Archive of Our Own ^beta

The light that filtered through the water cast blue-green shadows on the wall. Patton treated them like constellations in his head, since the dark weedy kelp and the sculptures never moved past slight swaying: the shapes were constant, flickery, and he could give them all names. It was a good way to make sure he remembered that things had names-- to remember that he had a name, and language, and everything else he hadn’t gotten the chance to use in over a year now.

The constellations weren’t so fancy they had a theme, because Patton had never been the best student, but he tried to make their titles fit. The one that looked like Italy was Pax Romana , after the last history lesson he remembered, and the one shaped like a cat’s face was Feline Pretty Good If You Think About It. The long sinuous shadow along the bottom edge was Snake In My Boot , so the one next to it was Snake It Or Leave It because they overlapped at certain times, and the one above them both that looked like a letter L was All Star .

Patton made up stories about them, but they weren’t very good stories. They limped, wandered and lost details. Sometimes he’d stare at the wall for days and days, trying to twist his limited creativity into new shapes, but all that would happen was the stories blurred completely and he’d lose the thread. He lost the thread when he got food, too, especially when he remembered to eat it-- and especially especially when he got a visitor. Visitors were more exciting than sea-shadows any day.

He’d used to get a lot of them back when he was a novelty, but the fish people had lost interest after a couple weeks. Patton figured it was because he’d gotten a lot weaker then-- being fed mostly raw fish and seaweed in the dark would do that to a guy-- so he’d ended up boring to watch.

The muzzle meant he could only drink or eat at mealtimes, so Patton’s throat was always dry. He didn’t try to speak anymore, since that’d gotten him punished for being rowdy or distracting, but sometimes he hummed soft enough that the waves covered the sound, and filled in the lyrics in his head. Anything to make sure he didn’t forget. The worst thing would be forgetting.

He slept so often, though. It was only a matter of time before he died or forgot he’d ever been anywhere else, when he couldn’t talk or understand the fish people’s language, or even move around much since he lost his energy. All Patton could do was curl up and conserve heat-- feel his bones under his skin, brittle like his fingernails had become-- taste blood in his mouth and know he was on the edge of scurvy pretty much every second, like a stranded pirate.

Treasure Island. Pirates of the Caribbean. One Piece. Those all had pirates in them. Patton had to remember them, too, or they’d slip through his fingers like the image of his mother’s face.

Patton had his hands curled under his cheek, knees brought up to his chest as a balm against the cold stone floor. The aliens gave him clothes, at least, even if they were strange, cold fabrics that didn’t keep in heat at all. 

He couldn’t see well without his glasses, but he saw when the observation corner lit up, draining like it did when the fish people had non-fishy visitors.

His breath stuttered, exhales like gunshots in the silent space. Patton pulled himself upright, scooting toward the corner so he could get his back to it, and put his head on his knees again. The shadow-constellations danced.

Through the not-glass he couldn’t hear the fish aliens’ echoey singing, but he thought he caught a hint of the language his first abductors had spoken, the language Patton had sort of learned: value and new were the only words he could hear, and because someone there was shrilling them louder than a grackle. He squinted, trying to make out the shapes of the visitors, but the aquamarine cast from the water made it hard to tell colors. They were small, though; maybe the size of below-average turkeys, but shaped more like those birdy dinosaurs that had to run before they could fly. The ones who showed up in Pokemon.

The vents in the ceiling hissed, and Patton flinched into himself, wishing he could hold his nose and mouth without the muzzle in the way. A sweet scent filled the chamber, the scent that meant examination, drugging, touching , but he knew better than to fight it by then; instead, he tucked into himself as much as he could, closing his eyes against the sting of the sleeping gas, and forced himself to relax.

*

Shrieks and chirps woke Patton up, vibrant as birdsong and painfully sharp. He tried to jerk away from it, to bring his hands up to cover his ears, but restraints stopped him before he could do more than twitch his wrists; he couldn’t do more than turn his head, pressed down on a cold flat surface with a light streaming into his eyes. The brightness was too much, like walking into daylight after spending all day with curtains closed. Patton squeezed his eyes shut against it, tearing up, and had to go through a breathing exercise to keep himself from hyperventilating.

This was-- this was new. The fish people had never done this before. He didn’t know the language he was hearing, didn’t even recognize it, and what if they’d finally decided to kill him and had sold him to be a dissection frog at an alien college, and this was the lab where he’d get pulled apart? Patton hadn’t even been able to dissect a cow’s eye in Biology without crying and throwing up, how was he supposed to deal with being the cow’s eye, what if they were starting already and he had to be awake for it because they thought humans were too strong like the smugglers had, what if they thought he couldn’t feel pain or didn’t, didn’t care--

The light moved away, and Patton heard himself whimpering, horribly close to sobbing outright. Not good. That was bad, noise was bad, he had to be quiet. He was quiet all the time, why was it so hard now, please please shush come on, couldn’t he shush just a little? Softer and softer, turning himself down like the volume on a radio. 

No more searing brightness. See? He’d done something right. Good job, Patton. Maybe someday he could give himself a sticker for that.

The chirping had a rhythm to it. Not the same as the smugglers’ tongue, that first alien language with the harsh consonants that Patton could copy pretty well, that he’d managed to learn some of-- this one was avian, melodic, pretty past the painful pitches. If Patton hadn’t spent so long surrounded by quiet, he wouldn’t’ve had a problem hearing it at all.

Open his eyes. Blink past the wetness left over from the light. The ceiling of the new place-- a ship? It might have been a ship-- was decorated in primary-colored fractals, like a McDonalds Playplace if it wanted to show stained glass pictures. Even the walls were colors, from what he could see of them, though they didn’t blend very well: pastels, jewel tones, and neons were all splattered over the sides, little chips of eyesore picking out mosaic patterns. Patton’s mother would’ve thrown a fit.

The chirps got lower once he started looking around, falling out of the painful range, and finally Patton caught his first look at his new captors.

The bird alien had white feathers, with streaks of deep red down to their tailfeathers (like a peacock!) and a beak edged with sharpish points. Their plumage shimmered in the light, white glinting gold at the tips, and their pupil-less eyes were an Easter green. They fluffed up when Patton looked at them, hopping forward with an excited trill, but a hiss-shriek from the alien behind them made them stop in place, fluttering in what looked like annoyance.

Three aliens. The shrieky one was black with bits of purple, shimmering purpler when their feathers bristled, and that one was a little bigger, a little skinnier, with violet eyes. Patton had to twist his head the other way to get a glimpse of the third one, but they seemed about the white one’s size, maybe smaller, dark blue with hints of black and no shimmer hardly at all. That one kept staring at him, tilting their head and making low chattery sounds like they were muttering to themselves.

The blue one was acting like a scientist, and Patton had woken up strapped to a table. He swallowed hard at the thought, but he didn’t feel hurt. Just-- different, and he wasn’t sure why, since he wasn’t even that cold and he’d eaten in the past day, all that was different was how--

How his tongue could touch his upper teeth. Patton couldn’t breathe all of a sudden, amazed by the inexplicable luxury. He wasn’t eating, no one was touching his mouth, but for once his jaw was completely closed. No muzzle holding it in place. No metal pressing down on his tongue, keeping him from even talking because then the fish aliens might realize he was sapient. The smugglers had spent so long trying to make him stop talking, had lied to his buyers about why he had to wear a muzzle, but now Patton had it off . He could lick his lips.

The bird language started up again around him, aliens calming after Patton did. He breathed and relaxed against the table as best he could, watching the ceiling, and picked out repeated words-- shree-chirp-going-lower for Purple, chirrickick for Blue, keekeekee for Red and another one he was pretty sure meant shut up . It was better not to forget Earth Things, so he renamed them all in his mind, where they couldn’t be offended because he’d never dare to tell them: Virgil, Logan, Roman. The first fitting names that came to mind.

He didn’t try to talk to them, not even when Logan came up and fitted the muzzle back on. Logan was ruffly-annoyed, from what Patton could tell of his body language-- was it even like a bird’s?-- but he loosened the muzzle enough that Patton could adjust it if he needed to. Enough so it didn’t dig lines into his jaw.

Patton had been hoping they’d forget the stupid thing, but that was too much to ask. If there was one thing he knew for sure about aliens, it was that they didn’t like humans to show their teeth. 

The birds didn’t drug him again, but he let himself drift anyway, closed his eyes and enjoyed being in a warmer place. It seemed like only minutes until the ship landed and his shackles moved, some kind of magnetic putty flowing over his wrists and fitting them together in front of him, gentler than Patton expected. There was an invisible tug towards the alien he was calling Logan, who stood closest to him but didn’t seem scared he would kick; Patton thought it might be like a leash for a dog.

Humiliation was a dull thing after so long as a pet, so he let it roll off his back like a coin down one of those swirly things at a museum, let it make noise in the back of his head and disappear. Being on his feet felt nice after so long on his back, and the flooring felt smooth on his bare soles.

Logan let him walk. Virgil and Roman followed behind him, Virgil keeping himself between them and flinching whenever Patton moved too fast. Standing up, even though he wasn’t technically done growing yet, Patton was at least two or three feet taller than all of them. It made sense to be nervous because of that, even if the fish aliens hadn’t passed on what the smugglers had told them about how Patton had been when he was first in space.

Patton remembered that perfectly. Fighting as soon as he’d woken up, because he thought he’d been kidnapped to get trafficked or locked in a basement or something, and-- hitting things and hearing their bones crack, kicking through someone and running and the blood had stuck to him, cloying and sweet-smelling, inhuman, and his fingernails had been covered in gristle and bone-bits and he’d kept fighting, over and over, because it had all been a nightmare and he’d thought he could wake up--

Now he knew better-- knew how fragile most aliens were, though they could shock or drug him from a distance. He knew what never to do.

The smugglers had tried to get him to fight for them at some point, had even sold him to some aliens who kept throwing him in with wild animals so he’d struggle for his life, but Patton had been sent back eventually. He didn’t remember much of that little adventure, since he’d been drugged as heck the whole time, but he’d come out of it with claw marks all along his back. The scars were maybe still there, but Patton hadn’t seen a mirror in a while, so he couldn’t tell. He’d have to reflect on it later.

The alien buildings were more like K’Nex kits than houses: taller than skyscrapers, spindly, colorful, with big open spaces and drop-offs with low railings, red-yellow-blue segments that arched blockily over their heads and disappeared down into dark cloudy ribbons. The air tasted thin and metallic through the muzzle, but past that Patton could smell ozone, dirt, a sweetness in the atmosphere like approaching rain. A closer scent, fresh and musty like a barnyard open to the air. 

When Patton turned back, he could see the outline of a brightly-colored ship, cradled in one of the LEGO-like structures and melded into it, probably so it wouldn’t get caught by the wind; he could feel the gusts in bits and pieces, mostly catching the hair at the top of his head.

In the distance were a thousand walkways like theirs but much busier, full of technicolor birds who swooped between them and landed with chickenish flapping, graceless but effective. Patton lost count of the color combinations. Even the walkways shifted shades from rose gold to forest green to highlighter yellow. 

No one else on this walkway, though. No one but Patton and the three birds who’d taken him for some reason, who’d examined him without blood and let him walk under his own power. 

The sky was a pale twilight purple, pinkish at the horizon and cradled by a pair of little suns. One of them was yellower than the other, higher in the sky. 

How high up were they? Patton hoped the aliens were strong enough fliers that the wind couldn’t throw them off the edge and away from good landing spots. 

Logan the blue alien, Chirrickick the scientist with the glossy feathers, let him stop to stare. The thoughtfulness made something in Patton’s chest curl with surprised delight. Standing in the dim sun of what might’ve been dawn or early evening, he felt his skin tingle and warm up, shivered like a dog shaking off the cold. Drank in the heat with his eyes until they stopped watering. He couldn’t see too well without his glasses, which he’d lost ages ago, but his pupils adjusted to the light after a little bit. The blurry angles of the other walkways got easier to see. 

He went along without a fight when Logan chirped and tugged the invisible lead, keeping his eyes down so he wouldn’t trip on the uneven ground. The chunks of color felt like smooth cobblestone. 

They reached a building, with a sideways door that Patton had to duck through. Then they were going through corridors, into a big room with a window taking up half of one wall and a bunch of cushions and long, flat bowls, and he looked back and realized Logan had stopped at the doorway, had closed it behind him and left Patton alone. 

The metal putty streamed off Patton’s wrists and melded into the wall. His muzzle loosened a second later, coming apart like it did at mealtimes, except without the usual tightness it didn’t dig into his cheeks at all; Patton could reach up and tug it free, so it rested in halves around his neck like a pair of headphones. 

He swallowed, experimentally. The wall with the door had a sheen to parts of it, so it might’ve worked like a one-way mirror, but he couldn’t see any cameras. That didn’t mean they weren’t there. 

The window showed mostly sky, with some distant lavender triangles that might have been mountains and a whole bunch of towers and walkways in between, twisting around each other like candy strips. Some of the cushions were as big as mattresses. One of them sat in the middle of a sunbeam, the other big ones shoved into corners or arranged in a wide arc like a fairy circle. 

“That’s nice,” Patton murmured, so soft a listener could mistake it for an exhale. “Thanks, Logan The Bird.”

No response. No one shrieked at him for the noise. Patton breathed in, metallic taste fading from his mouth, and smelled something sweet and savory past the feather-musk in the air. The long, flat bowls were segmented and filled to the brim with things he’d never seen before, and most of them had the fragrance of food.

No one visited him for three days. 

Patton spent his time eating whatever food appeared while he was asleep-- strange fruits, roots, and strips of meat, even some leaves and sweet juices-- and basked in sunlight until his skin warmed. He slept, deeply, and got used to the feeling of his muzzle down around his neck. Once, watching the door for any reaction, he hummed You Are My Sunshine , and for the last verse sang along. No one came in after that, either. 

By the time the birds came back, five sunsets after their arrival, Patton had them figured out. His new aliens were keeping him like a hamster. Maybe they’d bought him from the fish people, or maybe he’d been a gift, but they didn’t seem like they wanted to dissect him; Patton was more likely to be a status symbol, like a fancy snake. 

He could work with that, as long as they kept being so darn nice.

*

Two days without any contact, then one with the birds in the room with him while he wore his muzzle and the shackles wrapped around his wrists without connecting them. That was the schedule they fell into, after Logan’s cursory inspection of Patton’s hands and eyes on his next visit; it was like getting a snake to wrap around your arm and marveling at how it did snake things, the way they acted around him. Patton had to wonder if Logan had decided he should be socialized.

The birds didn’t seem to know what to make of him. They must have been important if they were buying intergalactic pets and providing them whole rooms to themselves, but if Logan had ever heard of a human before, he didn’t let it show. 

Humans were horrible, from what the smugglers had said, because outside of Earth-- their deathworld, was what they had called it-- they were stronger than most species, and a heck of a lot more durable. The humans who got to space fell to their worst impulses, got addicted to killing, or so beaten down they were desensitized to it. 

Patton would never be used to it. He wouldn’t try to be, not even if his life depended on it, not when he remembered how those first aliens had crumpled like paper mache under the force of a few blows-- how they’d screamed, how they’d fought back, twitched even in death. That was why he’d ended up with the fish people in a reverse aquarium, for being so boring. 

That was why he stayed still and relaxed when the birds came to visit him, and let Roman touch his face and arms when he wanted to, even though Virgil tried to stop him. He didn’t want the birds to be afraid he would hurt them, even if they planned on hurting him in the end.

Besides, the touch felt nice. Roman’s feathers were thick, heavier than expected, and they dragged across his skin like satin or velvet, solid and cool. He never scratched or got mad when Patton moved away, either; mostly he seemed to like being touchy feely with everyone, preening Logan and flapping over to Virgil and pushing for attention whenever he wasn’t busy. And when he was busy, it was with what looked like art, more than anything recognizable as work: colors on screens and melodies he sang bits of over and over until Virgil or Logan commented on them. Roman must have been some kind of actor, which made Virgil his bodyguard. Or maybe his husband.

Or maybe both of them were Roman’s husbands. Patton couldn’t tell. Even as he started to learn the language-- look for familiar words, familiar phrases, words always used in his presence or when talking to him and go from there, second verse same as the first-- their conversations were always about other things. 

About him, sometimes. But mostly other things. 

“ --- --- this,” Virgil was saying, perched on the back of the structure with one of his feathers brushing Patton’s hair. Patton was letting himself doze, though his ears were pricked for clues at new words. The chance for touch was too nice to pass up by wandering around and unsettling them. “I don’t ---- to listen.”

“Don’t be foolish,” Roman scoffed, “it’s not ---- criminal .”

“ Criminal ---- ---- if they decide we ----- defective merchandise. What if someone ------ while we’re away?”

“------ be present and available,” Logan clipped out.

“And ----- Patton?”  

He jolted at his name, and Virgil flapped backwards, puffing up his feathers. Patton winced in apology. Roman shrieked what was probably a laugh. “---- recognize!” he crowed. “Told you!”

“Not ---- stupid,” Virgil hissed. “ ---- question.”

“Containment,” Logan said, and then a string of words that Patton couldn’t parse. He shivered at the one he recognized. “Not ----- ----- know the time?”

“Six -----,” Roman said. “Can you ------- ?” A high, excited shrill. “------ small, have to be ----” 

“It’s an honor,” Logan snapped, “not a --------. Please focus.”

Please focus, low clicking like a cat watching a squirrel through the window, modified with a soft indrawn whistle. It’s an honor, a phrase like whip-poor-whill. 

Virgil scoffed. Roman flew at him, and they batted each other with their wings for a second, then separated like ruffled cats. Logan watched them with an expression of intense resignation. “Aren’t you ------ all?”

“I am focused on what is important,” Logan sniffed, tucking his wings in close. He looked like a broody chicken. Patton huffed a giggle. “Containment is ----- and we will be careful. It’s not --- Patton---- to be violent .”

“Gentle,” Roman sang. “ Patton, ----- gentle!”

Patton blinked at him. Roman fluffed up with excitement, and Virgil gave a shrill, irritated teakettle sound. “No no no we shall ------ Logan, Virgil!”

“Careful,” Logan warned, hopping off the structure and closer to the door. Patton shrank into himself, suddenly caught between three pairs of eyes. 

Did they-- want him to do something? Had he done something wrong? He’d shown that he wasn’t asleep, but he could have just woken up, it hadn’t been some kind of trick--

Roman whistled eight notes, almost an arpeggio, and Patton’s muzzle came loose around his neck. He went still, reaching up to check that his mouth really was uncovered, blank with shock, and Roman said, “Patton, gentle!” in that same excited tone. 

Gentle. A kind of breathy cluck and muted chirr, like falling and softening the landing before you hit. 

“Gentle,” Roman goaded again, hopping from foot to foot, and Patton kind of wanted to laugh. He wanted Patton to parrot it back at him. Maybe they’d heard him humming before, after all.

Breathy cluck, muted chirr. Patton tried his best to copy it, struggling to roll his R’s, and Roman shrieked in surprised glee. 

“Logan I — you, —— the — smart! Patton, —— Roman!”

Smart? 

He knew the words for nice to meet you. He could say them, say my name is Patton using his actual name, not the word he translated into it because he wasn’t sure what it meant for real. Could thank them for treating him so well. 

But then he might have to tell them what he was, or push them to find out for themselves. Then they might stop visiting, kill him or worse .

“He’s not —— it, Roman.”

Roman snapped something, eyes bright. “Patton, —- Roman!” he encouraged, and Patton slotted the unknown word into the space reserved for say. “ Roman.”

Keekeekee. Patton said it in the same tone Roman did, because he didn’t know if tones mattered in this language, and Roman cheered. 

“Say Virgil,” Virgil said, looking reluctantly interested. Roman gave a mocking trill. Virgil hissed at him. “Virgil.”

Shree-chirp-going-lower. Like a startled flute. Virgil jerked up, feather-arms fluttering.

“Say Logan!” Roman said next. 

“That is not —— ,” Logan interjected. “—— this is all silly.”

“Logan,” Roman emphasized, making Patton giggle. “Lo-gan.”

“Chirrickick,” Patton tried, and Logan puffed up so indignantly that Roman fell over squawking. Guess he hadn’t said that right. Patton tried again, blushing, “ Chirrick-ick?” With emphasis on a different syllable. He knew he’d find it weird if someone called him Pat-TON.

“ Chirr-ickick,” Logan corrected him, then glared at Virgil and Logan. “Say Patton. Pat-ton.”

Pronounced like that, in Logan’s clipped tones, it sounded like their word for honor. Only one extra sound, a high trill that led into the rest of the word like a grace note. “ Patton,” Patton tried, struggling with the rise and fall. Think of it like singing, like church choir. “ Pat- Patton. Pat-ton.”

“That’s you!” Roman exclaimed. “—- you, Patton!”

“You, Patton!” Patton responded, giggling, just to see him fluff even more with delight. The sight of his teeth didn’t make any of them flinch. 

“That’s right,” Logan said, watching him. “You are Patton.”

A chill ran down Patton’s spine. He shifted, dislodging Roman where he’d come up beside him, and curled a little more into himself. Virgil ventured a pat on his head, then settled on the other side of the structure and started up their former conversation. Patton couldn’t parse enough of the words to know what it was about. 

Better not to try yet. He didn’t want all this to end before he was ready.

*

Six days after he learned to copy their names, the aliens didn’t come to visit like usual. Patton watched the suns creep across the sky as he waited, following his new constellations that crept in at the edges of the horizon as it darkened: these ones he’d named after flying things, so he had the Great Owl, Blue Eyes White Dragon, Delta Airlines , and Bird of Pair of Dice , two clusters of six stars. 

By evening, Patton was pacing in front of the door, wanting badly to wring his hands. Logan loved schedules. He knew he loved schedules, because Patton had learned the word for schedule on the third visit. Logan said it whenever they had to leave or were late arriving. One visit he’d said it more than he’d said Patton’s name.

Logan wouldn’t be late. And it’s not like he would think to tell Patton they weren’t coming, but what if there was a reason they weren’t? A reason like Patton being sold again for being boring. Like one of them getting hurt. 

Aliens were fragile. It would be easy to die, if one of them were hurt bad enough. Patton had seen it happen. 

He worried at his lip. Nighttime usually meant sleep, but recently he hadn’t felt as tired. He hummed with energy, had to wear himself out running back and forth or stacking cushions or trying to climb the walls, failing to juggle fruit and singing under his breath. His memories followed him into sleep now, rising like worms after a long rain; things he thought he’d lost were reappearing, bobbing up like corks at odd moments. 

Bite into sour fruit and remember a sunny day, grass stains on his baseball uniform, Sour Patch Kids from the vending machine as the sun dropped and the wind picked up-- trying to beat the rain back home and watching the windshield wipers flick across the glass. Watch the stars and remember that certain night, the night we met, a melody he couldn’t quite catch. Smell clean water-- he had a place to shower here, and skimming off the weird thin garments the fish people had given him was easier when he knew he’d get them back-- and get it on his tongue and tasting the river, the canoes and netted areas and the chill of an early autumn, goosebumps rising on his bare legs as he ran to jump into the water. Breaking his ankle jumping into the water. Staying inside for the next two days with a cold and a Wii U, beating all the maps in Mario Kart and winning the Mushroom Cup. 

Singing brought up new lyrics he couldn’t match to anything-- memories of cages and dark rooms, too, the earliest days when he sang because it annoyed the smugglers and the alternative was hopeless silence, all the gospel he knew and everything on the radio. Before they left the muzzle on for always.

Along the fields of straw and stover

Clocked in till the workday’s over

Time’s a gentle stream, longer than it seems

Patient is the night

No sound came in outside the chamber, most of the time. Sometimes he heard chattering, but the birds were never loud, just piercing; Patton could talk louder than Roman’s most passionate rants. He could see ships rising and falling over the walkways outside his window, and aliens darting from one platform to another with ungraceful flaps, but there wasn’t sound from that, either. Even thunder was a dull roar, and he felt it more than he heard it. It shook the windows. 

Patton picked at his nails. They were stronger now too, less flaky, breaking less. His ribs were harder to see when he took off his shirt. Even his gums had stopped bleeding. But picking at his nails wasn’t a good fidget to have, so he stood up and walked again, leaned against the window to press his face against the glass. There was a group of birds on the walkway leading to Roman, Logan, and Virgil’s spindly building, carrying something in a floating cart between them and decked in glitter that reflected the setting sun like mirrors. 

Something was happening. That white blur looked like it might be Roman, since there was blue and black on either side of it. Bobbing, some kind of movement, and the cart drifted forward-- but Patton couldn’t tell from where he was. His vision fuzzed out the details. 

Here we are, the two of us

Like ships upon a winding river

And yet somehow we found each other

Like strangers, you and I

Disappearing back out of view. Patton tiptoed back to his door and put his ear to it, but all he heard was the faint hum of machinery. Whatever let the birds build so high had to be working all the time, to protect against the heavy winds. Something counteracting the gravity. 

He shrugged to himself, letting his voice pitch a little louder. Dangerous, since the birds were back indoors, but if they were gonna be busy--

He’d missed singing. It took his whole body to do right, lungs and chest and soul, soaked up all the bad thoughts from his brain. His voice sounded different now, cracking as it lowered, raspier than he was used to, but he could hit all the notes the same.

He could get lost in it. 

How I long to see her face now

Her starry moonlit gaze now

I know she’s never late

Still anxiously I wait

Patient is the--

The door opened. Patton leaped up, heart blocking his throat. His muzzle didn’t rise back around his mouth. He saw his aliens and heard electric whips, high growls, the snick of the door as it closed on him starving in the dark because he wouldn’t shut up, why wouldn’t the deathworlder ever shut up-- 

And Roman trilled, “Patton ---- song --- excited, this is amazing, I ---- you!”

“---- us when?” Virgil demanded, less tense than Patton expected at his lack of a muzzle. All his tension looked like it was from something else. “Roman, this is ---- stupid idea. What if he ------ the -----?”

What if Patton what now? He tilted his head, wondering if they’d elaborate where he could hear, and Roman clicked out another command. The metal putty on the walls loosened and flowed toward Patton, fixing around his wrists; he stiffened, told himself to breathe, ignored the crumpling in his chest. They would muzzle him if they were selling him again, right? He could get that much warning. 

Unless they thought he was docile enough not to need it. Unless they’d forgotten.

“You’re ---- this!” Roman said, hopping up and down. His feathers shined lighter gold than usual, glittering like pyrite jewelry. His spring green eyes were smeared in gold, too, thick as kohl. “--- an honor, a ------ finally ----- so wonderful! We’ll be ------ good ------ !”

Bemusement crowded out some of the fear. Roman sure was happy about something, even though each word made Virgil look like he wanted out of his skin. 

Roman led him down a couple hallways, then into a duller, warmer room covered in cushions and foliage, so much plant life that Patton had to duck to get to the back. Logan stood in the back with a dome the size of Virgil, decorated with petals in purple, blue, and red, white strewn around the floor. There was a light in the center of it, deep yellow like a tamed sun. 

“You ---- Patton?” Logan asked, looking up from staring into the construction. 

“------ not like we’re ----- it,” Roman brushed him off, leading Patton closer. The room was kitchen-hot. 

Closer up, he could see inside the dome. Feathers tucked into the sides of a collection of leaves and soft fabrics, down and fresh flowers. Dark, speckled shapes that glinted like jewels in the light, flecked like rock with hints of quartz, round and settled in the center of the nest. At least seven.

Eggs. Patton’s breath caught. They were barely baseball-sized. The babies would be tiny, little chicks with claw hands and fluffy wings. They would have to be kept warm. 

Not selling him. Not punishing him either, only showing him, trusting a strange alien pet to be close, even with a barrier in between. Even without a muzzle. 

Virgil whistled sharply, drawing Patton’s attention. “Not food,” he said vehemently. “----- not yours.”

Well, of course he wasn’t about to eat the little things. 

“He’s curious,” Roman huffed. “----- you ------ curious before, ------ ?”

“No,” Virgil said. “---- in my life.”

“Please ----- focus,” Logan sighed, and Patton suppressed a laugh. “Patton ----- the -----, yes?”

Huff-click. Patton thought that was the word for eggs. 

“I want him ------ bond,” Roman complained. “Did you know he sings?” 

“Does he?” Logan perked up. “I was not ------ of that ------.”

“Maybe he’ll do it -----,” Virgil ventured. “----- from the eggs.”

“There’s a ------ for a reason,” Roman said, then looked up at Patton and trilled something that sounded a lot like what Patton had been singing. Patton bit his lip, caught between the urge to please and the urge to hide.

If Logan figured out he was sapient, went looking for information-- oh, but he was being encouraged to sing, and their language was so different, who was to say they’d even recognize his words as words, or that he had to sing with words at all? 

But Roman had heard him already.

Temptation won out. Patton swallowed, blush rising in his face-- it’d been so long since he performed-- and tried, soft, “Along the field of straw and stover,” letting the words run together in a way his choir teacher would’ve hated. “Clocked in till the workday’s over…”

The birds had gone quiet.

Time’s a gentle stream, longer than it seems

Patient is the night

Roman burst out in a flurry of words too fast to parse, ending with: “--- you! Patton is not ------ be silent! He sings! Like us!”

“I ----- why,” Logan said, cocking his head. “A ----- method? Intimidation?”

“Does it matter?” Virgil asked. He kept peering at the eggs like they would explode if he wasn’t careful. “So he sings. I don’t ----- why we’re focusing on it so much. Just don’t ------- from ------.”

“Right, right,” Roman said, clacking his beak gently against the incubator. The heat lamp bathed the eggs dull yellow, like an external yolk. “Patton, you’ll ------- the eggs, yes? Gentle?”

“Gentle,” Patton repeated, as close to agreement as he would risk. He hoped Roman wouldn’t expect him to actually touch them, though. He’d dropped the egg baby he’d gotten in health class. 

“Careful,” Virgil warned, staring at the door, and this time Patton wasn’t sure he was referring to him at all. 

*

His aliens took him out of the room more often than they visited him in it after that. Patton learned to follow at a slower pace, keeping his footsteps quiet so he wouldn’t stomp and startle them, and let his mind busy figuring out the hallways and how they connected. Sometimes there were drops in the walkways, places where a bird might fly from one surface to another, but they always had ramps or pronged ladders, so Patton didn’t have any trouble with them.

Logan never flew, even when the others did; it made sense that they’d have a home that let them all get around the same. 

The birds left off his muzzle, and for the second outside visit, two of them arrived in the middle of an argument and brought him all the way to the incubator before Virgil finally noticed they hadn’t cuffed Patton, either.

“Told you,” Roman said smugly when Virgil shrieked about it; Virgil couldn’t tackle him like usual because Roman was sitting on the eggs, so he resorted to hiding and bristling his feathers, then flew up to a low perch and hunched there, glaring. Patton gave him a sheepish smile when he caught his eye.

“—— no excuse,” he muttered. “What if —- hurts eggs?”

Patton would never . “Not Patton!” Roman protested, echoing him. “He doesn’t even look at them, ——.”

“He could be ——,” Virgil hissed. “Look at his ——, his ——, he’s ——! That’s dangerous.”

“We have talons,” Roman said, unimpressed, and Virgil made his angry slide whistle sound. “——, come look at the eggs, Logan —— them and they all ——! All seven. My —— four!”

The flowers around the nest had dried out, but the petals kept their color. They crackled as Roman shifted to the side so Virgil could poke at the eggs, nudging a couple over and fluttering uncertainly. “You’re serious,” he said. “You’re serious? That’s too many. If —- hears—“

“There’s no way they’d be ----- to try,” Roman said, “and anyway, I’ve been careful. We have -------- that the --------- danger would be -------- .”

“That’s what they ------- say,” Virgil grumbled. 

Patton repressed a shiver. It sounded like they were talking about an outside danger, not anything to do with Patton: something that could hurt their eggs. Was it a disease, maybe? Or they weren’t allowed to have eggs? But there had been a whole procession, and Roman had gotten painted up for it, so maybe the problem was someone else learning about it. Some birds on Earth broke each others’ eggs to reduce competition. 

He couldn’t help imagining it. Some other aliens coming in with weapons, smashing up the eggs, fragile half-formed bodies wet on the ground and shards everywhere and for all he knew, on this planet no one would even get in trouble for it. It could be the way things went. 

Roman was important , always getting visitors he kept Patton away from and going off planet frequently. That meant he could have enemies. 

Time crept by, Patton sitting in the corner eating fruit and listening in as Virgil and Roman bickered about nothing. The atmosphere changed as the day went on, though, Virgil hopping to the side to pull up screens from thin air and Roman fidgeting and staring towards the door; a bad feeling rose in Patton’s throat.

Logan was never out this late. Patton was resisting the urge to get closer to the door when Virgil’s screen pinged and he dashed there first, hissing so low in his throat that it sounded like a growl. 

“Logan!” Roman said in a panic, flapping away from the eggs and closing the incubator over them. “Logan, ------, what----- have you been?”

Logan was moving differently. Patton stood, wavering on whether or not he should help, but Virgil was already there, feathers so puffed he looked like a pincushion and claws slashing the air. Agitated, angry, because Logan-- Logan was--

Was bleeding. At the back of one of his wings, close to the joint where walking would jostle it, a cut down his side seeping dark blood into his feathers. Limping like a wounded deer, drawn in on himself and trembling so faintly it was hard to notice, one of his talons cracked to the quick and bleeding. Some of his feathers crumpled. A few of them missing. 

Patton stopped breathing. Cold prickled all over his body, a swooping in his chest like vertigo and tightness in his lungs. A thin band closed around his ribcage. His hands wanted to make fists. He wanted to clean Logan up, wrap him in soft blankets, pet his cool head and yell at anyone who tried to hurt him. He wanted to cry for help. 

Roman was babbling, shrieking, posture so furious that Patton flinched back, like he would from a screaming hawk. Logan’s response was too low to hear over the outrage, but Patton caught the words focus and irrelevant. 

It was hard to focus. Hard to move, to inhale and exhale again. Logan was smaller than even Roman, maybe the size of a large goose. Logan couldn’t fly like the others could. He was a smarty pants, a scientist who lived around screens with diagrams Patton couldn’t make heads or tails of and manipulated them effortlessly, and he was hurt, scared, bleeding and acting like it didn’t matter--

Virgil was staring at him. “Patton,” he said in an odd tone, and Patton forced his eyes away from Logan’s bloodied wing. Virgil’s body trembled, too, wings spread at his sides. “Patton, ---- me. ----- me, Patton.”

Patton glanced back at Logan, uncertain. If Logan needed help--- 

“ Patton ,” Virgil bit out, a high whistle underlying his words like the shriek of a train, “Follow me.”

Follow him. Back to the room, right, because he was a pet. Because Virgil didn’t even want to trust him around the eggs. 

He went without protest, trailing Virgil and pretending to himself that he hadn’t seen Virgil relax once Patton was out of the way, trapped somewhere he couldn’t escape. It was too easy to forget where he stood with them, when they let him stay nearby like a quiet friend. He thought he’d promised himself not to forget. 

Cujo. That was a story about a rabid pet, wasn’t it. Or vampire movies, where seeing blood meant losing your mind. Werewolf stories. Why couldn’t Patton remember the names of any werewolf stories?

Logan shaking, saying please focus like a plea for normalcy. Virgil standing between them like he’d finally realized Patton was dangerous. Roman, saying there’s no way they’d be ----- enough to try, and Patton was willing to bet that missing word meant dumb or daring. 

Because his birds were in danger, and they’d taken something else dangerous into their home. 

No muzzle, but he’d kept his fruit. Patton ate the rest of it with a nauseous roil in his gut. 

Logan would be fine. He had to be.

The next visit happened three days later, except Logan was bandaged with soft cloth, lotions, slathered over his feathers like antibacterial. 

This time they didn’t take him out of the room; the birds filed in instead, Virgil pecking around the window and doing something that made it hum for a second before going quiet. “I’m being careful,” he defended, when Logan tilted his head at him. “What if they ---- in here? They could hurt Patton.”

“You don’t really think they’d ------ here,” Roman said, tail feathers flaring. “There are ------, they can’t just ----- in!”

“I think we’ve observed that their ------------ by their daring,” Logan clipped out. Patton carefully didn’t look at him. “You ------ them, Roman. It’s only practical that they would seek ------- in any way they can. Your ------- is too --------. To them, that makes you dangerous.”

“I’ll ------ anyone who tries,” Roman hissed. His talons shined, metal putty sharpening each point to deadly tips. Patton had never seen that before. “This is -------. How dare they ------- you?”

“They ------- if you had listened,” Virgil snapped, whirling on him. “Instead of ------- everything’s fine when it’s not, when they’re going to take the eggs, you know they are, if they’re ------- with us, we’ll never ------- another ------ !”

“Virgil,” Logan said, feathers stretching in alarm. “Virgil, please be calm---”

“Don’t ------- me to be calm!” Virgil screamed, beak open wide to show every serrated point. “Don’t, don’t even, just shut up--” Roman tried to say something, but Virgil turned on him and slashed at the air, wings wide in vicious display. “There’s three of us! They ---- us, ----- you, really ----- Logan and you think we can ------- the eggs safe?”

“Virgil,” Roman tried again, “-----, it’s all right--”

“It’s not!” Virgil shrieked, and Patton flinched. 

Virgil froze at that, hopping back and going quiet, and Patton ventured, pretending he was copying Roman, “Virgil?”

“We have to go ,” Virgil said, quieter, wretched. “I don’t want to ------- Logan -----.”

“We’ll be careful,” Logan said. “We have ------, Virgil, they will not be -------.”

The same word, for both of them. Alone, maybe, or defenseless; for birds, who needed flocks, it might have been both. 

Patton shivered, wishing he had something to add. Wishing he could have something to add. 

He didn’t want the eggs defenseless, either.

*

The tower buzzed when the birds left for whatever they had to do. Patton watched them from his window, distant blurs entering their distant ship, splashes of color too vague to tell apart in the pinkish light of early morning. The suns turned the spindly towers into riots of reflected light and quartzy glimmers; Patton had to squint against them, spots dancing in his vision, and when he looked again the ship was gone.

He hoped the buzzing had been the security systems. With all three of his aliens gone, no one was left to watch the eggs but him, and he was stuck being a hamster. 

He sang to himself to pass the time, watching dark clouds roll up from below the walkways (flyways!) and blot out the light. Storms came fast on this planet, hot with lightning and wind; the rain didn’t reach the windows, turned to steam first by the force fields, but Patton could watch it hit the walkways and boil away all he wanted.

And I don’t understand why I sleep all day

And I start to complain when there’s no rain

And all I can do is read a book to stay awake

And it rips my life away, but--

The lights above him flickered. Patton cut off, leaping to his feet, and stumbled at a clap of thunder that rattled through the floor, shook him to his teeth. The tower walls buzzed and popped, lights guttering and leaving Patton in the dark, lit only by streaks of lightning; past them, past the window, he saw the lights go out all along the horizon like falling dominoes. Rain splattered against the window and ran down it in rivers.

More thunder, and the glass squealed, shuddering like a bus window at a pothole. “That’s not good,” Patton said weakly. His voice sounded thin and strange to his own ears. He tried to think of a pun but couldn’t keep his mind straight. 

The force fields were down. He hadn’t thought they could go down, not with how much of the structures depended on them, but the proof was in the pudding, or rather the storming: between the lightning flashes he saw the world gone black and booming, horizon inked away, and had to blink hard so his eyes would adjust to the dark. 

The ground shook. Patton backed away from the window and went to the door, but it had disappeared, melted into the ground and left a blank space behind. The hallway beyond was even darker. 

The incubator. Patton started to run. 

Left, left, right, up a ladder-ramp, right again. He stumbled on one of the high rises, ankle slipping out from under him, but got back to his feet. If the eggs weren’t warm, he’d have to bundle them close himself. Maybe pull them in and cover them in soft, small cushions, use his body heat to his advantage, like fighting hypothermia. 

The walls creaked, sometimes shaking, once jerking under his feet like a flailing ship and sending him crashing to his knees. Too high. Too much wind, and the foundations were thin, weren’t they? Where could Patton go if the building started to collapse? Bundle the eggs in a blanket--

Movement ahead of him, darker pools in a dark hall. Patton went still. 

Chirping, chattering, inaudible below the thunder. Too many shapes, all around the egg room, one at the door as the others filed in. Five shapes with glinting metal at their talons. 

Patton crept back, heart speeding up, and ducked into another room, trying not to think about what he was doing. These birds had weapons. They were going for the eggs, like Virgil had been so scared about, and anything that made Virgil so scared, that hurt Logan or Roman, was-- was bad, right? They were his aliens. His tweety birds.

His mouth was dry. He wasn’t a fighter. But letting them take the eggs or smash them wasn’t an option, so he needed another one. He could-- be intimidating, maybe, act big and chase them off. 

Okay. Patton waited for the next roll of thunder and whistled eight notes, and his muzzle collapsed off his neck completely, molded into his grip, like he’d thought it might. When he swung it, the main metal part snapped out like nunchucks. 

Now he had a metal weapon, too. 

He couldn’t breathe. His hands were slick with sweat. No matter what happened here, no matter if he got sliced up or survived or even won, he’d be dangerous for sure. Someone would ask what he was, if they didn’t just know , and he’d never see his birds again. Something else would happen to him instead. 

Back into the hallway, down into the doorway; the lightning flashed again, bits of light reaching them through the neighboring rooms, and Patton asked in the smugglers’ language, “What are you doing?”

The smallest bird shrieked, wheeling backwards; the others tensed and bristled, raising claws. One of them stood at the edge of the nest around the shards of the broken incubator, staring down at the eggs with one clasped in a clear, humming sphere. 

On the floor beside the incubator, there was a mess of pulp and eggshell, a damp unmoving lump. The biggest bird stepped through it, crushed it further, hissed low. 

“What are you doing?” he asked again, louder. The muzzle felt heavier in his grip. Something was traveling through him, cold in his veins and hot around his eyes, drawing his lips back into a smile he didn’t feel. The biggest bird was trodding on a corpse. 

“It’s their pet,” it said, and the others relaxed. Its feathers were gray and ragged. “It mimics.”

“Say moron,” said one of the smaller ones, red-tinted in the dark, and the bird at the nest snapped at it. 

“------ it off or ----- it,” the gray bird said, “we don’t need --------.” 

The red bird and two others, pale blue and striped, moved forward. The red bird said again, “Look at me. Look at me, ------, say moron.” The others crept around to the sides, like Patton couldn’t see them surrounding him, like he couldn’t tell exactly what they were doing. Kids playing tag flanked people better than these guys. 

“I think you’re a moron,” Patton said in the birds’ language, sounding it out so he got it right. “You need to go, please. I want you to go away now.”

The gray bird stiffened, staring, then shrieked a signal. The birds charged him, one on each side and he kicked without meaning to, the kind of kick that meant get away but the red bird wheezed out a cry and flapped back, limping--

Claws at his back. Patton threw himself into the wall and crushed them off, turned and swung the muzzle with all his might, felt it thunk into flesh. The bird kept coming, though, lashing down his chest and arm where he brought it up to shield, so he hit it again, again, again--

It wasn’t moving. Patton stood again, trembling, and saw the red bird had limped back with the others, was watching and shaking. The muzzle dripped. 

“Are you a slave?” the light blue bird, the one who hadn’t attacked him, asked. “Hired? Bought?”

“ Gentle with the eggs,” Patton said, mixing his languages. “Get away from them.”

“We have four to your one, and you are damaged merchandise,” the light blue bird said, words too fucking familiar from months in the smugglers’ hold. “Doomed and useless.”

“Doomed,” Patton agreed, and smiled as warmly as he could. “That’s irrelevant .”

The pink bird at the nest said, hopping down with the egg floating in the contraption behind it, “----- us. Tell it, -------.”

“You could join us,” the light blue bird added. “Be free, not freehold.”

“Join you?” Patton asked, making it a question with the tilt of his head, like his birds did. The pink bird chirruped, moving closer. Egg pulp on its claws, and Patton couldn’t tell from which, whether his birds had six eggs left or less. 

“Yes! Yes, you can do that,” the pink bird chattered, in range. “Join us, ------ with us--”

His muzzle bashed its eye in, jerked its head to the side with the force of the swing, and the pink bird went down. Patton forced himself not to throw up. 

The gray one screamed challenge and flew at him, slashing at his hand and taking the muzzle with a strip of flesh. Patton stumbled back with a cry, talons digging into his shoulders hip close to his neck, beat at the bird but its wings were huge and muscular, he couldn’t see, his hands found its neck and--

Squeezed, shoulder to the side to hide as much of his front as possible. Shove it to the ground, body weight pressing on hollow-boned lightness, knees on the heaving feathered chest so the talons can’t reach. Blood blinded him, running down his face, but he could feel his way. Could tighten his hands and strangle against the weakened beating and useless metal spikes, sobbing with the effort, screaming in its face. 

He didn’t stop when the gray bird went still. He stood and stomped on its neck and wings over and over again, until the bones showed through the skin and feathers and the legs splintered apart. His breath came in whooping gasps, throat raw. 

So much of the blood on the floor was red, not brown. The red bird was crumpled in the corner, wheezing, blood dribbling down its razor beak and onto its chest. Its eyes were dull and terrified, shocky like roadkill’s. 

Okay, then. Patton yanked handfuls of the gray bird’s feathers out and went to the incubator, hands shaking.

Five eggs. He gasped back another cry and shoved the feathers over them, turned back and saw that the red bird had stopped breathing entirely. Took some of its feathers too, then staggered into the wall. His heart bruised his ribs. Probably other things had bruised his ribs, too. 

The red feathers drifted to the ground, torn and ravaged. He couldn’t make himself pick them up again. Five eggs. One smashed. One in a floating orb, and the light blue bird was gone--

The hallways shuddered more than the incubator room had, but Patton ran out anyway. One way to the higher walkway, the one with the ships. With so much wind and the fields down, the others weren’t flyable, right? Not even a plane would fly in some of them. 

A light blue feather on the ground meant he was going the right way. His feet slapped against the ground as he ran. 

The doors to the outside had disappeared, too, which meant the wind hit so hard Patton screamed, collapsing to the side out of the worst of it. Higher up, hitting his face and torso, nothing on his legs-- but God, it scraped him raw. 

But the blue bird had one of the eggs, and it knew the smugglers’ language. He wasn’t about to let any of his birds get taken like that, never mind a baby . 

Patton saw the blur of blue halfway across, wings spread to keep its balance. He tightened his hold on the muzzle and fell to his knees, gasping as it jostled his wounds. Crawling put him low enough to avoid the worst of the wind. 

The light blue bird froze at the sight of him, egg hovering close at its side. “Stop there!” it shrieked at him, voice nearly carried away by the wind and thunder. Lightning slashed over them, so close it put Patton’s hair on end. The noise was deafening. “ Stop there!”

There was a story he remembered sometimes, when he felt so nostalgic he scrabbled for older memories. Folk stories, urban legends, Grimm’s Fairy Tales that he’d always thought were too dark and mean, that’d used to make him cry as a little boy. 

The dog that killed a wolf, Lady and the Tramp without the happy ending. The overturned cradle and the bloodied mouth. 

The bird’s wings were up, egg container in her beak. The force fields were failing, flickering apart, tiles intermittently slicked with rain. 

Patton knew what was going to happen before it did. 

A running start, feet scrabbling against the tiles, the force field letting him through with a rush of static over his skin, and the wind struck him like a sword. Weightless, stomach left above him, horizon flying end over end and Patton caught the bird’s wing as it leaped and dragged it down, hit the next platform halfway, scrambled one leg up to drag himself onto a surface any surface please and the light blue bird clawed at his face, blinded him, fought beneath him with the force of a bundle of knives. 

“Give it back!” Patton shouted, and the bird screamed at the sound, battering him back. A word in the sound, and the egg container was opening, cracking apart, letting it fall-- “No!”

Lunge for it, wrapping his hands around the shell and pulling it close to his chest, even as the bird cut his face and arms apart. Even as the wind shrieked, walkway lurching beneath them. 

The attacks stopped, and the wind hit like an avalanche. Patton yanked himself back, blinking past the agony in his face to see that the walkway ahead of him had fallen away, the blue bird gone with it, and choked on a scream. The clouds boiled beneath him, dizzyingly far. 

He forced his knees under him, egg clutched so close to his chest he was probably breaking it anyway. Ran the only way he could run, falling over himself. He couldn’t see out of one of his eyes. 

A place where a door was, once, and familiar hallways. Patton dragged himself through them, head spinning, and staggered back into the egg room. Pulled off the shredded rags of his shirt and blanketed the eggs with them, shoved the shards of incubator to the side and curled around them himself, body screaming with pain. 

Cover them, warm them up. Patton could do that. He was sobbing, getting blood everywhere, but he could do that much. 

The egg in his hands had a crack at the top. He gasped past another whimper, placed it with the others and hoped that it might still be okay, somehow. Even though there was no reason for it to be. 

He didn’t have enough breath to sing, but he hummed as best he could, stuttering over the tune and flinching with every bout of thunder, wondering if the towers were about to collapse around them. The bleeding stopped for the cuts he could reach, when he held feathers against them and applied pressure. 

There could be more birds coming back. He had to stay awake. Had to remember. Remember the constellations, the shadows of water on the walls, baseball in the spring. Logan, Roman, Virgil. Had to remember he was keeping the eggs safe.

Gentle, gentle. Please focus. 

Keep the eggs safe. 

*

The story went: there was a king in Wales and he had a faithful dog, whose name Patton couldn’t remember. One day he went hunting, because he might’ve been a king but he still had jobs to do, and left his baby son alone in his home with the faithful hound. 

The wolf came when the king was away, came for the baby, and the dog fought it, bit and worried it, tore out its throat. The wolf collapsed, but not before the cradle had fallen on its side, spilling the baby crying onto his blankets. But the baby stopped crying, because nothing else happened and it wasn’t really hurt, and maybe the dog licked it with its bloodied mouth.

And the king came back to blood everywhere and horrible silence, the cradle on its side, his faithful dog trotting up to him with blood all over its face. 

And the king killed the dog in his grief, and then he found the wolf and the baby, one dead and the other looking up at him with blood on his cheek and a gummy baby smile.

But the dog was dead.

But Patton thought he might be dying. 

There was a light, weak cheeping coming from between his arms, little touches against his bloody elbows. A downy tiny thing with a pale beak and more fluff than body, still damp and bedraggled. Another one, fallen over its newborn legs and sitting on the eggshell. A third egg with a hole in it, egg tooth rummaging and poking through. 

Patton huffed a giggle, but couldn’t make himself move. “Hi, baby,” he rasped, and the hatchling tumbled into another flurry of cheeps. Three more eggs. He hadn’t broken any after all. 

Time blurred. He jolted aware at a wailing screech, the worst thing he’d ever heard, like a banshee being torn apart, and scrambled upright, begging for it not to be another fight. It was so hard to see, one eye gummed up with blood and swelling and the other pulsing with pain, not working at all, but he made out white, purple, blue and relaxed. “Roman,” he breathed, the easiest to pronounce, and the oldest hatchling clambered up the side of his leg, almost tumbling off before Patton caught it in one palm. 

“Patton!” Roman squawked, or Virgil maybe, and then they were all there, Virgil nosing at the hatchlings and bristling, Roman babbling too fast to parse, Logan snapping, “Give him ------, both of you, let me through--”

Patton slipped off the side of the nest to let them look at the babies in peace, staggered as his feet hit the floor a little wrong. A lot wrong. In the restored light, the incubator room looked like a slaughterhouse. Ragged bodies littered the floor, the pulp of the smashed egg still on the ground, red and brown blood intermingled. 

Virgil followed him down, pushing at him until he fell to his knees. “--------, this is bad,” he was saying, shivering in place. “-------- that’s a lot, a lot of ------, what even happened here?”

“Sorry,” Patton mumbled in what he thought was English. Virgil jolted back, though, confusingly, and someone else at the door said, “Oh, lovely, you are sapient.”

Patton shoved himself to his feet. He didn’t know that alien, and there were more shapes at the door, hard to see but strange, the wrong colors, and that was the smugglers’ language. And his birds were in the room with all their babies. 

The stranger was blocking the exit. 

 “Get away,” Patton said, wishing he still had his muzzle. He had his fists. Strangling had been enough before, but with so many more of them, he wasn’t a fighter-- “Go away, get away, leave them alone!” Screaming, like you did at mountain lions to look bigger than you were. The ground swayed under his feet. 

“I have no intention of hurting you or them,” the bird said. It was gold and green, colors split down the middle, green splotched across its eye and one wing. A tilt of its head, eyes intent. “Slavery is illegal here, do you realize that?”

“They didn’t know,” Patton snapped, hysterical, “I didn’t, didn’t tell them, it’s not their fault, come any closer and I, I’ll kill you, you can’t have the eggs--”

He slipped into bird language for the last few words. Virgil choked, “You ------ ?” behind him, but Patton couldn’t afford to take his eyes off the stranger. Not yet. Not when Logan couldn’t even fly. 

“For --------- , I don’t want the ------ eggs,” the gold bird hissed, flaring its wings. “I’m here because your ---------- .”

“What?”

Back to smugglers’ language. “I don’t want them. Your--” This language didn’t have a word Patton had noticed for friends-- “ crew was attacked on their way off-planet. Sabotaged. That is why I’m here. Why my crew is here. To protect.”

“Logan got attacked,” Patton accused, but his legs were weakening. Virgil was beside him, still shivering; Patton petted his head, accidentally smeared red across his feathers. “Oh. Sorry, Virgil.”

“Sorry?” Virgil shrilled. Roman and Logan were close behind him, coming up in Patton’s blind spot. One of the chicks was following them, but weirdly neither of them seemed to notice. “You’re sorry?” 

“They killed one,” Patton said miserably, because he guessed he deserved that. “I couldn’t--”

“You did nothing wrong,” the gold bird said, “and this ------- would ------- from -------.” At Patton’s blank look, it said, “I will translate. They are trying to apologize to you. Also, Logan would like to point out that you seem to have lost an eye.”

“Oh,” Patton said again, not really following. “Are you gonna tie my wrists?”

“Do you want me to --------- ?” the gold bird asked. 

Virgil gave a low, vicious hiss and snarled, “Don’t you dare. If you touch him--”

“Calm down, Virgil, I’m ------- what he asked,” the gold bird snapped. “What’s your name?”

“Patton,” Patton said in the bird language, without thinking, and Roman flinched so hard he startled. Why-- oh. Whoops. “ Patton ,” he said again, the way he actually said it, not the translation he’d been using in his head. P-A-T-T-O-N. “Hi. It’s nice to meet you.”

“Logan would like you to know that you need medical attention,” the gold bird said in lieu of a response, thankfully cutting through the ringing in Patton’s ears, “and that he is very grateful.”

“Okay,” Patton said, and the escaped hatchling leaped at his hand. He bit back a yelp at the scratch on his wound, pulling out of its reach, and asked, “Can you tell them I love them?”

Another head tilt. “Are you planning to die?”

“No,” Patton said, confused, even though he wasn’t sure that wouldn’t be happening anyway. “I just want them to know.”

“Then you can learn the words and tell them yourself,” the gold bird said, and shrilled something to Patton’s birds, so fast that he didn’t catch any of it. Roman came up close beside Patton, though, bonking him gently with his big ole beak and chattering low, and Virgil was bristling between him and the gold bird, and Logan was herding the little hatchling back towards the others, focused and industrious as always. 

“Hi, Virgil,” Patton mumbled again, reaching towards his most nervous feathered friend. Virgil leaned in closer to him, nudged him so he’d lay more sideways, let him keep petting for maybe the first time ever. “Are you okay?”

“Just don’t ------ and we’ll see about that,” Virgil said, not shying from him at all, and Patton smiled. It hurt, but he didn’t mind.

“Humans are tough,” he said, picking his words carefully. Virgil puffed out his feathers, but preened at Patton’s hair a second later. He didn’t back away. “I’ll get better.”

Keep breathing. Stay awake. Patton didn’t know if the aliens would understand how much humans could or couldn’t survive, so he’d have to be aware to help them out. 

He could do that. He wanted to play with the hatchlings, and teach his birds more songs, and ask Roman what it was he actually did. If he was really lucky, he might even get to stay. 

His aliens would want him to stay, at least. Patton could content himself with that, and with listening to the hatchlings peep at the new world they were seeing.