Work Text:
Grian
He was angry, of course he was.
Navigating the tunnels, clutching the arrow in one hand as if it were the only thing keeping him moving. In some strange way, it was. His chest felt like it was trying to shred him from within, his ribcage was expanding with every breath as if to consume him with the hurt, with the ache, with the, with the…
RUMBLE
RUMBLE
RUMBLE
“Agh!” Grian beat his wings hard to fling himself down against the tunnel floor as the pulsing scarlet starlight strands burst through the roof. Rubble tumbled down, striking his shoulders and wingtips. Not enough to do any real damage, but enough to throw him off balance. He wobbled in the air, catching himself with a twirl before he hit rock bottom.
Hit rock bottom.
And what did that even mean anymore? He was beneath the bedrock, after all.
I gotta get home…they’re probably all worried sick about me…
Grian had made it home through these tunnels once before, so he knew the way, roughly.
Back then, flying hadn’t been very comfortable, on account of how he’d recently had a piece of rebar pulled out of his wing.
Under that collapsed building…before Scar knew that it was me.
And who was he?
Cute Guy, high-flying vigilante heart-throb.
That’s what some of the tabloids said. Jimmy found them hilarious, Pearl though so as well. Doc and Etho were both still worried about him, but they let him go.
Let him fly. And so he had. Grian had flown under a blue sky that now felt so far away he could barely imagine it.
Whenever he tried to picture the vivid blue or the sunset colors he’d left behind a matter of minutes ago, all he saw was emerald green eyes and tan, scarred skin, and the brokenness, the brokenness, beneath that visor when it had risen and…
“Goodbye, Birdie.”
Grian whispered it to himself, mimicking his cadence, his tone.
His chest shuddered.
He could hear the thrum of the city up ahead.
Tears were falling, but what did he care anymore? No one would be paying him any mind.
He beat his wings and hurtled out of the tunnel mouth into the main cavern, beelining it with all the speed he could muster toward apartment 001 in the largest of the foundational towers. He swung his legs underneath himself to land on the balcony, stumbled forward and hit the door with both hands.
One flat palm, one fist still clutching the arrow. He was just about to reach for the doorknob, his mind sluggish and agonized as he tried to muster up the memory of the glamor code for this month, but he could hear the deadbolt clunking open.
The door swung inward, and Doc and Etho were there.
Doc up front, looking frazzled, Etho just behind him, squeezing beneath his husbands arm in the tight confines of their cramped front entryway.
“Gri!” He cried out, and Grian didn’t find anywhere within him to say their names.
He just collapsed into Etho’s arms and started sobbing all over again.
“O-Oh, Gri…!” Etho murmured. He spread his stance and held him, and only a split-second later, Doc had his arms around them both. So much larger of a man, he was able to support them, and Grian didn’t have to worry about it anymore.
About keeping himself moving.
There’s nowhere left to go.
“Shh, shh, I know, little one, I know…” Doc was speaking, and his voice was tight with tension, but it was strong.
And even as a grown-ass man, Grian clung to it, because he’d always been able to fix everything before. From a tear in Pizza’s beloved faux-fur, to bloody knees and twisted feathers, to a gunshot wound in the shoulder, to…
This.
But how to even begin to fix this? This couldn’t be patched by new fabric, or bandaged or pulled, or stitched up…this was just.
The end.
“I don’t wanna!” Grian found himself choking out pathetically, and Etho’s furry hand was running a soothing line up and down his back between his wing roots beneath his pale pink cropped hoodies, with the satin bow tails that had trailed behind him like a kite.
“I know. I know.” Etho said, his tone like a ghost, and Grian knew he should be more pragmatic about this.
They were suffering too.
They were hurting too.
And logically he knew that they couldn’t magically fix everything…but he was so exhausted, so hurt, that sue him he was going to pretend for a second they could.
They always have.
So Grian fell apart in his parents arms, in the doorway of his childhood home, as the redstone flickered and the yellowish glow of the day cycle faded toward black.