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probably-impossible · 1 year ago

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Signs & Wonders

Tuco made a hasty sign of the cross. “Blondie, y- you…” he stammered. “You have…”

“What?” Blondie could feel Tuco’s panic spreading to him. His stomach twisted with apprehension. “What do I have?”

Tuco hesitated for a moment, biting his lip. Then he spread his arms. “Wings!” he said. “Great big white feathery wings!”

Day 3 entry for @dollarstrilogyevent

The man known as Blondie was not religious. But he was only a man. Deep down, he was just as scared of dying as anybody else.

In the desert, with the skin peeling off his face and thirst burning his throat, in his desperation, he made a deal with God.

I'll do anything, be whatever you want me to be, just don't let me die here…

No one making those kinds of promises expected to be bound to them. He certainly hadn't. After all, he was the furthest thing you could find from a saint. Worse than evil, he was apathy walking; he was a greedy drifter with nothing in his life worth saving. Of all the prayers from better men that God wouldn't grant, it seemed unfair for his to be answered.

But then he'd started seeing miracles. A Confederate army wagon had appeared out of nowhere, just in time to save him. Tuco, the inveterate sinner, had taken him to a Catholic mission, where holy men had washed his face and tended his wounds. And he'd recovered, against all odds. Despite his unbelief, God had taken him up on his offer.

Now it appeared that He was holding Blondie to his end of the bargain. Because that was the only possible explanation for any of this.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

He and Tuco had just left the mission in San Antonio when he started to feel an itching between his shoulder blades. No matter how much he scratched at it, the feeling wouldn't go away.

Tuco shot him a glance. “You got a rash or something?”

Blondie scowled silently back at him. Tuco rolled his eyes. “Then stop fidgeting so much. This wagon ride is bumpy enough as it is.”

Blondie shoved his hands into his pockets and tried to ignore the feeling. It worked for a little bit. He figured he must have gotten sunburned back there and just hadn't noticed until now.

But after a while, the itching graduated to a sharp pain, sharp enough that even he couldn't ignore it anymore. Pain, and a sense of pressure. It felt like something pushing against his skin from beneath.

After a while he realized he was sweating and clenching his fists in his pockets. He doubled over, and his vision started to go fuzzy.

He could hear Tuco saying something, then the wagon slowly came to a stop. He tried to step down from the bench, but stumbled and landed face-down in the dirt. On his hands and knees, he arched his back and clenched his jaw.

The pressure in his back built and built, and his body twitched and jerked as whatever was growing inside him strained to get out. Finally, he felt a searing explosion of pain that turned his vision white.

Something burst through his skin.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

He must have gone unconscious for a few minutes. He didn't remember how he'd ended up on the ground, exactly. There was a dull ache that ran from his shoulder blades down to the small of his back.

He took a moment to catch his breath. Above him, he could hear Tuco yammering in frightened Spanish. He felt a weight on top of him, like a thick blanket. Had Tuco covered him with something?

Slowly, he pushed himself back up to his hands and knees, then stood. He swayed, feeling oddly off-balance. The weight on his back was still there. And he was experiencing strange sensations. Something dragging in the dust behind him… something ruffling in the breeze. His own body felt wrong, somehow. Different.

Behind him, Tuco stood pressed up against the wagon, looking at him with wide eyes. “La hostia!”

“Hey, that's blasphemy,” Blondie said, then blinked. He didn't know why he cared all of a sudden.

Tuco made a hasty sign of the cross. “Blondie, y- you…” he stammered. “You have…”

“What?” Blondie could feel Tuco’s panic spreading to him. His stomach twisted with apprehension. “What do I have?”

Tuco hesitated for a moment, biting his lip. Then he spread his arms. “Wings!” he said. “Great big white feathery wings!”

Blondie froze. “Quit fooling around.”

“I'm not fooling! I never fool! Look!” Tuco pointed at him. “They're huge!”

Blondie didn't move. He didn't want to. “You've gone crazy,” he said. “The heat got to you and you finally snapped.”

Tuco let out a frustrated groan. “You're the one who's crazy! All you gotta do is turn your head!”

“Don't feel like it.”

“You stubborn son of a—!”

Tuco lunged suddenly towards him, reaching past his shoulder. Blondie ducked away from his grasp, but still felt fingers close around his… his… He jerked as something pulled at his still-sore shoulder blades. “Tch—! Let go, you—!”

“No!” Tuco gave another sharp tug. “Not until you look!”

Blondie gritted his teeth. He looked.

Over his shoulder, he could see, sure enough, a huge wing, like a bird's. It was covered in pure white feathers that seemed almost iridescent in the sunlight. It had to be at least eight feet long, and it was firmly attached to his back.

Tuco had his grubby fingers buried in the feathers at the other end of it. By itself his grip didn't hurt, but it felt deeply strange; a touch in a place his mind was still telling him should not exist.

True to his word, though, Tuco let go when he saw Blondie turn his head. “I told you,” he said. “Wings.”

Blondie swallowed. He looked down the length of the wing and watched the feathers flutter slightly in the breeze. He looked over his other shoulder; there was a wing there, too. They were both very, very real. He tried extending them, and they unfolded clumsily, their tips dragging along the ground. He reached out and touched one. It was surprisingly soft.

“Wings,” he echoed numbly. He had wings.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Later, he sat on the seat of the wagon with his shoulders hunched, doing his best to keep the wings folded up over his back while Tuco drove. But it wasn't easy. Every time the wagon went over a bump in the road, the wings would be jostled from their position and start unfurling. They were huge and unwieldy and awkward, and they had ruined his sense of space. He'd had a very difficult time climbing back onto the seat of the wagon at all, with the wings flailing around and bumping against the canvas. At least they hadn't spooked the horses.

The wagon jolted as it hit a rock, and Blondie’s left wing flew free and smacked Tuco in the face.

“Ay pendejo, watch it!” Tuco snapped, batting it away. “How am I supposed to see where we're going with your feathers in my eyes?!”

Blondie didn't respond. He didn't feel like talking. Instead he wanted to burn through his cigarillos and not think about anything.

Tuco scowled at him. “Hey, are you even listening to me?” He huffed. “Just because you grew a big pair of chicken wings doesn't mean you have to sit there moping all day. I need you to keep a lookout. We're getting close to the fighting, there might be soldiers around.”

Blondie frowned at him. “You act like you're used to them already.”

Tuco shrugged. “There are two types of people in the world, my friend: people who can accept whatever this life throws at them, no matter how strange it is, and people who can't. You've got to be the first type of person if you want to survive like I do.”

“Yeah, well, easy enough for you to say,” Blondie muttered. “They ain't your wings.”

Tuco threw up his hands. “What do you want me to say?! That I think you're a freak? Fine, you're a freak! Your unnatural appearance frightens and confuses me. Is that what you were waiting for? Now you can either stop sulking and make yourself useful, or you can jump off this wagon and fly to the cemetery.”

Blondie glowered at the scenery. He still felt he should be allowed to sulk for a while. He furled the wings as tightly over his back as he could.

“Wait a minute,” Tuco mumbled. He stroked his mustache with his free hand. “Now that's an idea. Yeah… that's a good idea.”

Blondie gave him a sideways glance, narrowing his eyes. He liked Tuco even less than usual when he got ideas.

Tuco just grinned at him. “You really could fly up and look around.”

“Fly.”

“Yes, fly, what are you, deaf?” Tuco pointed towards the clear sky above them. “You'd probably be able to see for miles from up there. And then we could avoid the war altogether! Just think about it: those wings could save me—I mean, us—a whole pile of trouble.”

Blondie had to spend a minute processing this. His gut instincts rebelled against the suggestion; he didn't want to be Tuco’s scouting pigeon. But it made sense. It was a good idea. “I don’t even know if I can fly with these.”

“What? What else would they be for, huh, estúpido?” Tuco stopped the wagon and started trying to push Blondie from the seat. “Come on! There's no way to know if you don't try!”

Blondie gave him a glare but hopped down of his own accord. He stumbled; his center of gravity still felt off. But after some wobbling he managed to right himself. He took a few steps away from the wagon and glanced around. He and Tuco and the horses were the only living things out here.

Tuco was watching him expectantly, with a nasty little smile on his nasty little face. Blondie didn't want that gaze on him while he did this. He started to walk around to the other side of the wagon. When he got there, though, he saw Tuco lying on his stomach in the back, supporting his head in his hands and kicking his legs. He grinned. “Don't let me distract you.”

Blondie narrowed his eyes and took a few steps backwards. There was nothing around but empty flatland, stretching off into the distance. He extended his wings and tried flapping them a few times. Their size made them slow and he had to push hard against the air, but he felt his heels lift a bit before the dust cloud his wings had kicked up swallowed him. He coughed, fanning red dirt away from his face and backing up a few more steps.

He glanced at his wings, then up at the horizon. For some reason, he was apprehensive about this. …Should be able to, it's what they're for… He clenched and unclenched his fingers. Only thing to do was to try.

He spread his wings and took a running leap.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“Bah ha ha ha ha ha!” Tuco doubled over and practically rolled out of the wagon. “Oh man, I think my sides are gonna burst! Ah ha ha ha ha ha!”

Blondie lay face-down in the dirt, wings akimbo. He had decided not to move from where he'd face-planted on his fourth attempt. So far his new appendages had done nothing but betray him.

He heard Tuco’s footsteps drawing towards him, still laughing. “You looked like a blind pigeon! Ha ha ha ha ha ha… You looked like a chicken having a seizure!”

“Hrrnngh.”

Tuco crouched down and poked at his feathers. “Hey, you didn't break any bones, did you? If you're dying again you'll tell me the name on the grave, won't you?”

“M'fine.” Blondie tensed when Tuco touched his wing. He was pretty sure his feathers were disheveled, and he felt like a cat being pet the wrong way. He shook Tuco off and pulled himself up to a sitting position.

“Ha ha ha… I guess pigs still can't fly.” Tuco plopped down into the dirt next to him. “I'm serious, you know, your feathers look messed up. Here, let me just—”

“Don't touch me.”

“You quit being so pissy! You think you're gonna be able to fix this shit by yourself? You got extendable arms too, huh?!”

Blondie scowled, but he didn't pull away when Tuco’s hands found his wings again.

“Whiny bird-bastard, can't even accept a favor from the goodness of Tuco’s heart,” Tuco grumbled. His fingers dug into the soft, downy feathers near Blondie’s shoulders and gently combed them back into place.

The touch sent a shiver through Blondie's entire body. His breath caught for a moment. That felt… really good. So good, in fact, that it was almost…

Tuco stroked his wings again and he had to bite his tongue to keep from making an embarrassing noise. Apparently that area was … sensitive. “‘S enough,” he mumbled. “Do the— the bigger ones instead.”

“Huh? Why?”

“...”

“Oh, alright.” Tuco shifted position and started working his way towards the tip of his left wing. Blondie sighed. By contrast, this just felt pleasant. Tuco's hands were warm on his wings as they swept the dust from him and smoothed his errant feathers back into place. He wouldn't admit it, but it was nice.

“Hey, Blondie,” Tuco said after a while. He let his hands drop. “The whole flying thing… eh, you'll get it eventually. Probably. But I, ah, shouldn't have laughed at you. Even though you did look like a dead parrot rolling down a hill.”

Blondie whipped his head around, almost smacking Tuco with his wing. “Was that an apology?”

“Don't get used to it,” Tuco sneered. He rubbed the back of his neck. “I just thought to myself, you know, that Blondie, he’s had it pretty rough lately, what with sprouting big chicken wings and almost dying and everything. That can't be easy to deal with, even for a bastard like him. Maybe I should ease up on him a little bit. Maybe we could even let the whole trying-to-kill-each-other thing be bygones, eh? Call it even. After all, we're partners again.”

Blondie gave him a long look. Somehow, he could tell that Tuco was being uncharacteristically sincere. He didn't quite know how he knew.

He'd never been big on intuition, but this felt like some kind of sixth sense. If he focused on it hard enough, he could almost convince himself that there was a faint glow around him, telling him that this was good, this was a start, and he should trust it. If he’d been a religious man he might have called it a still, small voice.

Tuco had an almost sheepish look. “You know, Blondie,” he said, fiddling with the scapular around his neck. “This is gonna sound silly, but those wings don't really make you look like a chicken. Really, you look almost like … well. An angel.”

Ordinarily, Blondie would have never let Tuco forget he'd said a thing like that. But for some reason, today, he let it go.

He stood up and stretched his wings. He was starting to feel like maybe he could get used to them.

#long post alert lmao #wing fic #angel!blondie #the good the bad and the ugly #dollarsfandomevent #my fanfiction

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