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Opportunist is a very light sleeper.
It’s a fact that he’s frankly grateful for, as he’d rather be tired than dead.
It’s also why he chose the bedroom that he did, as most of the floorboards around it would creek when stepped on. The sound was quiet, likely barely registering to the others, but it was always enough to wake him up.
So, when Opportunist woke up in the middle of the night, he instinctively kept his eyes shut, listening closely.
It’s possible that it was simply Skeptic neglecting to sleep again, or any number of other flockmates known to have nightmares or insomnia, but he still strains his ears to try and figure out what woke him up.
After a few minutes, there are no further sounds, not even the tell-tale creaking of a board or breathing outside of his room. But he knows that something woke him up, so he holds his breath as he tries to focus.
Then, so quiet that he’s not even sure it was real, he hears a distant sob. Then a whimper. The sounds of someone trying to cry as silently as possible. It’s too quiet to make out where exactly it’s coming from.
Opportunist opens his eyes, looking over at his lamp. It’s always turned on when he’s in his room, its glow expelling much of the darkness of the night.
Another sob, easier to pick up now that he’s listening for it.
The next thing he knows, he’s grabbing and lighting a candle, carefully stepping over the creaky floorboards as he follows the sounds of distress.
He stops in front of Smitten’s room, hears a soft, pained whine, mostly muffled. As carefully as possible, Opportunist gently knocks.
“Smitten?” he whispers, “Are you alright?”
He hears Smitten swallow thickly, “Opportunist?”
Smitten’s voice is pained and cracked along the edges, so different from his usually charming boom.
“Are you alright?” he asks again.
A silence, then, “Did I awaken you?”
He did. Opportunist avoids his question in turn, “Can I come in?”
Smitten whines again, the sound choked, as if he’d tried and failed to muffle it. “I’m in a dreadful state. You shouldn’t.”
Opportunist feels as if an alarm started sounding in his head at the words, his mind immediately racing with worst-case scenarios.
“Are you hurt?”
Smitten says nothing for several moments, and every second of silence makes his heart beat faster.
Eventually, “It doesn’t matter. Go back to sleep, please. Don’t waste time on me.”
For a moment, Opportunist considers getting Paranoid, or Hunted, or Hero, or literally anyone else that is more qualified for this.
But what if Smitten is hurt? What if he doesn’t have enough time for someone else to show up?
Opportunist opens the door.
For as fast as his heart seemed to be racing just a moment ago, it freezes in his chest when he takes in the suffocating darkness of the room. It feels unnatural, as if any light within had been forcibly snuffed out. It is impossible to tell how far the room stretches, or if it ends at all.
But Smitten is there. He must be.
Opportunist finally catches a glimpse of two pale pink eyes in what must be the far corner of the room. They seem to be glowing somehow.
“Please,” Smitten whispers, his voice desperate, “leave. I can’t stand the light. Can’t stand to be seen in such a wretched state.”
One of Opportunist’s hands are on the doorknob, the other still holding the lit candle. His heart seems to be working again, beating wildly at the darkness of the room.
He doesn’t think. He can’t think. But he knows to follow his instincts, and they scream that the darkness is dangerous. Suffocating.
Smitten’s eyes are pained.
In the span of a single breath, Opportunist dowses his candle, sets it on the floor, and walks into Smitten’s room, closing the door behind him.
The darkness seems to reach out, sticking to him like tar, coating his lungs and squeezing his throat.
He forces himself to breathe, to focus on Smitten’s eyes glowing the far corner.
Slowly, Opportunist starts shuffling towards him, staring into his eyes. He can feel clothes and feathers on the floor, but he doesn’t dare glance away from the sole source of light in the room.
After what feels like an eternity, he’s finally in front of Smitten. Opportunist leans against the wall, slowly sliding down until he and Smitten are eye-level, sitting on the floor together.
“Why are you still here?” Smitten whispers.
It takes several seconds to get his voice to work, but eventually he manages to force out, “You’re crying.”
Smitten seems like he wants to look away, but can’t bring himself to.
“That doesn’t matter. I deserve to feel like this. Please, leave me. I’m beyond help, anyway.”
Opportunist feels a shiver run down his spine, a pressing against the small of his back, like hands seconds away from digging into him, drawing blood. His arms ache beneath his pajama’s sleeves.
Carefully, he brings his hands up to cup Smitten’s cheeks.
Opportunist expected them to burn, if only a little, but when they don’t, he pauses.
Smitten is usually warm. A burning heat constantly emanating from him, as hot as a bonfire. Now, in the thick, sticky darkness, he’s as cold as half-dead ashes. A fire that’s flickering out. The realization leads to others. Smitten smells of ash and smoke, far more than usual. And, most worryingly of all, Opportunist’s hands seem to sink too deeply into Smitten’s cheeks. It feels as if the outer layers of his body have turned into smoke, only half-heartedly clinging to the rest of him.
In spite of it all, Opportunist cups Smitten’s cheeks.
“Don’t say that. Please. You don’t deserve to feel hurt or alone. You’re not beyond help.”
Smitten weakly shakes his head, yet still refuses to pull away or break eye contact.
“I’m wretched. Can’t you feel it? What few parts of me still here are wicked. Evil. Undeserving of kindness. Leave me to rot.”
“No,” Opportunist’s voice comes out braver than he feels, steadier than his racing heart.
“Why? Why would you stay here with something like me? It is a waste of time.”
“It isn’t. You’re sick. You need help.”
He sees tears well in Smitten’s eyes, distorting the glow in them for a moment. As the tears fall, pooling in the crevasses between Opportunist’s hands and Smitten’s cheeks, the latter speaks again, voice wavering, “I’m not sick. This is what I am. As immaterial as air. You’re afraid of me — I can feel it. Feel your heart racing in the darkness. Leave me to fade into it. Please.”
Opportunist swallows, hands shaking. Slowly, he trails his hands down Smitten’s cheeks, past his shoulders, until he holds Smitten’s hands in his own. His fingers sink too deeply into the backs of them, but he’s holding something physical.
“I’m not afraid of you.” His words shiver around the edges, but are sure, nonetheless.
“But you are. You fear the darkness. Fear what I am. What I always was. You shouldn’t bother with something like me.”
“I’m not afraid of you,” he repeats, “You are not the darkness. I can feel you. Your hands. Your tears. Can you feel me? Prove to the both of us that we are here, together?”
Smitten stares at him. Then, almost imperceptibly, he squeezes Opportunist’s hands. He’s here enough, solid enough, to feel him.
Still, he is not fully convinced, “If I am here, solid, then I am still wretched. Not worth the effort it takes to see me, to touch me. I never was.”
“What makes you think you’re wretched?”
Smitten falls silent, searching Opportunist’s eyes for something. He still refuses to break eye contact as he whispers, “I hurt her. I made her cry.”
Opportunist pauses, surprised at the sudden mention of her, then squeezes Smitten’s hands, “Then we are all wretched. We’ve all hurt her, one way or another.”
Smitten shakes his head again, “None so directly. And none so accidentally. I wanted to give her everything, but I couldn’t. I hurt her, all without meaning to. It must take something truly evil to harm others by mistake.”
Opportunist tries to swallow the knot in his throat, blinking away tears that he hadn’t noticed until they threatened to fall.
There’s a sentence, a thought, a question sitting on his tongue. He knows the answer. He knows it’s true.
He speaks it anyway.
“Then I am wretched.”
He knows he is. Always has. But he keeps talking, because he must, for Smitten’s sake.
“There was a time when the Decider was away from the body. Away from us. I made the choice to hurt her, and I did, and nobody could stop me. Then, so much more recently, I hurt Hero. I was sleeping and I clawed open his back.
“If you are wretched, then so am I.
“But you don’t deserve to be hurt. You don’t deserve to fade into the darkness and stop existing. Because if you do,” Opportunist tries, and fails, to stop his tears from falling, but he forces himself to keep talking, “If you do, then I deserve to join you.”
It’s a lie. It feels like it, at least. Smitten doesn’t deserve to fade, but that’s not dependent on Opportunist. His arms burn beneath his sleeves, and that pain is proof enough that, of the two of them, Opportunist is the one that deserves to stop existing.
Smitten is frozen as he processes the words, staring into Opportunist’s eyes as if he doesn’t believe him, doesn’t believe what he’s saying. It’s an expression he’s used to seeing.
Then, hesitantly, Smitten reaches and cups one of Opportunist’s cheeks, still holding his hands in one of his own. He wipes away his tears with a thumb, and Opportunist allows himself to lean into the touch. He doesn’t know how long it’ll last, but he wants to savour the contact.
He realizes, then, that there’s something to lean into. Smitten’s hand still feels wispy at the edges, calluses as soft as smoke where they aren’t solid. But it’s more than what was there before.
Neither break eye contact, both fearing, at least subconsciously, that the other would vanish if they were to look away.
Then, quietly, “I don’t think this place is good for us,” Smitten whispers, “The darkness… it scares you. It dissolves me. We should go, shouldn’t we?”
Opportunist doesn’t feel scared, not anymore, and Smitten is solid around him, but he wants to keep it that way. It can’t be good for Smitten to sit in the dark, especially if it affects him like this.
So, Opportunist nods, still refusing to look away from him. After a few seconds, Smitten breaks the silence again with, “I’m… afraid. Afraid that I’ll vanish before I get to the door.” A tired chuckle, then, “How… ironic, that I’m now afraid of something that I wanted mere moments ago.”
Opportunist finds himself smiling slightly, “People can be fickle like that,” then, more seriously, “I’ll help you. I’ll guide you to the door and out of the room, holding on to you to ensure that you won’t fade.”
Smitten nods, trusting him, and they grip one another’s hands again as Opportunist carefully pulls him up. They walk slowly, Opportunist leading, never breaking eye contact or letting go.
Opportunist’s back eventually hits the wall, and one hand lets go of Smitten as he blindly searches for the doorknob. His hand wraps around it, and he opens the door, still staring into Smitten’s eyes.
Once the door is open enough for them to leave, Opportunist walks backwards through it. The hallway is dark, but somehow not nearly as much as Smitten’s room was, and what little light is in the hall is unable to penetrate the inky blackness.
In the moment between Smitten’s first and second steps out of his room, Opportunist catches a glimpse of the changes. Smitten’s feathers are grey, pieces of him turned to smoke, and his chest has a large, pitch-black hole in it, the edges coated in ashes.
When Smitten is fully outside of his room, everything seems to go back to normal. The unnatural darkness vanishes, his room no longer a suffocating void, and Smitten’s body regains its colours and solidity.
The wound, however, remains.
Opportunist stares at it, equal parts confused and horrified. The hole looks deep, and the sides of it are still covered in ashes instead of blood.
Smitten follows his gaze and, ridiculously, his feathers puff up in embarrassment.
“That’s… normal. For me. Please don’t worry about it.”
Suddenly, as if his brain finally remembered how to function, a million questions force themselves into his throat. Normal questions such as ‘what just happened?’ and ‘why is there a massive hole in your chest?’ and ‘why is any of this ‘normal’ for you?’
What manages to escape him, however, is, “Does Paranoid know?”
Almost sheepishly, Smitten nods.
“How did he find out?”
“During a checkup. I don’t… have a heart.”
“How?”
“I’m not sure. Neither is Paranoid. But he doesn’t know about…” Smitten gestures to his room, “… that.”
Opportunist’s mouth opens and closes, confusion increasing with every question flooding his brain, fighting to be asked next. He swallows, realizes that his mouth is dry.
“Would… would you like some tea?”
Smitten pauses, likely surprised at the change in subject, then nods, “I… yes, I’d like that.”
They’re still holding hands as Smitten closes his bedroom door, as they walk downstairs to the kitchen, as Opportunist guides him to sit down in a chair. They eventually let go, hesitant, and wait for a moment, as if they think that Smitten were about to vanish.
When Smitten remains present and solid, Opportunist nods to himself, turning and getting the kitchen’s first aid kit from a cabinet.
“What are you…?” Smitten half-asks, watching Opportunist.
“You— well, you have a gaping wound in your chest, I’d like to at least bandage it up.”
“You don’t have to, dear, it’s not going to get any better or worse.”
“Maybe, but… It’s better to be safe than sorry, right? I’d also like to try and clean it, if that’s alright.”
Smitten smiles gently as Opportunist sits on the chair next to him, opening the first aid kit as he inspects the wound.
“If it would help your peace of mind, then you may do as you wish.”
Opportunist glances up at him, then nods, “Thank you. I’ll try to be quick, then I’ll make you some tea. How does that sound?”
Smitten’s smile hadn’t quite reached his eyes before, but now they do, “That sounds lovely, thank you.”
Opportunist smiles back, but it feels nervous and frazzled. He turns back to Smitten’s wound, trying to decide what to do.
The entire inside is covered in ashes, and the places that peek out of the grey seem to be bone and flesh. He can see what might be ribs, lungs, and other normal parts of their anatomy. And, true to Smitten’s word, there is an empty space where his heart should be.
Opportunist is suddenly very, very glad that he spent all that time studying medicine.
“Can you breathe for me? Slowly?”
Smitten does so, and Opportunist watches as his lungs slowly expand as he breathes in, then contract as he breathes out. He seems to breathe slowly and shallowly by default. Opportunist realizes, belatedly, that much of Smitten’s ribs seem to be missing. Many of his organs would be completely exposed to damage.
After another once-over, Opportunist pulls out some gloves from the kit, retracting his talons before putting them on. He grabs a cotton swab, soaking it in disinfectant, then looks back up at Smitten. “Tell me if this hurts, or feels uncomfortable.”
Smitten nods, and Opportunist carefully begins cleaning up the caked-on ashes.
The layers are thick and solid, and it takes a while to clean up any one spot, but he works slowly and tries not to damage any of the exposed flesh and bone.
Once Opportunist has found a rhythm, Smitten breaks the silence, “Do you know medicine? Health? Like Paranoid, did you always understand this?”
Opportunist hesitates, “Uh— no. I’ve been studying. There were some textbooks in Skeptic’s office, and I figured that nobody was using them, so…”
“So, you learned medicine all on your own? May I ask why?”
Opportunist swallows nervously, “Well, um. Paranoid is the flock’s only medic, and if he can’t help — if he’s sick or something — then we’ll need someone else to take care of everyone, right? So, I figured, why not me?”
Smitten hums, some of his organs vibrating slightly as he does, then, “Have you talked to Paranoid about this? Is he not teaching you?”
“He— I, uh,” the words stumble as his thoughts are drawn to how Paranoid always looks at him when he asks to help out. That distrust, as if he thinks that Opportunist could never want anything other than being on top. As if he just wants to hurt them.
Opportunist forces himself to take a deep breath, steadying his hands, which still gently wipe away layers of ash from the jagged side of his ribs.
“I’ve asked him to teach me, actually. Several times. He… Doesn’t have the time, is all.”
They fall back into another silence, and eventually, the inside of Smitten’s chest is no longer covered in ashes.
“How do you feel?”
Smitten breathes slowly, flexes a bit. After a moment, he smiles at Opportunist. “Much better, actually! I hadn’t realized how uncomfortable I was before. Thank you, dear.”
Opportunist sighs in relief, taking off his dirtied gloves before putting on a new pair, “Great! I’ll bandage you up next.”
As he carefully wraps him up, Opportunist thinks about Smitten’s missing ribs. They seem to be mostly there, undamaged in his sides and, likely, in his back where they connect to his spine. It’s just the front parts, where the wound is, that are missing. A strong enough hit in the chest could kill him.
“Do you, perchance, have something that can protect your chest? You seem to be missing much of your ribs, you see, leaving your organs exposed…”
Smitten, thankfully, nods. “Yes, I have a chest plate that I first woke up with, back when we got our bodies. I wear it during the day, and take it off at night, as it is uncomfortable to sleep in.”
Opportunist considers that as he finishes bandaging him. What if Smitten needs to leave in a hurry? What if he loses his chest plate?
“I’ll see if I can get you a more comfortable chest plate,” Opportunist decides then and there. There are simply too many risks to having only one chest plate, especially if he takes it off for a significant portion of the day.
Smitten’s eyes widen slightly at the offer, “You’d really do that?”
“Of course! It’s unsafe to just leave your organs unprotected. I’ll help however I can.”
Smitten smiles at him, “Thank you, dear. Truly. I’m sure you’d make for an excellent medic.”
Opportunist’s feathers puff up without his permission, and he smiles back as he busies himself, cleaning up the cotton swabs and gloves. He leaves the first aid kit out — it’ll need to be restocked — and washes his hands. He grabs a kettle, fills it with water, and turns on the stove to heat it up. While he waits for it to boil, Opportunist grabs Smitten’s favorite tea — black tea — and his own, chamomile.
When the kettle starts screaming, he pulls it off the stove and pours them each a cup. Smitten likes his tea bitter, so he doesn’t add honey or milk before giving it to him. Opportunist adds some honey to his own and sits back down next to him.
They both take a sip, and Smitten smiles. “How did you know how I liked my tea?”
Opportunist shrugs, taking another sip, “I’ve seen you make tea before. You always make it like this, so I know that it must be your favourite.”
Smitten chuckles softly, “You’ve been watching me that closely?”
Opportunist hesitates, wondering if this is a trap. What is Smitten thinking? Is he about to accuse him of something? No, surely not — Smitten isn’t the type to trap him, judge him, hurt him.
“I suppose,” Opportunist says between sips, nervous, “I’m very observant, after all!”
“True,” Smitten agrees easily, “So why wouldn’t Paranoid want to teach you? He’s busy, but surely not too busy to train a second medic.”
Opportunist pauses, buys himself time to think by taking another sip of tea. What’s the right answer here? What does Smitten want him to say? That Paranoid doesn’t trust him? That he really isbusy, because he is, truly, so it wouldn’t be a lie. He weighs his options in the span of a few seconds, but eventually decides to tell the full truth. It’s hard to lie to Smitten, after all.
“He doesn’t trust me. It’s… Do you remember that very first storm that we saw here? When Skeptic had a panic attack and hurt himself? Well, I asked Paranoid how I could help, if I should get anything from another room, that sort of thing. He…” Opportunist trails off for a moment, thinking about the clear distrust on Paranoid’s face when he looked at him. The thinly veiled fear. “… said I should just stay put, which is fine, he probably just wanted to be able to see everyone, but whenever something happens, he either tells me to stay put and not do anything or tells me to just stay out of his way. And I-I want to help, I really do, but…”
“But he acts as if you have some ulterior motive?” Smitten finishes.
Opportunist nods, staring into his cup. The tea is already cooling.
“It must be lonely,” Smitten murmurs, “being… ostracized, like that.”
Opportunist pauses, considering. Is he lonely? True, most of the others don’t often interact with him, and once he healed and able to consistently walk and talk again, they didn’t continue going out of their way to interact with him. And, sure, when they do talk to him, they tend to keep conversations short. But they talk to him. He plays chess with Skeptic, gardens with Smitten and Hunted, even though Skeptic usually plays with Smitten and Contrarian, and his conversations in the garden primarily consist of instructions and suggestions regarding it.
Opportunist suddenly finds himself picking apart every interaction he’s had with the others, realizing how rarely conversations lasted for more than a few minutes, how rarely someone decided to talk to him instead of anyone else.
But if shouldn’t matter. If people aren’t talking to him, then he’s less likely to mess up or say the wrong thing and get kicked out of the flock. He should prefer being alone, because the fewer people around him, the fewer chances he has at getting hurt or hurting others.
He doesn’t like being alone — his insides hurt at just the thought of being away from the flock — but he’s not really alone. They’re always there, always nearby if he wants to talk to them.
But can he really talk to them? Fully and truly, without fear or strings attached?
No, he realizes, not really. They always think that he has some motive behind interacting with them. They’re probably right. He’s the Opportunist, always searching, even subconsciously, for a chance at getting what he wants. It’s not so farfetched to assume that he’s focused only on getting on top.
They’re probably right to avoid him, Opportunist decides, taking a sip of lukewarm tea.
He realizes, belatedly, that Smitten might’ve expected an answer of some kind, and he’d been silent for nearly a minute. As he attempts to form a response, however, Smitten says something else.
“Do you ever think about… back then? The Princess, the Decider, all the choices we made?”
Opportunist freezes, surprised at the question. After a moment, he sighs, nodding, “I… yes. I think about it sometimes.”
“I do, too,” Smitten says, staring down into his mug, “I think of all the things we could have done differently, the pains we could have prevented. I… I regret most of the things I did back then,” he looks up at Opportunist, “Do you regret any of it?”
Opportunist considers, trying to buy himself more time to think by taking another sip of tea. The mug is empty, though, so he just looks at the bottom of it.
Why would Smitten ask such a question? What kind of answer if he looking for?
What kind of answer would be the truth?
Opportunist just wanted to survive. He wanted the Decider to survive. Lies and backstabbing and trickery seemed to be the best way to do so. It’s easy to lie, as instinctual and automatic as breathing to him.
But it didn’t work, then. Worse, it now threatens his place in the flock. Nobody wants to be around someone who has a history in tricking and hurting people.
“Yes,” the word is bitter in his mouth, but it’s not a lie, “I regret the things I did. I think we all do.”
There’s a contemplative silence long enough for Opportunist to wonder if the conversation is over.
Then, softly, Smitten asks, “What do you think they’re doing right now? The Decider and the Princess?”
Opportunist thinks, then chuckles softly, “No idea. Probably whatever giant birds and five-headed women enjoy doing.”
Smitten stares into his mug with a bittersweet expression, “I like to imagine that they’re dancing.”
Opportunist hesitates, then smiles, remembering how she looked when she danced with Them beneath the stars.
“I’m sure they are, wherever they happen to be.”
He watches as Smitten sets his mug down on the counter, then takes Opportunist’s mug and places it beside his own. Smitten cups Opportunist’s cheeks, and the latter lets himself lean into the contact again, closing his eyes.
After a moment, Smitten shifts them both, tucking Opportunist’s head between his neck and shoulder, wrapping his arms around him. Opportunist finds himself melting into the warmth, sighing as he hugs back.
They stay there for a long time, content.
……
A few hours later, Opportunist is walking towards the garden, mentally going through the list of tasks that need to be done for the day.
He’s nearly there when he hears Paranoid walking behind him. Opportunist turns around, forcing a smile onto his face. Paranoid almost never interacts with him by choice, especially not after his leg healed, but judging from his stride, he clearly wants to talk to him about something.
Paranoid stops about a meter away from him, crossing his arms as he glances around.
Opportunist puts his hands behind his back, smile tense but unwavering as he says, “Well, hello, Paranoid! How are you doing?”
Paranoid sighs, then stares Opportunist in the eye, “You want to become a medic?”
Opportunist freezes, surprised at both the eye contact and the question. As he’s desperately trying to come up with the correct response — surely this is a trap, right? What does he want him to say — Paranoid takes a step closer, and Opportunist has to force himself to not flinch.
“Smitten told me what happened last night. You might’ve saved his life.”
Opportunist’s brain stops working for a split second — was he dying? It… it sounded like it, actually. Opportunist has to focus to blink away the sudden adrenaline, momentarily dizzy at the thought that — gods, what if he hadn’t heard him? What if he hadn’t gone to find him?
He has to force himself to refocus on Paranoid. He can freak out later, but he needs to pay attention to the Voice in front of him. He can’t tell if Paranoid either didn’t notice his mini-heart attack, or simply ignored it as he continues talking.
“If you really want to become a medic, then I’ll train you.”
Opportunist stares at him, searching for the trick, the trap. He can’t find any, and before he can think, he says, “Really?” his voice more hushed than intended.
“Really. But—” Paranoid holds up a finger, as if Opportunist was about to interrupt and break whatever spell, whatever dream possibly possessed Paranoid to finally change his mind on this. Smitten could only do so much, right? “—It’s not an easy job. There is a lot of information you would need to memorize, both of the flock’s mental and physical health and of general medicine. You’d have less time for things. The wellbeing of the flock will have to be your top priority.”
Opportunist nods along with every word. He’d known all of this, the sacrifices that he would make. The sacrifices that Paranoid makes.
Paranoid looks at him for a few moments, then takes another step towards him. He holds out his hand to shake.
“Well?”
Opportunist grins, genuine, as he takes Paranoid’s hand.
“I won’t let you down!”