AUs

Yachay was older and larger and could pass as an adult whereas they could not, and he bumped their shoulder as he made his way out first. They waited until the last of the patrol had filed out, and hurried by in their shadow. Early on in the season they had agreed to meet at the same spot near the outskirts of their flock. Sometimes it was impossible to sneak out without disturbing their father, and occasionally Yachay (who woke later than they did) would be caught by his birth-mother and be unable to come, but more often than not the older fledgling would drape a wing over their face as they waited, dozing, and thrust a wooden spear into their arms. 

All this secrecy was, in theory, unnecessary; they may have been barely double-knots, but certainly no one would have begrudged them space to train. But Yachay scorned the main training grounds, and they hated the scrutiny that came with the certainty of everything they did going back to their mother eventually, so under the guise of a patrol they slipped out in the blue pre-dawn light and went to the hills opposite the nearest human camp, close enough that they could see the red fabric of the tents spread out like flames against the rocks below. 

It was an arduous and circuitous route, made hunched over the hard-won warmth of their cloaks, to find the rare unguarded area where fledglings could spar alone and undisturbed. But it was worth it, and Yachay, who had been silent but for his harsh puffs of breath the whole way down, threw off his cloak with obvious relish. He lunged at them, driving them back in moments with his superior speed and strength until they were nearly at the edge of the mountainside, legs shuddering with the effort to fend off his blows and remain standing.

Barely an instant to fight back — they would have fallen there if Yachay didn’t withdraw, stepping back and tucking his wings behind him with a soft snick of feathers, and when he stared at them his gaze was full of awful contempt. 

“C’mon,” he coaxed, a wild light in his yellow eyes, “you fight like a half-fledged chick, ██████!” 

At this they let out a high howl of pure outrage and rushed straight at Yachay, who grinned broadly and hefted up his wooden spear. He blocked easily as they feinted to the left, then the right, but jolted back with a squawk of surprise as they charged his chest, bringing the butt of their spear upside his head. 

Unable to stop their momentum, they barreled onto Yachay's toes, knocking him backwards, and they toppled down the hillside in a whirlwind of feathers and bony limbs, weapons forgotten, pushing and shoving each other hard enough to bruise until they finally slowed to a stop. 

They blinked, dazed, as Yachay rolled onto his back next to them, brushing grass from his hair. Their face ached; they reached up to touch it, feeling a dozen tiny indents mottling their cheeks from where pebbles had stuck in them. Beside them, Yachay’s shoulders fluttered against their side, and it took them a moment to realize that he was laughing, low and rough and gleeful. 

“This is why I like you so much.” the older fledgling said. “you fight dirty.”

He said it like a compliment, but mockingly, so they doubted that he really meant it — but then again, that was how Yachay said almost everything. Sometimes people talked to them just to have someone listen to what they had to say, and he was no exception. They didn’t reply, licking the blood from the inside of their cheek. After a moment, instead of growing bored of their silence and pulling them up for another round, Yachay said, “Hey. Look at me.”

They did, and were surprised by the serious look on his face.

“Do you think there’s anything wrong with me?”

They were confused, for a moment, and then realized what he was talking about. Yachay's family was… cursed, or something like it. They had never asked about the specifics, and indeed only knew of it because their mother talked about that bloodline with a sneer in her voice. But she was always angry about something or another, so that hardly meant anything at all.

They looked at Yachay - his lean frame spread out indolently in the sunlight, already filling out with adult muscle, up to the handsome face framed with curly white hair like sheep’s wool. By now the bruises he wore were like second nature: the oldest was a pale greenish blotch on his chin which suggested three, four days of reprieve. Yachay had let his eyes slide half-shut, but now one flickered open completely to meet their gaze, a piercing yellow as intense as a ray of midday light.

“No.” they said. “I don’t think there’s anything wrong with you.”

“Good.” Yachay said. “Because there isn’t.”

He propped himself up on his wing, both eyes open now, and looked right at them. “You’re the only one who seems to understand that I’m being punished for something that I didn’t even do.” he said. “Isn’t that funny? A chieftain’s chick is the only one to have the decency to treat me like a fucking person.”  

He grinned, a flash of white teeth. "They've been trying to drive me away my entire life by saying I'm a burden when I'm not, never giving me the chance to prove otherwise. Not that I'd want to, even now." His tone was light, but something angry and dark lay in his voice. They stiffened, unsure what to do - they’d never been taught to talk back. But you know there’s nothing wrong with you caught in their throat; that wasn’t what he wanted to hear.

“But you’ll betray me as well, won’t you?” he said, as they lay frozen at his side, barely waiting for the stutter of denial to catch in their throat before he smiled and slid his fingers in their hair, right where the first buds would appear if their father's bloodline held true.

“When you grow up, you will.”

For a moment the look on Yachay’s face was pure hatred, fury and fire, he was holding them like their mother had when she fought the entire flock in the last season's bout, strong arms yanking the loser's head back to expose the straining, fluttering throat. The many-edged shard she’d held so easily in her knuckles, which they hadn't seen until -

It had happened so quickly.

They scrambled up in terror, scraping their knees on the gravel in their haste to get away from the blow, but he was quicker. In a flash his knee was on their back and they went down with a thump, one wing twisted painfully behind them. They heard a high-pitched whimper, starting and stopping in short panicked bursts, and it took them a moment to understand that the sound was coming from their own throat.

From behind their father's legs, they had seen the red wings twitching in the bloodied dust, once, twice, before going still. "Don't you fucking dare," Yachay said. “This is what your family’s reduced me to. If I won't run away, neither can you."

His voice was low and choked and awful, like he had never been happy in his entire life. They blinked back tears of pain as the sharp knee dug into their spine, not daring to lift their face from the ground. He could do anything. 

A familiar silence, like that of a predator deliberating whether they were worth eating or not. The fear ebbed a little, giving way to an inexplicable image of Yachay in some faraway, verdant place within a circle of multicolored feathers, bright-eyed and laughing. For one perfect moment, breathing hard with their face in the gravel, they somehow knew exactly what he wanted.

"You don't have to stay here." they said. "Don't, if it makes you unhappy. But you'll only be satisfied once you show everyone that you deserve better than this."

Strength is what matters, little chick. That's what'll prove your worth, in the end. An involuntary shiver of revulsion ran through them at the thought that they were about to echo their mother's words, but what else could they say?

"If you're stronger than everyone else, they'll — they won't be able to ignore you, or hurt you, or look down on you anymore."

Yachay was quiet. They lay very still and thought of nothing at all, distantly aware that he might be looking for signs of insincerity or defiance. Then a fine arc of pain passed through their scalp - he'd pulled them up by their hair - and then he was stepping back to let them stand, light on his feet as though he’d never knocked them to the ground at all.

"This is why I decided to talk to you." he said. "I knew you'd understand." He smiled, the exact same one he always gave them, but it made them feel - gutted, thrown off-center. They had done something wrong, and had no idea what it was.

"Let's go back." Yachay said. "They'll be looking for you by now."