“Whats that smell?” Emily asked.

Phil pondered the question, slowing his pace as he crossed the threshold of the southern entrance into the Pond. “It’s sort of like the airport?”

They had to take a flight of stairs from the main foyer, up a level to the gate access into the arena proper. Winded, Phil managed to balance his stack of boxed food the entire way, until he was able to see the destruction inside.

He dropped it all onto the floor, and shouted from the top of the stairs “What did you do?”

Emily caught up with him, taking in the hole in the floor that should not have been there, the shrapnel that littered the western side of the arena. The little fighter they kept underneath the building was still recognizable and resting on the stands in the lower section. The port wing, closest to their vantage point, had sheared off entirely, and lodged itself into a section higher than the rest. Some sort of supressant foam had been liberally sprayed over the entire mess. The ceiling had been retracted, letting sunlight into the building, but also letting fumes rise out.

“It’s fine, Phil,” Wildwing called from the ice.

“This is the most not fine anything has ever been and you know it!” Phil yelled back. “There’s supposed to be a concert in here next week!”

“I think you’re going to have to refund at least some of the seats,” Nosedive mused from his position far above them, surveying the destruction the errant wing.

“Where’s Winterwing?” Emily interrupted their banter, dropping her bags now as well. Mallory, down on the ice with Wildwing, pointed toward the team locker room. Emily took the stairs down two at a time.

Winterwing was seated on the bench that split the locker room down the middle, doubled over, still wearing most of the gear that they had slapped him into, but gloves, helmet, and skates thrown aside. Tanya was standing over him, speaking quietly, just barely audible.

“I won’t tell anyone, b-b-but maybe you need to.”

Tanya then stood up straight, striding briskly back into the arena, giving Emily a slight nod of acknowledgment as she passed.

The doors closed behind her. There was nothing left for Emily to do but take up the position Tanya had abandoned, standing over Winterwing with visible concern.

“You okay?” Emily asked.

Winterwing shook his head, maybe to clear it, maybe to whisk away something that had been said before she arrived, maybe to say no, maybe all of the above.

He scowled at the floor. “It’s fine, just a little panic attack.”

“Yeah, I saw,” she said.

“That’s not it,” he said. His hands were clasped between his knees, tightly holding to each other. Maybe to steady them, but it made no difference. Instead of his hands, his whole body shook, rocking under the influence of adrenaline.

He probably saw the look on her face, realized that his attempt at humor had fallen more than a little flat, and looked back down at her feet. “You never asked why I stopped playing hockey.”

She shrugged. “You never asked why I had nothing but the clothes I was wearing.”

He gave a conciliatory nod.

“I thought it was just a career choice,” she said.

“Maybe I thought it was.”

She stood over him in silence, watching him shake. Somewhere outside the doors, she could hear the vaguest hint of the argument between Phil and Wildwing, as the human slowly came to the realization that a plane had nearly obliterated his office.

“I don’t… really remember it,” Winterwing said, haltingly, bringing her attention back to the room. “I have this reconstruction in my head, but it’s all from after. Someone recorded it. I don’t remember. I just crumple and don’t move. It’s funny, when you watch it. It doesn’t look real. Asshole smashed me right into the goal post to full speed. Helmet did nothing,” he gestured to the back of his head. “Tanya guessed because she saw the medicom scan. There’s an impact fracture and three spots where they drilled holes in my skull.”

Emily had never heard any of this before. Dabble had still played, Dabble had been playing on the afternoon when Emily had met her. There had never, in her time with the two siblings, been an invitation or even a hint that Winterwing had ever played himself.

“Back there’s where your brain processes vision, when I woke up I literally couldn’t see straight,” he said, then let out a noise of frustration and ran fingers through his hair. “We have both nearly died several times since then and none of that has given me panic attacks.”

She sat down on the bench beside him and leaned against his shaking arm. It was the only thing she could think to do.

She did not tell him that he could back out of the hockey, because she did not know if he could. Not without sliding back into the team’s suspicion. He already knew that. That was why he had even tried it again at all. He was supposed to be integrating. They both were.

He shifted. “I just-It doesn’t make any sense,” he said at last, gripping at the feathers on his neck in frustration. “I’m afraid of something I don’t even remember. I woke up a week later and had no idea why I was even there.”

“Dunno. But you’re in good company,” she gave her chest a little thump.

Winterwing looked at her with an anguish that she had never seen before. “But that’s different. It took surgery but I recovered. Yours is permanent.”

She took his cheeks between her hands and said firmly. “No, this is permanent too.” He tried to grasp her wrists to pull them away, and she may have, just for an instant, answered with a slight sting where his fingers touched. He did not let go, but he did still, his full attention finally on her.

“But maybe it can be controlled a bit, like the food, right?” Emily said. She stood up, taking his hands with her and implying to follow. “Come on, first step is probably getting you out of all that.”

“Shouldn’t we?” he asked, looking over a shoulder towards the locker room door, implying the disaster scene beyond on the ice. Retrieving the Aerowing and bringing it back into the hangar was going to be a priority, it could not be left as it was.

“Fuck ‘em,” Emily shrugged. “They never even called us to let us know it happened.”

Winterwing seemed to struggle with remaining upright during their short journey down into the Pond’s lower floors. He did not immediately begin ripping off gear once they had returned to his room, as she expected him to. Rather, he slumped down onto his bed, sitting on the edge and leaning heavily on his knees, as he had done in the locker room above.

Emily made sure the door was locked behind her, and then turned her attention to him.

As she walked over to assist in removing the team colors and padding, Winterwing instead threaded his arms under hers, pulling her closer to him, and rested his head against her stomach. He said nothing, and held her there tightly. He was still shaking, she could feel it again, now more obvious through ragged breaths he took.

“He looks like me,” Winterwing said. “Like I did.”

“Wildwing?” she asked, thoughtlessly.

“I didn’t want to remember that,” he said, voice distant.

She stood over him, awkward, and rested her own hands on his shoulders. They weren’t right though, there was still a jersey and padding that gave him a bulk that didn’t fit. She shifted instead to playing her fingers through his loose hair. The impression the Deep sent her was still there, that taste of featherdust, though now it was pierced with something bitter and biting.

Emily’s fingers brushed his scalp as she played through the hair, and it was difficult not to let her mind catch on what he had told her. Was that flat spot the fracture, was that bump a scar. But as she focused, that other sensation came to the fore. The one the suggested that however solid she thought a skull to be, it was actually quite malleable. That bone could be as soft and fragile as a weave of cloth. That the skin could be torn like paper, and a blow with an iron bar was overkill. All she had to do was press a little too hard, and her fingers would push in as easily as if he were made of dough.

She was sure of it.

Winterwing shifted under her hands, and she snatched them away, remembering herself. He looked up at her, and Emily was sure that he knew. He must have known, somehow, the ugly pattern of her straying mind. He was the one person not afraid of her and he was going to find her as disgusting as the rest of them did.

“You’re beautiful,” he said, almost mystified. And the phrase was so counter to her thoughts, that she stood frozen in the clash between them, hands hovering over his head, confused and attempting to bridge the gap.

“I-” he started to say something, and then pulled away. “Fuck, I’m so stupid.” He slumped forward, elbows resting on thighs, and closed his eyes tightly, as if trying to push out a sound only he could hear.

“Come on,” she said again, pulling at the collar of the jersey. “Let’s get this off.”

He pushed her hands away, again threading his arms around her. His fingers slipped under her shirt, climbing up her back.

“What?” she asked, amused. “Like that?”

Winterwing looked down, as if just recalling what he was wearing, and then back up at her. “You’ve never thought about it?”

“No,” she said, perhaps uttering the most unconvincing lie of her life.