Chapter Text
You alight atop a tree so slender that it trembles under your weight. The branch under you sways and you sway with it, balanced tentatively on that knife-edge between soaring free and surrendering to gravity.
Above you, the sky shimmers an impossible shade of azure, so vivid it might have been painted by a master’s hand. Here, perfection is law. The Dreammaster, Gopher Wood — sole autocrat of this dreamscape — demands no less than order in everything, and each detail is a tiny gear in the machinery that powers this grand illusion. But behind his careful design dwells a hunger for control, as though, by banishing chaos itself, he could remove the pain and plight that dwell beneath it.
There are no clouds unless he permits it. No rain, no gloom. No stars in the night sky. Nothing but incessant, unrelenting sunshine.
Imperfection is forbidden here. You have learned, through the disapproving glint in his eye, that your guardian is never quite content with how you are. Your childhood is filled with the click of polished shoes on marble, hands and talons alike gripping you a tad too tightly, molding your posture, your gaze, your very voice.
Too willful, he once declared inside the silence of the piano room, his scowl twisting borrowed lips as if already plotting to retune the melody of your heart. Your tears left quiet crescents on the keys, each a mark of your frailty. Too weak to master your own emotions.
You compel yourself to feel grateful for the miracles that make up this world.
Once, this tree had held a newborn bird, but never a boy teetering at the wrong end of adolescence. You are no longer the fledgling of years past. Now, at last, the time has come for you to spread your wings.
The ground below ripples from vertigo, but you steady your breath. The fall is not that far, you tell yourself. You will succeed. He will finally look upon you with pride when you accomplish the impossible.
In the distance, your sister runs towards you, stumbling through grass so intensely green that it hurts the eyes. Her voice, thin and strained, calls your name.
“Sunny!” you make out. Then, louder: “Sunday!”
It will be alright now, you promise her, through that extrasensory bond you both share. The vow is hers alone, because only you are left to offer it. Now, you are strong enough for both of you — no longer the frightened nestling who once wept over the dying dove in your hands, one more soul you could not save.
Today, you swear, is the day you soar into the sky together.
That is how it has always been, as certain as the sun overhead. You had entered the world in sync, your hand wrapped around her tiny wrist, safeguarding her very first breath. When the burning supernova descended upon your home, it was you who had held her close as your mother’s light faded from her eyes and her final song dissolved to ash on the wind. When you prayed to the stars over her grave, only your sister’s face came to mind.
Please, Aeons, keep us safe. Together in Harmony, now and forever.
You spread the lower set of wings at your waist wide, the air chilling against your damp feathers. Contrary to the upper pair framing your face, pale as a fogged sky, they are dark as a starless night — a shadow cast beneath your form. Four wings in total, two at your hips and two gracing the sensitive spot behind your ears: a strange inheritance, marking you and your sister apart in this world of fabricated perfection.
Yours have always been frailer than hers, stunted by years spent tucked away, hidden beneath heavy cloth and heavier shame. Unseemly. Unfit for the image you were meant to uphold ever since you first crossed those marble thresholds. Yet now, it feels only right that they will carry you skyward.
You order your shaking hands to release the trunk.
Only now does your sister’s face sharpen into focus. Robin’s periwinkle hair flies wild, her eyes round and vivid as twin planets, shining with an almost painful intensity. Suddenly, you spot the tears welling there —
Then you see the raven looming above her, casting a dark silhouette far larger than any ordinary bird. Its inky wings beat once, twice, and the third eye on its chest slits with rage — a disturbingly human emotion. My eyes, the Dreammaster had called them. My talons. Its golden pupils, so like your own, blaze incandescent with the heat of twin vengeful suns.
The sight is every nightmare come to life, yet you cannot look away. Your heart hammers with dread and devotion, terror and admiration, pulling at your two halves so fiercely it feels as if you might break apart.
The branch gives way with a final brittle crack. Your cry comes too late, too faint to change anything. For a passing moment, you hang suspended in the air, weightless —
(Is this what it is like to fly?)
— but gravity takes hold of you without mercy. Air whistles past your useless feathers, too thin and stunted to hold you aloft. The earth surges up and up, hungry for your fall.
You hit the ground with enough force to shatter. Light bursts behind your eyes, leaving black and white afterimages in its wake. All sound subsides except for the ringing in your ears, a static noise that drowns out the world.
The spokes of your halo dig painfully into your head, jagged edges threatening to draw blood. Warm wetness seeps from the shattered shafts of your flight feathers. You taste iron in your throat and feel red at the edges of your vision, and the pain is like nothing you’ve ever known.
Overhead, the raven’s shadow passes over you, and your sister’s cry of fear and pain pierces the still air. You must rise. You must tell her that everything is alright, that there is no need to weep. You reach out for her, but your body refuses to obey.
A ray of sunlight reaches down to touch your face with empty warmth. The world is still flawless. But you are broken, Robin is slipping away, and all your promises scatter on the wind, unheeded. You try to call her name, but only a thin, desperate gasp escapes your lips. Darkness closes in, swallowing the perfect blue sky.
You were never meant to take flight.
---
When he opens his eyes, he cannot tell when the dream ends and reality begins.
Breathe, he commands himself, knuckles whitening as he grips the cotton sheets, desperate for something solid to hold him steady. You are safe. You are free. You are on the Astral Express.
Still, his heart pounds, thoughts spiraling faster and faster like the churning of galaxies, vast and unreachable. He had nearly made it. He had crafted himself a new set of wings, touched the very stars, held the fragile hopes of thousands in trembling hands — and yet… and yet…
The broken-winged bird smiled as he fell, a voice whispered in the back of his mind — familiar as every jeer, yet belonging to no one — for he knew to fall means to have once soared.
And yet, he had still fallen.
When he closes his eyes, all he can see is the image of that little dove.
All hollow chest and brittle bones, so delicate he’d feared his clumsy child’s hands might break it. Violet-gray fluff, eyes like polished onyx beads, a stubby beak edged with yellow. Such fierce will in that tiny creature, clinging to life and the hope that the sky would one day embrace it.
How quickly that hope vanished, dashed to pieces against the unyielding earth.
He remembers it all too well: the sharp, brittle sound of a wish breaking. The same sound the branch made as it snapped beneath him, when he tried to prove with his own body that flight was possible, even for the weak.
There was surprisingly little blood, just a little trickling from its beak. He’d scrambled to cradle the limp little body in his hands, helpless in his desperation. Its chest had risen and fallen even after the life had left its eyes, still staring up at the sky it would never reach. Once, twice, thrice… and then it moved no more.
And yet, he had still failed.
The binding around his ribs, worn even in sleep, feels suffocating tonight. He knows he should loosen it, but the idea of glimpsing his ruined wings is too much to bear. Not yet. Not now. Each breath grinds against his bones, pain folding in on itself. He knows this sensation too well: the ache of splintered feathers.
How fitting that he has to live with the weight of his own inadequacy.
Feathery down billows up as he shoves the tangled bedclothes aside with more force than necessary, clumping thick and heavy in the air. The sight makes his stomach twist.
Sleep is out of reach. Even if he ignores the tremor in his hands, the ache in his sides makes rest impossible. Static clouds his vision as he pushes himself to his feet. He barely notices. The room, once a sanctuary, now feels like another cage. He needs out. He needs air.
He barely reaches the corridor before his knees buckle beneath him.
Aeons, what a fool he was. To believe he could simply move on, leave it all behind. He knows the looks the crew will give him if he asks for help — the same look the guards had given him behind iron bars, the same way the citizens of Dreamflux Reef had looked at him upon his arrival, the same way the raven had seen him through its three golden eyes. Just another liability. Broken, dysfunctional. A parasite, taking and taking, never able to give back.
How much more can one person ask for? He knows it is selfish of him to want more when the Nameless have already given him so much — more than he deserves. Still, he cannot help it. Foolishly, childishly — wrongly — he only wants to belong, and staying here means staying out of the way.
He’d been brought up better than that. The old saying repeats itself: "Children should be seen, not heard. Never heard.”
The window stretches before him, alive with stars blinking and shimmering like a thousand silent witnesses. Their gaze is oddly comforting. He clings to that feeling — of being seen, being known — as if it were driftwood in a stormy sea.
In the glass, his reflection looks tiny and insignificant beneath the gaze of something vast. Just one figure among endless others, scattered across worlds in a cosmos too immense for any human will to measure.
Inhale. Exhale. Inhale. Exhale. You have to remember to breathe.
A sharp breath slips from between his teeth as he settles, fingers digging into his knees. Aeons, it hurts.
All the questions he was taught to ask, all the silent prayers, tumble out wordlessly. It is a last, desperate plea for absolution. Why must people suffer? Why keep enduring, only to fail over and over?
And beneath it all, buried deep, lingers the one selfish question he barely dares to voice: Why do I suffer, even when I have no right to?
He knows the answer already.
Because it is deserved, the voice of his guardian answers him. To show such weakness and lack of control is a wretched betrayal of the Harmony.
And when he had asked, “Why?”, Mr. Gopher Wood had only smiled knowingly — as though what he taught was simply a fact of the world, constant as the sun in the sky. What would ever come of those who act against the law if there were no punishments?
Inhale. Exhale. Inhale. You must keep breathing.
He stays there, kneeling for a long time, head bowed as though in silent supplication. His eyelids flicker open and closed intermittently. In truth, he recalls no verses, nor does he wish to.
Beneath him, the Express’ engine rumbles steadily. In his mind, it becomes the snap of branches and hope, the shattering of a fledgling dove’s bones on unforgiving earth.
For now, he looks up at the stars, and they look back at him. For this moment, that is enough.
A hand taps on his shoulder.
“Sunday? Are you feeling alright?”
The truth is, he is not alright. But he cannot speak, cannot think — cannot do anything but focus on getting air into his lungs. All he can do is draw breath, fighting to keep the panic at bay.
Inhale, exhale. Inhale, exhale. Still, he cannot breathe.
A sigh, warm against his cheek, followed by the soft rustle of fabric as the newcomer kneels beside him.
“Do you want to go somewhere else? It’s cold out here. You won’t be alone.”
He nods mutely. A strong arm wraps around his shoulders, helping him gently to his feet. Only then does he notice the shivering, the numbness spreading from his toes to his fingertips pressed against the cold glass.
The world tilts as he leans against a warm, solid back, and it’s all he can do to hold on. His head ends up resting in the comfortable crook of someone’s neck. He smells seawater and spices, and it reminds him oddly of home, of a promise made together over candlelight to see the ocean one day.
The door glides open with a soft hiss. Warmth seeps up from the floor, blue-green tiles glowing and pulsing like gentle waves lapping at his ankles.
Blink, and he is eased onto the ground, onto a nest of blankets. He wants to thank his savior, but the words die before they reach his tongue. The muscle is leaden in his mouth, pressing uselessly against his teeth. His eyelids flutter closed, open, closed again.
A figure sharpens into view: dark hair, deep gaze. Dan Heng stands before him, haloed by the cool Archive lights, an unlikely guardian angel.
He has beautiful eyes.
It is the only thought that surfaces as he drifts in and out of awareness. Through the darkness, he sinks into those eyes, deep and clear as spring water to a parched traveler. So vivid, so tranquil. So alive.
Only when the other’s voice finally registers through his haze does he realize the brightness in them is worry.
“What’s wrong? Are you injured?”
At first, all he can do is let out a shaky breath. He mumbles something too soft to hear, voice unsteady. Dan Heng’s eyes fill with concern as he notices the tears gathering.
He fumbles at his bindings, pulse rapid as a trapped dove in the cage of his ribs. Bone and delicate filaments jab at his searching fingers.
Steady hands help him unfasten the hooks around his ribs. It takes only the featherlight brush of another’s touch against his long-neglected wings for him to break, just enough for the relentless pressure to finally ease.
Hesitant fingers lift to rest on his back, and he leans into the gentle touch, comforted by the other’s presence.
No words are spoken, and none are needed. The silence is broken only by the sound of his own deep and shuddering breaths. But even that slows to a halt, steadied by the steadfast presence beside him.
For the first time in a long while, sleep finds him before fear can. This time, he does not dream.