I just wanted to give tktsaaiw some love. I adore that fic. Specifically Logans characterization in that fic. The bit with the dren? Him getting ready to throw hands vs the shock when Virgil does not in fact want the dren? The shock Virgil doesn’t betray them to the pirates?? HIM CALLING VIGIRL FEATHERS. VIRGIL CALLING HIM SQUARE. LOGAN PUTTING YHE OTHER TWO BEFORE HIMSELF?? Mwah chefs kiss. Love Logan in this fic.
Some fanart for one of @delimeful that I though of. I always imagined the ampens to be way more bird leaning lol.
I like to imagine that ampen Virgil's sand baths consist of purple sparkly sand and that colored sand acts as ampen equivalent to dying their feathers, not for any particular reason I just think that would be wholesome. Also the second I read chapter one I immediately imagined ampen Virgil with the head puff some breeds of chickens have. The idea that Roman’s the one who gets Virgil into 2000′s rock but Virgil is only mimicking so messes up the lyrics all the time is just the most wholesome idea to me lol. {Text in image below!}
(I walk a lonely road, the only one I have ever known...)
[later]
(*Off key* My shallows the only one who talks beside me!)
(Why?! Why do you bite so often? It doesn’t even hurt I just want the floof!)
had a dream about tktsaaiw. Have I read it yet? No. Did that stop me from dreaming about it? Also no.
Not, I suspect, that any of the details were right. But my brain presented the dream as "this is Lime's new wibar au" and I went "okay"
I was in Virgil's perspective, as a little ampen gardener or something, just minding my own business when suddenly BAM! There was a very large blue ampen face in the window. Like. Very large. Absolutely a giant. Never seen an ampen that size before. Probably at least five feet tall, and you know, I'm like. two feet tall tops, because I'm an ampen.
I went out to investigate, and there's actually two giant ampens, one bright blue and one bright red. (other than color and size, they looked a lot like this art by @ax3-e0ns. Especially the head floof.)
They were doing a science experiment, they said, and needed volunteers to help study a thing. (this involved putting a chicken in a backpack and racing, to somehow measure how the asymmetry of the chicken affected your time. It sounded logical in the dream. also I was briefly back in my own pov and human shape for this bit)
But it turns out, instead of science, they were waiting for an opportunity to separate me/Virgil from the other people to kidnap me!
So here I am, yoinked onto a spaceship, and it turns out those giant ampens? Aren't ampens! They were humans! (which explained their size, lol)
Logan was some kind of telepathic goo alien who was also maybe part of their ship? And he had done the disguises for them. He also made it so that everyone on the planet totally forgot who I was, so they wouldn't come looking for me. (my sibling and a close friend still were looking, they just got abruptly confused about who they were looking for and had to figure that out.)
So now I'm kidnapped on an alien ship, with two terrifying humans (who are, for some reason, still solid blue and solid red, but I didn't think that was weird) and an even more terrifying telepathic alien who's talking inside my brain which is very creepy and weird and I'm just freaking out. Also pretty sure they're gonna eat me or something.
Logan figured out that trying to talk to me to calm me down was only making me more scared, and retreated and left me alone, and eventually I calmed down a bit.
And then later, I was sitting on a kitchen counter and Patton gave me a sort of ice cream stick treat, and that helped relax me even more.
warnings: minor character death, violence & injury, panic, biases, lmk if i missed any
-
Virgil went through the footage once, twice, and then a third time, trying to understand the conflicting emotions that were unwinding in his chest.
He settled for rewatching the fight itself once more, because it was easy to tell how he felt about that. Each time, he’d watched with a sort of utter fixation, unable to look away despite the automatic, instinctual terror the scene incited in him.
He’d known, distantly, that the Humans were strong, built with dense flesh and flexible frames. He’d known that they could be lethal, that they sometimes moved in a stalk, with a sort of focused intent that reminded him of a predator.
Knowing these facts and seeing them put into action were two very different things.
On the tapes, the lights flickered out. The camera went dark for a half second before automatically enabling infrared mode.
In that brief moment of darkness, Square had already crossed a good third of the room on uncannily quiet steps. The recording refocused just in time to catch his first lunge.
The crack of a limb splintering was audible even from the camera’s tinny speakers. Before the victim’s paralyzer gun even finished clattering to the floor, the Human was moving on to his next swing, and his next.
Every alien in the room began scattering as the howls of the injured grew more frantic and more numerous. Some bolted for the boarding hatches, some for the door to the hall, some simply away from the crunches of violent impact. Almost all of them were left floundering in the dark, the few with functional night vision unable to move within the chaotic scramble.
Within moments, any raider with a long distance weapon had been taken out of the fight with brutal efficiency, and those who recollected themselves enough to lunge forward were met with the same fate.
Heartfelt returned, the emergency lighting casting their face in dim red glow that made the weapon in their hands and their uncharacteristically solemn expression stand out all the more.
They remained solidly on defense, guarding Square’s back with heavy, unhesitating blows, their expression growing more and more crinkled with each one.
In mere minutes, any aggressors had either been sent writhing to the floor or to an early grave.
The leader, the one who had so confidently made their proposal and deemed Virgil too stubborn to live, had fought more viciously than any of the others, and managed to knock the pipe clear of Square’s grip. As soon as the opportunity presented itself, the leader drew a two pronged viper’s blade from a hidden holster, and immediately tried to stab it forward into Square’s underbelly.
Square half-turned, letting the weapon pierce the meat of their shoulder with a grunt, and without faltering, they reached out to grab the leader’s head with both hands.
The twist was quick and clean, the snap of bone loud, the silence of the room afterwards somehow louder. The raiders didn’t need to be able to see the damage, not when they could hear the way their leader’s snarled threats had been so sharply cut off.
“Your leader is dead,” Square said into the pause, releasing his grip and allowing the body to fall lifelessly to the ground. They barely twitched as the viper blades were dragged out with the motion, their gaze flitting from silhouette to silhouette, watching for the next attacker. “If you don’t wish to join them, now is the time to surrender.”
Raiders were many things, but loyal to the death wasn’t one of them.
The surrender process was quick, almost rushed once the light came back on. Seeing the crumpled corpse of their leader had probably demoralized them. Square seemed distracted, overly so. He didn’t even set any negotiation terms at first, simply walking out and leaving control of the bay to Heartfelt.
Like he’d said, the fight was easy. The fight was terrifying.
It was what came after that was driving his thoughts to run in endless, maddening circles.
Heartfelt looked as though they wanted to follow after Square for a moment, but turned away. Instead, they faced the raiders, huddled against the walls in various states of distress.
They moved to pull the med kit off the wall, and then stepped forward, approaching the worst-off of the bunch with a slowness that made Virgil’s ruff prickle up instinctively, even having watched before. Even knowing who Heartfelt was.
The injured seemed to feel the same, with the babbled pleas for mercy as many of those nearby scurried further away from what they surely thought was an impending slaughter. Heartfelt’s face was pressed into thin lines of discomfort, but they kept moving to crouch next to the alien.
“Help, no hurt,” Heartfelt told them plainly, and then set the kit down and opened it.
The raider lunged the moment they turned their attention away, and Heartfelt flung up an arm on reflex to catch the sharp claws of the alien with a pained sound that they cut off mid-noise.
All eyes turned to the door, but Square didn’t return. They were retrieving him from where Heartfelt had stashed him, Virgil knew, and Heartfelt had muffled the noise of their pain before it could reach the others.
The Human reached out and unhooked the alien’s claws from their arm, suppressing a wince. “No, no,” they said firmly. “No hurt, okay?”
The alien seemed too dumbfounded by the fact that they were still alive to respond, and Heartfelt carefully moved their limb back to their side before returning with the bandages they’d been reaching for in the first place.
That was how the next few moments went, stemming the bleeding wherever they could and applying tourniquets for the more mammalian types. And through it all, they were watched with a sort of entranced silence, as though their actions were barely comprehensible to the raiders.
On the other vidfeed, Virgil could see his own pitiful form cradled in Square’s arms, too out of it to process that Noisy was only a few paces away or even that he was being held by someone who should, by all rights, terrify him.
But they didn’t.
The thought hit him like a rough-edged stone, startling and near painful in its honesty. Virgil stopped the tapes, pushed himself a few steps away from the interface and tried to process past the automatic terrified nausea that had formed at the sight of a fairly sturdy, battle-scarred alien being killed with one move.
The Humans were strong, lethally so. He’d known that, and now he really knew it. He understood why Sveve had spoken about the Humans being monsters with such conviction, pled for his help to escape with such sheer desperation.
He understood, but he didn’t agree.
Sveve had been aboard a ship that had almost mythologized the deathworlders they were hunting. The raiders had been seeking the Humans out since the start of their journey, had known their ultimate goal for however long the trip had lasted. The leader’s grand plot hadn’t worked out, but that didn’t change the fact that his Humans had been presented as powerful, violent beasts to the crew. Despite acting in their own defense, their devastating counterattack had only added a new layer of distortion to the raiders’ perceptions of them.
Virgil, on the other hand, had been aboard a ship with the three of them for cycles on end, with misconception after misconception being washed away the longer he spent in the company of any one of them.
Sure, he knew it was smart to be afraid of power like that. There was still a part of him in disbelief, waiting for his survival instincts and general antisocial nature to kick back in. He watched the most violent parts of the security tapes through multiple times, trying to find the part of his brain that would shift his instinctual fear into some sort of action, and… failed.
Maybe if it was the version of him from that first week of their cohabitation, when he was still seeing bared fangs in their smiles and aggression in their eye contact. But now?
Now, he couldn’t help but notice the way Heartfelt’s face scrunched up in misery even when fighting, the way Noisy curled in on himself during that stretch of darkness, the way Square had held him so extremely carefully, even when they were clearly deadly furious.
There was nothing monstrous about his Humans, his unwillingly-gained crewmates. They were just people, ones that had been forced to fight to survive, ones that had been backed into a corner at nearly every turn. He’d known as much long before now, even if he hadn’t acknowledged it aloud.
He turned the feed playback off, powering down the machinery. He’d seen everything he’d needed to see.
The navigation area was still dark and quiet as he left the record room, quickly skittering back out to the hall.
Of course, as soon as he got there, he immediately encountered Square, about five eerily-silent steps from entering the doorway Virgil had just scurried out of.
The doorway to the room that he absolutely wasn’t allowed to be in. Uh oh.
“I wasn’t doing anything,” he said immediately, somehow sounding about as guilty as someone who’d just been caught with a body at their feet and a murder weapon in hand.
Square inhaled slowly, and then let out a long, winded exhale, which they seemed to do a lot. “I somehow doubt that, but seeing as you’ve soundly rejected earlier opportunities to betray us for your own benefit, I’m choosing not to ‘freak out’ about it.”
Virgil paused, a little surprised despite himself. “I forgot about that. I mean, I forgot you knew about it.”
Square made an odd little snorting sound. “Well. You certainly seemed to feel very strongly about the matter while you were bedridden.”
See, this was why he hated it when he got hurt. His crewmates always insisted on using enough pain medication to make him way too chatty. Sure, anything less would have left him still steeping in agony, but what about the emotional pain of humiliation that came afterwards, huh?!
His expression had soured, but he still managed to pipe up before Square moved on. “I was looking at the vidfeeds.”
Square paused, gaze sharpening. “Pardon?”
“The security records. There are cameras on the ship, and all the footage is recorded and stored for future review.” Virgil stopped for a moment, a fragment of memory coming back. “That’s how they knew you three were aboard. There was a recording of the station you switched ships at.”
The lines of stress along Square’s brow seemed more pronounced than ever. “I understand.”
“I can show you how to erase them, before you leave,” Virgil offered, his antennae flattening back slightly in apprehension. “And, uhh… speaking of leaving. What are we doing with Sveve?”
Virgil wasn’t particularly fond of the guy from the few moments of conscious interaction he’d had with them, but he also didn’t really want to see them go the way of the leader for the crime of being annoying and a little pathetic.
At Square’s blank stare, he clarified. “The medic we abducted.”
“Oh!” Square frowned for a moment, aether full of contemplative, slightly confused feelings. “We had planned to release them on a nearby inhabitable planet. Maybe one with a port, depending on how fast you recovered.”
Virgil couldn’t help but laugh a little, even as his feathers drooped slightly with relief. “And the other raiders? Sveve said we were still attached to their ship.”
“If one could call it that, at this point,” Square replied, radiating a bit of smugness. “The vessel has only one piece of functioning equipment now, a distress beacon that we’ll activate remotely once we’ve gained some distance.”
Anyone responding to a distress beacon would be adjacent enough to the law to report the obvious raider vessel, meaning that their rescue would leave them facing legal charges and unable to pursue. Virgil chirped lowly, impressed.
A few doors away, Heartfelt appeared, holding a pile of machinery in their arms that was stacked higher than Virgil was tall. Despite being unable to see much past their burden, they barely seemed to feel the weight.
“I should go help him,” Square said, but glanced back down at Virgil one last time, something hesitant in their posture, almost apologetic. “We retrieved enough parts to rig up a temporary remote steering system, to use while you heal. I imagine that we won’t be the most graceful of pilots, so… What I’m saying is, everyone will be much happier once you’ve recovered enough to take the helm again.”
Virgil felt a little thrill of joy, unable to keep his ruff from fluffing up slightly at the confirmation that his fears had been unfounded all along. “I’ll try not to take too long,” he managed to respond, with only the barest embarrassing croaking to his voice.
Square nodded and hurried off to prevent Heartfelt’s teetering tower of metal, and Virgil huffed in amusement, turning to go track down Noisy and let him know that he was ready to take another nap.
It was amazing, just how relieved he felt to finally understand their arrangement. If they weren’t seeking retribution against Sveve, who had actively been on an opposing force, he seriously doubted they would kill him just to tie up a loose end.
Maybe it was a dangerous hope to foster, but Virgil couldn’t help himself. If this had probed anything, it was that the three of them saw him as far more than a simple, easily discarded tool, that much was obvious. It stood to reason that as long as he didn’t break any of the serious rules, they wouldn’t hurt him.
He might just make it out of this situation intact, after all.
just like virgil, it's time we get to look at the raiders' attack from a few different perspectives :)
warnings: violence, blood and injury, implied minor character death, guilt, fear, lmk if i missed any
-
CAMERA LOG SF 7
DESIGNATION: LOADING BAY
20:34:27
“You hurt him,” Patton said, and he barely even recognized the sound that came out of him as his own voice.
The crowd of aliens was frightening, the way all aliens were to him, but there were some advantages to being monsters, and one of them was that aliens were scared of him back. They parted before him like leaves scattered by a leafblower, his steps unimpeded as he made his way to where a bundle of familiar feathers and fuzz laid. Unnatural, twitching movements spasmed through them, but they hadn’t gone deathly still– not yet.
Whatever the leader alien was saying was lost to the distant buzzing in Patton’s head. Logan’s response made it through, just barely. His voice had dropped into that icy pitch that meant he was well and truly angry, an ominous tone that made something primal and hunted in the back of Patton’s mind shiver to life.
Be ready, it said. We’ll have to fight soon.
He hated fighting more than anything else in space, even the tests. He hated seeing the fear set in, with bristling spines or flinching spikes or rolling, panicked eyes. He hated the way alien bones and bug shells gave way so easily, like they were made of hollow styrofoam or old eggshell.
Feathers’ arm was broken, snapped with a nasty, jutting-out bit of bone that made him feel sick to even see. Patton remembered the chalky taste of shock when he broke his wrist as a kid, the way the hurt had overwhelmed everything, the cautionary tales about grabbing little creatures or bothering baby birds, because they would die from the shock and the stress sometimes.
Aliens were so much more delicate than the little beings back home.
There’s a sob, somewhere in the back of Patton’s throat. He folded it down carefully, because he was surrounded by danger and because Feathers was still alive, and so he couldn’t just give up or break down, not even with all his fear and dread mixing into a horrible, pulsing mess in his gut.
Feathers had always been spirited, from the first moment the three of them snuck onto the little guy’s ship. Patton repeated this to himself like a mantra as he crouched next to them, feeling his lips wobble a little at the sight of their little head craning slightly to see him.
Their eyes narrowed into little crescents, and they made a small, warbling chirp that seemed to get a little tangled halfway through the sound. Feathers had made a lot of sounds, but none of them had ever sounded like this. The high pitched whistling breaths sounded a lot like almost-whines, like a hurt dog begging for help, but Feathers didn’t even seem to know that they were making them.
The alien leader kept speaking as Patton carefully slotted his hands under Feathers’ small, too-light form. The cadence of the words was songlike and mocking, and Patton could practically feel the way Logan’s ire sharpened to a honed point, aimed directly at them like the tip of a saber. Whatever the stranger had said, it hadn’t helped their case at all.
And that was saying something, considering that they’d already dug the hole pretty deep by hurting Feathers, who they’d all grown attached to despite Logan’s best efforts.
Patton has to blink back the automatic tears when he sees Feathers’ arm up close, trying his absolute hardest to lift them into his arms without jarring the injury. He had to hurry; the last thing they needed was for Patton to be stuck on the wrong side of the room with precious cargo during their plan.
Feathers was still conscious as Patton made his way back over to Logan’s side, the hair on the back of his neck prickling in nervous anticipation all the way. They seemed… out of it, their antenna flicking in strange little circles and their feathers puffing up and smoothing back down as waves of trembling pain seemed to work through their little body.
Patton clutched them a little closer, exchanged a brief look with Logan, and scrunched his eyes closed, knowing that he’d need the advantage once Roman flipped the switch. Next to him, Logan would be doing the same, only keeping the slightest sliver of vision to make sure they weren’t ambushed.
Even knowing it was coming, he still flinched away from the burst of noise when Logan whistled the signal.
The final whistle had barely faded into silence when the orange-pink of the back of his eyelids flicked to an unmistakable pitch black.
For a moment, Patton was back in the labs. He moved to grasp for Roman in the dark, knowing that the only way he could help him through these punishments was to grab on and hold tightly, prove that he wasn’t alone in the dark through whispered words and interlaced fingers.
The only thing his hand found was empty air, and next to him, the silhouette of Logan moved.
Right. He had a different friend to look after this time, and if he didn’t hurry, he’d be leaving Logan to deal with an entire ship’s worth of armed aliens on his own. The moment of disorientation would serve as an effective distraction for a few moments– but only that.
He twisted on his heel, ignoring the sicking crunch of impact from a few feet away to lunge back through the doors they’d come in through, turning and sprinting down the hall for onetwothreefourfivesix long steps and turn again, reach out and there was the little open shelf area built into the wall for storage.
This was where he tucked Feathers, the lowest part of the shelf, pushed to the back corner, his heart breaking a little at the pain they were so obviously in.
He left them there with a whispered promise to return, his heart pumping rapidly as he bolted back to where he could hear shouting and the beginnings of screaming, steeling himself as he picked up the heavy section of pipe Logan had left leaning against the wall outside.
They were in this together. No matter how much he hated it, he hated the idea of not standing between his best friends and death– or worse– more.
With a shuddering inhale, he plunged into the fight.
–
CAMERA LOG SF 9
DESIGNATION: CONNECTOR HALL 3
20:40:56
When the sudden darkness hit, Logan’s eyes had been slightly cracked, and so his vision was still partially impaired.
So, for the first few seconds of the fight, he worked off memory alone.
While the pointless, infuriating conversation he’d had with the raiders’ apparent boss had done their opponents absolutely no favors, Logan had never been one to waste an opportunity. He’d spent the duration of it scanning the room, taking in the aliens closest to him, the ones between him and the boss, and the ones with long-range weaponry held ready.
He went for the ones with paralyzing guns first, because the risk of being hit by a stray shot outweighed the potential of letting them fire off their weapons blindly in a panic, and because it gave him higher odds of hitting targets that weren’t immediately lethal, like hands or arms or even tails.
In his experience, flight was a much stronger impulse than fight for most aliens. Seeing as they had far less adrenaline to numb the pain of an injury and allow them to keep fighting through it, Logan understood why.
He also understood that it made diving into the middle of a herd of opponents much less dangerous. The moment the first few cries of pain and crunches of wrenched limbs rang out, there was a frantic scattering away from the center of the room, like a bowl of marbles dropped on the floor.
Good. The less casualties between him and his goal, the quicker this would be over with.
Even as he twisted around the attempted strike of a heavy, lumbering alien, his thoughts still felt like a looping record, dragged back again and again to those moments before they walked in.
He’d been the one to hold up their sign for wait, paused as though he was assessing the situation even though he knew from the cameras that the Ampen had already been taken hostage.
It had been to satisfy his own curiosity, to justify his own paranoia when it came to their surprisingly resilient impromptu pilot.
The other two hadn’t been in space as long as he had, hadn’t been exposed to the depths that aliens would sink to when it came to humans. He’d taken pains to try and keep it that way, though it sometimes felt as though they were undermining his efforts with how friendly they were, even after everything.
He knew why. Roman and Patton both had far more sociable natures than him, and a willingness to believe the best of others that had been stamped out of him. It was only natural that they would be curious about the first alien they’d met that didn’t hold any sort of power over them.
Logan had attempted to warn them— an attack could stem just as easily from fear and ignorance as it could malice and greed. Feathers, as Roman had so creatively dubbed him, certainly seemed terrified and spiteful enough from the very start.
And yet, even he’d started growing lax in the face of the unexpected kindnesses that the Ampen had granted them. Guidance on the food stocks they had, explanations on the facilities, and a slow but steady easing of tensions the longer both parties went without hurting each other.
They certainly seemed to alarm and bewilder the little alien at every opportunity, that much Logan was more than practiced enough in alien body language to pick up on, but there was understanding there, too.
And it certainly wasn’t greed that motivated Feathers. They’d balked at the Dren canister as though he’d been offering them a severed head on a plate, rather than a rare resource that many aliens were willing to commit atrocities to obtain.
It was the best outcome Logan could have asked for.
It was too good to be true.
So, he’d heard the leader offer Feathers a way out, coaxing them with promises of pest removal, and he’d waited.
Because he wanted proof that he’d been right to keep his distance. Because he’d been so sure that this was it, this was the moment that he was betrayed again, except now it wasn’t only his life at risk, but that of the other two, as well.
Because nobody in space cared what happened to a few humans. Not when ‘human’ was synonymous with ‘monster’.
“I don’t… give starscourge pirates shit,” Feathers had spat, words vehement even as their body refused to do more than dangle limply from their captor’s grasp. “Nobody on this ship… ‘cept me, anyhow.”
For the first time since he’d left Earth’s atmosphere, Logan realized that his worst fears were unfounded.
He’d been stunned. Almost too dumbfounded to think, let alone move.
And somewhere in that unforgivable moment of hesitation, Feathers stalwart refusal to give them up made them expendable.
“Useless,” the leader had hissed, the vitriol dragging Logan’s mind back online just in time to hear a splintering crunch.
The high-pitched shriek of pain only lasted for a handful of seconds before it cut off, and Logan had forced himself to move before his lapse in judgement cost their smallest crewmember any more than it already had.
Only half of his mind was on the conversation, the other half spinning wildly out of control as he watched Patton retrieve Feathers and knew from his tremulous expression alone that it was bad.
‘Bad’ for a human was fatal for an alien, more often than not.
“Logan, eight o'clock!” Patton’s familiar voice snapped him back into the present, and Logan stuck a hand out to smoothly receive the pipe Patton tossed his way.
He forced himself to focus, grounding himself with the sensation of his fingers around the cool metal of the makeshift weapon. Patton was at his side. Feathers had been safely removed from the situation.
There was only one matter he could afford to worry about now, and it was ensuring that he and his companions remained free and safe.
Logan stepped forward and swung, aiming to win.
—
CAMERA LOG SF 3
DESIGNATION: MAINFRAME ROOM
20:49:16
Waiting for the all-clear signal had been one of the most painful things Roman had ever had to do.
Up until now, every battle they’d faced, from their daring escape to boarding Feathers’ ship, had been with all three of them fighting together.
To sit in the dim red glow of the emergency light, holding a sharp twisted bit of scrap metal and his heart in his throat, ears straining for any sign that his only friends in the whole of space were alright— it was torture.
Even so, he sat.
Roman would be less than useless in the darkness that played such an instrumental role in their plan, his body responding to the threat and locking down regardless of what his mind had to say. He would become a liability, and the absolute last thing he wanted was to be used against them.
When the whistle finally came— one long call, and then two short bursts— he wasted no time before flicking the lights back on and sprinting down the halls.
Something tight and terrified in his chest loosened the moment the lighting fixtures flickered back to life, but it didn’t fully release its grip on him until he turned a corner and saw Logan, whole and unharmed.
Only Logan.
“Patton—?” he started the moment Logan turned fully to face him.
“Still in the bay,” Logan replied immediately, and for once Roman was grateful for his utter lack of any sense of drama. “He’s helping some of the more critically wounded with tourniquets and the like. They surrendered after I dispatched their leader and the more stringent bodyguards.”
Looking at the way he was splattered heavily with blood, one hand still white-knuckled around the equally-splattered pipe, Roman could imagine why.
“That’s Padre for you,” he replied, trying to remain upbeat even as he detected something distinctly wrong with Logan’s expression. “Is Feathers with him?”
Logan’s face closed off even more, and it felt like an invisible hand was squeezing all the air out of Roman’s lungs.
“They were injured. The severity is…,” he stopped, looking pained. “I need you to guard the main door so I can retrieve them and assess the damage.”
“Go,” Roman said immediately, reaching out and tugging the pipe from his grasp. “Don’t just give up, Specs. I mean, we don’t just have our resources now, right? There’s an entire ship full of supplies right here, and another connected to it. How often do you want to bet space pirates get injured on the job?”
Logan nodded, jerky at first and then smoothing into something more determined. “Right.”
Without another word, he headed down the hall, and Roman took a few deep breaths. He could keep it together for everyone. It didn’t matter if the composure was fake, so long as he acted it out well enough.
By the time Logan returned, he was put-together enough not to balk at the sight of Feathers cradled in his arms like a corpse.
The first thing Feathers had negotiated for was the right to walk for themself. They hadn’t let anyone else hold them since then, still snapped at fingers if Roman tried to pet them even a little.
There was a faint chirping, interspersed with a few nonsense syllables that might have been trying to be words, and Logan drew to a stop immediately, peering down at his passenger.
“Are you with us?” Logan asked, carefully moving a hand to hover over Feathers in an attempt to keep the bright overhead lights from blinding them.
They flinched a little, and then opened their eyes a little further and slowly moved their gaze to stare at Logan.
“You’re badly injured,” Logan told them bluntly in Common, a frantic edge to his voice. “We need to know what sort of treatment will work for you, what kind of medicine— and what amount, as well— is safe for Ampens. It’s very important, Feathers. Can you tell me?”
Roman couldn’t even find it in himself to tease Logan for giving in and using their nickname, too caught up in scanning Feathers’ tiny face for any signs of comprehension, any hope that they would be able to properly treat their wound.
After a few long seconds of blank staring, Feathers straightened up slightly and pushed their head up to butt against the palm of Logan’s hand, like an affectionate cat seeking attention.
Logan went still, like he was being held at gunpoint, and exchanged a desperate, pained look with Roman.
Feathers made a few tiny peeps, more vulnerable that they’d ever let themself be around them before, and Roman struggled not to be overcome by the feeling of his heart sinking right through the floor.
Hesitant and desolate, Logan smoothed his hand over their feathers as carefully as he could. Feathers crooned quietly and slowly settled back into unconsciousness, tiny muscle spasms still rolling through them every so often.
“Find their medic,” Logan said, and when Roman looked up, he found that his friend had settled into the harsh, sharp-edged version of himself, the one he used to harden himself to what they needed to do if they wanted to survive.
They’d all found a little of that in themselves, over the months spent in captivity. Logan had tried to use it to keep a protective shell between himself and their fluffy, stressed out pilot, but Roman was more than willing to use it on Feathers’ behalf.
“I’ll have Patton bring the first one we find to the medical room,” he agreed with a nod, already turning to head into the bay. “Once we’ve got the other ship locked down, we’ll meet you there. Take good care of them until then?”
Logan’s expression twisted the slightest amount, before firming into something determined. “I will.”
i am hoping sm there is a paralell scene to that scene in chapter 5 of wibar where virgil meets the crew in tktsaaiw specifically so janus and remus can watch dumbfounded as virgil curses out the human they were just fighting, yells "NOW SAY SORRY!!" and then have said human turn to them, looking very disgruntled and go "SORRY."
*sweeping you away with a broom* get out of my outlines! /j
warnings: blood & injury, offscreen violence, shock/disorientation, medical drug use & side effects, miscommunication, overprotectiveness, rude bird behavior
-
Afterwards, he was told that he’d been in and out of consciousness for the better part of a full three cycles
Virgil felt like he had experienced it all in fragments, brief memories he could only recall the briefest flashes of.
–
Large hands setting him in a corner, warm and gentle but shaking hard enough to jostle him back to awareness. Heartfelt’s aether receded until he knew he was alone, his don’t-leave whistle dying in his throat as he began processing other senses again.
None of it was good.
He could hear the high agonized whines that slipped out with every breath, and farther away, the gradual shift of angry shouts slowly turning into terrified caterwauling or pained shrieks. He could see the dull flicker of the emergency lights, the wide and strange shadows cast along the ship’s walls, the occasional bright, crackling flare of a paralyzer shot. The scent of blood, so thick in the air he didn’t know how he’d missed it.
Some of it was his own, though maybe it would have been better if he hadn’t noticed that much. It had taken only a single glance at his mangled arm to send him back under.
–
Distant angry words woke him next, and the icy pressure of Square’s aether was distinguishable even through the thick fog currently roiling in his skull.
He floundered for a moment– where was he?– before recognizing the soft arms cradling him. Human. He was safe, even if he was being moved at a rapid pace and his brain didn’t seem to be functioning properly.
“What happened?” he tried to ask, though the noises that he actually produced weren’t even close.
A minor twitch ran through the chest he was cradled to, the hurried gait drawing to an abrupt stop, and he realized belatedly that Square was the one holding him. Huh. No wonder their aether felt so present.
Something about the arrangement was a little odd, but his mind couldn’t quite piece together why.
A sharp, throbbing pain was present on the edge of his awareness, and somehow Virgil knew that the more he focused on it, the worse it would get. Unfortunately, he was finding that thinking about anything else was extremely hard.
His feathers twitched. There was something hovering over him. Virgil flinched back a little automatically before cracking his eyes open and spotting an oversized hand, bigger than his head and blotting out some of the overhead light. Oh, it was just Square.
They seemed to be speaking, but it must have been in a Human tongue, because the noise was indecipherable and sounded oddly far away. He’d caught “medicine,” maybe?
There was an expectant pause.
Virgil considered the situation at length, surveying all his options, and then stretched out and pushed his head up to bump against Square’s stupidly big palm.
He would have tried to bump the underside of their jaw instead, but even this much movement had sent shocks of pain through him, and willpower could only take him so far. If Square had wanted to be comforted properly, they should have made sure their big head was in headbutting range before leaking all that defensive-angry-terrified into the air.
Square stiffened up a fair amount, but after a few possibly hatchling-adjacent peeps from Virgil, they seemed to soften. The weight of their hand settled down slightly, smoothing down Virgil’s ridiculously fluffed up feathers. Thankfully, his antennae were already dopily angled backwards, so he could enjoy the somewhat heavy handed preening without any discomfort.
It would have been a victory if not for the alarming thread of desolation that had wound its way into Square’s aether.
He crooned a slurred complaint, but exhaustion was already overcoming him.
When he slumped back, there was only a moment’s pause before Square’s hand followed to continue those gentle strokes. The warmth of it was a sharp contrast to the coldness of his words, faint and directed away this time.
“Find their medic.”
–
A sharp prick, and he opened his eyes first this time, bypassing whatever he’d just been poked with in favor of the unfortunate realization that he wasn’t being held anymore.
Noisy was the closest to him now, though he was being uncharacteristically quiet as he swiftly moved away to dispose of an empty injector pen, expression pinched as though he didn’t want to even be looking at it, let alone touching it.
There was a slowly-spreading numbness along his arm, which was nice because he was pretty sure it had been distracting him somehow. Something in the back of his brain told him not to look at it, so he sought out an easier, less personal distraction.
Despite his loudest human’s reticence, there was still plenty of noise in the room. Virgil’s gaze slowly drifted over to the source.
A stranger was seated on one of the medbay’s uncomfortable plylon chairs, one limb cuffed to a chair leg, the other hanging limp at their side. They were staring at their lap, a hurried stream of Common spilling from their mouth, slightly muffled by the way their mandibles kept curling over their face defensively.
“– swear, I’m telling you it’s the right dosage, you’ll see, please–”
Virgil stared at the scene with mild fascination. As they spoke, the stranger was also running through practically every known submission display in this quadrant, even the ones that contradicted each other. It was like they were running out of time to input the correct admin password before a total system shutdown, and had resorted to trying any combination they could think of.
It was sort of impressive, how much physical groveling they were fitting into those miniscule movements. Even unable to do the grander ones that required a full range of motion, they’d probably done over a dozen completely unique displays just in the short time he’d been watching.
Square was standing in front of them, one hand wrapped around a narrow length of pipe that Virgil was pretty sure belonged in the walls of his ship, and holding themself menacingly to their full height in a way that could only be described as ‘looming’.
The tactic seemed to be far more effective on the babbling stranger than it had ever been on Virgil, despite the fact that they were probably twice his height. The still-wet blood splattered on the pipe was probably adding to the effect, although even that wouldn’t have deterred Virgil from backtalk, personally.
Still, despite all their de-escalation attempts, the stranger didn’t seem to be picking up on the fact that Square was getting frustrated with how quickly they were speaking.
They should try biting and/or swearing at the Human. That had worked out pretty well for Virgil, personally.
He attempted to remember how talking worked, in order to give them his valuable advice, but before he could manage, their politely-averted gaze passed over him and then instantly darted back and locked onto him like a drowning victim spotting a floater frond.
“Look, he’s awake! He must know– he can tell you I’m being honest,” they dove into a whole new litany of pleas, but Square had turned at the third word, attention entirely diverted.
The Human was pretty splattered with blood, too. A concerning amount of it– was some of it Square’s own blood? He couldn’t remember the specifics, but he felt like identifying sources of bleeding had been a recent concern of his.
“Virgil!” Noisy exclaimed at his side, sounding surprised and also kind of frantic. He was using that Human word again, so Virgil guessed it really was a nickname. “When did– How long–?”
“Virgil,” Square echoed, voice firmer but just as urgent. “Can you hear me?”
He hummed a distracted affirmative, and the Human’s expression lost some of its drawn-out tension.
“We need to know how to heal your injury. Human medicine is… I think, too rough. What sort of medicine is best for you?” Square asked, drawing closer.
Virgil knew this, he knew he knew this, but the information all felt so far away.
All of him felt pretty far away, actually. That numb, floaty feeling had spread far past his arm, at this point.
The stranger moaned some sort of prayer for salvation.
“‘m feeling fine,” Virgil managed, his words slurring unhelpfully. “Worried?”
“Yes.” Those stress creases were returning to Square’s face. “We don’t know enough about alien medicine. We don’t trust the other aliens to not hurt you. Too much medicine could be lethal.”
Oh. That made sense, though he wasn’t sure why the Humans were making such a fuss about it. If it was just a question of trusting their source, though…
“Bring them here,” he requested, attempting to flick an antenna in emphasis and failing entirely.
Noisy, who had been shuffling from foot to foot in his peripheral vision, darted across the room so quickly that the stranger couldn’t seem to hold back a fearful warbling shriek.
The Human completely ignored the noise to grab the back of the chair and pull. He easily dragged the chair across the room, and with it, a chunk of the paneling where it had formerly been attached to the medbay floor.
“Annoying,” Virgil scolded him, but his voice sounded amused even to himself. The stranger made a strangled chitter.
Noisy’s answering grin was genuine, if a bit (affection-fear-stress) strained, and the stranger was now close enough that Virgil could feel the terror in their aether ramping up to new, unprecedented heights at the sight. His feathers ruffled slightly in distaste at the abrasive feel of it.
“Gonna poison me?” he asked them bluntly.
“Absolutely not,” they replied vehemently. “I– I only have some medical training but I know more than enough to keep you stable for long term treatment, although erring on the safer side of medication dosages means you might experience intermittent pain– but of course there are ways to avoid that!”
Their voice went near-whispery with panic, probably because Square had shifted the slightest bit closer at the word ‘pain’. Virgil didn’t bother trying to shoot the Human a look, mostly because it was kind of hilarious. Everything felt kind of hilarious.
“The exact recommended dosages for Ampens should be accessible via online medical records,” they continued, each word nearly tripping over the next. “If you gave me administrative access, I could find them? … Please?”
Their aether felt too authentic for the treatment to be a lie, but the request was another matter entirely. Virgil believed that they wouldn’t commit any medical malpractice. He definitely didn’t believe that they wouldn’t send an emergency aid request to anyone and everyone the moment they got their tarsal claws on an online comms device.
(Nobody else got admin access. It was too dangerous. He couldn’t remember exactly why, but he wasn’t in the habit of ignoring his lower heart. Better safe than sorry.)
“Nah.” He narrowed his eyes in a pleasant expression. “I trust your experience.”
He fell back asleep to the sight of their mandibles curling in as though he’d just sentenced them to death.
–
The next time he woke up, he was in far less pain.
His mind also felt less like a fledgling lost in a thick early morning fog, which was good.
Now it felt like his thoughts were slipping directly from his skull out into the world, which was… less good, he was pretty sure.
The overhead lights were dim, which made it much easier to open his eyes and spot the Human half-slumped over the bottom half of his medical cot.
Heartfelt’s cheek was smushed against the thin padding on the table in a way that looked deeply uncomfortable, but they seemed entirely knocked out anyhow.
Maybe Humans were squishy for exactly this purpose. He would have to tell Janus to update his theory chart on Human anatomy. Built-in cushioning would be so difficult to justify on those online forums he liked to argue on, he’d have a blast figuring out the most convincing explanation for the feature. Remus would love it, too. He’d contribute the least convincing explanations during the brainstorming process, most of them inappropriate enough to get a user banned.
Where were they? He missed them.
He didn’t realize he was making noise until Heartfelt startled into wakefulness in front of him, with a sharp inhale and a reflexive upright jolt. Virgil suspected that he would have flinched if his current reflexes weren’t all made of jelly.
“Sorry,” Heartfelt said on automatic, and then their face pinched with (worry-alarm-sadness) upset and they leaned towards him. “Virgil? Hey, it’s okay, it’s okay… What’s bad? Hurting?”
That pitiful little croon was coming from him, he realized with a jolt, and the noise trailed off into nothing. He didn’t want to talk about his friends to the Humans. It would be too weird, and it made some unpleasant feeling prickle at the back of his ruff.
“I don’t have any bones left,” he said instead, because that was also a thing he was pretty sure was true. “Who took them?”
Heartfelt blinked at him for a long moment, and then covered their mouth with a hand. What were they trying to hide? Sobs? Were his bones gone forever?
“Bones are okay,” they managed after a moment, words slightly muffled. “All— All okay, it’s only medicine.”
Virgil tilted his head at them dubiously. His whole body felt floppy! How was that ‘okay bones’?
Heartfelt hiccuped slightly, and Virgil realized that they really were crying now.
“I’m so glad you are okay,” they said, extending their free hand until it hovered only a few inches away. “It was scary, you were hurt—,” their voice cracked.
Virgil reached out and wrapped a hand around a couple of their fingers, alarm fluttering in him. “Don’t— Don’t be scared anymore. I won’t be scary. Or hurt. I like you guys too much.”
“I don’t think that is how it works,” Heartfelt replied, but their lips seemed a little more upturned, their aether less tremulous. “Ignore me. Are you— want food?”
“Hungry,” Virgil provided, because out of all of them, Heartfelt routinely forgot the most words. “No, not really. I think I mostly want to know what happened.”
Seriously. What was wrong with his bones.
“Hungry for knowing,” Heartfelt nodded wisely, prompting Virgil to make an amused little trill. It was always fun when he actually understood their wordplay attempts. “I… don’t have the words. Hold on?”
Virgil nodded, watching them stand and only remembering to release their fingers when they hunched over slightly to refrain from breaking his grip. It was a short trip to the doorway, but they still managed to look a little unsteady on their feet. They whistled down the hall, and for a moment, he recalled an echo of the sound and felt his feathers fluff up slightly.
It didn’t take long for Square to appear, and Virgil blinked in some distant surprise at the lack of any splattered discoloration on their hands or clothes. Why had he expected something different? Square was always fairly tidy in appearance.
“What do you remember?” they asked, watching him with a keen gaze.
Virgil hummed and tried to actually recall the situation, which sort of felt like wrangling eels. “There were… raiders? And I…”
He turned his head to look at his other arm, the one that he hadn’t used yet.
It was set and bound, but that didn’t prevent the slow pang of panic that worked its way through him. He needed that arm for something, something important. It would take too long to heal. Heal for what?
Square was still waiting for him to continue, radiating anticipation.
“I got hurt. I… broke a rule?” he guessed, trying to remember past the delayed impact of pain and the resulting flood of shock. He must have done something, to earn an injury this severe. Even if it would hopefully heal clean.
The Humans were both wearing expressions that he was pretty sure meant noncomprehension, though Square smoothed theirs out quickly. “The opposite, actually. You refused to speak of our presence on the ship.”
Oh. That made sense. Raiders were bad news. They would have done something awful to his Humans, for sure.
“And you got them out?” he checked. The last thing he needed was an infestation of pirates. He already had an infestation of Humans. His ship was getting full. They’d have to start making people sleep in the walls.
“We took care of the situation. We’ll discuss it further when you’re more lucid,” Square said, voice tight. “But why?”
“The tunnels are uncomfortable.” Obviously. Most sections weren’t really made for long-term sleeping. In hindsight, he was glad he hadn’t tried to bolt into them and live as a stowaway on his own pilfered ship.
“What–?” Square stopped, shook their head. “No, why did you protect us?”
It took Virgil far longer than it should have to process the question, probably because it was an unbelievably stupid one.
Abruptly, he felt irritation bubble up.
“Come on,” he said crossly, “do you really think that lowly of me? You guys might be total assholes, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to hand you over to star-scourge smugglers.”
Square studied him with that direct, piercing gaze for a long moment. Behind them, Heartfelt was mouthing the Common word for ‘asshole’ with mild confusion, which was honestly more stressful to witness than the threatening eye contact.
Finally, Square looked away and bobbed their head in what could graciously be called a nod. “... Are you in any pain?”
Virgil tried to bob his antennae suspiciously, but mostly just made them flop sideways on his head. The question felt strange, coming from Square.
Maybe because they were always very utilitarian about their own pain? How did he know that, again? More importantly, did the other two know about that?
“No,” he told them stalwartly, ignoring the dull throbbing that had started up on his injured side. If they took any more bones from him, he’d turn into an Ampen puddle. “I don’t want to be liquid.”
Both Humans were staring at him now, which made it the perfect time for Noisy to pop in, guiding a distinctly non-Human handcuffed stranger along with him.
Oh, Virgil remembered this guy. It was good that they hadn’t been still strapped to the chair this entire time.
“Virgil!” Noisy cheered, “You’re alive!”
The stranger seemed both vindicated and relieved about the matter. Virgil wasn’t the best judge of mandibular facial cues, but he was pretty sure that at some point while he was unconscious, they’d burnt through all their active terror and had now settled into an exhausted sort of fugue state.
Noisy turned to Square to ask a question in Human, prompting a brief exchange that Virgil couldn’t hope to follow, all of them still shooting Virgil concerned sideways looks.
He then scooted forward to Virgil's bedside and with all the hopeful confidence of a fool, reached out to pat the top of his head.
Virgil squashed himself down away from the hand in an automatic show of displeasure, and when that didn’t deter the Human quickly enough, he lunged back up and bit him.
(It was fair play. He was pretty sure he’d given them a warning about the biting at some point. Like, eighty percent sure.)
“Mean!” Noisy huffed, but his aether was singing relieved-grateful loud and clear. Weirdo.
“Cranky,” Heartfelt added with a fully-fledged smile. “Back to normal.”
Square nudged the stranger, who apparently still had some active terror left in them after all, and they jumped forward to skirt around Noisy and survey the various scanners Virgil was connected to.
Someone should probably tell them that their life wasn’t dependent on the whole nursing-Virgil-back-to-health situation. … It wasn’t, right? … Right?
It better not be, Virgil thought sourly. His head hurt too much to navigate all that. Truly, the motives of his captors were mysterious and indecipherable.
He missed most of the medical discussion, but the consensus ended up being that Virgil was being disagreeable and did in fact need another dose of analgesic. He might have protested the matter more if it weren’t for the way a jolt of agony had spiked through him as he’d stretched to snap his jaws on Noisy’s arm earlier.
Apparently, sharp jarring movements weren’t good for recently-snapped bones. This seemed like something he’d known before being placed in range of clingy idiot Humans.
He wouldn’t be able to pilot either, he recalled as a pleasant numbness swept through him. Not with his arm like this.
The thought prompted a bubble of shockingly strong panic, but he couldn’t figure out precisely why, and the emotion dissolved like sea foam as he drifted off again.
Oh well. He’d probably figure it out when he next woke up.
