." 

Phiza clicks at him. "Not if you let your wings go to shit. You gotta preen around the fetters, get that crap off of them. You're gunna get sick." 

Infected follicles and oil glands, skin infections, feather rot. He's seen all of them kill, and those deaths are always slow. Once, he held an older woman's head on his lap as the infection ravaged her body, from the base of her lovely, speckled brown wings outward. Someone had to do it. She deserved that comfort. No one would do it but Philza.

People give up on their wings and their wings eat them alive. 

The kid's eyebrows furrow. "What, you mean like wiping them off?" he says, and Philza's mind short circuits.

That's. What? 

"Preening, mate," says Philza. He leans forward as he says it. He can't help himself. "Get the feathers back in order." 

The kid looks totally blank. It's a fragile type of blankness. "...I dunno what that means." 

The words hit Philza like a whip to the face. "You don't—" 

Across the cage, the kid curls into himself like shame. All the earlier brashness is gone. "Been on my own awhile," he mutters. "Last time I saw my mum, they were still all fluffy. I dunno. I usually just wipe 'em off." 

And that's—That's incorrect. That is wrong on a deep, visceral level. That's like someone not knowing how to work knots out of their hair, or how to wash their face, or what a hug is. That's one of the most basic things an Avian can know about themselves. 

It must show on his face. The kid shrinks even deeper into himself. 

Philza—remembers large, taloned hands around his small soft ones, guiding him through the motions of straightening his feathers out. Catching the dislodged ones and laughing kindly, adding them to the temple's alter later. Didn't they used to throw parties, when a child fully fledged? It's so hard to remember. There's so much pain between then and now. 

He can't get attached. He won't. But—this boy will never set foot in a sky city. He'll never know his wings without fetters again, unless some human bids it. He will never learn Avian prayers or games or holidays. 

But, fucking hell, Philza will not let him die of wing rot because there was no one there to show him how to prevent it. 

He swallows. Then, he says, "C'mere, mate." 

The kid stares at him, transparently suspicious. Good. That's a good instinct. That's something that will keep him alive.

"'m just gonna show you how to fix them," says Philza. "I'm not joking, mate. That shit'll kill you if you don't take care of it. Just come sit in front of me." 

There's a long pause, and then: "If you do anything fucking weird," the kid says, "I'll fucking tear your throat out, I swear I will."

It's almost amazing. Philza can't remember the last hybrid he met with this much fight in him. It makes something twist and squeeze in his heart. He needs to ignore it. 

Instead, he says, "I got no doubt about that. Promise I'm not." 

Somehow, miraculously, that seems to be enough.

The kid scootches across the cage until he's sitting cross-legged in from of Philza. He glares at him. 

"What the fuck am I doing?" he asks. 

"Okay," says Philza. "Pull the wing across yourself, but be careful not the strain too much against the fuckin' fetters." 

"Is that what those things are called?" asks the kid, as he gingerly does just that.

"Yeah," says Philza. He barely knows where to start. He doesn't remember the last time he talked this much. It's like he's losing his own words. "So, first, you need to separate everything to straighten them back out. The feathers need to lay flat against your skin, got it? And if the skin gets wet you can't just let it fucking sit, that's how you get fungus and mold and sores and shit. Start as close to the joint as you can get—yeah, just like that, good." 

And so he continues, talking the kid through the process of preening. Philza can see the moment it clicks in his hindbrain, something like an instinct guiding his fingers as he pulls and prods and straightens. He combs again and again over a particularly dried patch of blood until it starts the flake off. The white feather underneath is stained, but it's—better. It's better.

Only once does Philza touch him. It's when his first loose feather comes out—a red one. It slips through the kid's fingers and floats to the floor of the fucking cage they're both trapped in, and Philza's heart aches. 

He picks it up.

The kid freezes and stares at him, but does not resist when Philza presses the feather into the palm of his hand and closes his fingers around it. 

"Hold onto that," says Philza, and he does his best to not sound choked up, "as long as you can." 

He can't put this boy's feather on an alter, a prayer for clear skies and a bright future (Philza knows what awaits in this boy's future, and there's nothing bright about it). But he doesn't need to let it be thrown away like garbage. 

The kid swallows thickly and ducks his head. He clutches his feather tighter, as if he hears Philza's thoughts.

He nods. 

His wings look better, by the end of it. At least they don't look like they're going to kill him anymore. 

"Good," says Philza. "That's good. Try to do it at least once a week, if—if you can." 

Sometimes, you can't. Philza knows that well. Soon, this kid will, too. 

But. Tonight, his feathers are straight. And he knows how to avoid dying of wing rot. 

It's something. 

"Can you—" Philza nearly jumps out of his skin; he wasn't expecting the kid to talk again. He's hunched in on himself, speaking to the ground, as if he can't bear to look Philza in the face. "Can you sort the ones down by the base? By the fucking - f-fetters. I can feel them now and I can't fucking reach them." 

Philza swallows. His squeezes his eyes shut, and then opens them again. 

He doesn't deserve this trust, or any trust. He's a hunting bird, a weapon to be wielded. He's too broken to imagine escape. He's too weak to fight for anyone, for himself or for this poor fucking kid. 

He lets the boy turn his back to him and uses his talons to carefully smooth the last of the broken feathers. 

He says, "There. You're all set," and then he pulls away. "Now try and get some rest."

The kid looks back at him. Hesitantly, he says, "Do you want me to," reaching his hand out while he does. 

Philza forces himself not to flinch. He says, "Nah, mate," and waves his hand towards his second set of fetters. "These make it tricky. I handle it myself." 

"Right." The kid ducks his head. "Right." It looks like he wants to say something else, but he doesn't. 

Philza retreats to the other side of the cage. 

It's much harder to float away, for the rest of the night. He can hear every hitching breath (sob?) the boy makes. 

.

Morning dawns like a nightmare. The traders and hunters wake up. There's noise. 

Market day. 

"Get the little one first," Philza hears the leader shout, jerking his chin to their cage as he does. "Big one is our grand finale, obviously, but the little red thing will be a great warmup. Get everyone's appetites whetted, eh?"

Bless the skies, thank the gods, Philza still has enough feeling in him to hate these motherfuckers, and he takes a moment to indulge in it. He hates them. He would tear their fucking hearts out, if he had the chance. 

Across the cage, the kid cringes back, and then Philza watches him yank bravado around his shoulders like a shield. He puffs out his chest. He glares at the traders, who are openly laughing at him. 

And then he glances over at Philza. "Got any last words of advice, old man?" he asks. His voice is tight and barely shaking. Maybe, in a different situation, Philza would even believe he wasn't scared. 

Philza remembers being this boy. Because he was also once a young, blond, winged thing, snarling and filled with anger. Sold for the first time, and then sold again, and then sold again and again forever.

He thinks about his worst places. About gilded cages and "pretty birdie." Uninvited hands touching his fucking wings.

He leans forward and says, soft enough for only this boy to hear, with all the feeling in his heart: "Make sure you're more fucking useful than you are pretty."

Philza watches the kid process that. Watches his eyes widen, just a bit. Watches his lips twitch and almost wobble. 

And then he meets his eyes and nods, resolutely, once. 

"Brave kid," Philza thinks, before he can stop himself. "Stupid, brave kid." 

And then the cage door slams open, and human hands descend on the Avian boy and yank him out. The kid immediately starts yelling, twisting and spitting obscenities and insults, his newly-preened wings trying and failing to lash out. The hunters and traders laugh louder. 

Philza's wings twitch in their fetters. He wants to wrap them around himself and hide. He wants to wrap them around the kid, too—block him from view, safe from the eyes, a dark, warm place to rest. He remembers the priests doing that for him, so long ago. 

He presses his forehead to his knees. He tries to tell himself that he's done enough. 

Chapter Text

The commune is a marvel. 

Philza—he's never dreamed of a place like it. Never dared to. Never had a reason to believe it existed, after the sky cities fell for good. 

It isn't in the sky, however. It's firmly on the ground, tucked into a valley and protected by a break in the earth's crust that plunges down to bedrock, and more warding magic than he's felt since he was a child. 

He's the last to be dropped off, of the group that staggered from the Colosseum's ruins. Philza's talons had been covered with the blood of people who deserved it, for once. A smirking Arachnid hybrid met them in the right place, gave them the right code words. Helped them all get to safe places, one by one. Philza made sure every single person was in a safe place before he let himself be led here. 

It only felt right. He's the person who dragged them all into this situation to begin with; he needed to see all of them through.

Or—he's one of the people who did that.

(The edges of his vision are still haunted by flashes of pink hair, a sharp-toothed grin. A comrade, a friend, the person who woke up all the defiance and the anger he was sure his masters killed a decade ago. The person who actually freed him, if he's being honest.)

(They had been separated when the Colosseum fell. Philza has no idea if he got out.)

(His heart aches with it.)

The wards around the commune are maintained by a Starborn who introduces himself as Scott, and who had a worn, tired smile and banding scars from wrist to elbow on both arms. 

(Philza's familiar with those marks. Some humans know how to use Starborn as power sources, exploding and exploding until they burn themselves out, shackles glowing red hot against their skin.) 

(He can't believe the man in front of him can smile at all.)

"I helped found this place," Scott explains as he walks Philza through the communal areas for the first time. "Picked the spot and everything. Built some stuff. Do you build?"

Philza swallows around a dry throat. "Never had much of a chance to," he whispers, truthfully. 

Scott's eyes darken for a moment, before he hides it behind a grin. "Well," he says, "now you do."

Him, a builder. The hunting bird, the bloody weapon, the pretty thing in the hanging cage. Philza, the builder. 

His wings flex unhindered. For the first time in years, there aren't any fetters biting into his skin. 

If Philza were the type for it, he might even cry. 

.

He spends his first day at the commune flying. 

He goes from tree to tree, mountain to mountain. He sours high, lets himself drop, catches himself and spins. It makes his wings ache. The muscles aren't as strong as they should be, from all their years tied down. 

Philza ignores it. He flares them out and falls and catches himself again. He doesn't want to think. He doesn't want to touch the ground.

(Someone watches him, unseen, and says nothing.)

. 

He meets other denizens of the commune slowly. Niki, a Merling with a defiantly happy grin and noticeably missing incisors. Jack, a Blazeborn who speaks loudly and refuses to go underground. Ranboo, who claims to be Ender royalty and has water burns speckled across his face. Sneeg, an Inchling with a limp who Philza likes right away. 

It take two days for the person who watched him to seek him out.

Philza is staring at the place he's going to build—build!—a place to live, when someone clears their throat behind him. 

A shot of alarm goes through his spine. He spins around, ready to fight, ready to flee (ready to fall to his knees and be as good as he can to avoid being hurt). 

And then he blinks. 

He see straw-blond hair and sharp, liquid blue eyes. Red and white patterned wings. That brash, bold glare. 

It's like seeing a ghost. A memory come to life. 

Because Philza remembers.

It seems impossible. But he's just spent a day flying, and there are no fetters on his wings. It seems like it's the season of impossible things. 

The figure older, now, because of course he is. It's been years. Not so much the kid Philza had dubbed him that night, what the hunters had called a little red thing; the person standing before him is young man. He's taller than Philza, and he's frowning. He has a small scar at the corner of his mouth, which Philza recognizes as a result of being backhanded, hard, by someone wearing a sharp ring. 

The young man is staring, pointedly and directly, at Philza. Philza, unsure what else to do with this ghost, stares back. He can't identify the feelings piling up in his chest. 

A long, heavy moment passes. 

The young man tilts his chin up. His frown sharpens into a scowl.

"Do you remember me?," he demands. 

It's a fair question. Slowly, Philza nods. "Yeah, mate," he says. "I do."

The young man—blinks. It's as if he hadn't expected that answer. "Oh," he says. "Well. I remember you, too." 

Not surprising

"It was—" Philza's tongue feels like lead. That night played often in his mind, in his dreams and in his nightmares. The little Avian who didn't remember the sky cities, who was somehow still born free. Who never had anyone teach him how to preen his fucking wings. 

He should have done more. There was nothing more he could have done. The collision of the two thoughts makes his nauseous to this day.

Philza finishes, "It was a memorable night," and the young man snorts. 

His wings fidget anxiously, puffing up and smoothing back down. Even with the fetters on, he'd never been able to stop them from doing that unless he was actively trying. Now, Philza lets them move as they will, just for the joy of it. He watches the young man's wings mirror the movement unconsciously, expanding and falling back. 

That's classic fledgling behavior. Mirroring, to learn how his wings work. This young man should be too old for it. 

It makes Philza wonder how many other winged folk he's known. 

The young man takes a deep breath in, breaking Philza out of his thoughts. That boldness is back, wrapped tight around him like a weapon. "I listened to you, you know," he snaps out. "About—About everything. I kept my fucking wings neat. I—" His voice breaks, and he inhales through his teeth. "I was so much more fucking useful than I was pretty."

Philza inhales, and it catches in his throat. He hopes it helped. He hopes it spared this kid the worst of his own nightmares. The golden cages and the hands. 

He's sure what he experienced instead wasn't any better. But maybe Philza spared the kid that. 

"It was shit advice, old man," the kid continues, voice rising. His hands are balled into fists at his side. "I fucking hated it. But—it got me here, probably."

What would have happened, if Philza had fought that night? Could they have escaped? Could he have rescued this kid from every horror inflicted on him? Could he have fought through chains and iron bars and 15 hunters? But where would they have gone, afterwards? He didn't know places like this existed. He watched the sky cities fall himself. 

It's haunted him since the kid was pulled out of the cage, all those years ago. What a shitty, awful world they lived in, for those words to be the best thing he could have done. 

"I'm—" says Philza, "sorry."

He's not sure what he's apologizing for (the world itself, maybe), and it's not like the words will change anything. The kid seems to know it; his lips curl up into an impressive scowl. Philza's expecting him to spit out that it isn't anywhere near enough, and he'd be right.

Instead, he snaps, "That's a shit fucking thing to say."

It's unexpected enough that Philza actually coughs out a laugh. The kid isn't *wrong, is the thing. So he agrees, "Yeah. Yeah, it is." He doesn't apologize again. 

The young man drags the heel of his hand over his cheek, an obvious nervous tick that traces the scar there. He hesitates another moment, and then says, "I'm Tommy. Do you got a name?"

Years ago, he'd said he was nothing, and nearly begged the kid to believe that he was, too. But that was then.

"...I'm Philza," he says at last. "Or Phil. Either's fine."

"Philza," the young man, Tommy, echoes, nodding slowly. "Yeah, guess that fucking works. I've just been calling you Crowfather, in my head." And then his jaw snaps shut and color flushes up his cheeks, as if he hadn't quite meant to say that. 

And Philza can't help it—he does actually laugh, this time. 

It looks like Tommy is going to say something else, but a loud voice breaks through their conversation. It's enough to make Philza flinch, though he hides it well. 

"Tommy! Toms, you gotta come now, I'm sick of waiting on you!" calls a bee hybrid from the top of the hill, probably aboutTommy's age, who Philza has not had a chance to formally meet yet. 

Tommy swings his head around. "I'm coming, Tubbo, hold your fucking horses, have you ever heard of manners?"

And it's when he turns that Philza catches it—secured on a piece of twine and slung around his neck, is a crumpled and torn red feather, much smaller than his are now. 

Philza's eyes burn. 

Tommy turns back to him. "I need to go, apparently. I'll catch you later for sure, nobody can keep out of each other's business in this place." He goes to leave, not waiting for Philza to respond, and then stops abruptly. 

Philza waits.

"...D'you think," says the kid, and it's as if he's battling himself to get the words out, "that you can teach me more shit like that? Like the wings stuff, back then?"

Back then, they wouldn't have made it out, if Philza had fought. 

But they're both out now. 

"Yeah, Tommy," says Philza. "I can do that." 

Tommy meets his eyes again, bold and brash and full of a fire that survived, all those years. He nods once, resolute. 

"Tommy!"

"I'm coming, you impatient shit!" He turns the rest of the way around, and then waves his goodbye. "See you, Crowfather," he calls. 

Philza doesn't know if that's a slip of the tongue or not. He doesn't have the time to ask—Tommy is already running towards his friend. Fuck, a friend. They have friends here.

The wind brushes through Philza's hair and ruffles his feathers. His wings spread, unrestrained. 

The hunting bird, the bloody weapon, the pretty thing in the hanging cage. The little red thing next to him, listening as he hurriedly explained how to keep his feathers healthy, as if that was worth shit in this awful fucking world.

Tommy made it out.

Philza turns his face towards the sun. 

He wonders if he can remember how the priests used to make islands fly.