Chapter Text
Grian spends that night haggling with an innkeeper to acquire a cheap space for the Outsiders. They end up in an unused storage hut, which will function for the night. They split off into their usual groups, trios that are most comfortable sleeping near each other.
Owen, Acho, and Apo tuck themselves into a corner, the three huddling together under Owen’s Sparrow wings for the night. Martyn, Jimmy, and Joel set up near the back wall, settling similarly between Jimmy’s outstretched Canary wings; Joel’s fluffy orange-red and white striped tail is thrown over their laps like a blanket. Grian, whose talons click uncomfortably on the wooden floor, makes his way to an opposite corner from the Maze trio; Scar and Mumbo are there softly discussing small, random things while the latter does a checkup of the former’s leg braces. Jellie is perched on Scar’s shoulder, clearly still grumpy from the earlier chase. She never likes being tossed around like that, but Scar refuses to part with her. (For good reason of course, she’s a good kitty and they all know it.)
“Feelin’ alright, fellas?” the Sunbird hybrid asks, taking up his own perch on Mumbo’s shoulder by pure instinct. The mustached man only grunts with the relatively small effort of staying upright.
“Oh I’m feeling am- ayzin’ !” Scar grins, absently running a hand through Jellie’s fur. The cat is purring like a motor despite the glare on her face. “Queenie here’s still bein’ a sour sally, but all is well!”
Mumbo snorts, giving the metal braces they’ve been inspecting a small pat. “I’d be rather sour too if I was being violently jostled in a bag for five minutes straight, Scar.” It’s clear they’re teasing, and the other takes it in stride.
Scar gasps, dramatically scandalized. “Why, MJ, I’ll have you know I am quite careful running with Jellie! I keep her very upright and steady!” he declares, hand against his chest.
Grian watches them banter with a small smile and soft eyes, unbearably happy with the privilege of loving these two. Not once had he imagined he’d be here, fleeing from a war with a family of his own. It’d been so long since he had that.
Owen grunts softly, rubbing harsh circles into the skin around his right eye. He hasn’t had a flare-up for a couple weeks now, a new record actually, but of course it came back at the most inconvenient moment. As always. Stupid flare-ups. Stupid scars. Stupid Kr-
“Scar acting up?” Apo softly questions, a clawed hand gently halting the rubbing. “You know messing with it doesn’t help, Owen.”
Owen heaves an irritated sigh. She really needs to stop thinking about these things. “Sorry.. yeah, hurts again.”
“No apologies, remember?” Acho doesn’t scold, but it’s a near thing. “..you’re thinking about it again, aren’t you?”
“How can I not?” Owen counters. “Flare-ups mean thinking about the scar and thinking about the scar means thinking about Kro-“ they cut themself off with a chirping growl, wings wrapping tighter around the three of them. “..about it .”
“It wasn’t your fault,” Acho insists, a few clicking and whistling tics escaping them. They already know it’s not the scar he’s upset about. They always seem to know . “It was another trial, neither of you had a choice. None of us had a choice, Owen.”
“Doesn’t make it any less dead,” she bluntly argues, far too exhausted with far too guilty of a conscience to beat around the bush. “Doesn’t make any of them any less dead .”
There’s a silence that makes him question himself for a moment, if he went too far, before Apo’s speaking again. “Maybe not, but… our survival means they live too, in a way. If we remember them, they aren’t… dead , just… gone. They’re resting now, aren’t they?”
The trio is silent again, aside from Acho’s soft whistles and jerks of his head. No attention is brought to the tics. “They are,” the Fae settles on agreement. “They rest while we remember.” From anyone else, the statement would seem bitter. Owen knows he’s thinking of Kyle, though, and that he's happy that his friend can rest.
Owen had thought about it a few times. How their friends weren’t dead just gone , but that wasn’t true, was it? They were dead; but she wanted to believe that their friends were in a better place so much that she assured herself it wasn’t the truth. They were dead and resting; but sometimes Owen couldn’t help but wonder if they were interrupting their friends' peace every time they thought about them, especially bringing back the worst memories possible. A morbid thought. He needed to be happy , happy for his dead friends, and happy for himself.
It would have been easier to share Acho’s happiness if Owen hadn’t delivered the death that they think of now. If they hadn’t been the one to amputate and murder the dragon in that Maze. If he hadn’t been forced into a battle to the death by the trials laid out by The Organizer. If he hadn’t killed someone he considered a friend. If she didn’t have a permanent reminder etched onto her face and trapped in her mind. If, if, if …
“I think about Rasbi, sometimes,” Apo softly admits, but then he winces. Owen flinches. He wishes he could see her face in his mind’s eye. He doesn’t have a mind’s eye. It’s a different kind of torture, the inability to see the faces of those they’re meant to remember in their head. Sometimes she felt like she was forgetting them, before she would remember that their faces were already long gone. Their names are the only thing he keeps, and he will make sure to keep it till the end. “Sorry,” Apo mutters.
“Don’t be,” Owen can only whisper, refusing to let his friend feel guilt over this. “I think about her too. I think about all of them.”
So many faces she can’t remember properly. So many names that never leave their head. So many deaths they carry on their shoulders. So, so many people whose bodies remain in the Maze and whose spirits may never find rest. He can only hope each of them are where they’re meant to be, that they’re happy now. He hopes they are free.
He swears he will never forget them.
Martyn’s tail twitches in unrest. He is meant to be asleep. Joel snores up a storm on the other side of a drooling Jimmy, and Martyn is not asleep. He sees Mumbo and Scar tucked underneath Grian’s wings, and can hear Jellie purring nearly as loud as Joel snores. Even the cat is asleep. Martyn is not asleep. He spots Apo and Acho atop a snoozing Owen, protected under the Sparrow’s wings in a very similar fashion. Martyn, though also blanketed by a soft wing, is not asleep.
“...What happens when they send someone that’s actually good at the chasing part? At the killing part?”
Despite his earlier bravado, his conversation with Grian is eating at him. The avian brought up a good point, after all. Obviously, Martyn was ever so confident that their group of nine could handle whatever STARR threw at them, but… it was a good point nonetheless.
Some of the spies those labs had sent were, admittedly, pretty good. If the Outsiders were a normal group of fugitives, they may have been killed by now. Their only saving grace is that they’ve survived STARR’s tortures for a reason .
A Demon, Fae, and Sparrow, the only survivors of the infamous Maze Trials. Forced to kill and hunt in order to survive, to escape. A Regal Sunbird, Canary, and Siren, escapees of STARR’s special hybrid task force. As if they hadn’t dealt with enough before that; island purges, cults, kidnapping– far too much to be terribly bothered by running again. A Red Panda hybrid, joining up with that same task force for the sole purpose of getting his brother-in-law back home alive, because said hybrid is far too devoted to his wife for common sense to fit in his brain. A Vex, nothing more than a number in an experiment to one of the happiest people Martyn had ever met, his beloved cat in tow. A Vampire, master of Redstone machinery that is only a fugitive because he refused to part with his platonic partners in the name of making weapons of war, but is far more capable than they give themself credit for. Nine fugitive hybrids. Nine soldiers. Nine survivors.
And yet …
STARR labs had been the thing to torture them in the first place. The Organizer was, Martyn could begrudgingly admit, a capable man. A dangerous man. The spies he’d sent so far were weak and amateurish, but… what if?
What if he did have something up his sleeve? Some one ? What if STARR had something in their arsenal that could do them real harm? Basically everyone in the army had heard of the labs’ “dogs,” inescapable assassins and spies trained practically from birth to hunt . All nine of them had seen the star-shaped tattoos on their pursuers’ biceps, black marks announcing to the world their status as the best of the best. The Outsiders had outrun and eventually killed every last one of those “dogs.” But what if those weren’t the best? What if they were only being underestimated? Thinking about it scared him. They were so close to freedom, and yet they spent days upon days running away; the idea that one day they would get an opponent that would not let them escape terrified him. He just had to hope that his fear was unfounded, and they would continue to run away without harm. They just needed to hope. But what if?
What if, now that they’d killed over a dozen of STARR’s spies, they were no longer being underestimated?
It’s just under a week later, in the dead of night, that Martyn is proven horribly correct.
They weren’t anywhere near any towns by the time the moon was peaking over the horizon, so they’d resolved to set up in trees for the night, the thick spruce branches providing enough stability for them to get semi-comfortable under their usual blankets of feathers.
It’s the sound of snapping branches that has them all shooting awake.
And it’s the sound of growling that has them alert.
Grian’s eyes snap open, vision adjusting for all of five seconds before he registers the face hovering above him, pitch black goggles of sorts covering their eyes and a hood obscuring their head. The figure has twisting, sharpened horns atop their head that stick out of said hood, and there are growls coming from their throat.
There are claws around his neck, then, and all he can do is shriek and give the figure a fierce kick with his talons. This launches them into a nearby branch, hissing so angrily they sound feral .
“Hey, hey, hey!” Mumbos’ scream is heard in the background before he falls down the tree with a heavy thud. Grian’s shriek wakes everyone up, causing them to jump, followed by different types of reactions: from shock– ( How did they find them so soon? )– to anger– ( Seriously? Barely even a full day! )
Everyone is up and jumping down branches now, and Grian can only follow. The demon (he can think of nothing else they could possibly be) follows way too closely for comfort. Grian swears he can feel their breath on his neck, and he must be right because Owen is launching herself at them as soon as they’re on solid ground, and Grian hears a grunt mixed with an almost layered snarl.
He whips around just in time to see Owen being shoved off the demon and into the thick trunk of the nearest tree, and there’s a sickening crack followed by a birdlike shriek of her own. The demon is up and running at Grian almost immediately, locked onto their prey. Grian is caught in a dance of claws, distracting them enough for Apo to swoop in and get Owen back on their feet. Acho is there, too, and the three flee. Martyn is suddenly beside him, but the demon doesn’t back down.
They fight violently, claws and teeth and all the dirty tactics in the book getting thrown into the mix. With a swift motion, Martyn tries to slash the demon with his sword, metal shining under the moonlight; but before he lands a hit, the demon manages to slap it out of his hand.
“Hey!!” Martyn exclaims, running back towards the sword– but the demon is faster, sprinting past him at an uncanny speed and grabbing the weapon. Martyn and Grian take a quick step back, preparing to avoid the incoming attack– but instead of attacking them, the demon plunges the sword into the ground, and breaks the blade in half with a heavy kick on the side.
“What the hell?! That was mine, you freak!” Martyn yells, his ear fins vibrating slightly in annoyance, and he immediately jumps back into the fight with a flurry of vicious claws.
The two of them try desperately to somehow overpower the assassin, but they’re losing time, with their friends getting farther and farther. They need to kill this guy now or run as quickly as possible.
“From the sides!” Grian shouts, before they jump in opposite directions to overwhelm the demon, dealing the punches from left to right.
The two barely manage to get them on the ground for more than a few seconds, but the demon’s recuperating and getting back up so quickly that Grian can only think to grab Martyn by the arm and run . They can’t win this.