Chapter Text
Eight-year-old HM Murdock comes from a family of dogs. His Grandpa trots around with a border collie, Grandma hums to an old English sheepdog’s howling, and his Ma used to read while she pet a beautiful Labrador Retriever, with fur like white snow and soft brown eyes.
(His Pa was rumored to have an Akita, stubborn and independent, but he’s talked about so little and left so long ago that sometimes when he comes back in Murdock’s dreams he comes back as something else entirely)
Because of this, it would make sense for Murdock’s own Cielia to settle as a dog.
“Perhaps a nice Australian Shepherd to help Pa and Annamae out in the fields,” his grandma suggests, as she lays a slice of cake down in front of him.
He smiles at her and ignores Cielia as she twitches at his feet, reptilian eyes no doubt staring at him knowingly. Then for a lack of anything better to do he shoves a piece of chocolate cake into his mouth.
Grandma chuckles and daps a bit of frosting onto his nose, “Then again, maybe a Chocolate Lab would suit you better.”
He nods like he agrees and watches as she turns back to take something out of the oven.
(What they don’t know is Murdock had already decided when he was five that Cielia wouldn’t be a dog. Decided it the moment that his Ma’s hand went slack in his grip and beautiful-sickly-Diego blew into Dust beneath Cielia’s paws. Sometimes, Murdock thinks, when Cielia is anything with padded feet he can still see it. Golden and disgusting and woven between her toes.)
—
When he turns nine Grandpa starts taking him out with him to herd the sheep.
“It’ll be easier if you turn into a dog,” Annamae barks, as Cielia stumbles along as a goat. “I think we could use another border collie in the house. Heaven knows that it would make my job easier.”
“Kids aren’t supposed to make life easy,” Cielia bleats.
Grandpa laughs and turns to Murdock, “You really wanna try and herd sheep with a goat then?”
Murdock smiles and nods, and Grandpa calls the two of them silly, as they fumble their way across the farm and into a new pasture. When they get home Grandpa goes to talk to Grandma about how he thinks Cielia may settle as a goat instead of a dog and Grandma hushes him and says that dogs run in the family. The older couple laugh and joke as Murdock and Cielia sneak away.
Despite all the theories and the suggestions, Cielia is very rarely anything with four legs. If it does have four legs it’s never something with paws. Nothing with paws he reminds her that night as she curls against his stomach as a garden snake. Nothing with paws.
(He reasons that if she never changes into something with paws, she can’t settle as something with them and then maybe the Dust will go away.)
—
He’s ten when they decide that there’s something wrong with that. He’s surrounded by canines and other pawed farm animals and Cielia should naturally change to what’s around her, but she doesn’t. When they ask him why he says that they don’t want to. They frown at that and tell him that he isn’t handling his Ma’s death like he should be. They say that they should’ve noticed earlier and when he says he’s fine they don’t believe him and make him talk about it.
They take him to a room where a nice woman smiles at him and asks him questions and listens to his answers.
So he tells her about how it hurt and how it makes him sad. He tells her that he misses his mom and how he wishes she were here and she smiles and comforts and nods like she somehow understands.
(All while the Golden Retriever at her feet nods and talks in a deep voice and tries to offer advice, but all Murdock can think about is how he can never seem to get away from all these dogs and the Dust between their toes.)
Together the duo carefully coax him and Cielia away from their fears and applaud when Cielia changes into a skinny Xolo dog--black and hairless and as far away from Diego’s soft white fur as possible.
(She has to stay that way for the rest of the session and it makes Murdock’s skin itch in a way he can’t describe.)
They talk some more and he tells them that he’s okay now. He thinks he might be, at least a little bit, the part of him that used to hurt hurts less now and that must mean something. They nod, and he leaves, and he tells them thank you.
(He doesn’t tell them about the Dust, or how he still can sometimes remember how it had tasted on his tongue. He doesn’t tell them that Cielia became a toad the moment they were out of sight)
—
When Murdock is fifteen he discovers birds and planes and flying. Grandpa takes him up in an old, borrowed, crop duster, and it feels like freedom. It feels like the warm hugs of his mother and the steady howling lullabies of Diego. It feels like home. Only it isn’t enough to just be a passenger, he wants to know what it feels like, but Grandpa won’t let him fly, keeps saying he isn’t old enough, and so Murdock turns to the next best thing and Celia soars.
She turns into hawks and falcons and small sparrows and flies farther and farther away from him, until his stomach flips and his brain aches. But he doesn’t mind, because she’s flying. He can feel her exhilaration over their bond and he knows that someday that’ll be up there joining her.
He watches as she flies a bit too far to the left and pins and needles shoot down his skin and cause him to stumble in her direction. But the pain is lost in the joy of this newfound freedom, of this new journey, and he laughs and catches Cielia as she soars back into his hands.
She twitters and screeches in his hands, as he inspects her wings and holds her close, then when they’ve grown tired of being grounded he throws her back into the air and watches as she gets smaller and smaller against the noonday sun. It’s breathtaking.
(Later there will be people, monsters in disguise, who will take this away from them. Will take this freedom and joy and willingness to soar and twist it into something ugly. Later there will be people who will separate their bond and cause them to be unable to drift apart all at once. They’ll hate it and think themselves weak over it, but that’s the future and this is now.)
—-
Murdock is seventeen and they talk about him behind his back. He hears them whisper about Cielia as she flits between a dove and a robin. It’s unnatural, they say, for a boy as old as him to still have an unsettled daemon, but they just don’t understand. There're so many birds to choose from, so many species that they had spent hours researching together, and how could they simply settle on one?
Grandpa frets and Grandma says they’ll figure it out when they're good and ready and the rest of the town gossips. All the while he watches with binoculars as Cielia flips through the air as an eagle and changes into a mockingjay mid loop. She’s beautiful.
(“Do you think there’s something wrong with us?” He’ll ask Cielia later, when they’re alone and she’ll scoff at the very thought of it and put him at ease as they continue to look for new ways to fly.)
—
He turns eighteen and joins the Air Force. Only, there’s a war on, and Grandma worries and fusses and Grandpa asks questions like who will watch the farm, but Murdock doesn’t care. His common sense has been lost in the euphoria of being able to fly, of being able to join Cielia in the air and soar.
(They don’t have the money for him to get a pilot’s license and the old crop duster no longer appeases the growing need in his soul. This is the best option, he tells himself, the only option.)
They send him off with tears and he beams and waves at them as they drive away.
(He’ll cry later, when he’s alone in his bunk and what he’s done has finally settled in, but for now, all he sees are the planes and he thinks that he’s in love)
—-
He’s nineteen when he goes up in a plane by himself for the first time and it’s everything he’s ever dreamed of. There’s nothing but him and the sky and every distraction that has ever tormented him fades away into the distance.
The cockpit is small and Cielia is a hummingbird flitting too and fro and backwards and forwards in the small space and she laughs in his ear, her joy radiating off her and into his heart.
He whoops, and yells, and howls and at last feels like he’s complete.
Then there’s a burst of gold out of the corner of his eye and Murdock panics. The plane dips and the joy fades as he frantically tries to catch sight of Celia. That had been Dust, and Dust wasn’t good. Was never good.
(Dust was the yellow specs across pale, dead, skin, it was the golden strands stuck in between puppy paws.)
The plane is still dipping and someone in the control tower asks if he’s alright. He yanks back and steadies the plane and breathes. In and out. In and out. Just like he’d been told to do when he was ten and they’d wanted Cielia to be a dog. He smiles and lies and says he’s fine.
(If they hear the tremor in his voice they don’t say anything and he doesn’t mention it.)
She can’t be gone, he tells himself, because he’s still here. He clings to that truth like a lifeline as he tries desperately to find her in the never-ending blue around him.
(She’d been a hummingbird last and those are oh so small and what if he can never find her again?)
“Murdock,” She chirps at last, or perhaps she’d been chirping for a while now and he’s just now noticed over the thundering of his heart, either way, it’s the most beautiful sound he’s ever heard. He looks towards the sound, just a few inches to his left, and spots her.
She’s hovering in front of his eyes, small, green, and beautiful. Her wings blur and the last few specs of Dust rain down from them, disappearing into the air. Dust, he remembers, can bring other things than death.
“Oh,” he breathes, “You’ve finally gotten stuck.”
She doesn’t say anything, but he can feel her uncertainty, her unease, so he smiles at her.
“You look lovely.”
She hums and chirps and preens at the compliment. Her unease bleeding away into pride.
“Do you like it?” He asks next because that seems important.
“I’ll miss being big,” she admits, perching on top of his head, then after a moment's hesitation asks. “Will you miss it?”
“Being big?” He asks, “I don’t think I was ever that to begin with. Tall maybe? But never big.”
“No,” she bristles and he can hear the scowl in her voice. “I meant will you miss me being big.”
He pretends to think for a bit, if only to get a rise out of her, before shrugging, “Eh, big planes can’t do as many tricks, I’m sure it’s the same for birds. And even if that ain’t true I think you’re perfect just the way you are. I certainly wouldn’t want you to change now that you’ve gone and decided what you want to be.”
And he means it, no one should be forced to be something they're not and if Cielia wants to be a hummingbird then that’s what she’ll be.
There’s a beat of silence as she nestles down into his hair and chirps out, “I like you just the way you are too.”
He smiles and watches the sky and feels like he’s finally whole.
(Later, there will be the Thunderbirds and the CIA and the army and Mexico, and everything that comes in between, and everything that comes after, but for now, there’s just him and Cielia and the sky and for now, that’s enough.)