Chapter Text
There is a legend.
There is a legend that falls away as history consumes time and distortions eat the memories of those who may have known its meaning. As death becomes the feast of the new age and those who stay alive are those who change.
There is a legend, whispered softly from descendants who don't know their own origin, from maddened beasts that have lost more languages in their mere existence than those reading this may be able to name without a second thought.
There is a legend, and this is the fourth time it is told, not third as most may think is true and right and just- that humans once had wings.
And it is this legend that holds love- not in the starting point of it, but in the way it blooms beneath the sky of a new sun- flowering in minds that know it as intimately as the rain knows the earth. Roots growing in this new old hollow world. In a wound opened up where it should never had existed. Roots that have carved in them the fact that hope can have the form of flight, made by those who can never forget the air beneath their fingers.
Holds love- because the one who clad the world in sunlight has no wings.
But those who still remain whole enough to remember the shape of a forgotten truth do have them.
And isn't it love to give to those who hold your heart without it feeling like a duty a way to become closer to their wishes that they could never fulfill themselves?
Not much is known about the meeting of Mingrui and the one who most would one day come to call something that is soft like the sun's rays and covered with so much hope that it cannot be uttered without knowing that the name was first sung in days where love was considered a God's blessing.
Instability, madness and loss stood center stage- in a play where the director had still not fully crafted His blessed throne, and the Error in the works hadn't known that His existence is a lie that can only be told so many times before it becomes reality- and in doing so stops being something fixable.
Something that can be worked around to bring the desired outcome.
In days where loss specifically was as common as the end of all things, that once where considered to not be able to be torn by anything but blades and cruelty that cannot be measured in anything but breaths taken without-
And yet, they meet.
And it is all too easy to find those that knew the before when you look at eyes that crave to fly with wings that are not there, and use every other measure, every other half thought method of Fooling reality for a mere moment of something as close to those wonderful memories of freedom.
Of knowing that no matter how different you are to those that stand around you, you will still get to fly.
Of having that certainty stolen in an instant.
Grisha finds Mingrui shifting in a not there wind. Not quite flying in the form that is more familiar to them both, but copying the movements of muscles that are just plainly not present in the way they once were, steadying his feet upon a continuous attempt to fit within the twisted image he has made upon reality.
A perfect mirror that reaches, in its repetitive grasping for the wind to be felt as something more than a cutting pressure on his back, movement. Reaches with the precision of a machine that has been attempting the same process that it was build for again and again- with something fundamentally wrong in its structure stopping it from clicking.
From being able to fulfill what once was commonplace and easy.
And Grisha- who remembered perfectly those first few how long how long how long can you be sane without a weight at your back to remind you that you are free, that you are you, moments- stops.
"If you would allow me," and its a matter of trust as much as it is of duty, of a distant kind of care that can only exist in those who have felt the exact same fragment of desperation colouring their movements as they breath and cannot reach to catch that breath as it flies away, "I can make you new ones. Exactly as those that you have lost once were."
"They would not be the same."
Eyes turn upon him as the words are spoken from a mouth that for a moment shows so much desperation. And Grisha can read a hundred circles of stability shattered in the face of death and madness of those that made that stability possible. Can read a yearning for something that can never be real again.
And yet- before a perfect mask of a smile is placed once more on the face of his companion, for the briefest fragments of a moment, impossible to notice if one is not a Spectator-
there is hope.
And Grisha decides at that very second that this is someone he will save.
That's how it begins.
With care presented in the space of two people that have both known loss that most can never imagine.
With the knowledge that there is something that can grant the closest thing to happiness any one of them can feel, if only first there is trust.
"Father?"
Grisha's hands pause in their movements. A God's hands used for something almost mundane standing still, not because the action itself is necessary to indicate the fact He is listening with most of His never-ending focus, but because of Amon's question.
Because almost nothing is as important as answering His son's question.
"Can you show me the constellations again?"
Grisha moves the slightest bit to the side in the desk of his smaller workshop. Leaving just enough space for His son to seat in as they have done exactly fourteen times before.
Allowing His son to see the patterns on the wings He has been stitching together more clearly.
"These will be for you, always. To look at any time you may desire my Son."
With careful steady motions He pulls the void black fabric that has not yet been cut into the correct shapes for the base to the side. Pulls the bones that His Red Angel brought so quickly that have not yet been experimented for their structural integrity to the floor.
And underneath his fingers a sky of stars that have not been seen in millenia unfolds, hidden in the shape of carefully crafted feathers. Hidden in the unmoving structure of a pair of wings that are not ready to be used for flight yet.
His son pulls even closer to His side. Leans over the revealed canvas of starlight hidden in a seemingly never ending black. Follows the trail of Grisha's fingers as they form a needle into the air, small and carefully forged and the tool that is necessary for this task, silver thread ready to be burrowed once more into something that is already real- but will become more so with every lingering moment of His attention and regard.
"Let me tell you their stories once more then, Amon."
He calls upon memories of blessings and prayers that His grandmother had said in turn for Him when He was still not what He had become. When He still had wings of a light yellow and equations in His mind that didn't carry the weight of all of human life.
He calls upon tales long since buried to the fog of history, tales that will never be spoken again as often as the sky has clouds wandering the endless field of blue above them, never be known down to the bones of a whole part of the world, stories that he grew up with and that his grandparents had grown up with, and that all who had wings upon their back and knew the mountains of his hometown remembered as a pretty flower that grows often in the rain, as a soft fairytale.
He calls upon the needles' edge as more and more words unfold from a God that will never be remembered in such a way.
In the kindness of crafting a pair of wings for His son.
Amon falls asleep to the knowledge that he is safe and to a blanket of black fabric that has not yet been used for the wings that will follow his every action carefully folded over his back by hands that are as familiar in his hair as the wind.
And Grisha for just a breath picks his son up in his arms and knows why His goal has to become real.
As real as the wings shaped underneath His fingers.
As real as a culture that has been lost and will now be known only be a son that doesn't have the ability to understand it when standing outside of its unending shadow. Not be able to ask questions and gain answers that reflect so much more than mere voices, than just ideas and thoughts and feelings.
Now lost.
Grisha returns to the spot where he had first met Mingrui.
Searches for traces of the other's existence in the tapestry of knowledge he now holds as easily as the fabric that Amon so often used as a cloak until it become too short for even that. Stolen from Grisha's workshop time after time after time as if to search for a hidden meaning, for something to decipher that is not there.
And He finds Mingrui again and again and again.
Finds him halfway into a facsimile of true flight. Or resting with a book in one hand written in a language that Grisha knows in its appearance even if He never had the interest in learning it before.
Until every opportunity to learn it from another human mouth died with the loss of all that once was so familiar.
Grisha seats upon the cold dirt of a field that will not contain the possibility within it of looking up and seeing constellations he knows a hundred stories of, and finds his companion reading out loud.
By the side of a fire that is useful for no one of the two of them. That once may have been useful for someone who now is not there. Speaking words that only stand to fill the silence of an observation taken with the target of it knowing that he is there.
Glancing at him before he continues, drawing upon an endless number of stories that now no one will hear except a hundred marionettes controlled in calm always there fingers
and a God who was once just a man with wings, that loved humanity enough to not drown in the Chaos until nothing else remains.
Sometimes Mingrui pulls stuff out for them both to enjoy rather than looking at Grisha with that half hidden mix of questions for his patience and for the fact he is not dead in turn.
Pulls tables and cheap tablecloth and plates that Grisha sometimes recognizes as painted on by children to set upon a field that no one else will want to find.
Playing the part of a good host for an unruly guest with the manners of someone who is unused to holding that role but does not care for anything enough to hide that lack of familiarity, even if he could have copied the actions of someone else perfectly.
But Grisha keeps coming, keeps returning. Filling in the silence when Mingrui does not have words to read- with tales about his plans and of his Angels' inefficient actions. With stories that would not make sense from a job that currently cannot have a place within existence as it stands. With the plans he knows of those who are still alive to oppose him and how to hide from them if they come looking here.
He never mentions Amon's wings. Never mentions the wings He granted to His angels, a symbol of a loving and benevolent god who cares.
Even thought His companion must have heard of them by this point.
Afterall, he is just a guest that arrived without informing the slightly clumsy host first. Not an honoured God, but-
just Grisha.
But at some point he is forced to ask by the weight of the calculations that accompany Mingrui within His plans, forced to ask for something that He doesn't know the reason for its absence.
"Can't you pull them from there," the tapping on the table stops as Mingrui's eyes look completely upon him from where they had before been resting on the glass of wine on his hands. The emptiness in the them as all consuming as a star that has died out but still continues to exist, wandering eternaly in a space it cannot light up again.
And Grisha rests in the center of that gaze. In the focus of that airy heavy attention that seems to want to pull Him into non existence until every question He has ever asked stops echoing in the space he will leave behind.
And waits.
Doesn't care to calculate how long he will need to spend waiting.
Just waits.
"It would not be the same- they would not be-"
Grisha walks the steps that separate them. Slow and with none of the careful methodicalness that usually characterized his every movement. Takes care to give Mingrui the opportunity to run if he so wishes. To tell him to stop.
To tell him to leave as had become necessary sometimes when the hunger was there. Heavy and relentless and unmistakable for anything else.
But Mingrui doesn't. Remains still and unfocused and with that desperation he had seen at the very beginning cloying his face like a layer of white silk. A funeral shroud that is only to be seen by a Spectator and the wind that he cannot touch with feathers unwrapping from his back.
Grisha carefully grabs the hand that is bare now that it had stopped being used as an anchor to reality and carefully lays it down upon the table.
Before laying his own above it. Near enought, physical enought that it can help but not overwhelming. Not dangerous, or at least as friendly as he can make being this near to a being that knows his capabilities.
"What if I make you a set? A new one. One that will carry no expectations, no weight other than that which you will give it yourself. No memories but the ones you will make from this point forward," his words are true but also contain more things left unsaid than if he had offered to make him a land without death rather than wings. "I have been experimenting with some attempts at making wings that can last in most likely conditions and it will not be too difficult to add another set within the currently measured pairs."
His hand tightens just the slightest degree around Mingrui's own, just enought to offer the optimal conditions for an outcome that would not be majorly effected by Mingrui's current negative mental state. That will be closer to how he would have reacted if he still was more human.
"What will you ask in return oh great Sun God?"
The words are whispered, and yet they cannot escape from the way that Grisha is waiting for an answer like a man that has been waiting for the sun to rise for centuries and only now can see the dawn and cry knowing that it was real. That it was not just a fragment of an imagination distorted by time.
His companion is asking a petition to a God.
And He would answer only with the one thing no one else can grant Him.
"Give me tales. Grant me only the information to understand what now can never be understood, has been lost completely to the passage of time."
Grisha had previously considered what he would request if this had ever become reality rather than a frequently calibrated possibility, but now the words are torn out of his throat as he looks at eyes covered in hope.
"Grant me in return the tales you knew about wings, and let me fly inside your eyes as long as it would take for the feathers to be found in full."
The God waits for His petitioner to understand the complexity of his request. To see all the factors that are already known to Him.
All except one.
The answer.
"I agree to the price that has been stated Grisha. Let use meet again when you have a colour in your mind."
And then Mingrui leaves. As calmly as a puppet that once knew the shape of expectations and happiness but had so many of its strings cut that to connect them once again would require something more than a miracle.
And Grisha does not move. Does not leave in a seamless fluid way.
Grisha only opens his hand and finds a black feather that he knows the giver of as well as his own goal.
And the Ancient Sun God smiles.
Amon finds a new feather added to the ones that make up his wings, after a being with lonely eyes and so much despair that nothing but the stars can hold without being consumed comes and speaks to him- added with the smile of a Fool who doesn't know when to stop giving.