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Chapter Text

Tears burned his eyes and warmed his cheeks as he continued to push his body against the bars, the wire digging into his torso and face painfully. Even with his entire arm sticking out and reaching around the bars his fingers weren’t even brushing the clasp. The trap was designed so that only someone on the outside could open it.

A sob bubbled up as he heard heavy footsteps approach, and he pulled his arm back and thrust it back forward, hoping, somehow, the momentum would get him just close enough to the latch. It never would, he was just creating bruises that would be sore later, he had to think of something else. Anything else to get him out. He was running out of time- 

He was out of time.

There was a large crunch of leaves right in front of him and he yanked his arm back, holding it close to his body as he scrambled to the back of the trap, his wings now pushed against the bars on the other side. He stared wide at the offending thing in front of him, the foot of the human, who was now bending down.

“Well, hello there,” The voice was soft, attempting to be reassuring, not that it helped. The trap shook as it lifted off the ground and he came face to face with his captor. White teeth, dark skin, green eyes, reddish hair. “Aw, you poor little thing, you’re going to be okay. We’re going to take good care of you.”

That didn’t bode too well for him. The human stood, holding the trap to his side, making it swing with each of his giant strides. He let the tears fall freely as his home grew farther and farther away.

One terrifying ride on the human’s growling machine later they arrived at a building surrounded by a few more of those human machines that looked like shiny boxes. They entered the building and Patton could immediately make out the voices of several more humans and he let another loud sob through.

“Oh, darling, it’s okay. This is just a checkup, we’re going to take you right back home tomorrow,” The human holding his trap said as he set it on a table in front of a different human with blue hands, “He’s been crying since I picked him up, I don’t think it’s going to get better.”

The blue handed human was pulling at the clasp of the trap and it popped the door right open for him, “Has he said anything to you?”

“No. Should we just put him away for now and come back when he’s calmed down?”

“He’ll just start up again when we do. I’ll check him quickly and write down his information, we’ll observe him over night, and we’ll let him go in the morning. At least we won’t have to worry about him being a repeater, like Virgil is.” The blue hand came into the trap and, despite his fighting, the fingers were able to wrap around his middle and pull him out. The hand was disturbingly smooth and rubbery. The blue handed human had black hair, pale skin and square things around his eyes. 

The green-eyed human laughed, “Yes, I suppose that’s right. Oh, hello, little one. I know this is very frightening, but Dr. Logan isn’t going to hurt you one bit. We just want to make sure you’re all healthy.”

He tried to get out of the grip, but it was just tight enough not to allow any movements. Then there was another hand on his wing and he wailed as he went still.

“Do you think it’s broken?”

“No, it would be dragging if it was. I’m sure he’s just terrified that I’m going to be the one to break it. It looks healthy and well groomed, however.” He continued to cry out as his wing was pulled open and the feathers were prodded and touched. “They’re really in fine condition, he’s just upset I’m touching them at all.”

His wing was let go and he pulled it tight against his back. The blue hand human readjusted his grip and started rubbing down his sides and he whined loudly at the feeling, “That’s weird.”

“What?”

“I can feel his ribs, all the avians in this area have been a healthy weight. Roman, can you get me a few berries?”

“Yes, absolutely.” 

He shouted at the human as he pulled his shirt over his head, “Shush, it’s okay, I’m just getting a better look. Oh, dear, what happened to you?” The large fingers brushed over his chest and stomach.

He knew he was skinnier than he should be, but it was hard finding the familiar red color of berries.

“Here we go.” A black bowl was set in front of him and the blue handed human let him go. “Perhaps he’s recently recovering from an injury that made it hard for him to get food?”

“Perhaps.”

He immediately went over to the bowl, looking into it and frowning when he continued to only see black instead of any red. He looked up at humans with watery eyes, wondering why they had tricked him.

The humans only looked back. 

There was a moment before the green eyed human spoke, “Can you not eat blackberries?”

He scrunched up his face and reached into the blackness, surprised when his fingers brushed against something immediately. He grasped at the berry and felt it, realizing it felt an awful lot like a raspberry and smiled as he took a bite of it. 

“Oh dear.”

“What just happened?”

“I don’t think he could see the blackberries.”

“They’re right in front of him.”

“Yes, that is why that is worrying.”

“Why wouldn’t he be able to see them?”

“If his vision is impaired he wouldn’t be able to see them against the black bowl.”

Patton ignored them, he already knew he had a bit of trouble seeing, it wasn’t too bad. He could still out run predators and he always found food eventually. He contented himself with eating the blackberries as the humans continued to talk over him.

Once he was finished he fanned out his wings and looked around for a place to get out of the building. It took him a moment to find where there was any green and when he did he flapped his wings to get off the table. He didn’t get far as the blue hands wrapped around his middle. He screeched and tried to flap his way out, but the blue hands just readjusted to keep his wings against his back. 

“No. No. Apologies, but we are not done. Roman, can you grab the scale and a velcro band?”

“Let go!” He shouted, tired of these humans already. They weren’t listening to anything he was doing and now he had to bother with actual words.

“I know. I know,” the blue handed human said, though he clearly didn’t cause if he did he would let go. “Just one more thing and we’ll set you up with a nice cozy blanket and some yummy food.”

There was a loud ripping sound before a black thing was wrapped around his body quicker then he could fight it and was holding his wings and arms down. It itched and he wriggled and yelled as the human set him down on a cold surface.

“Extremely underweight for an avian his size, even after just eating.” The human wrote something down on the paper. “Alright, we’re all done, you did a wonderful job.”

He was once again picked up and he sobbed, “Stop!”

“I will, it’s okay,” He assured and the black band was ripped away and he was set into a cubby in the wall. There was soft material under him and two small balck bowl in one corner, and an empty looking hut in the other. 

There was a click and Patton looked back, expecting him to be locked in but he could still see the white walls of the building. He was confused but attempted to fly out- only to ram his head into an invisible wall. 

“OH! Darling, it’s a glass door,” The green eyed human explained, a moment too late, moving in front of him to talk. “You poor little thing, I’m so sorry. I didn’t think- Oh, that’s my fault. Just- there’s food and water in the corner and if you need anything you just call me or Logan, okay? I’m Roman, by the way.”

He looked up at the human, tears free falling down his face. He didn’t want anything but to go home. Why didn’t these humans understand that?

“Can I know your name?” He pushed, “So we know what to write down on your chart.”

He didn’t answer.

“Right. Right- I get it. I’ll ask again later. You’re going to be okay. We’re going to take good care of you.” He hung a board on the glass door, and walked away. 

Patton sat there for another moment before crawling into the hut and laying down, falling asleep after the exhausting experience.

Chapter Text

“I hate this,” Roman said to Logan as he was filling out the paperwork for the little avian’s transfer, “This is literally everything we’re against.”

“I know, this is what we were trying to prove was unnecessary with this research, but from what I’ve gathered from observing him he is unable to find food unless it is brightly colored; and he separated himself from other avians because he can not tell them apart from predatory birds and therefore wasn’t receiving help from any of the nests in the area. I do not think he could survive the next few months, let alone this winter,” Logan answered, putting his chew stim necklace back in his mouth and grinding his teeth into it.

“He’s going to hate us,” Roman sighed.

“He already hates us, it’s not really a loss.”

“It feels like a loss.”

“I know.”

Roman signed the paper at the bottom and shoved it in Logan’s direction. Logan signed it quickly and didn’t look at it again. The avian would be sent to a nearby wildlife rehabilitation center for permanent housing. They had done what they could to avoid this, including attempting to introduce the avian to other wild avians they bring into the shelter, but he refused to socialize with bigger avians (which was most of the ones they brought in) and they couldn’t risk introducing him to a wild nest without it or him rejecting it. 

This was the little guy’s best chance at survival; and yet it felt like they were completely betraying him. 

He just hoped he would warm up to the workers there, for his own sake. It would absolutely break Roman’s heart if he continued to be miserable when he was rehomed.

Joan popped their head in, “Virgil’s back.”

Logan groaned, “How? We’ve told everyone if he was in a trap to just open it and leave him.”

“Percy brought him in, I guess no one gave him the memo,” they answered.

“I’ll take it,” Roman sighed. He got up from the desk and followed Joan out to where Virgil was relaxing in a trap on an examination table, grinning up at him. “Congratulations, you’ve made it inside back once again. What if we just didn’t feed you? Would you stop coming back then?”

“Would you stop?” He asked with that damn grin. 

He glared at him, “No. I’ll get you some food.”

“Grapes?”

“Yeah, whatever. What are you going to do when we leave in a few weeks and you lose your free meal ticket?” He grabbed a premade bowl. 

Virgil shrugged, “Starve.”

“Don’t say that,” He snapped, setting the bowl down and opening the trap, “You’re capable of feeding yourself, some avians are not.”

Virgil walked out, raising an eyebrow up at him as he grabbed a grab slice, “What’s wrong?”

He debated telling Virgil what was happening, but maybe it would finally scare the emo nightmare into staying away, knowing that someone else wasn’t getting the same option. “We have a little guy here with impaired vision and half-starved. We just signed him off to be sent to a wildlife center to be taken care of. He’s not being released.”

The avian’s eyes widened, “You do that?”

There was a moment where Roman really thought he had gotten through to him before realizing that the look Virgil was giving him was not of fear. “Virgil, no. No. You can fully take care of yourself. The center is for animals to heal and be released, technically our little guy shouldn’t be going but it’s the best place we got that isn’t an avian adoption center.”

Virgil’s face fell and he took an overly aggressive bite of the grape. Roman pinched the bridge of his nose, wondering what they were going to do with him. Maybe they should have stopped feeding him a while ago, but it was their policy to feed any avian that came in and he didn’t want to break it for one stubborn avian. Virgil was really trying to domesticate himself, which would have worked with any other group of humans besides them. Their research team was here to show that wild avians were perfectly capable of taking care of themselves and that the capture and attempted domestication of the endangered species was unnecessary as long as they were given reliable resources. This was proven true by every avian they had caught but Virgil and their blind friend.

He glanced at the kennel that had held the little avian, who had barely spoken to anyone since he got here. Sending him to the center by himself would do nothing for his depression, especially since he was unwilling to talk to anyone. He looked back to Virgil and a light bulb went off, a light bulb that had him groaning and dropping his head on the table. It was an awful idea, but if it worked it would possibly benefit both avians. 

“Roman?” Virgil poked his face, looking at him with barely hidden concern. 

“You want to live in the center? For real? You probably won’t be able to come and go. You’ll live in an enclosed space and you’ll be doing what humans tell you. Does that really sound fine to you?” He pushed, not lifting his head, “There’s no backing out of it once it goes through.”

Virgil looked to be considering it, looked to be weighing the pros and cons of what was being offered. After a minute he looked into Roman’s eyes, very seriously, “Would I get to nap?”

He looked down and thunked his head on the table, “You’re such a lazy bird. Yes. You’ll be able to nap whenever you want, with one stipulation-” He lifted his head and looked down at Virgil, “You have to take care of the avian that’s already going. If you can befriend him by the end of the day we’ll copy the paperwork and you’ll be able to go with him. It would make me feel better to know that there is somebody there with him to make sure he doesn’t get too sad.” 

“Really?” Virgil asked with a scrunched nose, “Have to be friends?”

“Yes, Virgil, you two have to be friends,” Roman answered, wondering if having to be friends  would actually be the thing to deter Virgil from the self-domestication option, “I’m not sending you to the rehabilitation center just cause. This avian is becoming depressed here in the clinic, and I fear it’s going to get worse. If you can’t help him then there is, quite literally, no reason for you to go.”

Virgil sighed heavily, “Okay. I’ll help.”

“Thank you, Virgil,” he grumbled and scooped Virgil up, taking him over to a separate meeting kennel and putting him in one side, “Logan’s definitely going to hate me for agreeing to this.”

He walked over to the other little one’s kennel; he opened it and scooped the blanket up that he was in, quickly transferring him before he was able to orient himself. The little avian shouted at him through the blankets and struggled baselessly.

He slipped him into the opposite side and locked the door. The meeting kennel was just a bit bigger than the normal kennels, but with the divider currently in the middle both sides were about a third smaller than the normal kennel. Virgil was right up at the divider immediately, making small chirps at the other. 

Roman let them be for now, he’d check up on them in an hour and see about lifting the divider. Logan left the office, and he could see the exact moment when he noticed Virgil and the little avian were together. 

“Virgil? Are you sure? Virgil doesn’t belong to a nest and he barely forages for himself, you think he would be willing to do so for another?” He questioned.

“Actually,” Roman chuckled nervously, “I told Virgil if he could befriend him… He could go to the rehabilitation center along with him.”

“You didn’t,” Logan gaped, “Roman, we can not take a perfectly healthy and capable avian out of its natural habitat just because he’s lazy.”

“Look, I know, but Virgil claims to be dependent on us for a food source, and while I don’t believe him it’s a usable excuse not to release him; and, he clearly doesn’t want to take care of himself, if the occasional horrible state of his wings are anything to go by. Besides, this is a chance for our blind bird buddy to have a friend to go with him to make the transition better,” Roman explained. 

Logan glared at him, “You better be right about this. I hate the idea of removing one avian from this forest, let alone two.”

“It’ll be fine,” He assured. Logan nodded at him and walked off to talk to some of the other researchers and volunteers.

Roman looked back to the cage with Virgil and the little avian and watched as Virgil tried to coax the other to chirp back to him. This had to work, if only so the little one didn’t waste away in the rehabilitation center. He trusted the center to take good care of them and give them as much freedom as possible with the little one's disability, but it was still going to be a difficult change.

The little one gave a gentle chirp back at Virgil. Roman sighed in relief.

Chapter Text

The ride in the truck was loud and bumpy. He knew Roman had done his best to keep them as secure as possible and tried to muffle the sound by covering them with a blanket, but all it did was make them sleepy without any way of actually falling asleep. Patton was clinging to his hands and jacket fiercely and whimpering at every hole they hit and all Virgil could do was chirp softly in his ear to try and comfort him.

Patton was not happy with the move, even with the knowledge he was coming along to be his moral support. Patton would rather be out finding his old nest or trying to live out on his own, but doing so would result in a slow and likely painful death, and while Patton had agreed that he’d rather live with Virgil at the rehabilitation center instead of dying he had done so reluctantly. Virgil was however ecstatic with the transfer, though he did tone it down for Patton. It had been getting harder and harder to work up the energy to get out of his little tree home in the morning, let alone going around collecting the food he needed to eat for the day. The human doctors these past few weeks were the first thing in months that had made him excited about going out, a little adventure to find the traps with the bits of food inside and then a short (if uncomfortable) ride to the office where he was fed and housed and got to talk with Roman and Logan or some other human for a night.

Now, while Roman and Logan apparently weren’t going to be there, he would get a similar experience everyday. As well, Roman said his brother worked at the center so they’d probably get along great, and once Patton was comfortable he’d probably warm up to the humans too and make friends.

The truck came to a stop and he felt Patton’s breath of relief on his neck before the car door was opened and their carrier was pulled out. Far away, and coming closer, was the sound of different human’s shoes on gravel.

“Brother!” A shrill voice shouted, causing Patton to squeak in alarm and Virgil reached over and smoothed down the puffed up feathers. “Are those the little chicken wings?”

“Hello Remus,” Roman said above them, fondly exasperated, “And yep, Virgil and, as we recently learned, Patton are all set and ready to see their new home.”

“Patton’s a pretty cutesy name for a birdy that was too stubborn to talk, let alone join a nest.”

The carrier lifted up and down and Virgil assumed they were handed off to Roman’s brother.

“I think he’ll be more inclined to open up with Virgil helping him along,” Roman added.

“Oh, it is so polite to talk about them like they're not right here,” Another voice said, making both of the avians jump since neither had heard the third human approaching.

“They’re asleep aren’t they?” Remus asked, lifting the blanket a bit and looking in. Virgil tilted his head in confusion as he looked just like Roman but had a mustache. He gave a short wave. “Oh, whoops. Hiya. We’ll try not to talk behind your guys’ back too much, at least not an ear shot anyway.”

The blanket was fully removed and Virgil blinked his eyes in the sudden light. He could see the third human now, who was shorter than the two brothers, had long blonde hair pulled into a ponytail and his head was covered with a cap with a tree symbol on it, the same symbol on his shirt. He had dark skin with white splotches on his face and arms and one of his eyes was a dark brown and the other green.

The new human smiled down at them, “Hello, my name is Janus, lovely to make your acquaintance. Now, I’m sure Remus and Roman want to stay out here and catch up, did you want to say goodbye and we’ll go inside?” He took the carrier before they could answer and opened the barred door before setting it on the ground.

“Janus…” Roman hesitantly said, and Virgil could tell he was nervous about them leaving the safety of the container.

“They are aware why they’re here, are they not?” Janus asked, “Cause if they are they should know that flying away only means that they will have to survive on their own after you deemed that they can not.”

Virgil helped Patton out of the carrier before flapping up and on top of it. Roman watched them and sighed, “Y’know, any other time I’d be on your side but I’m just worried. Patton-”

“I’m sure he’s smart enough to make his own decisions, if he wants to fly off and attempt to survive on his own, far away from the area he’s familiar with, then that is his own decision. Isn’t it, Patton?”

Patton gave a few frustrated chirps in response. Virgil frowned worriedly and chirped back, which thankfully made Patton’s expression soften.

“Already on that tough love stuff, aren’t you, Janny?” Remus asked with a snicker, “Don’t worry, you’ll figure out soon his little pointed remarks are his own little way of showing he loves you.”

“They are not,” Janus insisted. He started walking back to the center, his footsteps surprisingly light, “Come along you two, I’ll show you the habitat we set up for you guys and start introducing you to the other residents of the center.”

Virgil ascended into the air and came to rest on Roman’s shoulder for a second, hugging his face, “Bye Roman.”

“Goodbye bird brain, I’ll miss you,” Roman replied as he patted Virgil’s back.

He flew off to follow Janus, Patton right behind after waving to Roman. He was still pretty weak from malnourishment, but he was fine to fly small distances, and Virgil knew he was happy for the chance to get some wind under his wings. Janus held the door open for them and they flew into the center’s tiny lobby, both landing on the receptionist desk.

“You guys will have free range of the entire center, given that you behave yourself and not torment any of the animals recovering. We do have a screened patio for you to enjoy the outdoors without fear of predators, but if you’re feeling dangerous, and don’t tell Roman this as he’ll run me through, but there is an avian door on the patio as well for you to come and go,” Janus explained as he walked through the lobby opened up the door behind the desk, “This back here is where a few of our tamer as well as our permanent guests reside.”

Janus showed them around the entire center, even showing them their own personal hidey holes for them. There were lots of other animals in the center, though there were a lot more that lived in enclosures outside because they were predatory or too big to be inside the center building itself. Janus left them to their own devices as he processed their paperwork and they stayed out of the way of the other animals to go into a nest that was made for them with blankets and little pillows.

Virgil got comfy quickly and he was happy to see Patton was as well, “You like it?”

Patton took a moment to answer, “It’s not my home, but this- this is good.”

Virgil nodded and pulled Patton into a hug, which the other avian melted into. Patton had lost his nest months ago, and there was no finding it then and certainly no finding it now. Virgil may be content to live here, but he knew the transition was going to be a lot harder for Patton and he would do his best to be sympathetic and help him feel comfortable here.

They stayed in there for a long time before Patton shifted and looked at Virgil. Virgil tilted his head before laughing as Patton chirped playfully in his ear before flying out the nest. He followed him out, repeating the chirp, and they started a game of tag, racing around the center.