Severance's poison, the static, the cool whisper and the lie that the connection had killed him, all of it burned off the thread at once. North's voice came down the resurrected bond from somewhere already far away and going farther, and it was one unfinished word.Brother….
Then the thread where North had always been went quiet.
Fly had gotten to his knees in human form, his arm swollen and screaming, but he ignored it and caught North's heavy, slack body, folding down over him on the shattered stone. He was warm. His chest still rose and fell. His heart still beat under Fly's palm, steady and strong, butThanwas gone. The grief was a physical weight, crushing his chest, stealing his breath. Fly held his head in his lap and he made the same sounds that had tornout of him only one other time, a raw, ragged thing that was half sob and half denial.
Fuck, Than! Why did you do that? What were you thinking?But Fly knew what Than was thinking, exactly what Fly would have been thinking if the roles were reversed. Save his brother. That was it.
Now he had to carry this in a head that never forgot a fucking thing, a heart that was full of a friendship that had grown into a foundation he wasn't sure he could do without.
"Goddamn you," he whispered to Than's frozen expression, his open, vacant brown eyes, his own gut sinking like a stone. He wasn't sure who he was cursing. Maybe he'd never know. He'd never seen death up close, and it ripped into him with cruel claws. Those eyes, so like Bear's. How was he going to face Than’s brother? His mom? Ayla and Grandfather Ray. Oh, God. His throat tightened into a knot of dread, his jaw clenching. Shamrock and Bolt would be devastated.
He had to live with the fact that North had died for him. It should have been him lying there, his soul ripped out. But he was the Visionary, and he had to survive or all of it came apart. His resolve tightened. Just like Mei, Than's death would mean something. He would carry it to his dying day.
Their anchor was gone. The solid foundation under all of them, the man who always knew where they were, ripped out of the world in a single breath. Fly reached through the bond on instinct, the way he'd reached a thousand times and always found North waiting. This time he got the others. A wave of it slammed back into him. Anger. Sorrow, and under both, hot and rising, the need for retribution.
Above them, Lechuza screamed.
She screamed the pain Fly couldn't, the howl trapped in his own chest with nowhere to go. She let it out for all of them.
She plummeted from the sky with the sound tearing out of her, the white owl falling like an avenging blade, all her grief turned to a single descending point. She hit Severance where it stood, gloating over its work. Her great, razor-sharp talons extended, sank into the vile assassin, and she screamed in short bursts against the contemptible lie he was. Flash dropped in beside her a heartbeat later. The eagle took one side, and the owl took the other. The two halves of the union that Severance had tried so hard to break viciously tore the bond-breaker apart between them, and the pieces of it were nothing before they reached the ground.
Null was still there. Null was always going to be there, the patient absence, waiting to take what it could now that the wall was down.
Then all of them felt Twister change.
Fly felt it start before he saw it, felt it come down the thread like the temperature dropping. The medic in him had reached for North's body the way he reached for every wound, and there was no wound to close, no pulse to chase, nothing to do for a man whose soul was already gone, and the helplessness of it broke something loose. His feathers inked over from the chest outward, the place the grief had struck hardest, the pure white going to a deep, predatory black, and the whole team felt the warrior come up where the healer had been. It was the grief of a man who'd held life in his hands his whole career and got there too late this time.
He opened his beak, a low, crushing and final lament, the whole weight of a life and a death inside it, and he drove it into Null. He filled the void. Made it choke. Suffocated it with the abundance of what North had just done, the undeniable fact of a man who had spent his life for his brother. Fly felt the killing-song pour through the bond and into the nothing, and hefelt Null learn what an ending actually was. It collapsed inward under the weight of North, and it was gone.
The same breath that killed Null reached down and closed over North's hollow body. Fly felt the song change in his chest, the crushing finality gentling at the edge, and where North's soul had been torn out, Twister sealed the opening, sealed it against anything that would prey on an empty shell. A desperate, loving act. A medic's last impossible intervention.
The body in Fly's arms went still in a different way, the breathing slowing, the warmth banking down to something held and waiting for Than to come back to it. Twister had killed the void with one-half of his song and saved what was left of North with the other. The black bled back to white, and by the time the swan sank to the cracked stone with nothing left in him to stand on, he was a man again. The loose feathers made a mournful, swishing sound as the wind carried them off. Twister doubled over, covered his face, and wept.
The courtyard went quiet except for his sobbing. Rupture was dust. Severance was scattered on the wind. Null had choked on a soul and ceased. The battle was over, and they'd won it. Fly knelt with his brother's body in his arms and North's last unfinished word still ringing on a thread that strangely thrummed. They'd won, and it was one of the worst days of his life, a sharp, heavy stone in his gut that he already knew was never going to leave.
Twister came to him on his knees, still shaking, and put his hands on Fly's ruined arm without asking. The healing poured in, cool and sure, and the bent bone straightened, the swelling going down under his palms. Twister’s face tightened, pain around his mouth. Fly was reminded of the cost they all endured. Twister's throat worked.
"I couldn't save him." His voice cracked on it. "I had my hands right there, and there was nothing to—" He stopped. "I'm sorry."
Fly pulled him in. He got a fist in the back of Twister's shirt and held him hard, and he was so numb inside that it scared him, a cold that the healing couldn't touch.
"Nathaniel Locklear was my best friend." The words came out rough. "If anyone can survive his soul getting ripped out of him, it's him."
Twister nodded against his shoulder. He pulled back, scrubbed a hand down his face. "I've faced death. I've seen it more times than I can count. But I neverexperiencedit. Not like that." His jaw set. "That fucker Null is one of the worst things I've ever seen."
"Thank you for what you did." Fly meant it down to the bone. "This is all beyond anything we've trained for. But we don't flinch. Ever."
"She was there." Twister said it quietly. Fly waited him out. "Sadie. My wife. When I went black and there was nothing left in me, she was there." His eyes came up, wet and steady. "Everything I do now is for her. I won't rest until we finish this. Hoo-yah."
Fly squeezed his shoulder. "Hoo-yah."
Lechuza came across the damaged courtyard, her face wrecked, and Fly gave her what comfort he had and got to his feet. She didn't say anything. She just wrapped her arms around him and held on, and he let her, and for a moment neither of them moved.
"We won't let his sacrifice be in vain," she whispered.
"No," Fly said. "We won't."
She let him go. Flash came up beside her, his eyes going to North's body on the stone and away again, like he couldn't hold it long.
