fic: "These Wings, Taken" by Tielan [slave challenge]
Title: These Wings, Taken
Author: Tielan
Category: angst, whump, AU
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: None
Summary: John would fight them, and go down fighting if he had to. Disobedience, rebellion, sabotage - anything.
These Wings, Taken
John rested his head against the bars of his cell and breathed shallowly of the scents of dry dust, unwashed men, and despair.
He closed his eyes and concentrated, trying to overcome the Binding spell. His body trembled and his shoulders itched, the skin over them twitching as though in a brief spasm of the muscles, but that was all.
After nearly three moons of trying and failing, he was accustomed to failure..
Whatever Larrin had used to Bind him, it was very effective.
"You've been fun, John," she'd said, running her fingers through his feathers with something that might even have been regret, "but I have to think of my people. And I can't just let you run back home and tell them we're here..."
In that moment of anger and helpless realisation, terror had clogged John's throat - not for himself, but for his people. If Larrin's people knew how to bind one Atlantean, then they knew how to bind all of them, and his people needed to know. They needed to be told, to be warned, or else more of them would turn up here in the hammering sun and bitter dust of the Derestria markets as the humans moved into Atlantean lands.
So far, he hadn't found any way to get a message out.
Oh, John hadn't given up hope. There was always the possibility that someone would carry the news back home - an Atlantean male for sale in the Derestria markets. Only a possiblity, but even a hint of such news would bring someone out to look for him, would let the others know that someone had taken a Lantean and Bound their wings.
Caldwell, Lorne, and Bates, at least, would know to be wary, even if he suspected the priority of the others would be to get him out of there.
"Hey, birdman! You gonna spread those wings of yourn and get us outta here?"
John kept his body casual, even though his first instinct was to stiffen and find a wall against which to plant his back. In the earliest days of his capture and sale to the Derestria, he hadn't mingled with the other captives, too focused on his own freedom, on trying to persuade his captors to send a message to Atlantis because this was a mistake, had to be a mistake.
They'd taken it badly.
'Too fine and mighty for us,' was the conclusion the other slaves had made. And by the time John realised that he was a target, it was too late.
"I don't have wings," he said, not turning to face the taunter. Instead, he ran a finger around the inside of the slave collar that circled his neck and the neck of every other slave in this compound. "As you can see."
"Yeah, but you got those pretty feathery things tattooed on your back. That means you got 'em, you just ain't using 'em."
It meant his wings were held in potentia - there and not-there. Rodney had claimed it was a variation of the Charadingah Proposition - that the act of being observed changed not only the observer but the object being observed, and that when their wings were in potentia, there was a form of quantum physics acting on their bodies in a pocket of localised space-beneath-reality.
John didn't bother with an explanation for the slave. This one - Dorek - made sneering comments about John's wings and his people and the size of his balls that were probably calculated to make John's fists itch, but that was better than some of the others, who looked like they wanted to get their hands on him for entirely different purposes.
"I heard all the Lanteans got wings - even the women," someone else piped up. Beyond, in the other cells, the men had fallen silent, watching the latest round of 'bait the Lantean.'
"Be interesting riding one of them Lantean women," laughed another. "Soft thighs, soft ass, and those pretty wings rubbing you as you go at her..."
"Ain't no Lantean women here," said the first man - the one who'd started it all with the call to the 'birdman.' "Pity we can't make do with a Lantean man... That ass of his is pretty enough. I bet it rides real easy..."
Laughter was a garish thing in the cells, echoing through the bare-walled prison with ugly undertones. It closed in on him, twisting his muscles into tense knots, and doing nothing to ease his state of mind.
John let his eyes drift out the door, resting on the square of sunlight that poured in through the open entryway and not allowing himself to respond. Their taunts were calculated to make him react, to make him revolt. They couldn't touch him physically, but they could yank his chain.
That first day in the Derestria pens, he'd been in more fights than he had in the last two years in Atlantis.
The bruises from those fights still ached, and if his actions had won him a separate cell to the other slaves, it hadn't earned him any friends among the men. All the more since the Derestrian Slavemaster had taken one look at him, and informed his aides, "He'll sell for double the rest of them - triple if the ladies get a good, long look at him. Keep him healthy and this sale will make this season for us."
And after today? After he was sold to the highest bidder, one more piece of flesh in a region where slavery and serfdom were the norm?
Somehow, he doubted that he'd be set to work in a garden somewhere.
The bar of light that fell across the stone floor suddenly darkened with the shadow of one of the Slavemaster's aides. "Time for the show," he said, blue eyes gleaming with anticipation as he looked at John. "You're up for sale, Feathers. Better hope she's nice."
Out in the yards, John heard the noises of the crowd muting slightly as he stepped out into the sun. Instinctively, he murmured the syllables of the cantrip that should have triggered his wings, felt the twisting itch of his shoulderblades as innate magic struggled against the Bindings...and lost.
Frustration flooded him. Overhead, the azure sky mocked him with its gleaming curve and his throat closed up in anger and grief.
A moment later, the fitted collar around this throat was suddenly a chokehold, and as he gasped for air, he wondered if they'd felt him cast the spell and were about to punish him.
A moment later, rough fingers slid inside the collar's rim, clipping long iron rods to the links that ran around the outside. Most slaves were carried in a chain gang, but it seemed a Lantean was too precious to risk with the others.
John fought back a gag at the reek of the guard's stale sweat and body odor, and schooled his expression to blankness as the man stepped back, his features chiselled and cold. "He's in."
"Take him out to the auctionsss..." The aide trailed off, his face lifting to the sky, his eyes wide and wild.
All around him, other faces turned upwards and John jerked around, nearly throttling himself as the collar caught on his larynx. He saw the cloud of men spiralling down from the sky, towards the slave yards, and thought his rescue had come...
Then John saw the wings.
Lanteans had theorised that there were other winged races. Elizabeth and Carson had once debated late into the night on the possibility, their cups emptying and refilling as they laid out the reasoning and possibilities of it all, while Rodney mocked and John tossed questions in just to watch them scramble for answers.
They'd been right, if only they knew it.
John watched as the leathery wings rose and fell in powerful downbeats, his mouth dry as the dirt in which he stood as they circled over the slavemarkets looking for somewhere to land, an awesome and terrifying display of power and strength.
One of the slave aides was running through the crowd, waving over at an empty knoll, whose weedy grass stalks showed the signs of people's passage, but which, for some reason or another, hadn't yet been utilised by the Derestria markets.
Like everyone else, John watched as the winged men maneuvred expertly over to the knoll, their wingbeats slowing as they allowed gravity to claim them, dipping lower and lower against the blazing sky. Dust billowed up in a maelstrom of air currents, and people turned their faces away, but John watched through lowered lashes, familiar with the dirt and dust of swift passage through air, and saw the leader's wings close up, neat as folding linen, before he dropped to the ground. A multitude of long braids swirled around his shoulders as he landed, light and graceful as any feline.
Someone breathed a curse, and there were murmurs of fear and awe in the crowd. A moment later, not just the aide but the Slavemaster himself hurried over to the newcomers, their gestures unctuous, their expressions obsequeious. The leader stepped forward and spread his wings out in a magnificent display - at least six yards from tip to tip - before corners of his mouth curved beneath the trimmed shortbeard, and the wings vanished, to a chorus of awed surprise and astonishment.
John's heart was pounding in his chest, so loud that it seemed the guards must hear it.
Even the Derestrian markets had heard of the Lanteans; yet John had never heard of a people like this - winged, with magic like the Lanteans, yet so vastly unlike them.
"Didn't think the Pegasi would turn up this year,"said one of the handlers, softly.
"Don't think anyone did."
"All right, enough staring," said the guard, harshly. "Take him along." A moment later, the collar jerked John out of his reverie and he was half-dragged, half shoved along the pathway towards the auction blocks.
He didn't see where he was going at first, too intent to do more than wonder at the winged men - the Pegasi.
Who were these people? How far had they flown to reach the Derestria markets? And if they had both the wings and the magic of the Ancients, why hadn't Atlantis ever heard of them before?
Would they recognise John as one of the same type as them? Could he apply to them for freedom?
A jerk on the collar nearly throttled him.
"Pay attention!"
John swallowed hard, wished he could do something with this hands, gritted his teeth and focused on where he was putting his feet.
His later memories of the actual slave auction were blurred. The gleaming midday sun burned his eyes and his skin, the leather was unpleasantly sticky around his throat and chafed his skin. And the endless noise of the auction crowded in on him, somehow worse than the murmurs and taunts of the other slaves.
He remembered the moment they push-pulled him into the selling arena, though. He remembered the avid gazes, the impersonal expressions that studied him from within the comfort of fine gowns and expensive cloth.
And John kept his gaze blank and stared directly ahead.
"Ladies and consorts, for your delectation this year at the Derestrian markets, we have a unique prize. Captured far from his home, for your entertainment and pleasure - a true Lantean!"
A thready note of interest rose among the crowd, and heads tilted in discussion and conversation.
"He might not look like much right now, but cleaned up, he'll add distinction to your house - and with appropriate training, he could be taught many other things." The auctioneer's voice took on an ugly leer. "Note the tattoos on his back? Ladies and consorts, this is the real thing, I assure you. And, in case there's any doubt... Bregathonzwy!"
John's itching shoulderblades suddenly blossomed into a relief so strong it hurt as his wings burst from his back. He spread them automatically, sending up a storm of dust that drew gasps and cries from the crowd. They felt a little strange after being kept bound for weeks, but they were out and free and in working condition.
A tight, fierce grin started on his lips.
His wings were free.
A flex whipped his wingtip primaries past the faces of the two men holding the rods on either side of him, and they stumbled back, letting go of the control rods. A moment later, his wingtips slashed at the faces of the other two guards and they fell back as well. He grunted at the jarring sensation as they dropped their leashes to the ground, but pain was temporary - freedom would be permanent.
He leaped for the skies...
...and nearly broke his leg as he gained no more height than a few yards, then crashed to the ground.
The pain of the landing was minor. A mere speck in the midst of the burning bitterness he felt as he drew his right wing around and stared at the missing row of feathers, now nothing more than a row of clipped shafts.
They'd clipped his wings while he'd slept.
They'd clipped him.
As he ran his fingers across the neatly-cut ends of his primaries' shafts, the first flush was of disbelief and anger.
Then it slammed into him with all the hollowing shock of loss.
He wouldn't fly again until the next molt when his wings shed their feathers and grew back in. If whoever bought him remembered to clip him when he molted, he'd never fly again.
Without the primary row, he'd never make flight. Oh, he could jump off a cliff and use the leading edge of his wings to drift, but powered flight - that first heady leap off the ground in defiance of gravity and the ground - that was gone.
Thunder echoed in his ears, and there was a whistling wind shrieking in his mind. It took him a moment to realise the thunder was the sound of his heartbeat pounding in his chest, and the gale was the rasp of his breath between his lips.
They'd clipped him.
Hands dragged him to his feet, and he let them at first, giving no resistance. Only when he'd found his feet did he leap, lashing out with fist and wing before they could get a firm grip on the collar rods. If they'd done it to him, then they'd do it to others of his people - and if they were going to enslave a Lantean, clip his wings, deny him freedom, then John was going to teach them the cost.
The rods dragged at the collar, nearly choking him, but John didn't care. He got a firm grip on one and swept it out with all the force he could muster, watching men fold over in pain as he swung and jabbed and buffeted them.
Around the selling arena, he glimpsed faces - shocked, scared, amused, avid - watching him fight, and felt a grim satisfaction.
His muscles ached, and his bruises protested, but John fought on, using every fighting trick and tactic he'd ever learned. The stubbornness his father had deplored and which his friends had shook their heads over was his ally now, not his enemy. He wouldn't go quietly, he wouldn't submit.
Whoever was thinking about buying him would think carefully after this. John would fight them, and go down fighting if he had to. Disobedience, rebellion, sabotage - anything. If he was never going to be free again, if they were going to bind him with spells and clip his wings, then he was going to give them a reason never to do it to any other Lantean, ever.
If it kept his people safe, he wouldn't regret a moment of it.
Most of the guards were down and the others were keeping their distance. John spun as sharp movement caught the corner of his eye, and the fist-sized sandbag caught him on the cheek.
He stumbled, dizzied and hurt, then staggered as his wings vanished, unbalancing him.
A guard came at him, tackled him with all the gentleness of a brick wall, and he tried to lash out, but the fist got his jaw first, a single agony before everything went black.
--
Author: Tielan
Category: angst, whump, AU
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: None
Summary: John would fight them, and go down fighting if he had to. Disobedience, rebellion, sabotage - anything.
These Wings, Taken
John rested his head against the bars of his cell and breathed shallowly of the scents of dry dust, unwashed men, and despair.
He closed his eyes and concentrated, trying to overcome the Binding spell. His body trembled and his shoulders itched, the skin over them twitching as though in a brief spasm of the muscles, but that was all.
After nearly three moons of trying and failing, he was accustomed to failure..
Whatever Larrin had used to Bind him, it was very effective.
"You've been fun, John," she'd said, running her fingers through his feathers with something that might even have been regret, "but I have to think of my people. And I can't just let you run back home and tell them we're here..."
In that moment of anger and helpless realisation, terror had clogged John's throat - not for himself, but for his people. If Larrin's people knew how to bind one Atlantean, then they knew how to bind all of them, and his people needed to know. They needed to be told, to be warned, or else more of them would turn up here in the hammering sun and bitter dust of the Derestria markets as the humans moved into Atlantean lands.
So far, he hadn't found any way to get a message out.
Oh, John hadn't given up hope. There was always the possibility that someone would carry the news back home - an Atlantean male for sale in the Derestria markets. Only a possiblity, but even a hint of such news would bring someone out to look for him, would let the others know that someone had taken a Lantean and Bound their wings.
Caldwell, Lorne, and Bates, at least, would know to be wary, even if he suspected the priority of the others would be to get him out of there.
"Hey, birdman! You gonna spread those wings of yourn and get us outta here?"
John kept his body casual, even though his first instinct was to stiffen and find a wall against which to plant his back. In the earliest days of his capture and sale to the Derestria, he hadn't mingled with the other captives, too focused on his own freedom, on trying to persuade his captors to send a message to Atlantis because this was a mistake, had to be a mistake.
They'd taken it badly.
'Too fine and mighty for us,' was the conclusion the other slaves had made. And by the time John realised that he was a target, it was too late.
"I don't have wings," he said, not turning to face the taunter. Instead, he ran a finger around the inside of the slave collar that circled his neck and the neck of every other slave in this compound. "As you can see."
"Yeah, but you got those pretty feathery things tattooed on your back. That means you got 'em, you just ain't using 'em."
It meant his wings were held in potentia - there and not-there. Rodney had claimed it was a variation of the Charadingah Proposition - that the act of being observed changed not only the observer but the object being observed, and that when their wings were in potentia, there was a form of quantum physics acting on their bodies in a pocket of localised space-beneath-reality.
John didn't bother with an explanation for the slave. This one - Dorek - made sneering comments about John's wings and his people and the size of his balls that were probably calculated to make John's fists itch, but that was better than some of the others, who looked like they wanted to get their hands on him for entirely different purposes.
"I heard all the Lanteans got wings - even the women," someone else piped up. Beyond, in the other cells, the men had fallen silent, watching the latest round of 'bait the Lantean.'
"Be interesting riding one of them Lantean women," laughed another. "Soft thighs, soft ass, and those pretty wings rubbing you as you go at her..."
"Ain't no Lantean women here," said the first man - the one who'd started it all with the call to the 'birdman.' "Pity we can't make do with a Lantean man... That ass of his is pretty enough. I bet it rides real easy..."
Laughter was a garish thing in the cells, echoing through the bare-walled prison with ugly undertones. It closed in on him, twisting his muscles into tense knots, and doing nothing to ease his state of mind.
John let his eyes drift out the door, resting on the square of sunlight that poured in through the open entryway and not allowing himself to respond. Their taunts were calculated to make him react, to make him revolt. They couldn't touch him physically, but they could yank his chain.
That first day in the Derestria pens, he'd been in more fights than he had in the last two years in Atlantis.
The bruises from those fights still ached, and if his actions had won him a separate cell to the other slaves, it hadn't earned him any friends among the men. All the more since the Derestrian Slavemaster had taken one look at him, and informed his aides, "He'll sell for double the rest of them - triple if the ladies get a good, long look at him. Keep him healthy and this sale will make this season for us."
And after today? After he was sold to the highest bidder, one more piece of flesh in a region where slavery and serfdom were the norm?
Somehow, he doubted that he'd be set to work in a garden somewhere.
The bar of light that fell across the stone floor suddenly darkened with the shadow of one of the Slavemaster's aides. "Time for the show," he said, blue eyes gleaming with anticipation as he looked at John. "You're up for sale, Feathers. Better hope she's nice."
Out in the yards, John heard the noises of the crowd muting slightly as he stepped out into the sun. Instinctively, he murmured the syllables of the cantrip that should have triggered his wings, felt the twisting itch of his shoulderblades as innate magic struggled against the Bindings...and lost.
Frustration flooded him. Overhead, the azure sky mocked him with its gleaming curve and his throat closed up in anger and grief.
A moment later, the fitted collar around this throat was suddenly a chokehold, and as he gasped for air, he wondered if they'd felt him cast the spell and were about to punish him.
A moment later, rough fingers slid inside the collar's rim, clipping long iron rods to the links that ran around the outside. Most slaves were carried in a chain gang, but it seemed a Lantean was too precious to risk with the others.
John fought back a gag at the reek of the guard's stale sweat and body odor, and schooled his expression to blankness as the man stepped back, his features chiselled and cold. "He's in."
"Take him out to the auctionsss..." The aide trailed off, his face lifting to the sky, his eyes wide and wild.
All around him, other faces turned upwards and John jerked around, nearly throttling himself as the collar caught on his larynx. He saw the cloud of men spiralling down from the sky, towards the slave yards, and thought his rescue had come...
Then John saw the wings.
Lanteans had theorised that there were other winged races. Elizabeth and Carson had once debated late into the night on the possibility, their cups emptying and refilling as they laid out the reasoning and possibilities of it all, while Rodney mocked and John tossed questions in just to watch them scramble for answers.
They'd been right, if only they knew it.
John watched as the leathery wings rose and fell in powerful downbeats, his mouth dry as the dirt in which he stood as they circled over the slavemarkets looking for somewhere to land, an awesome and terrifying display of power and strength.
One of the slave aides was running through the crowd, waving over at an empty knoll, whose weedy grass stalks showed the signs of people's passage, but which, for some reason or another, hadn't yet been utilised by the Derestria markets.
Like everyone else, John watched as the winged men maneuvred expertly over to the knoll, their wingbeats slowing as they allowed gravity to claim them, dipping lower and lower against the blazing sky. Dust billowed up in a maelstrom of air currents, and people turned their faces away, but John watched through lowered lashes, familiar with the dirt and dust of swift passage through air, and saw the leader's wings close up, neat as folding linen, before he dropped to the ground. A multitude of long braids swirled around his shoulders as he landed, light and graceful as any feline.
Someone breathed a curse, and there were murmurs of fear and awe in the crowd. A moment later, not just the aide but the Slavemaster himself hurried over to the newcomers, their gestures unctuous, their expressions obsequeious. The leader stepped forward and spread his wings out in a magnificent display - at least six yards from tip to tip - before corners of his mouth curved beneath the trimmed shortbeard, and the wings vanished, to a chorus of awed surprise and astonishment.
John's heart was pounding in his chest, so loud that it seemed the guards must hear it.
Even the Derestrian markets had heard of the Lanteans; yet John had never heard of a people like this - winged, with magic like the Lanteans, yet so vastly unlike them.
"Didn't think the Pegasi would turn up this year,"said one of the handlers, softly.
"Don't think anyone did."
"All right, enough staring," said the guard, harshly. "Take him along." A moment later, the collar jerked John out of his reverie and he was half-dragged, half shoved along the pathway towards the auction blocks.
He didn't see where he was going at first, too intent to do more than wonder at the winged men - the Pegasi.
Who were these people? How far had they flown to reach the Derestria markets? And if they had both the wings and the magic of the Ancients, why hadn't Atlantis ever heard of them before?
Would they recognise John as one of the same type as them? Could he apply to them for freedom?
A jerk on the collar nearly throttled him.
"Pay attention!"
John swallowed hard, wished he could do something with this hands, gritted his teeth and focused on where he was putting his feet.
His later memories of the actual slave auction were blurred. The gleaming midday sun burned his eyes and his skin, the leather was unpleasantly sticky around his throat and chafed his skin. And the endless noise of the auction crowded in on him, somehow worse than the murmurs and taunts of the other slaves.
He remembered the moment they push-pulled him into the selling arena, though. He remembered the avid gazes, the impersonal expressions that studied him from within the comfort of fine gowns and expensive cloth.
And John kept his gaze blank and stared directly ahead.
"Ladies and consorts, for your delectation this year at the Derestrian markets, we have a unique prize. Captured far from his home, for your entertainment and pleasure - a true Lantean!"
A thready note of interest rose among the crowd, and heads tilted in discussion and conversation.
"He might not look like much right now, but cleaned up, he'll add distinction to your house - and with appropriate training, he could be taught many other things." The auctioneer's voice took on an ugly leer. "Note the tattoos on his back? Ladies and consorts, this is the real thing, I assure you. And, in case there's any doubt... Bregathonzwy!"
John's itching shoulderblades suddenly blossomed into a relief so strong it hurt as his wings burst from his back. He spread them automatically, sending up a storm of dust that drew gasps and cries from the crowd. They felt a little strange after being kept bound for weeks, but they were out and free and in working condition.
A tight, fierce grin started on his lips.
His wings were free.
A flex whipped his wingtip primaries past the faces of the two men holding the rods on either side of him, and they stumbled back, letting go of the control rods. A moment later, his wingtips slashed at the faces of the other two guards and they fell back as well. He grunted at the jarring sensation as they dropped their leashes to the ground, but pain was temporary - freedom would be permanent.
He leaped for the skies...
...and nearly broke his leg as he gained no more height than a few yards, then crashed to the ground.
The pain of the landing was minor. A mere speck in the midst of the burning bitterness he felt as he drew his right wing around and stared at the missing row of feathers, now nothing more than a row of clipped shafts.
They'd clipped his wings while he'd slept.
They'd clipped him.
As he ran his fingers across the neatly-cut ends of his primaries' shafts, the first flush was of disbelief and anger.
Then it slammed into him with all the hollowing shock of loss.
He wouldn't fly again until the next molt when his wings shed their feathers and grew back in. If whoever bought him remembered to clip him when he molted, he'd never fly again.
Without the primary row, he'd never make flight. Oh, he could jump off a cliff and use the leading edge of his wings to drift, but powered flight - that first heady leap off the ground in defiance of gravity and the ground - that was gone.
Thunder echoed in his ears, and there was a whistling wind shrieking in his mind. It took him a moment to realise the thunder was the sound of his heartbeat pounding in his chest, and the gale was the rasp of his breath between his lips.
They'd clipped him.
Hands dragged him to his feet, and he let them at first, giving no resistance. Only when he'd found his feet did he leap, lashing out with fist and wing before they could get a firm grip on the collar rods. If they'd done it to him, then they'd do it to others of his people - and if they were going to enslave a Lantean, clip his wings, deny him freedom, then John was going to teach them the cost.
The rods dragged at the collar, nearly choking him, but John didn't care. He got a firm grip on one and swept it out with all the force he could muster, watching men fold over in pain as he swung and jabbed and buffeted them.
Around the selling arena, he glimpsed faces - shocked, scared, amused, avid - watching him fight, and felt a grim satisfaction.
His muscles ached, and his bruises protested, but John fought on, using every fighting trick and tactic he'd ever learned. The stubbornness his father had deplored and which his friends had shook their heads over was his ally now, not his enemy. He wouldn't go quietly, he wouldn't submit.
Whoever was thinking about buying him would think carefully after this. John would fight them, and go down fighting if he had to. Disobedience, rebellion, sabotage - anything. If he was never going to be free again, if they were going to bind him with spells and clip his wings, then he was going to give them a reason never to do it to any other Lantean, ever.
If it kept his people safe, he wouldn't regret a moment of it.
Most of the guards were down and the others were keeping their distance. John spun as sharp movement caught the corner of his eye, and the fist-sized sandbag caught him on the cheek.
He stumbled, dizzied and hurt, then staggered as his wings vanished, unbalancing him.
A guard came at him, tackled him with all the gentleness of a brick wall, and he tried to lash out, but the fist got his jaw first, a single agony before everything went black.
--