#nothing descriptive bc im sleepy and also Not At That Level Of Writing

[lackadaisical-pottymouth]

Status.

[Birdmen Fic] 

...

Main body compromised. Severe burns detected on face, arms. Wing integrity compromised. Leg integrity compromised. Shock impending. Survival is unlikely. 

Flock status: disconnected. Reconnection advised. 

Redirecting wing mass activity to sustaining lungs and blood clotting. Applying aid to burn and open wounds. 

Shrapnel found in cranium. Cranial integrity compromised. Chances of survival below acceptable levels. Continued action denied. Conserving energy.

Remove it. 

Chances of survival--

REMOVE. IT. 

...

...

Shrapnel extracted. 

The body winced as metal fell with a dull plunk, and he felt the way the wingmass surrounded the afflicted area in a tight cocoon. Disorientation spared him the pain he surely felt. A rock jabbed squarely at the base of his neck and he stared forward, to the night sky and its orange sunset.  

Light filtered into his vision through dark clouds. How long had passed before he realised it wasn’t clouds that obscured his sight, but thick, suffocating, smoke? He couldn’t know. Sunset was absent; casting the orange glow on his world were beasts of flame.

Soft sobbing echoed through the burning building. Another sound resounded, more distant and booming, almost out of place among the crackles of fire. Then echoes of gunshots. An awful BANG, a reprise of silence, cyclic and unending.  

Reconnection to flock in progress. 

It hurt. 

The pain sent him into convulsions, the screams a contagion in time with the disembodied gunshots. The images; vivid macabre portraits. Muscle failure, searing pain, lungs burning, thoughts racing as connections screeched for help, for understanding, served as its paints. 

Then came the confusion, in waves, then torrents. 

Lastly came his name. In cries, in tears. Their voices called to him, a cacophony of desperation, of loneliness. 

They were so loud. 

Mental health compromised. Diagnosis: Guilt. Disconnecting. 

The body twitched. The order was denied. 

Main body movement detected. 

Main body integrity below acceptable levels. Chances of survival below acceptable levels. Action suppressed. 

A single cry, distant and fearful, jolted him out of his haze. The owners’ wings were tattered, their breathing laboured, their hair ash with sections of bruised skin licked clean by hungry flames. Their voice was small and withering, fading. At first loud and pervading, now soft, resigned.

Pain radiated from the body, not at all physical. He moved toward the owner of the voice. 

Main body movement detected. Suppressing. 

The body moved. 

He flipped over onto his belly with a laborious thud, dragging himself with towards the source with one shattered arm. He ignored the rousing sparks of pain. 

Cease movement.  

The body shook with every ragged breath, eyes blurry. It moved and moved, dragging along the deadweight it had become, leading like it was supposed to. 

The owner of the voice drew closer with every pathetic claw along the cold concrete. The flames danced, witnesses.  

Stop.

The owner’s sobs had ceased by the time the body had drawn closer. Now in sight, he gasped. He gasped at the wreckage atop the owner, at the wooden beams and concrete slabs collapsed atop the dwindling voice, obscuring it. 

With that same shattered arm, the one that screamed bloody murder in protest of the awkward angles it was introduced to, he began to pry at the concrete prison. The first movement shifted a pebble before the arm retreated to itself. 

He drew in a breath and continued to pick. 

All the while the sounds of his flock began to falter, their silence deafening firecrackers exploding in his ears. Please, he thought, pulling at whatever he could grip, his body a useless thing. He thought back to moving logs, to breaking out of concrete rooms and shattering tracking devices. To things he thought of child’s play, to strength he took for granted, to the Voice he never heard.      

Move, he willed his body, please, just move. 

...

...

Redirecting wingmass to arms. 

Thank you. 

The rocks were unforgiving, an effigy to his failure, but the Voice beneath it continued to tremble with life. He dug on, scraping at the fortress of stone, the screams of his own body masked by those of his flock. 

He only stopped a moment when he realised they had silenced. 

He breathed. 

Mental health compromised. Diagnosis: Shame.

His teeth dug into his lower lip and he continued, a silent prayer repeating in intervals between memories of dead friends. 

Are you so afraid of the outside? He’d said, You needn’t be, not when you have me!

Come, let’s fly together! he’d said. 

Do understand that it’s because of you that you’ve lost a comrade? the old woman snipped at the end of their meeting. 

It’s because of you.

It’s because of me.

It’s my fault. 

The realization came along with a piece of debris from above. It was a small thing, roughly pebble-sized and smooth that nicked at his hand. Miniscule in comparison to everything. 

His vision blurred. 

His stomach churned with an ichor that commanded him to dig, and he did. Tears didn’t dare fall. Not in lieu of what foolishness had caused. 

My name is Arthur C. Pheonix and I’d love to fly with you. he’d said. 

I’ll save you, he’d said.  

The building continued to burn around him.

...

..

.

Mental health compromised. Diagnosis: Regret.

Mental health compromised. Diagnosis: Regret. 

Mental health compromised. Diagnosis: Despair. 

Cutting off conscious thought.

Set course for Tokyo, Japan. 

---

The Voice came a little after midnight, like he thought it would. Like he’d been warned of. He found him not much later than that in a pod built of flimsy wingmass. 

The other boys wings pulsed weakly in familiarity as Takayama cradled his head. He knew this one, he was his. The one that he’d shared a link with. His wings vibrated low in response to the weak coo the other presented. The edges of his wings sought the foreigners, blending together with wilting strands as they untangled from the mutilated body. 

His Voice was...soft. Like a mumble. Previously, the quietest Voices were attributed to insects and other such tiny things. Theire deaths were usually sudden, the result of a scared housemate and a well positioned slipper. Their deaths (usually) didn’t even illicit a response. 

But here was the New York Birdman, his voice a whisper, his eyes dimming.

Dying. 

The New York Birdman continued to project words his mouth couldn’t, wouldn’t give voice to. His wings transferred images, of flock, of family, of a facility far, far away. They began in an overcast of blue, changed to a sunflower yellow, then ended in a dull red. The light in his eyes dimmed further. Takayama held him and listened until he drew his last. 

The sound of the waves and the winds were much, much louder than the Voice he’d shared. It would’ve...it would’ve been easy to not even realise when the quiet cry disappeared. 

Karasuma arrived shortly after he’d buried him, carefully, under a mound of stone and mud. He’d never...he’d never buried someone before. Usually he left them be. The dead had no qualms with how they were treated, and if they couldn’t be saved then...then...

...

Flowers were out of season and the only places nearby the ocean that had some were homes or already closed. One day, when Time was up, he’d place some there. Maybe burn some incense. From what memory had shared, the New York Birdmen likely wouldn’t have family to complete the rituals for him. 

A weight settled on his chest, one that pulsed and kicked and contracted with a vengeance. One that tore at the edges of his insides and burned. Words unsaid manifested deep inside him, spreading through his body with the crash of every wave till he felt it in his very soul. It’s like these wings carried me to you.

Though the reason why escaped him, like it did every time. There isn’t anything special about being carried by Takayama, Karasuma had said once, and honestly, he didn’t disagree. 

...

Time told him he needed to leave, and once Karasuma had hesitantly retreated for the night, he did. 

.