It was four days after their confrontation with Asteroth when Winterwing’s communicator beeped, a ping from Tanya. He stared at it stupidly, unsure what it was supposed to mean. He knew that someone was going to come collect him eventually. They would insist that the mission, whatever it was now, recommence. It wasn’t Tanya he was expecting to make that call, but it was maybe most logical that it would be. No one else had much use for him, and she had far too much to do. With his book of poetry set permanently aside, perhaps she had created a new task for him.

He sent an acknowledgment and pulled his aching body out of bed, and went about trying to find reasonably clean clothing to present himself in. As he assembled himself he mused that he almost needn’t have bothered—Tanya was so disinterested in appearance when she was busy she would hardly have noticed if he had simply arrived in the bloody remains of his ruined shirt.

He paused before tapping the control panel for the door, thinking to himself for a moment, before looking over his shoulder at Emily, now shamelessly taking up the space in the bed he had left.

“Tell me if anyone bothers you,” he said. Once again, under the self-delusion that he would be able to do anything about it. She had a brow furrowed in worry, but said nothing as he walked out.

The long corridors of the Pond had been behaving. Winterwing walked gingerly, though he knew if one of the strange monsters chose to appear again, whatever pace he set was not going to be enough.

He arrived at Tanya’s lab without incident, and it was only when the door closed behind him that he realized that he had walked into an ambush.

Tanya was in her usual place, leaning over a bench and fussing over a mess of wires as she did. Between himself and her, Wildwing and Mallory had firmly planted themselves in his path. They had arrived dressed for the occasion, wearing their armor in lieu of anything comfortable, though they had been kind enough to not have their weapons drawn. Mallory was her ever-vigilant self, an implied threat. Wildwing, by contrast, was having a difficult time pretending at his posture of control and calm. He looked haggard and ready to collapse.

This was going to be the confrontation that he knew was coming. Nosedive had promised him that Wildwing wasn’t going to let it go. That Wildwing would decide they didn’t get a chance after all.

“So, you’re ordering around my team now,” Wildwing said.

“That’s not what happened,” Winterwing replied.

“You don’t get to demand access to our equipment like that.”

Winterwing shouldn’t have said anything, but there was something in the tone that made a connection in his brain buzz with irritation, and he could not help himself. “I do if I have to come rescue you again.”

Mallory cut in “Maybe if you hadn’t distracted Nosedive-”

“Distracted? I distracted a teenager so a bunch of adults couldn’t handle their mission? That’s your accusation?”

“That’s what you are. A distraction. All you seem do is take up space and time.”

At this point all sense left Winterwing, and he ripped off his shirt, pulling it over his head. The scar left by the oily monster, so deep the medicom had to grow new skin and muscle for him, blazed for the room to see. It was healing, but the skin was thin, bright red, and itched furiously. He felt ridiculous, and yet it had effectively silenced the room.

“This is going to happen again,” Winterwing declared, “the very least you could do, if you can’t actually offer any protection, and you also haven’t decided to execute me for ‘taking up’ your space and time, is to fucking let me try to defend myself.”

Mallory appeared ready to continue the argument, and Wildwing’s hand landed on her shoulder.

“You can’t be serious,” she turned her furious gaze up at Wildwing instead. He was quiet for a long, tense moment, before exhaling irritably, his posture deflating ever so slightly more as he did.

“He’s right,” Wildwing conceeded.

“Are you out of your mind ?”

Wildwing didn’t respond to her directly. “You could have stayed behind, when Nosedive came after us.”

“Would you have let them go alone?” Winterwing asked.

“Of course not.”

“Well, there we are.”

Wildwing’s silent scrutinizing continued for a long moment more, before he said “Why did Dragaunus bring you here?”

Winterwing grumbled. “Answer doesn’t change no matter how many times you ask me. I don’t know.”

“There’s a reason. Maybe it’s an accident if it’s anyone else, not if its you.”

“All I did was help someone,” Winterwing insisted. “She was going to die of exposure on that road. You wouldn’t have left her there, either.” He said it with a confidence that he couldn’t explain.

Wildwing made a noise of acknowledgment, and then shook his head. “Put your shirt back on.”

Winterwing did, with much less drama.

“I suppose I need to make sure she’s still in the building,” Wildwing sighed.

Winterwing paused in fussing at his hem. “You haven’t checked?”

“I-” for a moment, what should have been anger in Wildwing’s face looked like confusion, instead. “I must have.” Even more bizarrely, no one else remarked on the hesitation.

Wildwing looked back over his shoulder to Tanya. “Find something to fit him, when you get a moment.” Then, directed back to Winterwing. “These things aren't for… ‘self defense’. Everything in this base is in service of the mission, which is removing Dragaunus. If you’re going to be using our resources then you’re following that directive. Can you do that? Even if it wasn’t your home he destroyed?”

Winterwing gave his best sardonic smile. “Would you believe he doesn’t seem to like me that much?”

Wildwing was not disarmed by this attempt at humor. “I don’t trust you, I’m… I can’t make myself do it,” he gestured to Tanya again. “But you have a convincing character witness,” then to Mallory. “And I’m not the one you’re going to have to impress.”

There was something in those words that Winterwing could not quite glean the meaning of, like there was part of the conversation that had occurred before he had arrived, and its contents had been removed from the context.

Mallory made an irritated noise.

“So, you report to the two of them,” Wildwing concluded. “They’re going to decide if you’re on the team, not me.”

“Well, looks like I’ll be taking up more of your space and time.” Winterwing said.

“You’re going to have a few more scars to match if you keep that attitude up,” Mallory responded, with false sweetness.

Winterwing returned to his quarters no worse for wear, with the assurance that he would be told when they were ready to outfit him, and the explicit understanding that his schedule now belonged to Mallory’s whims. Whether or not she would make good on the threat of scars, he was not sure, but he did feel confident he was not going to enjoy the experience.

Still, theatrics aside, he knew he was right. There was going to be more trouble than just an angry monster, or even an angry lizard, and it was going to be better to have some protection than to be an afterthought.

In the time since he had left, Emily had gotten up, and had shifted to his couch to watch the little annoying entertainment box called a television.

The door closed behind him, and he leaned against it, exhaling and thinking, and they shared a moment of considering each other from across the room, the little television blaring.

“They don’t know,” he said aloud. He looked to his desk, where her communicator had been sitting for the last four days. “How is it possible they don’t know?” They must have checked on its location, more than once. They had to know it was here, and that it had not moved from that spot.

Surely, someone should have asked why it was in his room. He was convinced that was the confrontation that he had been lured into, yet Emily had barely been an afterthought in the conversation.

“Maybe they don’t care,” she shrugged.

“They spent weeks accounting for every breath and step you and I made,” he said. “After their friend... they should be watching us more closely, not less.”

“Maybe they’re using it to listen in,” she said, flatly.

“Great, thanks for that,” he scrubbed at his face with his hands, and tried to ignore the itching of the scar. “They were so sure we were conspiring to murder them all, why aren’t they breaking the door down to accuse us?”

“Do… you want them to?”

“Of course not,” Winterwing said, making sure the door was locked, and then walking across the room to sit next to her. “Something’s wrong.”

She gave a snort.

He leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees, and studied the seams of the floor. “All that diligence and vigilance. The whole thing breaks down if Wildwing’s not calling the shots, no one steps up to fill the void.”

Emily let out a groan that suggested boredom with the topic, lying across the couch and resting her feet on his shoulders. “Who cares? No one’s trying to get blood from me, no one’s talking about me like I’m not in the room, no one’s asking stupid questions.”

Winterwing responded with a sideways glance. “It’s going to matter if he doesn’t regain control. Eventually it’s going to be a problem.”

Emily exhaled, exasperated. “Then let me enjoy my day of not being hassled before he does.”