Archive of Our Own

Scar

The new uniform felt better.

It was one he’d gotten commissioned shortly after breaking away from the Institute with Cubs help and yet…he’d just…never worn it.

I guess the strings were still just to tight.

It was probably bad, how easily that concept flitted through his mind now.

The new outfit was still a tight fit on the top; it had to be. The only exception to that was a capelet that hung off one of his right shoulders; he could throw it back or keep it forward. It was black, as most of the outfit was. With vivid cuts of orange and blue over the front shoulders, and a V neck that plunged all the way from his collarbones down to the band of his belt, terminating in the Hot Guy winged logo on his belt buckle. The pants were loose fit, comfortable…with pockets on the sides. His bracers still gleamed, their occasional flash of orange or blue along the routes where they connected with his biotech, but they didn’t overtake his entire visage anymore. They didn’t define him anymore, like the scars. The only thing he showed off now was his chest, his abs, things he’d built up himself, not necessarily with biotech taking the reins from him.

Sneakers instead of heeled boots, the canvas painted his colors. His hair was still pulled back into his wolf's tail, his eyes and the upper half of his face still concealed by his visor, his left arm still encased with the familiar weight of his gauntlet that doubled as a guard against his bowstring.

But all of this makes it feel so much easier to breathe, now…

Honestly, the whole city is one badly timed tremor away from anarchy and this guy is sitting here reading the newspaper and drinking wine.

Scar considered as he adjusted the zoom on his visor, the orange tint a familiar veil over his view. This was a piece of tech Cub designed for him…it didn’t have all the bad associations he connected to the rest of his old uniform, which was now crumpled in one of his under-bed storage bins.

He was perched on the edge of a roof access from a skyscraper across the street from the council building. The council building was an imposing structure smack in the middle of downtown, all shining white with a marble facade on it’s lowest level. Then it soared up into the sky, into a glass spike that seemed to rip the sky itself, one of the tallest buildings in the city.

It was also one of the most heavily secured.

Not like that was a problem for Scar, considering he knew the overrides and access codes for the entire place.

Call him old, or call him well-connected.

All these years, he’d played along with the council's whims because he hadn’t had a good reason not to. They’d turned him into what he was, their funding to the institute had, anyway. Sure, even if those people had long since either moved on to other places or passed away entirely, to the point where no one in the current government even knew his secret identity, he still intended to serve the city.

All he’d wanted was to make people feel safe.

And right now, people didn’t feel safe.

Not above the bedrock, nor below it.

Scar dug into one of the pockets on his pants and pulled out the crinkled piece of paper he'd tried to smooth and fold properly. Blackwell's assistant...Willa, had it been? She'd stuffed it into his quiver when he'd shonw up two months ago after the first tremors hit.

Insisted he'd want to see it. Yet hadn't seen it, hadn't even really analyzed it till he was stowing arrows for tonight, because his last attempt at coming out had gone so poorly. It was schematics. The design of a device that looked, for all Scar could think to describe it, like a giant set of knitting needles being manipulated by a series of pistons and mechanical arms that were moving it up and back as some kind of matter was pumped through the hollow interiors. Formed into the faux bedrock and forced into the layer that separated the over-city from the under-city.

One device. All that's doing this is one stupid device.

A pitch of fury boiled in his stomach, and he reached back for his bow.

Aimed. Fired.

The arrow struck one of the shining white pillar fixtures that lined the glass panels that created the top spire of the council building, and affixed with a burst of cementing glue.

The arrow he’d fired had trailed a thin wire, and without a moments thought he snapped the wire into one of his arm guards and jumped. It reeled him in like a fishing rod, as he arced across the street below.

The street so much more deserted than it would’ve been three months ago at this time of night.

Right as he hit the pillar, the boots of his bracers landing firm, another tremor rocked the city. The ground groaned, the lampposts below swayed and the trembling shook him to the core.

Then it was over.

Every bit as hard-hitting and terrifying and inexplicable as the first time.

Scar’s mouth twisted, expression souring, and he swung out onto the wire again, only to shoot himself forward and kick in the window of the office.

The shattering of glass filled his ears, and he heard an admittedly very gratifying squeal of fear from Blackwell, who flung himself up from the high-backed leather chair he’d been lounging in as he perused some papers. He spilled his glass of wine…was that wine…? All over the fine mahogany desk.

“What do you think you’re doing!?” The man shouted at him, eyes bulging in distress.

“Oh, just dropping by, Councilman, I see you’re working hard,” Scar said it in a gently chiding tone, as if he were talking to an underperforming student.

The man’s eye twitched. “Y-You don’t…fine.”

He straightened up, yanking a little too harshly at the lapels of his pressed three-piece suit....though the folds looked a little uneven. 

After adjusting his tie like a nervous tic, he turned his eyes onto Scar.

“What do you want?”

Scar made a casual humming sound as he rocked back and forth from toe to heel. “Lemme think…oh yeah!”

He snapped his fingers. “I want you to stop this half-baked, crazy plan of yours.”

The Councilman quirked an eyebrow before a cold laugh burst out of him.

“Half-baked? Ohhhh, no no no, this is already well done!”

Scar tilted his head to the side and raised an eyebrow at him. “What?”

Blackwell sputtered when he realized his attempt to twist the words didn’t work, and extended his arms to the sides instead, as if trying to be grandiose. “Don’t you see, Hot Guy?”

Scar still didn’t like the way this man twisted his hero name on his tongue. The phantom strings dug in tighter, cutting against his skin with invisible force. He took a breath to steady himself as the man continued.

“This is brilliant. All the rifts are being stitched up! It’s taking some time, yes, but before long we’ll be rid of…”

“How long?” Scar cut him off to demand, ignoring the strings yanking back against him, taking such a tone toward this figure of authority. This was a different man.

Scar was a different man.

The Councilman shrugged flippantly. “Well, projections vary, but anywhere from another year to a five-year span of…”

“Five years?” Scar demanded, trying to hammer home just how incredulous this idea was.

“Five years, and for what?” He barked, waving toward the window he’d just broken through. Anger boiled in the bit of his stomach worse than before, red seared at the edges of his vision as he stomped a step forward, the cape of his new uniform thrown back as his arm waved out.

“The city is suffering now. The people you’re supposed to protect are hurting now. This ‘bedrock initiative’ is nothing but your fear-fueled ego-trip to put a stopper on something that’s been wide open for as long as anyone can remember! I warned you before this began that it was a bad idea.”

Each declaration he made was like a string snapping. The force that’d been tearing him apart all these months loosened its grip, and he found himself suddenly struggling to withhold his fury. Like all the restraints that’d been seared into his motions all these years had been clipped away in this one confrontation, the strain at last was enough for him to snap.

Blackwell scoffed, though he did look uncomfortable, taking a half-step back, trying to put more space between them. “And where do you get off on saying these things? You’re just concerned the city will no longer have need for you when there’s no more monsters escaping the rifts.”

Scar groaned, rolling his head back and planting a hand to his forehead. “That’s exactly what someone like you would think. Forbid the thought I’m actually worried about the people of the city. Who are currently hiding in their homes out of fear that the ground is gonna split open and swallow them whole! Because of your initiative!”

Blackwell’s previously amused expression twisted into a sneer, a flash of the shallowness he always tried so hard to hide showed through pale eyes as he snapped back.

“Is that so? Well, my initiative is going to carve my name into history, and there is nothing you can do to stop it. The Institute was being stubborn just the same as you! So you can stand by and keep your glorious title as defender of our fair city if you’d like, but the bedrock initiative will see its conclusion.”

Scar exhaled slowly.

This guy…

He almost wanted to laugh about it.

Almost.

But perhaps that showed just how much he’d freed himself.

Or, more accurately, how he’d been freed by the sight of a single colorful feather.

He waved his arms around the room as he took a few more strides forward from where he’d landed. “Hey, hey, ok, ok, I recognize that got a little…heated. Lemme just, I’m just gonna…clarify something.”

The Councilman raised an eyebrow at him as he came closer, but then Scar tilted his head to one side. His ponytail of dark hair shifted behind him.

Red.

Something red that twisted far beyond the warmth he’d felt in an apartment so far below his feet. A red that was gnarled and twisted, reflecting all he’d felt for the past two months of helplessness.

“What’s to stop me….” He began, each word dropping cold as ice from his tongue as one hand lowered toward his quiver.

“…from killing you…”

He continued, as he turned fully. His new uniform left his chest largely on display, a part of his body that had always been covered up in his old uniform, and yet now it was open to the air. A heart that was raw and wounded pumped in there, scarred and ached and absolutely fed up.

“…right here and now?”

The man visibly blanched. His face went slack, and his mouth hung open. Terror streaked clear as day across his gaze; his shoulders tensed as he stumbled backward a few steps. A garbled series of syllables fell from his lips as he planted a hand on his desk, solidly in the puddle of…maybe-wine…on the leather desk mat.

“Are you…threatening me?” He asked, voice utterly aghast.

Scar waved his hands flippantly, reaching back over his shoulder casually as he did so, the side cape of his new uniform shifted. It was comfortable. It felt safe. Rather ironic, given his stance at the moment.

“No, no, never…it’s not a threat.”

In the moment it took to blink, he knocked an arrow and fired it.

The sound of shattering glass sang in the office.

The councilman didn’t appear to even realize what’d happened till he looked down and saw the wine glass that had been toppled over on his desk obliterated, with an arrow sticking out of it neatly, hardly an inch away from his planted hand.

Scar let out a breath as a full-body shudder ran down his spine, but he concealed it. In these clothes he’d chosen for himself, not been fitted in like some box-made plastic action figure. This uniform didn’t put his every weakness, every shift and shiver and turn, on display.

This one covered what he wanted and showed what he wished.

It was safe. He was safe.

And he was the one in control this time.

The councilman slowly turned his head back to stare at him.

Scar’s voice came in a low tone that didn’t match the jaunty hero that had patrolled this city for nearly two decades.

“What was I saying? It’s not a threat. It’s a promise.”

He jabbed a thumb over his shoulder. “You shut down this ‘bedrock initiative’. I don’t say a word about tonight. Everything goes back to normal.”

The councilman’s face turned first red, then nearly purple in rage.

“You think you can treat me like this!? The council owns you!”

His confident declaration didn't match how he was scrambling backward halfway behind his desk as if it might somehow protect him from another arrow.

Scar clenched his jaw, the clinging pull of the strings drawing fears to his mind…but they didn’t connect to him anymore. He’d finally clipped them all free, and even if they might still try to yank themselves tight, there was no longer anything for them to tether to.

He drew another sharp breath and stood himself up straighter. “Do you? You don’t know where I’m from. You don’t know who I am. The last people who knew that information left a long time ago, one way or another.”

“That doesn’t mean we can’t still rein you in like a misbehaving dog!” The head councilman spat, the vitriol that he usually concealed beneath a gaudy facade showing through like wallpaper peeling away.

Before those words might’ve scared him. They might’ve tightened the strings and reminded him of so many years where that’d been a fact of life he’d lived by.

But today?

Scar just shrugged.

“Guess we’ll find out. I’m giving you till this time tomorrow. I better see signs the initiative has been shut down by then. Otherwise, you’ll need to worry about losing more than another wine glass.”

Then he bent his knees, his bracers hummed as they built up strength, and he launched himself backwards out the broken window.

For a few moments, he backflipped out over empty space, then the wire still attached to his wrist gauntlet pulled taut, and he swung with his momentum in a giant crescent shape over the pavement, kicking off the council building again as he went.

He soared back up over the skyline, detached the wire, and pulled out another arrow to fire at a far-away rooftop, grappling away mid-air like it was the easiest thing in the world.

Gasping, breathing in the icy air like it was life.

It was life.

I did it…!

As he left, he knew he hadn’t guaranteed anything.

But his heart was somewhat lighter for the work.

However, he heard cries from nearby windows and the lone passerby, brave enough to still roam the streets despite the tremors, pointing him out and calling out to him.

Flashes of joy and hope across faces creased in anxiety.

Because maybe he was wearing something else, and maybe, in some way, he’d become someone else.

But this city still needed him, and he’d ignored that to wallow in self-pity.

Man, Grian’ll be so pissed I screwed up my PR when I see him.

Scar didn’t dare warp that thought. He didn’t taint it with any ‘ifs’ or ‘maybes’ and just let it stay.

When he saw Grian.

Which was a day not far away.

He’d tell himself that as he spent the night fighting petty crime, and made it home in the dim hours of morning.

He barely peeled himself out of his clothes before he reached his bedroom, opened his side table, took out a length of cord with a lobster clasp. Fixed to the cord, contained carefully in a glass vial he’d gotten at a rather sparsely stocked hobby store, to ensure it wouldn’t be damaged from being tucked under his shirt, was the feather.

Brilliant red. Beautiful red. Not the twisted kind. Not the hurting kind. The kind that was warm and loving and pure.

For a few seconds, he turned the vial over in his palm, watching the color shine in the light from his side lamp, seeing as the sun hadn’t yet risen.

Then he clasped it around his neck.

After dragging on a set of PJs he flopped tiredly into his chair, and rolled out into the kitchen. Set up on a wire rack, cooling where he’d left them before he’d headed out, whipped up in record time wearing his bracers, was a batch of cookies. He grabbed one and took a bite, then pressed his lips together with a frown.

“Nah, too chewy…I wanted better crispy edges…more butter, then?” He noted it down in his spiral-bound notebook filled with his musings over various recipes he’d made and adapted. Jellie came in and hopped up onto his lap, hitching a ride as he began boxing the cooled cookies into the various decorative cookie tins he’d collected over the years.

He left the beat-up red one on the counter empty.

Only because he’d made chocolate chip, and Grian would kill him if he found even a trace of the stuff in his special cookie tin, considering it made avians sick.

Once he’d boxed the cookies aside, he decided he ought to turn in and try to get at least a few hours' sleep.

And he’d set an alarm to check in with Blackwell the next evening.