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Frank thinks that the other creature in the cell with him is human. Or, at least it was, once upon a time. Another avian, dirtied grey feathers hiding any features from view, so hidden into themselves. Dumped here, like he was, shirt removed to expose his wings. Clipped. They’d clipped his wings, and he bats them in the air in disgust. He should have never let them get the jump on him. He’d been stupid. Foolish. An idiot. Whatever decisions had led him here had been his own, and he’s here in a cage with what he would only guess is a feral avian. Bars line the walls, the floor, and he can see nothing but void beneath them. Frank puffs his own wings up around himself, watching over to see if the other prisoner makes any sort of movement. If they are even alive. He’d of course heard of what happened to feral birds. That there came a point where nothing more than instinct took over, stealing voices and thoughts and freedom. He’s worried, that they have not been able to escape in however long they have been here. He trills softly across the room, hesitant to speak and spook them further. The wings flutter a little but do not expose what they are hiding. If Frank looks closer, it seems as though those wings have been clipped many times. The telltale signs of different feathers being cut, of half-grown back messes. It is enough to ruin a soul. To ruin a life. Sure, they will grow back, but it’s akin to an amputation, to cripple an avian’s ability to fly. And to have been land bound for so long, this poor soul...Frank isn’t sure if they are still in Hell’s Kitchen anymore. There are always missing people, always those seemingly lost without a trace, and he vows to get the both of them out of here. Even if this stranger is as lost as they seem, they both deserve to see the outside sky again. “Hey, stranger. We’re going to get out of here, okay?”The avian coos back at him, and even that sound is hoarse and clearly unconfident. But they are alive, and they are capable of responding to Frank, and perhaps they might have some answers or advice. “Have you been here long?” “I don’t. Long enough. They keep. Clipping. Hurts.” His voice is pained, and the wings tuck back down against the stranger’s back, and he hums as he shuffles them back into place, seemingly trusting enough of Frank to reveal himself from his shelter. “They want. Songbird. I’m not. But. Pet. Keep.” Oh. Frank’s not a songbird either. The stranger’s hair is unkempt, a beard long gone past stubble, and he can’t keep Frank’s eye contact. First he thinks from fear, and then he looks closer and sees the cloudiness in his eyes. “Were you blind before?”“Yes. Since child.” A blind missing person. That had to have made the news. A blind avian, missing, for weeks, if not longer. This is all working on the assumption they are still local to their home turf, though. Frank couldn’t tell how far they might have taken him, unconscious, unwilling. What they could have done with him. He supposes, in a way, he should be grateful his wings were only clipped. He has heard horror stories of torture and of wings being completely amputated in an effort to send a message. He tugs at them, a little mournfully. Escaping will be so much harder without the ability to fly. “Have you been able to try to escape?”“No wings. No fly. Hurts. Tried.” He shifts, and Frank can suddenly see that one of his legs does not bend in a normal way. “Hurts.” It’s not clear if it is still broken, or if it was simply broken before and has now healed so very wrong. There’s no blood, which is a relief. He is reminded of the injuries fledglings get when they try to fly for the first time, scuffed knees and bruised limbs, when their wings don’t quite hold their weight yet. This stranger must have clearly tried to escape, perhaps squeezed through the bars - it certainly looks as though a person could fit through that gap - and suffered injury as a result, before being dumped back in here. It is a birdcage. It is so very clearly a person-sized birdcage, above nothingness. Circular in shape, a few rough mats on the base where they both sit now. A perch, just out of jumping reach, ideal to sit on if he could have flown. They seemed to at least be graced the humanity of water bottles, even if the container they are in is disguised as an oversized bird water dispenser. A simple bare lightbulb hangs from the domed roof, the light dimming to nothing by the time it reaches the edge of the cage.He can see nothing outside of the bars. Pure darkness. Nothing but emptiness, and it feels as though they are hanging above a void but he isn’t sure if that is real. It may simply be a trick, perhaps some sort of sound dampening. The stranger had said whoever had captured them had been after a songbird. And here they are with a mourning dove and what Frank is thinking is a pigeon, but there could be something more under the grime. Neither of them are known for their lyrical voices. “What’s your name, stranger? I’m Frank.”“Pet.”Frank’s heart starts to shatter. “Did you have a name before you were Pet?”It is quiet, and if Frank wasn’t waiting for it, he doubts he would have heard. “He died. Nobody mourns.” Clearly nobody had come looking for him. No one had come to rescue him. Or if they had, they had failed, and he didn’t know.And Frank knows there is likely nobody looking for him either. It is rare that Frank finds himself without any plan at all, but in this scenario, he isn’t at all sure what to do. If the man who shares this cage with him (Pigeon, he decides; he refuses to call him Pet) is still here, hasn’t been able to escape even after weeks or months in a place like this that would have someone trying anything they could to break out? Doesn’t bode well. Perhaps Frank would have a slightly easier job, the benefits of being able to see, but he doubts it.“Does anyone visit?”“He. Wants song. Sometimes feeds pet.” The man in front of him is skinny. Not emaciated, but skinnier than Frank imagines he is normally. He hasn’t been eating enough. Probably hasn’t been fed enough, however long he has been in here, long enough to break. Solitary confinement. Even a day is enough to turn a person’s mind into something else. And for this man to be visiting and demanding songs, and clipping the pigeon’s wings, and not even feeding him enough, even that company is surely worse than being alone. At least if there are the two of them, they can hold each other in reality. Or perhaps simply slip into insanity together. “You’ve tried to escape before?”“Yes. Hurts.” He gestures to his leg, the break that looks oh so wrong, and Frank is no doctor but he is sure that needs looking at by one. “Punished.” Pigeon tugs at his wing, at the randomly clipped feathers, the excessive cutting more obvious when he flares them in the air. “Grounded.” The messy wings are in dire need of grooming, those feathers that are still intact crumpled in and amongst each other. “He did mine too.” Frank’s clipped wings are so much neater though. The simple standard cut, enough to keep an avian on the ground. Not the horrific mess of Pigeon’s. That will take many molts to come back again. Will take a while until he can fly again. Until either of them can. Primaries aren’t quick to grow back, and it isn’t like they have spares around to imp replacements in. They’ll both be stuck down with the wingless until they heal up enough.When, or if, they ever get out of here. Frank isn’t sure how long it is until there is a new noise, a new movement on the edge of the room, and Pigeon hides beneath his wings. He doesn’t move. He hasn’t moved, hasn’t even tried to. Frank turns to the noise, peering into the black dark in the hope of spotting someone, seeing their captor. “Hey, birdies! Got you a new friend, Pet, I think you two would have gotten along before. Two little vigilantes trying their best to protect a city.” Frank watches as a shadowy figure approaches but stops some ten feet from the bars, seemingly leaning against a barrier. His wings flare behind him, what is usually a fearsome sight in the darkness, but now serves only to show off his grounded status. “Yes, oh yes. You have wings. I know. Punisher, do you sing? I’m missing a little songbird, and I want to replace them. She was such a beautiful thing, but beauty does not last forever in this world.”Refusing to speak, Frank stares the stranger down, arms crossed and mirroring their stance. It is too dim to see any details, their clothes dark, a hood obscuring most of their face. “No music for me, Poppet? Such a shame. Things are easier if you sing, you know.” The words carry an unspoken threat, but Frank has survived torture before. “Just look at poor Pet. Couldn’t sing, and then tried to escape, and look where that got him.” “You broke him.”“He’s a pet. Almost. Not quite. I worry you might undo the work I’ve already done to be honest. Speaking to him, getting him to speak back. Tsk tsk. The Punisher, not just some senseless monster as I thought? There’s a human in there.” They pace along the edge of the barrier, the faintest outline of a black railing against the black of their clothes. “I thought that you would attack him. Didn’t think you were capable of pity. Really ruins the plans I had.“I don’t know that I have the time to look after the two of you. I’m sure you’ll figure it out, one way or another. They say that unfamiliar birds tend to fight if not introduced correctly; does that extend to avians?”There’s a rustling noise, and then a thud, and a bag lands at Frank’s feet before nearly falling through the gaps in the bars. He scrabbles, grabbing at it, even as their captor continues to speak. “There. Dinner. Fight over that.”As the stranger moves away, Frank tears into the bag, dismayed at finding it full of birdseed. Too many small bits. Even the thought of eating it gives him an uncomfortable feeling in his mouth, and he simply ties the bag up again. Maybe they’ll get desperate enough. He hopes they won’t. Is this what Pigeon has been eating this whole time? He’s skinny. Frail. Frank shuffles over to Pigeon. The gaps in the bars beneath them are too small for him to fall through completely, but he still worries about getting an arm or a leg stuck. They can’t have any more broken bones. Pigeon lifts his wings, letting them relax behind him, as Frank approaches. “Seeds. Did you want any?” Pigeon grimaces, and then reaches a hand out for the bag. With practiced movements he takes a handful of seeds and then washes them down with water, lip curling in disgust. “Bad.”“Is this what you’ve been surviving on?”He nods, continuing to sip at the bottle of water, and without even realising he’s doing it, Frank starts to preen at the very edge of Pigeon’s wings. He stiffens at the first touch, wing moving as though to fold completely away again, before letting it happen. They’re a mess. It is even more obvious this close that their captor simply hacked at them to ground Pigeon, to punish him for an attempt to escape, or simply because of ongoing anger at his inability to be a songbird. It seems as though Pigeon has made no attempt to look after them himself, and Frank doesn’t blame him. He seems broken in both body and soul. Abandoned. As far as thinking of himself as dead. His wings are filled with grime and dirt, dry and unkempt. They haven’t been oiled or preened for weeks. Maybe even heading into being counted in months. Frank shifts closer to Pigeon, making his actions obvious and clear, and reaches a hand towards where Pigeon’s wings meet, running careful fingers to find the oil gland.Pigeon gasps and jumps to his feet. His wings flutter in panic as he turns around, pausing with his fists raised towards Frank. His face contorts in agony as he lifts his broken leg off the ground, before schooling back into an expression of indifference. There is something familiar there. Frank can’t place it, but he holds his hands in the air in surrender, still sitting on the floor. “Sorry, sorry. Your gland. It’s painful? I didn’t mean to hurt you. You haven’t been looking after your wings, have you?” It is blocked, clearly swollen and angry and painful, and it is no surprise given the dryness of Pigeon’s wings. He shakes his head, lowering his hands to clench and unclench at his sides. “Sit down, Pidge. It’s okay. I’m not trying to hurt you, I want to help, and we had better look after our wings before we escape.” He hopes his desperate wishing is not obvious, how he has little hope of getting them out alive without someone else to assist them. It is simply waiting for a miracle. “Pidge?”Frank hadn’t even noticed he’d called him that aloud. “Oh. Sorry. Pigeon. For your wings? You deserve better than Pet. Unless you have another name you want me to use?”“Pidge good.” “Okay, buddy. Do you want me to look at that gland again? Try and get it unblocked?”In answer, Pigeon lowers himself to sit on a mat again, back turned towards Frank. He pulls the end of one wing towards himself, starting to preen at it, as Frank gently starts to massage the space on his back between his wings. Slowly, gently, he manages to get it unblocked, swapping between massaging it and just holding his hand against it, in the hope the heat helps. If they were at home, he’d be here with a heat pack, or advising a hot shower. At least in here they seemingly have all the time in the world. His brain continues to run over any possible options they have of escape, but all seem to end in them back in the cage, or dead somewhere. Frank mulls over the fact that their captor had called them both vigilantes. That they had something in common. But Pigeon is blind. Unless they’d caught the wrong person and it was a case of mistaken identity and this poor soul was suffering for someone else’s alter-ego. He cards his hands through Pigeon’s wings, running oil through them, loosening any molting feathers and doing his best to straighten up those that remain. There is little he could do to make them flightworthy again. It would take a full molt for him to be able to fly, to lose all these broken, shattered, clipped ones, no discretion taken between blood feathers and those safe to clip. Dried blood flakes through the bars, and Frank’s heart shatters at this poor soul who has suffered too much.“There!” He would be lying if he announced they looked better. He has found painfully few whole feathers in his preening, and he will stop at nothing to ensure that the man who has done this meets a deserved fate. He makes a halfhearted attempt at his own wings, but touching those clipped feathers serves to only make him shudder in disgust. There has to be a way out. He spends hours inspecting their confines. He can’t see a way to break the lock on the barred door. Frank climbs the bars, wings outstretched for balance, peering into the dark in hope of some further clues for their location. He is able to just about reach the lightbulb, batting at it as he slips down again, and it swings erratically. But it reveals more of the room, looping in a random pattern, and he can more clearly see the platform their captor was standing on. It is higher than the cage, about ten feet away. He can’t glide on clipped wings, let alone Pigeon. Neither of them will be able to flap up there. He hangs from the perch, knees hooked over it, but seeing the world upside down doesn’t make an easier escape plan as he had hoped. “I don’t know what to do, Pigeon.” His companion is resting. He hasn’t moved in the hours Frank spent restlessly pacing and climbing the cage. All he gets is a sad coo in response from the broken soul. “I don’t see a way for us to get out of here.”Time passes and Frank isn’t sure if it is daytime or nighttime, but Pigeon seems to have curled up to sleep, and so Frank claims a mat across the cage from him and mirrors the position. Wings tucked around him as a blanket, arm beneath his head in place of a pillow. Their captor is truly treating them as birds. As animals. Frank has seen nicer prisons than this, with more comfortable places to sleep. Every small shift leaves him falling off the edge of the mat, and resting against a cold bar has the metal sapping the heat from his skin. It is no surprise Pigeon is the way he is. Feral, unloved, deprived of any humanity. For weeks, for longer. Frank lays awake, mulling over what their captor said, about them being similar. About them being vigilantes. He hadn’t - he isn’t sure of any vigilantes in Hell’s Kitchen, or New York, that have gone missing recently. Pigeon has a local accent, in what little he’s spoken, so it doesn’t seem as though he had been taken from too far away. He racks his brains; perhaps it was some upstart who had never really made a name for himself. There was the black mask. He’d never bumped into him, he’d disappeared almost as quickly as he’d appeared, found himself in a few fights and then vanished. Frank’s contacts had never said anything more about him; it had felt as though he was in over his head. But perhaps it wasn’t that he’d given up. What if he’d been taken instead?That was easily two months ago or more since it had been recognised he’d stopped. It could have been longer; he hadn’t exactly been making a big dent in crime, especially with his seemingly no kill policy. Pigeon is blind, though. And he said he had been for a while, since he was a child. Was it possible a blind man could fight like that? The man in front of him doesn’t seem like he could fight like that. But this is a broken shell of a man, and Frank can see his own future in him if they are not able to escape. There’s some fleeting thought that perhaps the person who had captured him has the wrong person, that this is not some vigilante, but instead someone so very innocent and now so very broken. He doesn’t remember the man in black being winged, but perhaps he had kept them bound, to keep his identity safe. It isn’t unheard of: wings tend to be pretty distinct from avian to avian, and anyone trying to hide away would also hide their wings under clothing, to pretend to be an unwinged. Frank doesn’t feel as though he can ask, what with Pigeon being the way he is. They have to focus on getting out. There is bound to be some sort of opportunity for escape, for pity or a lucky break. Days pass. Frank is restless and Pigeon seems stressed, picking at his clipped wings, loose ones floating to the ground over and over again. “No hope. No escape.” It is all he seems able to say these days, head tilted as Frank paces the cage, hoping with each pass that he will spot something he had missed before. He’s tried so many different things. Pulling at the bars to see if any of them would break, seeing if the perch was loose enough to take down and use as a bridge. Studying if they had enough clothes to sacrifice to make a rope they could throw to the other side. Nothing works. Their captor barely visits, a taunt to ask if they are ready to sing yet, and then a bag of seeds thrown in. “Do they really think avians just eat seeds?” Frank copies Pigeon, washing the seeds down with a mouthful of water, the knowledge that they need to eat to survive long enough to escape. Pigeon just chirps in response, shrugging his shoulders, and Frank worries he has lost all of his words completely. There is a constant dull ache in Frank’s stomach that any amount of seeds will not diminish. Everything turns into an energy saving exercise. Neither of them really move, besides to grab another bottle of water, a mouthful of seeds. Knowing that if they are able to get this lucky break, they will need as much strength as possible to escape. It feels like a waiting game. For something he doesn’t know is going to happen. Even if he had wanted to sing, to try and please their prison warden, he doesn’t think he’d have the energy. He has not been this skinny in a long while. Has not been without this much muscle in longer than he can remember. They haven’t spoken in days. The merest of hums, or trills, as they try and persuade each other to eat, or drink, or attempt to tidy feathers. The light in the cage continues to be dim, and Frank becomes convinced they are both going to die in here now. “The food. Less now?” Frank shakes the bag. Pigeon nods in response, a low mournful hum. Fucking hell. They are going to starve to death. Without energy and decent food, they are both molting feathers, but no new ones are coming in. They both look feral and bedraggled, and Frank tries his best to keep them both preened, if nothing else but to keep the oil supply unblocked; if they escape, they’ll hardly want to be dealing with that as well. In his dreams he is flying. Far above the skyline of New York, and there is a coo from a pigeon at his side, and their wings are healthy and full. They perch happily on the edge of a rooftop, looking over the city, and they talk with words they have long since thought lost. In his nightmares he wakes up and Pigeon is dead in the corner, his body finally having given up on clinging to survival, his wings limp and ever the image of a fallen angel. Gone without a sound in the night, and Frank is left alone and mourning somebody he never really knew, who had already called himself dead. In reality, they sit on opposite sides of the cage, or lay on them, or in the rare occasions Frank feels like he has energy, he stands and leans against the bars. He doesn’t look at Pigeon’s leg. It does not look healthy. He worries if it is already dead and gone. There is nothing he can do about it here. He has long since lost any chance of keeping their mental state safe; neither of them want nor need to use their words anymore.He simply glares at their captor when they return to the cage room, and it has reached the stage where they both ignore the food when thrown in. They are starving to death here. Why prolong it with mere scraps?He is so bitterly cold, and he shuffles over to sit beside Pigeon, and they lean into each other, and he is glad that the other cannot see the tears in his eyes. It was not supposed to end like this. If he was going to go out, it was supposed to be with a bang, not a whisper. Not forgotten and alone and abandoned. Not with the proof that nobody out there is coming to save him. They both seem to fall in and out of sleep, exhausted when they’re awake, not often being awake at the same time. For a long while Frank thinks that Pigeon is never waking up again, until they happen to blur into consciousness at the same time. It feels more like a nightmare, or a memory, when there is the distant noise of a gunshot, that shatters the silence and sets Frank’s weak heart to beating a panicked rhythm. There is so much noise. So many voices, so much hustle from somewhere he is not sure is real when there is only this cage and this dark void of a room. There is no screaming accompanied with the gun, so he does not think anyone has actually been shot, but he pulls himself up to put himself in front of Pigeon, his wings flared out. They cannot know if this is more enemies. If this is another trick. Perhaps it is time to be put down and out of their misery. His legs shake as he stands but he remains strong. He hears Pigeon hum in confusion but he cannot turn to reassure him - he needs to face whatever is about to enter. If something or someone is going to enter. Perhaps it is a rescue. Perhaps it is more enemies. The cage is both a prison and a safety bunker. Light floods into the room and Frank squints, the brightness unfamiliar and painful, and he throws an arm across his eyes. There’s a shout: “Here! More of them!” He screeches, the noise unfamiliar but he is scared and he is feral, and Pigeon behind him echoes the noise of panic, wings buffeting the air as he remains stuck on the floor, crippled by his leg. “Oh fuck. They’re worse. Okay.” The door is closed, gently, and the person lowers their voice. “Hey, it’s okay. We’re here to help you, okay?” She clicks on a torch, pointing the beam to the floor so that she can be seen, but the light is not blinding Frank’s eyes. His wings still but do not lower, continuing to guard Pigeon behind him. “Can you speak?” “Yes.” Frank’s voice is a harsh whisper of disuse and starvation, and the word fights its way out of his lungs. “Good. I’m Alex, I’m here to help, okay? What’s your name?”“Pete.” The lie comes easy enough, even if Pigeon chirps behind him.“Thank you, Pete. I’ve got people coming with a platform that can get you out of there. What’s your friend’s name?”“I don’t know.”“Oh. Does he know?”Frank tucks his wings back in, revealing Pigeon on the ground, looking so very close to true starvation. “Pidge? Is okay.”Pigeon just coos, and here where there is a little more light, and Frank finally has someone else to speak to, it is so very painfully obvious how broken and feral this avian has become. “No words left.” Frank shakes his head, and he knows even his words have become lost along the way. “Long time.”“You’re both safe now.”There’s more noise, and the scrape of a bridge-like platform being pushed over from the doorway, to hook onto the cage near where Frank knows there is a door he was never able to open. “Cover your eyes, Pete, and your friend.” He cocoons Pigeon in his wings, shielding his own eyes with his hands as some sort of grinder makes short work of the door. As the door swings open, Frank tries to help Pigeon stand on his own feet, but they are both too weak. As light as Pigeon is, he is unable to lift him. “We’ve got you, Pete. Both of you.”He watches as someone lifts Pigeon, the man’s face going ghastly pale as his broken leg is jostled before returning to colour, cradled bridal style in a stranger’s arms. Another stranger offers their arm to Frank, supporting his weight as they trudge back across the bridge and into a bright hallway. Frank squints, a wing wrapping around to drape his face in shadow. The fresh air when they reach outside almost makes Frank fall to the floor. Real daylight. Clouds. The city. The sun. There’s what seems to be a triage set up, and there are a scattering of other avians here, and waiting ambulances, and the rush of paramedics. Most of the avians have clipped wings to match Frank’s own, but there are a few who seem to be tending to the wounded, wearing uniforms. There’s a constant crinkle of emergency blankets, and he watches Pigeon be placed onto one of the waiting stretchers. A gaggle of paramedics immediately surround him. He goes to follow and is instead guided to another stretcher, although his eyes don’t stop looking in Pigeon’s direction. Someone is asking him questions, and through it all, he discovers it has been two months since he was taken. It feels like only days but also years. His answers are short, and he knows somewhere he has more words to describe what he is feeling and what has happened, but he also just wants to screech into the air. There’s a hawk-winged avian that’s gesturing in the air, and Frank vaguely feels like he recognises him. His head tilts to one side as he catches a glimpse of hearing aids in his hands, and the paramedic who is trying to speak to him in sign. He can’t place him, though he’s sure it will come back to him. He’s loaded into an ambulance, and what follows feels like a blur, and he is not sure if crying or disassociating is best. It ends up being some mix of the two. In the hospital everything is so much. The lights are bright, the noise is relentless, and it seems as though he and the others are all suffering, and eventually they all find themselves in a quiet room together, with most of them simply on orders to rest. Frank has an IV in, as they stress over fluids, and they are all given plates of simple food. Pigeon doesn’t appear. Neither does the little hawk, for whom his brain finally kicks in and realises is an Avenger, so he was probably rushed off to their private hospital. Frank just sits there, picking at the bread in front of him, and the next nurse that comes to check on them he asks about Pigeon.“Pigeon?” The nurse looks confused for a second, scanning around the room at the other rescued avians. “Not here. Rescue. Blind? Leg broken.” “Oh, the John Doe. He’s in surgery.”Frank’s wings flare in panic, a noise of confusion and concern the first sound he makes as he looks at the nurse. “He’s going to be okay. That’s what’s important. He will be okay.” “What happened?”“His leg. They’re trying to save it.” His voice is somber, with the tone of someone who is preparing to deliver bad news. Frank sits with the other avians, and his words are the worst of them all. The thoughts circle in his mind but he cannot force them out. It slowly becomes easier to talk, to reorganise his mind into something more human, less feral. They share meals, and one day when they are given granola, all freeze at the sight of it, before the nurse takes it away again, apologies falling from their mouth. One by one, the others get discharged. The ones who have people to rescue them, who are taken home where they can recover all the way, with their own people. Frank doesn’t have his own people. Never had. He continues to worry about Pigeon, and he is nobody to him, and so doesn’t have the right to visit him. The nurse tells him what he can, but it is short and brief, and it sounds like Pigeon is still unable to talk, and as such, unable to tell anyone who he is. He is listening to the news one day, trying to catch up on what is happening in the world, when the local station reports on a case of captured avians. His stomach drops, and he drops the book of word searches and puzzles he’d been keeping himself busy with. The name of the man responsible isn’t one he recognises, and it is confirmed that of the ten captives, all but two have been discharged from hospital. But they are expected to recover, to be discharged as soon as they can. The remaining two. Him, who the nurses still aren’t happy with regarding his appetite, or weight, who does not have anyone to mother him on the outside. And Pigeon, who is still alive, but seemingly in the same position as he. Not fit enough to go out, or not able to tell anyone who he was. He had told Frank the person he was was dead. That it had been a while since he had been taken, and nobody had come looking for him. He had to have had someone. Perhaps the incident reaching the news will bring the right sort of attention. Perhaps someone is looking for him. Frank’s heart aches for the man who had been broken so deeply. A few more days pass, and finally the professionals are happy enough with Frank that he is allowed out. He feels like a toddler when they ask him if he thinks he will be able to continue eating well, and when they go through the discharge paperwork, they tell him the bill has already been settled. “You were rescued alongside an Avenger. They felt a duty to make sure the rest of you were okay.” He has little to his name, but he takes the half-completed puzzle book with him, and the cheap clothes he was provided. He pauses at the nurse’s desk, and he tries his luck to ask about Pigeon. He is well aware he will not be allowed to see him. But perhaps he can sneak in, if he can find out where he is. The nurse looks from his face, to his carrier bag of belongings, to his clipped wings, and her face softens. “I can’t let you see him, but someone came forward and knew who he was. I can leave your number for them if you want? He has someone with him now. He’s going to be okay.” “I don’t have a phone.” His voice is quiet. “Can I come back and give you a number when I get one? I don’t think I have a home anymore.” Her face crumples a little more, “Of course! Let me write down this desk extension for you, then you can just ring us with the number and I can pass it onto your friend. Just ask for Claire, I’ll leave a note for my colleagues to expect a call.” “Thank you. Thanks, Claire.” He leaves the hospital, and he looks behind him as he steps into the daylight in the hope of seeing Pigeon at one of the windows, but it is in vain. He does not know where he would even be. For now, at least, he has a short mission. Phone. Work out if he has anything or anywhere resembling a home anymore. Try and get in contact with Pigeon. No: first task, money. He has nothing. He rearranges his mental list of tasks, and detours to his safehouse, and hopes and prays there is enough cash there for a burner phone, and gets lucky, finding a spare he’d forgotten he’d brought some time ago. The place looks untouched, which is both surprising and reassuring, a thick layer of dust across all the surfaces. After waiting for the phone to charge up, he rings the hospital, and passes on his number to Claire. All that is left to do is to wait, to hope that Pigeon or his friend will contact him. He busies himself, tidying up, clearing out, trying to let fresh air in. There’s nobody he needs to contact to let them know he’s alive. He shrugs a coat over his wings, clipped, shamed, grounded, and leaves again, to buy food. He’d promised the nurses, and he owes it to Pigeon to at least be fit and recovering if, when, he sees him again. Continuously he checks his phone, hoping for a missed call, for a message, for anything. He refrains from ringing the nurse’s desk in hope for an update; they are busy enough without dealing with his worry. He will find out about Pigeon when he can contact him, either himself or through his friend. He is okay. He will be okay. He is in the best place. Frank can’t help but continue fretting, though. It is worse, being further from him now, not knowing how he is. To be apart from someone he had spent every single minute of the day with for so long. Sure, they’d been apart for the last week in the hospital, but that had always felt like a temporary thing. Here, on the outside, in a safehouse, it feels so much like before. Before they’d had their souls changed and tormented. Before he’d felt so intertwined with someone whom he barely knew. Someone who he’d never even asked where he lived, someone he’d never really been able to learn who he was. Days pass. Feathers start to grow in again, now that he is actually eating. It will still be a few months before he can fly on them again. Before he loses all that had been clipped and broken and mistreated. He hopes Pigeon’s are doing better now as well. He hopes he can recover. Regardless, he still waits. There were many things he can, should be doing - putting his name back out there, or just finding a job to earn money. But his eyes and ears are glued to his phone in the hope of it ringing, and so he sits on the roof of his safehouse with a crossword book in hand. Hawkeye had been seen out again, the Avengers reunited, although it seemed as though he hadn’t been captured that long. That he had been the wrong or right person to be kidnapped, with people who would actually miss him. Short work to track down such a place capable of keeping people captive like they had been. To free them, to help them, to likely feel guilt that so many people were taken for so long without anyone knowing they were gone.Frank's phone rings and it drags him rapdidly from his thoughts, pencil long since abandoned. "Hello?""Hi, is that Pete?" The person on the other end of the line's voice is filled with unrecognisable emotion, and it must be Pigeon's friend. No one else has this number."It is. Are - is he-""Matt's awake." Matt. He has a name. "Has been for a few days but he's confused. Mute. I don't - I don't know if hearing your voice might help.""Yes. I can come see him. When?""Whenever, really.""Now?"The voice in the phone laughs. "Yeah. Yeah of course.""Do either of you want me to bring anything? What ward?" Frank is already climbing back down into his home, finding shoes and coat, shaking the nerves out through his wings.The man, who Frank later learns is called Foggy, lets him know where they are, and insists they need nothing.
No one ever needs anything sat waiting in the hospital, so Frank stops by a corner store on his way in for a box of chocolates and some cans of soda, and pauses when he sees a basket of bird plushes in the kids’ section. There's a pigeon. He buys one, tucking it under an arm as he continues to the hospital.He's not really sure what to expect when he is welcomed into Pigeon's, Matt's room. The avian that is sitting up in bed looks a lot cleaner and healthier than he was in their time in the birdcage. His wings splay behind him, and it appears his friend has been preening them - it is obvious which side he sits at most often, for how much glossier the feathers are there.Frank is relieved that at least Pigeon seems to perk up on hearing Frank's voice, his wings lifting a little as he lets out a little chirp. "Hey, Pidge. They say you're pining away in here for the open sky?" He passes over the bag of snacks and drinks to Foggy, "I know you didn't need anything but nothing beats a bit of comfort when you're waiting."He sits on the edge of the bed, careful not to jostle Pigeon's legs, and freezes as he looks at them.At it.They didn't save it. He catches eyes with Foggy, and he worries his face flashes guilt, that perhaps there was something he could have, should have done. Something breaks a little. For he has emerged from this seemingly untouched - or at least once his feathers grow back in he will be.And yet here is Pigeon, who will not walk on two legs again, who has not yet spoken to him properly in here, and he is doubtful he will."I got you something. Couldn't help myself when I saw it in the shop - here." He places the toy bird gently in Pigeon's hands, watching as he investigates it."It's you. A little pigeon. He's got similar markings to you." The fabric is soft and Pigeon seems to approve, running his fingers over the plush material, tracing around the eyes and then the wings. He freezes when he reaches the bird's legs, jostling with them a little, before tearing into one of them with such an unleashed frenzy Frank is not sure whether to stop him or flee. When he is unable to tear it off with his hands, he clenches teeth around it and rips the fabric.The plush leg drops to the floor.Frank takes a step back, away from the bed, hands held in a placating gesture he is not sure Pigeon can understand.A moment later, two plastic eyes also drop to the floor. Stuffing is escaping from the massacred plush, but Pigeon now holds it close, protecting it. He coos, looking in Frank's direction as though to say thank you, and Frank can only gulp in response.Something has so painfully broken within Pigeon, and he is not sure if it can be fixed. He looks young, so much younger than Frank thought. Too young to go through all this shit. So broken. He doesn't even want to ask if he thinks that he will get his words back; he fears what the answer will be."Do we know how long before he's allowed out?" Frank looks over to Foggy. The nurse had said friend but he must be next of kin."Few more days still. They want to get him up and moving around independently a bit." There's a walking frame parked in the corner of the room, and wide open spaces clearly big enough for a wheelchair.Pigeon chirps, a soft quiet noise Frank can only call sadness. Foggy is clearly close to tears, and this is surely a lot - he must have thought Pigeon was dead, for how long he had been missing.The question of if Pigeon was in fact the man in the mask weighs on Frank's mind, but it is not one he can ask right now. He does manage to persuade Foggy to take a break, that he can sit and stay with Pigeon so he does not have to be alone. It is more kinship than friendship, what he feels for Pigeon, for they have survived what no avian should never have to, and come out the other side.When Pigeon relearns to walk, he takes slow wobbly hops with the assistance of a walker, the physiotherapist one side, Frank or Foggy the other, as his wings flare out behind him in an attempt to stay balanced.There is a promise of trying out a prosthetic in the future, especially when he changes to just a crutch, but still has to juggle his guiding cane. It does not look easy, but with someone to guide him, he manages. He protests whenever they offer him a wheelchair, grumbling noises that sometimes sound more like a squawk.His words do not come back.Sometimes he hears the clatter of metal, and he shrinks under his wings, hiding from some invisible threat.Sometimes he forgets he has access to food, and waits and waits until someone reminds him.His wings grow back in, and Frank finds himself sitting at his back, preening through them, and they take to the sky for the first time together.Here, Pigeon is free. He does not have to balance on only one leg, the sky is open and devoid of obstacles, and he swoops and ducks and dives through the air. He trills, a sound of pure joy, the closest thing to a song the both of them are capable of producing, and Frank echoes it back to them as they twist through the slipstreams.