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Scar
“Another fine days work, Pretty Boy!”
Scar had to withhold a sigh, but his lip did quiver a bit in amusement at the sing-song tone.
We’ve gotten far to used to this.
How long had it been now? Over a year? Probably, he ought to think about it further, but yeah, that sounded about right.
Ever since Cute Guy had come on the scene, things had turned upside-down. In every possible way.
“I’d say the same to you if it were allowed, Birdie! Now fly home!” He called back, and he only received an amused chortle in reply.
He was standing on top of a three-story building, the alleyway behind which had recently revealed a rift beneath a rusted old dumpster. The resulting monster surge had been a fight more or less the same as usual. Keep distance from the creepers, those scuttling terrors, try and catch the zombies in a few explosive arrows, keep an eye out for anything else dangerous, and done.
It was simple, at this point.
Especially now that I have someone who’s watching my back.
Scar considered as he looked up.
Cute Guy.
That is, Grian.
Or well…at this point, did it really matter which name he used?
Co-worker. Friend. Boyfriend. Beloved. Ahhh…maybe I should save that one for later…
Scar could already see the two sets of tiny wings on Grian’s head fluttering from his flustering cries, his pale skin blushing hot, his dark eyes darting to avoid eye contact. The thought made his chest warm, made him feel like the ache running up his legs from his bracers, pulsing pointedly at the small of his back to say augments were reaching their daily limits…well, made those feel so much further away.
Grian swooped down from the dark night sky above, speckled with stars, into the light haze from the street lamps below. He landed right on the corner edge of the building, just like he always would. His heels clicked on the cement moulding, his eyes were purple orbs blazing through a shadowy haze that hid his face.
Down below, there was the clamor. City police trying to keep various reporters and curious onlookers away from the scene, a few of them half-heartedly taking aim at the local vigilante…but they’d long since stopped trying to shoot.
Because they don’t want too…that or they’ve given up on hitting him.
Scar thought to himself ruefully as he raised his bow and pointed across the building at Grian. Time to put on the usual show.
“You gonna come quietly or do I need to chase you halfway across the city again?”
“Aw, you say that like you’ve ever managed to catch me before, Old Guy!” Grian replied without a moment of pause, his head tilting, the purple orbs narrowing to teasing slits as he plied the words. He spun his pink pistols off his thumbs and slipped them into the holsters on his hips. Pink shorts with cutesy lacing, thigh-highs and garters…honestly, when Grian had finally explained to Scar just why his vigilante outfit looked like that, he’d about lost it laughing.
Leave it to Pearl to design something that’ll do the job and absolutely humiliate him at the same time.
Scar rolled his eyes at Grian’s reply. “Didn’t we already settle that I prefer ‘Pretty Boy’?”
“Oh? And did you earn that title today? You’re looking a little flustered, you ought to shape up before I take you apart.”
Scar distantly recognized someone in the crowd hooting, and he turned and shouted down. “Hey! You cut that out!”
Laughter.
What the hell even is this, anymore…?
It wasn’t news.
Scar knew it wasn’t.
Grian did, too. They were both over the moon about it. That this little play they put on each time they confronted each other on patrol was slowly coming out to be just that…a play.
A farce.
Just enough to keep the Head Councilman from completely blowing his top.
Scar let his shoulders unwind just a fraction.
He knew what Grian’s entire goal with this was, now. Beyond the abstracts. Into the smallest details, the things that woke him with stifled sobs and nervous whimpers in the middle of the night when he’d stay over.
“I’ve got to pull it off.”
“I can’t stand it much longer.”
“I’ll make sure they all get to see the sky.”
The charming, quippy, pink ribbon themed vigilante had stolen the city itself, in many ways. The public was used to him, now, seeing him soaring along in the sky was a pleasant surprise, not a terrifying precursor to a hybrid invasion from below. It was slow-going…Scar feared it might take years more…and he knew he could do so much more.
“You ought to hold your tongue there, mister!”
“You sure you want me too?”
“S-Stop it!”
I should do more. I know I should.
But what could he do?
A puppet on loosened strings, but strings all the same. Scar answered to the Council, he answered to Blackwell, and sure, that was all just propriety at this point…but he was too terrified to break away from it.
It’s not the right time yet.
Then when would it be?
Cub had erased all of his information from the Biotech Institutes database…he’d done so much to free Scar from the hell that had been the days he’d spend in those horrible sterile white hallways. His best friend.
And now here was the one he loved.
Grian was standing on the edge of the three-story building, wings comfortably half-folded in a heart shape behind his shoulders. Tight fitted black top, black gloves that hummed and pulsed along the wrists with energy…glamor. Scar knew what it was now. He knew so much more now.
Yet what have I done?
But he couldn’t stomach it even as they stood here and put on the very same show again and again and again…and how sometimes he just wanted to stop, wanted to turn to this crowd and scream at the top of his lungs that he loved this man and he’d never hurt him and the whole world needed to change. Needed to take away the aches that hurt him as he kept wings folded under an oversized sweater. Ought to demolish how he needed moments curled in the corner of his office, trying to breathe, door locked and blinds drawn, glamor headaches ravaging him.
And all the others.
All the ones he loved, all the ones that through him, Scar loved.
Scar loved this man.
This man who stood here in an outfit like that and did things like this in the hopes to show so many people…so many people Scar had never met, because he’d never seen the under-city…show them something that ought to have been free to them all.
The winter day was mild.
They weren’t due for snow for a few weeks more.
Grian insisted the cold didn’t bother him much, said something about some dark place he knew being colder, and Scar hated that, hated it all, hated it…loved him.
I love him.
And had he yet bothered to say so?
No. He made his coffee the perfect way, and repacked his special red tin with cookies. He’d felt his lips on each and every scar on his body, a body that had been torn apart and put back together for the sake of keeping order, an order that Scar wasn’t even sure deserved protecting anymore.
I love him.
“What’s wrong, Pretty Boy, I though you said I’m the one who ought to hold my tongue?” Grian’s voice came with a teasing ring, amusement clung and tugged to every syllable as he swung his arms behind him and leaned suddenly to the side, tilting his head, kicking a foot out, wings opening further, tips flicking like fingers curling in a beckoning wave…probably trying to catch Scar’s attention again. Purple orbs flashed in a way he’d learned to read in all this time, asking a question that couldn’t be said in front of the crowds, not during this play.
‘Are you ok?’
And maybe later he’d be able to tell him what he’d been thinking.
Maybe.
Then Scar heard the high-pitched crack.
It took his mind a second too long to catch up with what the sound actually was.
And by the time he did, it was too late to do anything about it.
Through the slight orange tint of his visor he saw blooming red.
Grian’s purple orbs, concealed behind glamor, widened, and they were facing each other atop the building, and they were far up from the crowd…Scar saw the molten metal in a silver flash passing a few feet to his left, meaning the shot had come from behind, and when he tried, in between heartbeats, to spot the shooter, all he saw was a retreating flicker of midnight blue.
The crowd went silent for one heart-stopping instant.
Grian made a soft sound.
A weak, unintelligible, burbling rasp.
His shoulder was coated with red, and his right wing had momentarily flared out, fanned open. Blood on the feathers, which were weeping their colors.
Then he toppled backward off the building ledge.
“NO!”
Scar’s legs screamed as his augments responded, his bracers kicked in, and he launched across the rooftop so fast his boots took chunks out of the concrete. He flung himself over the edge, grabbed the ledge and used it for leverage to slingshot himself downward, accelerating his fall.
Red.
Red.
Red.
Red blood.
Red feathers.
Scar managed to get his arms around the avian, and pulled with all his strength, turning over to press Grian’s head and shoulders against his own chest as he took the impact for both of them.
The landing was hard.
Very hard.
Scar felt his entire body rattle from it. He tensed enough not to knock himself out cracking his head on the street, but all his focus went to ensuring Grian didn’t hit headfirst as he would’ve.
If I were a second slower he’d have snapped his neck.
Scar’s mind provided as his lungs worked to draw oxygen in, having gotten the wind knocked from him. The crowd was screaming.
Red.
Red.
Red.
Scar tried to coach himself into focus, he had to focus. He flipped up onto his feet again, ignoring the rippling pain up his back and shoulders from the impact. He was scratched up, but he’d been augmented to take landings like that, Grian hadn’t been, Grian hadn’t been, Grian…
He’s not bulletproof.
Scar had just enough time to cradle the avian’s body into a bridal carry, eyes darting behind his visor over him but only seeing red, blinking out tears as fast as he could, trying to see, because he needed to see, to help, there was red, this was his beloved, this was someone he hadn’t even managed to tell that yet, not properly, and to make matters worse was red feathers, red feathers.
Grian was unconscious. The shot, the pain…it had knocked him out. He was unconscious.
And he can’t keep up his glamor in his sleep.
Sleep.
Yeah, let’s think of it that way.
Think of the sharp, rattling breaths and the weakly fluttering pulse against him as sleep, that was the way to get through this.
“Hot Guy!”
One of the city officers was moving toward him.
Scar looked up, taking a breath, ready to call for an ambulance, for medical attention, anything, anything, save him, don’t let him die, don’t let him die in my arms before I can even tell him I love him I…
Then Scar saw the man had his weapon drawn.
And Scar remembered all that time ago, all those months ago, under the collapsed building where it felt this had all first truly begun.
A piece of rebar sticking out of his wing…and he knew they wouldn’t pity him.
He’d thought time and again in all these months…how would he know when the time was? To put an end to this stupid charade…to finally just admit it?
“We can take him to get medical attention, then…” The officer was talking, and Scar wasn’t listening, because he was sure that sentence ended with ‘detain him’ or ‘arrest him’ or, or, or…
Did it even really matter?
Scar had always been a puppet on someone else’s strings.
But he’s got my strings now.
This small, horribly still figure folded into his chest.
And like hell I’m gonna let him let go this easily.
Scar’s eyes narrowed and his fingers tightened around Grian. He turned him, keeping his limp body folded close, hiding his face against his chest, not letting the officer, not letting anyone see, to keep his identity secret. The wings were out, the parrot colors, those weren’t something to be denied any longer, but at least his face, Scar could cover that.
And then he stood. His bracers whirred, his legs ached, and he took a few shaky breaths.
It wasn’t nearly as intense, as powerful, as profound as he wished it wouldn’t been. It didn’t boom in his chest, he didn’t scream it to the world, he didn’t do anything like that because in the end he was absolutely terrified of what he was about to do.
“No.”
He did it anyway.
“I love him.”
Scar saw the mans eyes widen spectacularly and then he engaged his bracers and hurtled up over the buildings again with a massive crunch against the asphalt, digging out more holes. He never put this much strength into it because his augments would give him hell for it later, but right now he couldn’t care less. He didn’t care if he tore his augments apart at this moment, so long as it meant getting Grian to safety.
Scar’s mind whirled.
Where do I take him!?
Cub?
But Cub doesn’t know his secret…I trust Cub, but Grian, I don’t…hnn…
It was really his only option, though. Scar landed on the other side of the building where he and Grian had been chatting, been putting on their show, just moments ago, and Scar’s arm was hot and sticky. He frantically looked over the wing, over his shoulder, trying to identify where the bullet wound was, but everything was just red, red, red…it was hard to tell if the bullet had gone through his shoulder or just grazed it, Scar knew it wasn’t still lodged inside because he’d seen it streak past him upon exit, he needed to get some sort of pressure, some sort of…
“Hot Guy!”
Scar turned with tension coiling into his legs, ready to make another bounding escape. The crowd was in chaos now, Scar could hear screaming, and he supposed for just a couple minutes the city police were now occupied with corralling that.
He didn’t jump when he saw the approaching figure, a bright spot of blue amongst the dingy alley lighting.
“S-Scott…” He rasped, and when Scott got to him, his blue eyes were wide and darting over the two of them.
About a million questions hurtled through Scar’s mind all at once.
Scott was Jimmy’s boyfriend. Jimmy was Grian’s cousin. Scott knew Jimmy was an avian, and therefore knew Grian was an avian, but did he know Grian was Cute Guy? Had he already known? Had he recognized him just now because the glamor fading revealed the true color of his wings?
“Here!” Scott didn’t seem to see a need to bother with any of these questions though, he just frantically stripped off his pale blue collared jacket and waded it up.
“I don’t know where the wound is…!” Scar babbled out. He’d endured situations frightfully similar to this with civilians, but this wasn’t some stranger he needed to be strong for, this was Grian, this was his beloved, his beloved whom he still hadn’t told that, who was bleeding, who was, who was…
“Scar, breathe!” Scott shouted, gripping him by the shoulders and shaking him once, glaring into his face with a brilliant earnest gleam in his eyes.
Scar sucked down a single massive breath.
“H-How…?”
“Context clues, I’m dating his cousin and I’m not stupid. Now come on!” As Scott had gritted this out he used his jacket to wipe the blood from Grian’s shoulder, and as he grazed over just by the crook of his neck, the avian jolted in Scar’s arms. For just a moment, his dark eyes flew open, and he let out a singular heart-wrenching high-pitched keen, and Scar’s breath hitched.
“Gri!”
But just as quick, he went limp again. Scott, meanwhile, was sloppily tying the sleeves of his jacket around Grian’s shoulder to keep some some kind of pressure there. Then he was turning and beckoning Scar to follow. “Come on! Come on, come on! You’ve got to get him some help!”
“W-Where!?” Scar demanded.
He’d have to deal with the whole thing about Scott, apparently knowing his secret identity later. He picked up his legs to chase after the blue-haired man, who led them down the narrow side-street the alley connected too, and at last onto another street. It was past dark, the evening commute was long since finished, and so while there were a few folks on the streets, it wasn’t impeding them.
“Just follow me!” Scott shouted back, and Scar knew he had little other option. He chased the reporter down the street, around several corners, and finally into a familiar alleyway.
This is where I saved Gri from getting mugged…when he figured out my secret, even if he didn’t actually tell me so for months…
Scott rushed down the seedy alley to a large metal access door. He pounded his palm on it once. “Here! Jimmy took me down this way once, this is the route Grian usually uses!”
Took him down?
Scar finally realized what Scott was trying to do.
Get him to the under-city.
Of course. There would be help down there. There were people down there who would treat a hybrid and not immediately imprison him or worse straight after.
So Scar rushed to the door, still cradling Grian close, and aimed a kick. His bracers engaged, his augments ached and prickled sharper, even worse as he pushed past his limits.
CRUNCH!
He kicked in the iron access door with a powerful impact. The locking mechanism buckled under the force and he dented the metal, the door swung inward. Scott darted around him and inside. Down they went, around, and around, down several flights of rickety rusty stairs.
“Gri! Gri, come on, open your eyes, do something!” Scar pleaded against his boyfriends ear, and the man still didn’t move. The two sets of macaw-banded wings on his head were limp and bouncing lifelessly with their steps. His left wing was curled in against Scar’s body, and his right was half tucked, but there was still just so much blood. Scott’s jacket tied around his neck had already been soaked through with it. Scar’s stomach turned and he tried if at all possible to go faster.
“D-Down here!” Scott was sucking down sharp breaths as he skidded to a halt in front of a black chasm.
A rift.
Concealed from human eyes and kept as a gateway.
“I-It’s not a straight drop, it slopes, so you should be able to run it with your bracers…y-you…listen, the under-city, it’s…”
Scott heaved a few times from exertion. His sky-blue hair was stringy with sweat despite the winter chill in the air. His eyes were hazy, Scar wondered if he were trying to compartmentalize the horror of the bloody situation they both now faced.
Finally, he managed to lock eyes with Scar again. “There’s towers. Towers that look like they’re holding up the bedrock. You’ll know them when you see them. The largest of them, closest to the inner streets where you’re going to pop out. It’s got apartments. Very top, apartment 001, take him there, take him there, go!”
Scar gave a stiff nod, looking down into the black chasm.
“Right…r-right…I-I…”
“Go!”
“Thanks!”
Scar jumped feet-first into the dark. With his augments directly interfacing to his visor, he activated night vision and his view was illuminated by the tech. The chute was steep, but there was just enough of an angle in the rock for his bracers and boots to get purchase. In a grind of metal on stone, he hurtled down, occasional booming footsteps to kick off that sent shockwaves of pain through his legs, into his back.
Grian still hadn’t moved.
Grian still hadn’t spoken.
Hadn’t opened his eyes, hadn’t even groaned. At this frantic pace, it was hard to even tell if he was still breathing.
He’s breathing!
Scar berated himself internally as the tunnel leveled more and he broke into a sprint again, hurtling along many times faster than any normal human could ever wish to go.
He wasn’t a normal human.
And where he was headed, he doubted he’d find many of those.
To his benefit, of course, because those weren’t what he needed right now.
Scar burst out from the interior tunnel into the under-city.
For an instant his visor switched the night vision to a less powerful setting, adjusted his sight, as he looked around with eyes wide. This world was one he’d spent his entire career working his damnedest to keep separated from his own.
Redstone cables snaked over the stone, flickering scarlet heartbeats of the city. Spiraling roads like corkscrews, bridges criss-crossing a fall into blackness, the towers that seemed to rise up from that dark, plunge into the bedrock ceiling as if the entire city was screaming to be let out.
But Scar didn’t have the time to stop and sightsee.
He quickly located the largest tower as Scott had described. Closest to the street he emerged from. He hurtled the street in it’s entirety, drawing a few shocked cries from the scant pedestrians, the lighting down here was so faint, as if to mimic nighttime up above. He leapt onto the bridge that seemed closest to connecting, and then sprinted across it. It wasn’t busy, in fact, he didn’t see anyone out. A few flitting shapes of people flying, flying, because right, that was probably just your typical mode of transit down here.
He couldn’t stop to observe. No time. No time.
Grian still hadn’t moved. Still hadn’t spoken. Still hadn’t opened his eyes so Scar could say it, say it, say it.
He jumped the railings, his bracers humming and whirring hard as his augments howled protests that would just have to wait. His boots thudded hard on the narrow landing, in front of door 001, and he reeled back and kicked the door with the toe of his boots so hard it rattled the entire wall.
“Help! Help!”
Immediately, he heard a rapid tumble of movement from within. Footsteps, small and hurrying, huge and thundering, two sets, Scar could hear, hurtling toward the door. The sliding of the peephole, and then the rapid turning of locks.
The door swung inward.
Scar wasn’t sure who he was looking at.
A man with silvery hair, fox ears, and a massive scar over one eye, who was quite petite.
A man with dark green skin who had parts of his chest, his entire arm, his eye, all replaced with exposed redstone augmentation, who was absolutely giant.
The two of them stared at him with pure shock, all the span of a heartbeat, and then Scar strangled out hopelessly.
“P-Please…you gotta help him.”
“GRIAN!”
The large man with the many augmentations surged forward, nearly knocking over the fox hybrid in his haste. He seized Grian from Scar’s arms and whirled. His augmented eye flashed brilliant scarlet as he carried Grian inside, knocking aside several things to lay him flat on the dining room table. Blood spattered, Scott’s soaked-through jacket hit the surface with a wet slap, his wings were limp and sprawled open from the pressure of laying on his wing roots, and Scar felt tears burning through his gaze.
It was so stupid.
"D-Don’t make him lay on his back…he always says that’s so uncomfortable…" The words toppled end over end from his lips in a heartrending whisper.
Maybe that was what finally just shattered him?
He hit the ground on his knees in the doorway with a thud that stung, his bracers sending hot sparks of pain through his legs, his hips, up into his spine. He wrenched once. Nothing came up.
Then he broke down sobbing.
“P-Please…y-you gotta save him…I-I gotta tell him something, please…!” He rasped out, and the fox hybrid dropped to his knees in front of him and grabbed his shoulders, squeezing hard. Paw-like hands with soft pads against bare skin.
“We’re gonna. He’s gonna be fine, now you come inside, let’s go, come on.” He spoke in a ghostly yet weighed cadence that somehow steadied Scar’s heart in the merest fractions. Tears were still pouring though, and wearing his visor, he couldn’t rub his face.
He didn’t even think about it.
Why do I even care anymore?
He reached up and yanked the visor off in one motion, tossing it aside so he could wipe the tears away, but before he could begin scrubbing his eyes, the fox hybrid grabbed him by the wrists.
“You’ve got blood all over your hands, don’t rub your eyes!” He snapped.
“He…h-he…!” Scar heaved again, and the deep booming voice came again.
“Etho! Get my med kit!”
“Right!” The fox hybrid jumped up and rushed into one of the room off the hallway, then returned carrying a large beat-up duffel bag, sprinting it out into the dining room and setting it on one of the dining chairs.
Etho.
Scar felt his stomach turn.
Doc and Etho…?
He ought to have been terrified, but in some corner of his mind he felt a sense of deep relief. That’s who Scott had sent him too…
His parents.
These were Grian’s parents, whom he’d talked to Scar about on occasion before.
Etho returned to him after a moment and grabbed him by the wrists again. “Come on, come on! Get in here!” He half helped, half dragged Scar inside the doorway and then awkwardly reached over him to shut the front door and lock it again. Scar felt numb, even as his body pulsed and ached with the pains of forcing his biotech so far past his usual limit.
But he didn’t spare an instant to think of himself. “G-Gri…I…p-please…!” His voice babbled and broke. Etho’s expression was tense, his one open eye was shining with all sorts of complicated emotions, but in them all there was a sureness.
“He’ll be fine. Doc’s got him.”
“B-But…” Scar sputtered, still trying with trembling limbs to move a bit further forward, wanting to see more than just the pink heels dangling over the edge of the dining table, alongside red, blue, and yellow feathers, tips that he could never recall seeing totally settled even in sleep so frightfully still.
But Etho just repeated himself again.
“Doc’s got him.”
And at that point…?
Well.
Scar would just have to hold his tongue on those never-said, ever-felt words.