Wildwing had circuitously focused on those last few moments Canard had been with them. It had crowded out all other intrusive thoughts, a strange cancer of the memory, and more than once it had threatened to consume him. He spun through it from start to end without control, focusing on things that he should have fixed, or changed, in the impossible way that hindsight insisted upon.

What he had not dwelled on nearly as often, and thus could not summon with similar clarity, was the time between Canard liberating him and his brother from the work line, and the morning they had left to begin the mission. Whoever they had retrieved from the parking lot would better resemble Canard shortly before they lost him, and nostalgia for childhood would do little to help. The Canard he knew before the invasion no longer existed, just as Wildwing before the invasion no longer existed. 

The Resistance base that Canard brought them to had been in poor repair, but Wildwing had been stunned to realize he had been more or less marching directly over it the entire occupation. Some of it was a branch of military installation, a segment that had not been caved in and swept through by drones. The rest of the base was the utility tunnels that existed beneath the undercity and the rail system. Clambering down those passages had felt much like being vermin, pushing through cables and grates that were meant to never be disturbed and surviving on scraps. The Saurians must have known there were people down there, but it had been so easy to get disoriented and surprised in the tight, snaking systems that they seemed to be unwilling to attempt to uproot the fighters, or to even attempt to teleport in. The Resistance could appear nearly anywhere in Metro, and then scatter to the ground, into a thousand unknown corners. 

 It was not until Wildwing and Nosedive were given a small, improvised living quarters in the corner of what had been a water treatment node, that Wildwing had started to feel the personhood that had been stripped away start to reappear. He was given the ration of a two minute ice-cold shower. It was the first chance to bathe he had been allowed in months, and for that alone it had been worth all the risk of getting there. He didn’t even care, in that moment, if the escape would lead to nothing. Being cleansed of every sickness, every sodden step through mud, every bruise and sore, every rotten meal, and every other abuse by clean, freezing water was a stinging salve on the soul.

The Pond carried on the tradition of the underground fortress, but it did not carry the same smell of dank and disuse, or the perpetual dark. Canard had dutifully endured a tour of its simpler maze that was not so much tour as taking stock of sections that had previously been targeted by shifts. Canard became the third charge in the Team’s care that had to be watched at all times. There was no other choice. Wildwing could not have a stranger walking in their halls unhindered, even if that stranger was a friend of many years. 

Canard had been initially talkative, about everything and nothing, and it was the exact sort of banter that Wildwing recalled, and recalled fondly, but he could not find it within himself to reciprocate. He had pictured this reunion in his head, so many times, about how everything was going to be exactly like it was over a year ago, before the end of the world happened. For all of Wildwing’s revisited fantasy, the reality was the past stayed firmly the past, and Canard’s presence now did not fix anything beyond that he had been missing. The intervening time between had still happened.

Mallory would not humor Canard either, despite being the person who had known him the longest during the occupation. They were not friends, at least not that Wildwing had ever understood. At best they respected each other, and she did not have it within her to renew trust without careful consideration. As Canard realized these things for himself, he fell into silence, and their survey of the massive base became a procession of three people lost in their own fraught contemplation.

They completed their inspection to Wildwing’s satisfaction, and ended up in front of Drake One. On the platform, Canard gazed out over the empty space in the ready room, silently considering its corners and architecture. Mallory stood at something not quite stiff enough to be called attention, watching him intently, though he either did not notice or did not mind.

“This place is huge,” Canard murmured.

Wildwing heard him, but said nothing in direct response, pointedly fixated at the controls before him. “The corridor that thing tore through looks trashed,” he said instead. “It’s not going to be structurally sound until it’s rebuilt. It looks like modularity saved everything around it. We’re going to have to enlist Tanya’s maintenance drones.” 

Wildwing spoke to no one in particular beyond a need to fill the empty space, but Mallory humored him. 

“Those things give me the creeps,” she said, giving him just the slightest acknowledging flick of the eyes before turning back to her quarry.

“They wouldn’t be so bad if she didn’t insist on putting lasers on everything,” Wildwing mused.

“The monster they saw,” Mallory’s tone changed, pulling Canard to the conversation. “Does that sound like what you encountered… in there?”

Canard’s response was a silence of staring into a corner of the ceiling, long enough it seemed possible that he hadn’t heard the question, his hands fidgeting. What Wildwing saw, that Mallory could not have, was a twinge of something that crossed Canard’s face, some memory that snagged an eyebrow before he brush it away. “I don’t know. I don’t…it could have been? I didn’t see it, but it could speak. It used words.”

The creature that had attacked Winterwing, Tanya, and Duke had done nothing but scream, from all accounts.

If Canard was telling the truth.

From here they fell back into quiet, with conversation between Wildwing and Mallory that was meaningless, but had the outward appearance of importance. This needed to be fixed, that schedule would need to be moved. All these things that they never would have bothered speaking aloud in other circumstances, because it was implicitly understood what their tasks were already. Not saying anything left open the gaping possibility that their third person would want to speak, and after months and months of wishing to hear Canard say anything again, now that he could, Wildwing was unwilling to let him.

The evasion only prolonged the inevitable, and eventually Canard took the opportunity of a pause in the inane conversation, “Is anyone going to explain to me why there are two of you?”

Wildwing sighed, “Winterwing? We don’t know why. There just is.”

Canard looked between both him and Mallory, expecting elaboration, and when there wasn’t, said, “Are… are we just okay with that?”

“Nope!” Mallory said with false cheer, “We found him about the same way we found you. Couldn’t just leave him there, tempting as it was, so he’s with us for now.”

“You…you know that sounds insane right?” Canard observed.

“Absolutely,” Mallory agreed. “The alternative was to let Dragaunus have him, and that seemed worse.”

Wildwing winced, though Mallory did not seem to notice the landmine she had positioned herself upon.

Canard was not so oblivious. “Dragaunus is alive?”

Mallory seemed to have realized her mistake, because she suddenly had nothing else to share. This was information that Wildwing was going to have let out at some point, but no matter how he phrased it internally, it was hard to word it as anything but a failure. The mission that had passed to him and he had not managed to end it. It was not for a lack of trying. It was not cowardice. It was simply that they had not been up to the task.

It was another strange gap in his fantasy of reunion that Wildwing had never considered. He had never practiced the ways in which he would be disappointing to his friend.

Wildwing’s only choice was to be honest. “He’s on this planet. His ship is mostly disabled. We have him in hiding, and his gateway generator destroyed, so he is not leaving.”

Canard gave a furrow of the brow, a confused slight tilt of the head. “You’re very different.”

Which stung in a way that Wildwing was not expecting. “It’s been over a year,” he heard himself say defensively.

“It was this morning,” Canard said, quietly.

“Well then, this morning, you jumped out of a plane and told me fixing everything was my problem.” Even as he said it, Wildwing regretted it.

Canard’s hurt was visible, but he did not respond in kind. “Yes, I did.”

“Why?” Wildwing demanded. “What were you thinking?”

Canard looked instead to Mallory, “Did I make a bad choice?”

“No,” Mallory said, and gave Wildwing a satisfied smile when he glared at her.

Wildwing sighed and crumpled against Drake One, leaning on it for support. The rest of it was out in the open, and there was nothing left to do but rip the final bandage away. “The Mask is gone.”

“Oh,” Canard said, mechanically, as one did when they heard but did not yet comprehend. It did seem that Wildwing had merely been the borrower of the artifact, that the intent was he was supposed to return it to Canard. It didn’t belong to Canard or Wildwing or anyone else, it was far too important for something as profane as ownership. And yet, it was still impossible to shake the feeling that he had wronged Canard specifically in its destruction.

“Well,” Canard said, finally understanding the depth of the sore they had been creeping around, “that is a very steep price to pay, to keep him off Puckworld.” And then another pause for consideration, “But, probably worth the cost.”

Wildwing looked up, confused.

Canard burst out laughing, so loudly that both Wildwing and Mallory flinched at the unexpected sound of it.

“Look at you!” Canard exclaimed. “You’re waiting for me to scold you.”

Wildwing’s cheeks felt hot. “Sh-shut up!”