One Went In, Two Came Out
Tony anxiously tapped his fake passport against his knee, his leg bouncing erratically as he watched the screen slowly drop towards his flight number. He didn’t know why he was exerting so much energy into being worried, his flight was ten hours long anyway, his apparent son would be alone, locked away in HYDRA for another half day regardless.
He had done the math already. He would land at three in the morning, make it to the base within another hour or so, and then figure out the rest of his plan from there. Winging it wasn’t exactly his style, but it wasn’t like he had any other choice in the matter. The place would most likely be crawling with guards, and Tony had absolutely no idea where the poor kid would be held in the facility.
There was no use in trying to plot out an idea for the rescue mission, which is definitely what he was calling it now.
“Flight four-one-eight nine to Russia is now available for boarding.” Tony perked up, checking his flight number before shouldering his duffel bags and moving towards the terminal. He began mentally preparing himself for a long, tedious journey of sitting in an uncomfortable chair and eating questionable airplane food.
Normally, he didn’t have an issue with flights, but that was because he always flew first class and had the ability to stretch out his wings as long as the small curtain could cover his seat from prying eyes of other passengers.
But now, squashed up against a chair, unable to unfurl his appendages, he could feel his wings stiffening up uncomfortably already.
----
While this was happening, Peter was curled up at the back of his cage, his eyelashes fluttering as the tell-tale sound of booted footsteps neared his small room.
“Get up, you’ve got another feather extraction today. Move it.” The guard called, kicking the side of Peter’s cage, watching him blearily taking the bottle of cloudy, grey water in his hands and tipping it back with a revolted look on his face. “Move, move, move!” The man declared as he hauled Peter up through the top of the cage by his elbow, walking him forward hurriedly and not caring as the small boy stumbled over his own shaky feet.
Peter looked to the ground, watching the bland sections of pale, grey linoleum washing past him as he was led into the surgery room and hooked up to the familiar monitors and machines. He tried his best to not look at the bench which held the surgery tools, but he knew what a feather extraction entailed.
Five feathers from each wing, pulled out by the gloved hands of the surgeons and sealed in an airtight bag to be examined at a later time. It was one of the shortest ‘surgeries’ he dealt with, but it was one of the most painful.
His wings were sensitive, any time someone would touch his wings, the sensation was so crisp and sharp that it often made him nauseous from the overload of it. New feathers growing back in was always the worst, they came in extra sensitive, meaning if they were damaged or plucked again, it was excruciating.
“Spread them,” one of the surgeons demanded, watching impatiently as Peter was helped up onto the metal bench. The boy shakily parted his wings, knowing that he had no other choice unless he wanted them to be opened by force. He sighed for the brief moment where he had the control, his wings spread out wide and nothing restricting them. But then a set of gloved hands was pushing down and Peter felt the familiar sensation of the tips of his wings being taped down to the bench, preventing him from closing them back up.
He didn’t even know if there was an anaesthetic which could numb his wings, but if there was – God he wished he could have it.
Peter bit down on the inside of his cheek and squeezed his eyes shut, his nails scratched against the surface of the metal. He felt his ribs digging in against the bench, but he pressed his cheek down against it and took a deep breath.
He could push through a feather extraction, after all – he had every other month since he could remember.
Four hours away, as the first feather was torn from the tip of Peter’s wing, Tony had just managed to convince himself to relax.
----
The flight landed on time, and Tony rushed through the rest of the Russian airport before hailing a cab and getting as close as possible to where the HYDRA base must have been concealed.
It was surrounded by dense forest on all sides, and because it was a little past four thirty in the morning and pitch black, Tony was relieved that he had found a good flashlight at the stores in the airport. But he was happiest about the fact that he could now shrug off his constricting jacket and stretch out his wings.
He walked through the foliage, the wind rustling through his feathers, he focused on staying quiet to be on the safe side. It was cold enough that the flashlight beam caught his breaths as they rose. He pulled the sides of his fluffy hat down over his ears, shivering as the wind crept up the sleeves of his heavy coat.
He was almost eager to find the base, and Tony found himself hoping he could snag some warmer clothing from the building if he found time. He had a small scanner which buzzed quietly when it picked up heat signatures a little over an hour into his trek.
The base was smaller than he had imagined, only three stories with two of them being basement levels. There was one signature in what Tony assumed was the front office, and the rest seemed to be on the other two levels of the facility.
He had no weapons on him, and he didn’t exactly have an excuse for showing up to a HYDRA base at five in the morning, so that single, unguarded man in the front office would have to be the best and only option.
Tony pulled a wire out from the heat signature tracker and twisted it back around to loop through the opposite way. He reversed the charge and tugged at a few more loose parts before clicking the activator tentatively.
Blue sparks fizzled from one of the live wires and he grinned. He carefully folded his wings away, tucking them back under the large jacket which concealed them so well. He rolled his shoulders back and blew out another breath before stepping out from the treeline and waltzing confidently towards the front door.
“This is private property, you’re an unauthorised guest and I need you to exit the premises, effective immedia – ah!” Tony didn’t hesitate to jab the makeshift taser into the neck of the guard sitting blandly at front reception. The man’s low yowl of surprise faded as soon as he slumped out of his chair and hit the ground.
The all-black uniform looked relatively plain. It consisted of pants with a belt holding an actual taser, as well as a simple, long-sleeved shirt matched with a jacket built for the Russian winter.
Luckily, it fit Tony perfectly.
----
Peter felt dizzy with the overwhelming and raw discomfort as the tape was peeled away and he was walked back through to the showers and his cage. He never got books on feather extraction day, the test was too short to justify the reward.
He padded back down the hall, shivering as the water from his hair dripped down the back of his neck. After the guard lifted the lid to his cage, Peter winced as he clambered back in and crawled to the back corner as he did every day.
“Keep it quiet,” the guard grunted uninterestedly as he left. The door swung shut behind him and Peter leant his head against the sides of the cage, sighing quietly before sinking down onto the floor and curling into a tight ball to keep the heat.
He slowly began drifting, his lips parched and his body shivering with silent tremors, as he fell into a light sleep.
The guard didn’t bother to wake him up when his food was slid beside the cage, but the lights shut off and Peter stayed curled on his side far into the early hours of the morning.
----
Tony stayed under the radar as he wandered through the halls of the facility. He didn’t see any other guards, but he did duck into a storage cupboard to find a uniform which might give him a higher level of clearance then a receptionist or guard.
There was a white lab coat hanging from the hook on the back of the door. Tony pulled off the guard’s jacket but kept it draped over his arm, just in case it got too cold back out in the forest, or he needed to switch back to the guard’s uniform.
He trailed through the first basement level cautiously, slipping open the slit in each door which was presumably for feeding trays to check for anybody to save, or anything to help in general.
Tony flinched when he thought about how many people had been in the boy’s place before him. There must have been others, but the reports hadn’t detailed anybody other than his apparent son.
He sighed wearily and jogged down to the lowest level. It was three in the morning, and he assumed the base would be quiet during those hours, so when he passed by a pair of guards standing against the wall and fiddling with a radio. Tony steeled himself and kept his face tilted away from the two men before finally managing to take a sharp left out of their view. They hadn’t seemed to have given him a second thought, which was ideal.
He leaned against one of the last doors in the hall, looking up to the ceiling and taking a breath. How would he ever find this kid?
Tony worked away at the inside of his cheek, thinking until his eyebrows scrunched up.
“Where are you at, kid?” He murmured, checking the slit through the door he had been leaning against. There was nothing in the room, and he grew more concerned as the number of doors in the final hallway to search through dwindled.
He pressed his forehead against the next door before he slid across the small slot, he bent down to look through, and finally there was something other than a blank wall that caught his eye.
On the left side of the room, almost in the corner, sat a cage styled as a typical dog crate. He blinked, peering further in as he saw a hint of something living. It was a small flicker of dark brown fur, and he frowned as he realised HYDRA could have been experimenting on an innocent animal as well as a human.
He twisted the handle and raised an eyebrow as the door opened without resistance. Assumingly whatever was in that cage wasn’t seen as much of a threat.
Tony stepped past the doorframe and pushed the door closed as quietly as he could manage. The room faded to pitch black as the light from the hallway was shut out. Tony pulled out his flashlight and pointed it around the space.
He could hear soft breaths coming from the cage at the far back of the room, and he approached wearily, hyperaware of the taser on his belt if anything went wrong.
He rounded the cage, getting more and more concerned as what he had previously assumed had been fur… looked increasingly more like strands of curly hair.
“Hello…?” He whispered into the darkness of the room, squinting through the lack of light. He froze as he finally stepped close enough to angle the torch beam into the cage.
There was a child in there.
A kid that couldn’t have been more than eleven or twelve at the most. He was curled up on his side, cheek resting on his elbows and knobbly knees pulled up into his chest. A soaked, plain shirt lay stretched out on the other side of the cage, leaving the small boy in only a stained pair of grey boxer shorts. His eyes were closed, his eyebrows scrunched in painful discomfort and his nose twitching every few seconds.
He’s sleeping, Tony realised sadly. This poor, neglected child had been left to sleep in a cage…
The boy looked so young, so hurt, and yet Tony knew the kid was his own. The dark, chocolate curls, black lashes resting softly against starkly pale cheeks and lean, scrawny physique was undeniably similar to his own as a child.
Putting aside the ache of his own guilty conscience, Tony could see dark patches of bruising littered across the boy’s exposed skin. He was stained green and yellow from contusions which looked months old. There were poorly healed scabs and scratches across the expanse of sickly pale flesh, and Tony wondered how often the kid ever got proper sun.
Tony could see how damp the boy was, water was dripping ever so slowly from his overgrown bangs and collecting in a small puddle beneath him.
This child is sleeping in a puddle at the bottom of a dog crate, Tony thought to himself bitterly.
But none of what he saw could capture his attention as much as the two wings folded over and covering the boy like a blanket.
They were underdeveloped, probably the size that Tony’s had been when he was between three and five years old. The feathers were dull and colourless, brittle and frail. Some of them looked so newly grown in and thin, that they were almost transparent. They were tinted a copper-tinged brown-grey colour, and were far from healthy.
As a whole, the kid’s wings were weak, obviously undersized and they didn’t seem to be keeping him warm at all, judging by the goose bumps covering his small frame. He was shivering and each of his joints stuck out skeletally from undernourishment.
Tony felt his heart fracturing as he looked at the tiny child – his child – who had obviously been mistreated and neglected his entire life. He looked so pained and scared, even in sleep his body language was submissive and fearful.
Tony took a deep, shuddering breath to steady and prepare himself before crouching down next to the bars of the cage. “Hey, kid,” he whispered, tilting the flashlight around until he was sure it wasn’t shining directly in the boy’s face as he began to stir.
He found the latch to the top of the cage, unclipping it and pulling the hatch back. “Kid,” he said slightly louder, flinching when his voice caused the boy to jolt awake.
His eyes were wide and terrified as he saw Tony, he scrambled away until his back and head slammed against the wall of the cage, the noise echoing throughout the small room. Tony stared back, his mouth falling agape as he saw the massive hazel irises gleaming in the glinting light of the flashlight.
He held his hands out placatingly, shuffling back from the cage. “Hey, I’m not going to hurt you…” he promised, smiling gently to hopefully ease the kid’s mind.
“N - new ones ‘lways say that,” the boy whispered, his voice was broken and unused. He didn’t meet Tony’s eyes.
“No, I’m different. I’m not a doctor,” he pressed, his fingers itching to peel away the lab coat. “I’m like you,” he admitted softly. The white fabric fell back slightly, enough for Tony to stretch the collar of his shirt down and tilt his back towards the boy. “I’m exactly like you,” he repeated, his wings unfurling and pushing against the guard’s shirt.
Tony saw the kid’s mouth open in shock as he saw the feathers peeking out from beneath his shirt.
----
The new surgeon seemed gentle, but Peter knew better than to trust first impressions. Although… that was before the man shrugged away his lab coat and turned so that he could see whatever was leaking from his shirt.
Unlike his own, the man’s feathers were colourful and solid, no transparency anywhere. They were jet black like a raven until the tips, which were streaked with speckled shades of indigo, deep blue and what he imagined the sky to look like.
Peter felt his eyes widening and his jaw dropping as he saw the visible shape of a massive set of wings and the truly enrapturing colours staining the man’s feathers. They were the most colourful thing that Peter had ever seen in his entire life, the closest he ever got to seeing colour was the crimson which he bled after a mistake or a particularly invasive surgery.
“See? I’m just like you, kid.” The man said, pulling the lab coat back on and standing up. Peter shrunk back slightly at the sudden movement, but the man just leaned over the cage and stretched out his hand through the opening.
Peter stared up at the hand, waiting for the man to grab him and haul him out as it normally worked, but he seemed to be… waiting for him to reach out and take that hand himself?
That can’t be right.
“Come on, we’re getting out of this place,” the man spoke with determination. Peter didn’t want to disobey orders… but he didn’t believe it wasn’t a trick yet either.
He shakily lifted his arm, his fingers trembling as he tentatively accepted the offered hand. The man smiled warmly, and he held Peter’s hand, pulling him up to his feet. “Here,” he murmured as his other hand reached out to take Peter’s opposite bicep, steadying him as he stepped out of his cage slowly, unsurely. “Are you okay?” He asked, Peter looked down at himself.
He felt better without seeing the normal sweat, grime and dried blood smeared across him, but he still felt exposed without his shirt, which was still soaking wet at the bottom of his cage. He lifted his arms and wrapped them around his torso, his wings deflating as he tucked them flat against his back, feeling more uncovered by the second.
The man must have noticed, because he unfolded a guard’s jacket that had been draped over his arm and moved to tuck it around Peter’s shoulders.
He jerked backward, shaking his head defiantly and staring ahead with wide eyes. He wasn’t going to break any rules until he was certain the new man was nice like the other guard had been all those years ago.
“N – not allowed t – to,” he whispered, curling in on himself and hoping that if this had been a test, he had passed. He turned back towards his cage and gingerly leaned back in, picking up his shirt and wringing it out before pulling it over his head. The man watched him with a worried look, he almost seemed… sympathetic.
“Okay,” the man said softly, glancing back towards the door. “You don’t have to do anything you wouldn’t like to.” Peter blinked confusedly, tilting his head curiously. “I’m going to get you out of here, you don’t deserve to be caged up like that, alright?”
“Yes Sir,” Peter nodded, replying stiffly as if he had been taught to say the words. He didn’t notice the man’s throat bobbing as he swallowed dryly.
“L – let’s just get you out of here, kid.” The man held out his hand again, letting Peter decide whether he wanted to take it or not. He wasn’t used to the way the new man was acting, he normally just let the guards grip his upper arm and drag him to the surgery room. Maybe that was what the new man wanted.
----
Tony watched as the boy stepped towards him and held out his arm before pushing it into his grasp. He frowned in confusion as he looked down to where he was now holding the child’s upper arm. “Ah… o – okay,” he said unsurely, wrapping his hand gently around the boy’s arm and guiding him towards the door, making sure to let him walk at his own pace.
He turned off his flashlight and tucked it away into the pocket of the lab coat before cracking open the door and checking the hallway for any other guards. According to the heat signatures before he entered the building, there was only a total of eight other people in the building, minus the guard who he tasered by the front desk.
Tony was swift as he began walking with the boy at his side, but he was tactical at the same time. He listened out for other voices or footsteps, and they managed to make it to the stairwell leading up to the first basement level without anyone seeing.
They were about halfway up the stairs when the door clanged ahead of them. There was a guard lighting a cigarette by the balcony, and Tony felt Peter tensing up in reaction as his head bowed and his eyes dropped to the floor. “It’s okay,” he said quietly, “I’m not going to let anybody hurt you.”
He continued moving, knowing that if they turned back to the bottom floor now, they would never make it out. “I’ll make sure you’re safe, kid,” he promised sincerely.
The man flicking ashes over the railing had definitely noticed them by that point, and he straightened up as Tony and the boy got to the door.
“Hey,” he barked, “what are you doing?”
Tony opened his mouth to reply, but the guard spoke again. “Didn’t you read his file, new guy? Always restrain eighty-four when you’ve never worked with it before. It’s a simple rule, how hard is that to follow?”
Eighty-four? Tony wondered silently.
“Uhh… he’s been real cooperative, there’s no need for restraints.” Tony tried to remind himself that in the lab coat, dressed as a surgeon, he was supposed to be a security guard’s superior. “I appreciate the advice, but we’re good here,” he snapped, lifting his chin as if to challenge the man to speak back.
“Not my rules, that’s what the boss wants,” the guard replied, sneering as the boy hunched in on himself further. “If you don’t have cuffs, then you use mine. Don’t keep escorting it around without restraints, that thing’s dangerous.” Tony grit his teeth, glowering when he heard the guard calling the child a ‘thing.’
He scowled when a pair of handcuffs was dropped into his hand. “Hands,” the guard demanded, roughly gripping the boy’s wrist when he immediately held out both of them, like a trained animal.
Tony kept his mouth shut as the guard tightened the cuffs, leaving them on a setting where the metal looked to be biting into the poor kid’s skin. He ground his teeth together when the guard grinned proudly. “I bet you’re about to have a fun day, chick, you know what it means when you’re up this early. Enjoy the treadmill.”
“I think that’s enough,” he spat darkly as the child let out a small, frightened sound at the guards’ words. “Come on,” he said more calmly to the boy, gently placing his two hands over his shoulders and leading him past the guard and onto the first basement level.
As soon as the guard was out of ear shot, Tony spun the boy around and crouched before him. “I’m so sorry, kid. I swear I’m not going to hurt you, it’s just till we get you out of the building,” he rambled as he loosened the cuffs until they were so large that they would slip off if the child really wanted them away from him. He smoothed down the back of the boy’s hair, smiling sadly at the scared look in his eyes. “One more floor, just one more,” he chanted, beginning to shuffle through the hallways as quickly as possible without raising suspicion.
“M’ sorry,” the boy panted “p – please. No – n – no treadmill.” Tony had felt the kid’s body trembling since the guard, and he only moved faster, checking the next stairwell until he was sure no other guards could have been lurking.
“Yeah, no treadmill buddy, I promise. You’re not going on a treadmill.” He helped the child up the steps, but he slowed as they first opened the door. “We’re almost there,” Tony said eagerly, ushering the kid forward and ridding him of the handcuffs as he moved towards the front door.
“I – is this real,” the boy asked, his voice disbelieving and almost hysterical as Tony turned to see a watery look in his eyes.
----
The front door was glass, and as Peter stumbled forward with the man, he caught a glimpse of dark green treetops and orange wood scattered across a bed of pine needles.
“Of course it’s real,” the man answered, taking Peter’s hand and tugging him forward, shoving open the door and leading him into the outside world for the first time in his life.
Peter froze, his eyes blowing wide as he gasped audibly. There was a massive clearing surrounding the building, and he could see the treeline only about five hundred metres away.
He felt his heartbeat picking up and pounding in his throat, his face flushed with his body and the wind whipped his hair back and forth with a chill that somehow felt invigorating rather than numbing. “Come on,” the man yelled, a large grin on his face as he began running with his hand still holding Peter’s encouragingly.
“Th – this… outside…” Peter choked out, the wind swallowing his words and blowing them away before anybody other than him could hear them. A memory pierced the quickly inflating excitement and Peter cried out, skidding to a halt and immediately trying to scrabble backwards. “N – no! Th – the line!” He wailed, shaking his head when the man only continued guiding him forward towards the tree line. “Wait! Please, ple –”
As Peter’s foot inched back into line with the man’s, a white-hot pain shot through his veins, something burnt his eardrums at a high pitch and he felt grass under his body as he writhed. He screamed in pain, tears flooding beneath his closed eyes. He tore at the ground, his nails scraping black earth up as he clawed his way backward. He tasted metal in his mouth as he continued to shriek in agony, the electricity twisting the world around him until everything became a hazy blur.
With one last attempt, Peter sobbed as he threw himself back over the restriction. The pain fizzled out, but he still continued to twitch and wail painfully.
“- id? Kid?! You’re gonna be okay, I’m getting rid of it, I swear!” Peter felt hands on his chest and neck, lifting him against something warm and supportive. His head lolled back, and he moaned as someone’s fingers probed the chip preventing him from passing the invisible barrier line. “I’ll be quick, I’m going to get this out, but you have to let me dig it out. Okay? Everything’s going to be okay…”
Peter sobbed as he realised the screaming pitches in his ears were the facilities alarm system, alerting everyone in the building that he had managed to escape. They didn’t have much time, and he knew that he would be brutally punished for even attempting to run.
“They’re coming…” he warned, shuddering when the man pulled a small scalpel from the pocket of the lab coat he was wearing.
“I know, buddy. I swear this’ll be quick, I promise. Please don’t try to fight me, I don’t want to hurt you.” The man whispered hurriedly as he cupped Peter’s cheek, gently tilting his neck back so that he could see the lump where the chip rested under the surface of Peter’s skin.
“S’ okay…” he mumbled, twitching when the incision was finally made. He could feel the stickiness of his own blood against the side of his neck.
“I’m done, I’m done. It’s okay,” the man gasped, relief in his voice. “We have to go, I’m sorry. Can you run?” He asked, rushing to help Peter to his feet.
“Yes Sir.” Peter saw the man look sadly at him, but then there was a noise as the door slammed open, the glass shattering behind them. He couldn’t help but whimper as he saw the fury painting the now fully armed guards rushing out from the facility. “I don’t wanna go back!” He cried, stumbling when the man grabbed his hand and began sprinting for the treeline.
“I won’t let them! I swear you’re going to be okay, just stay by my side,” the man yelled back, dropping in behind Peter as if he were covering him from the guards. “You’re nearly there, keep going!”
Peter saw the trees getting closer, and the scent of pine needles filled his nose as he sucked in air. He heard the man behind him, still yelling encouragements as he picked up the pace and met Peter’s pace as the both of them broke the tree line.
Peter felt branches slicing up his shirt as he ran past them, and thorns were piercing his feet, but he couldn’t care less. He could hear actual birds chirping hysterically and saw insects buzzing out of his way. He jumped over a fallen branch and saw the man beside him doing the same. “There’s an old landslide up ahead in a few hundred metres, just don’t look back!”
Peter yelped as he heard one of the guards taking a shot behind them, and soon enough the entire group of them were firing at him and the man. “We’re almost there!” Peter sped up as the man beside him did, and he watched in awe as he saw the man tearing away his lab coat and tying it around his waist as he maintained his speed.
From the slits in the back of his shirt, Peter watched as the man’s wings unfurled. They were massive, at almost five metres all together. The midnight black fading to streaks of blue and indigo were only the outer feathers. On the inside of his wings were a deep crimson-scarlet which faded outward into soft orange hues. Peter gaped as he saw the flecks of gold which were speckled across the man’s feathers.
The wings were like two opposite sets. One side was as black as midnight, and the other burned like a raging fire. Peter had never seen anything more stunning in his entire life.
A rogue branch snapped him out of his stupor, he stumbled awkwardly as he realised he had fallen behind the man in his effort to admire the sight of his wings.
“Come on! Jump with me,” the man yelled, pointing ahead to where Peter could see a massive drop off where a section of land must have fallen away years beforehand.
It was a big enough drop to shatter someone’s legs if they fell, not to mention the collection of branches and stones that jutted out and up from below.
The man wasn’t slowing down, in fact he only seemed to be speeding up the closer he got to the edge. Peter realised what he wanted…
----
The two of them were so close, one jump and he would have saved his biological son from a lifetime of experiments and torture. The wind was rustling his shirt and he could feel how secure the lab coat was tied around his waist. Tony thanked his past self for cutting slits in the back of his heavy coat, because as he unfolded his wings and threw himself off the edge of the cliff, he had never felt more alive in his life.
The wind caught his feathers and he twirled upward, laughing as he broke the tree tops and saw the HYDRA base almost a full kilometre away. The shots in the forest sounded so distant now, he imagined them to be little foam bullets that children played with. He turned to face the boy, wondering how he was faring with such underdeveloped wings.
He wasn’t there.
Just the broken remnant of his screams echoing from the drop off in the forest.
“Kid!?” Tony screamed back, tucking his wings away and letting himself drop back through the tree tops. He sunk below the line of the landslide until he was slightly below the big drop, sweeping his wings in broad strokes to keep himself in place. “Kid, where are you?!” He tried again, looking down as fright consumed him for a horrible second, worrying that the boy had fallen before he could unfurl his wings.
“Please, Sir!”
Tony snapped his head up towards the sound of the boy’s screams. He caught sight of the child, crouched by the edge of the drop off with tears streaming down his face. The two of them looked at each other, Tony’s heart filling with sorrow as he saw the devastated look on the boy’s face. “Please, please! Sir, please!”
“Fly to me! We have to go!” Tony cried, growing increasingly more nervous as the gunshots grew louder. “You’re going to get shot! Get out of there!” He yelled, pulling his arms back and ushering for the boy to fly to him.
The boy stared at Tony with tears streaming down his face. His mouth opened, and he choked out a small sob.
“I – I can’t,” he whimpered.
“Yes, you can! Look, I know it’s scary, but you gotta hurry.” Peter wailed, stretching his arms out and making a grabby motion. A bullet whizzed past him and hit the collapsed wall of mud and pine needles beside Tony. “Come on, kid - you have to go, now!” The boy’s wings wilted against his body and he bit his lip before finally speaking.
“I can’t fly! Th – this is my first time ever being outside…” Tony stayed quiet for a moment, still pumping his wings up and down. A stray bullet hit the trunk of a tree standing a few feet away from the child, and he flicked into action.
“Okay, that’s… that’s okay. Just jump and I’ll catch you, I swear.” Tony moved closer to the edge of the landslide, he stretched out his arms and watched the boy’s every move.
“I’m sorry,” he said quietly, moving as close to the edge as he could. “I… I’m… my wings, they’re not strong enough.” Tony smiled sadly.
“I know, it’s okay, kid.” He took a breath, moving even closer and feeling as the tips of his wings scraped against the sides of the cliff on every downward stroke. “You need to jump, you can trust me.”
“Okay,” the boy called, determination set on his young face, surprising Tony. A third bullet pinged the ground directly beside the boy’s foot.
It seemed to spur him on, because one second his feet were firmly planted and the next, he was throwing himself off the cliff. His eyes were squeezed shut and the wind whipped his hair all around, his curls wild as he sunk downward.
Tony surged upward, reaching up and bracing himself to catch the boy’s whole-body mass. He was seconds away from catching the child when the armed guards reached the edge of the cliff, beginning to aim down at the two of them. He heard a gasp as his fingers finally made contact, gripping the kid’s arms and torso like it was life or death, which it was.
Tony expected the weight to be an issue, but the boy weighed even less than his two duffel bags, which was worrying.
“H - hollow bones,” the boy admitted quietly as Tony began navigating through the trees, zigzagging as best he could to dodge the bullets still chasing them.
“I know, me too, but you’re still smaller than you should be,” Tony pointed out. He pulled the boy closer to his chest, tucking an arm behind his back and cupping his head. It occurred to him then, that he didn’t know anything about the boy. “What’s your name, kid?”
“Uh… they call me eighty-four,” he answered softly. “But I’ve always wanted to be Peter.” Tony smiled, his lips curving at the edges as Peter’s head nudged slightly closer.
“I’m Tony, and I’ll call you Peter because you aren’t an experiment number.” From against Tony’s chest, Peter smiled.
“Thank you,” he murmured. “You’re one of the first people to call me Peter.” The boy’s fingers gripped the back of Tony’s shirt tightly, his legs dangled over the ground.
“I’m going to break through the treetops, so they can’t see us anymore, okay?” Tony angled upward, still mindful of the men blindly shooting through the forest, hoping to hit the two of them. “Get ready!” He warned, throwing an arm over Peter’s head to protect him from the branches that snapped and crackled loudly as Tony’s wings crashed through the trees and broke into the sky.
He whooped loudly, continuing upward until the wind grew the strongest and he could glide beneath the clouds.
“Woah…” Peter breathed, looking over Tony’s shoulder to see the mass expanse of forest that spread out for miles until the HYDRA base was barely a speck in the distance. “It’s - it’s perfect,” he said in disbelief.
“You’ve never been outside…” Tony stated with sadness in his voice. “You haven’t even seen the moon before?” He thought of how much Peter would have missed out on, how many things he had never seen.
“Only in books,” Peter said despairingly. “Once I saw the clouds from the skylight in the surgery room, but not much, just until I was given the anaesthetic.” Tony swallowed, his feathers rustling in the wind. “I’ve only ever been inside HYDRA, never anywhere else.” Tony ground his teeth together, his arm tightening around the boy.
“Well, I guess I’ll have to change that then,” he said enticingly. He felt Peter looking up and around them every few seconds, his chest expanding with every small gasp of wonder. “You’re out of that cage now,” Tony pointed out. “You’re free.”
Peter smiled, turning his head up and feeling the sensation of sun on his face and wind in his hair. The cool air was a shock to his system, but he knew nothing in the world would ever compare to that moment. Every time he closed his eyes, the colours brightened, and the sun grew stronger. His eyes dripped tears and he was clutching Tony tighter than what could have been comfortable, but neither of them cared in the slightest.
“I am,” he whispered into the wind.