Wings of Honor: Deciding Destiny

Chapter 10: Difference

"Marvin!" "Marvin!"
Travers and McManis fell down beside him, going over him.
"Are you okay?" "Oh, you're really fucked up." "Absolute bastard." "Can you stand?"
Marvin didn't even have the chance to respond before McManis and Travers had their arms underneath his shoulders, dragging him out of the cell.
All the breath left me when he managed the strength to look up at me and whisper: "Grace." Then his head slumped.
"Shit!" "Oh fuck! Stay with me, Cap!"
They hoisted him onto my back, holding him secure by hand. Moon and Qibli ran up to me, fear in their eyes.
"Get us up! Get us into the light!" McManus ordered. We immediately started for the stairs.
"The enchanted rock! Do you still have it?" Winter shouted as we passed him.
Hobbling on three feet, I passed it back to Travers, everyone frantically working to try and heal Marvin.
The nervousness ate at me, my breathing constricted and shaky. I couldn't hear his mind, and he was colder than when he was stranded in the Ice Kingdom. I could sense he was hanging on by a thread as it is. But Turtle's rock was reinforcing that string with rope every adding second.
We emerged out into the landing. Still inside the castle, but we could see much better than the scarce torches in the corridors. Travers and McManis were intensely focused on Marvin's health, as was I, but Qibli took charge.
"Okay. You two should go wake up Anemone." He said to Winter and Turtle.
I nodded, looking back at the frail and badly beaten hero who lay on my back. Only now did I notice the tears fogging my vision. I blinked and wiped them away.
They laid him on the ground, supporting him against the wall. Marvin was pale, ghastly so, even with his tan skin as it was. But color and warmth gathered everywhere the rock passed over, and his hopeful but agonized groans took the place of deathly silence. McManis administered Morphine and Epinephrine.
"Come on! Wake up, Marvin!" He forcefully shook his face.
We all held our breaths when he slowly opened his eyes. His pupils were dilated and conveyed terrible pain. I was beginning to feel the dull, stinging aching in my chest and heart. Marvin was broken.
"Where's his items? Marvin's enchanted items?"
I knelt as he fished out his cross. Gently, he raised Marvin's head and slipped the cross around his neck.
It was like a wave of pain struck me. An intense migraine would have taken me to the ground if I hadn't been lying down already. Tears flooded my eyes as I groaned in the same agony Marvin did.
"Oh shit," McManis swore.
But his mind was even worse. It was covered in that all too familiar, sticky darkness, as well as fogged over from pain. His heart was utterly scattered to a degree I couldn't even fathom. It was like he had lost all hope, as he stared with dead eyes.
"I... failed you."
McManis growled. "Alright shut up with that failure shit." He angrily said as he finished bandaging Marvin's wounds. "Failing and doing your best in the situation are not mutually exclusive."
"I abandoned you." Marvin gasped.
I gasped.
"HEY!' McManus made all of us jump. "Quit that thinking right now! You know you had no better choice!"
"I got you hurt."
We all fell silent. All of us stunned at Marvin deadset in his thoughts.
"I..." McManus shook his head, Marvin's darkness beginning to dawn on him. "You had no other choice."
"I failed you."
We all just stared at him, speechless.
Tears flooded my eyes, as I realized the light that I once saw burning so brightly in him, a light that a month before I would say was impossible to snuff out, a warmth that I confided in him...

Was gone.

What was left was the husk of a hero, a man who believed he was dead, my best friend... who gave up.
A tear slipped from my cheek, falling to the ground with a quiet splash on the stone floor.
The... sorrow... no, deeper than that. The pain, the eternal suffering, stopped him from crying. His emotions clouded so much, he couldn't feel. My heart ached with the knowledge that if he could will it... he might have ordered his heart to stop beating to spare this fate.
"Marvin." McManus knelt now, alongside Travers. "Captain. We still need you." He looked him dead in the eyes, speaking as gently as he did with me. "You're our last hope."
But Marvin made no reaction. Hope... Can only be given...
I couldn't fight back a shaky sob.
But it can be taken from you.
I couldn't take it anymore. I pushed McManus and Travers aside, enveloping him with my wings. I sobbed into myself.
"You don't deserve this. You gave everything for us. For me." Tears streamed down my face. "Don't hurt yourself anymore. Please."
He did not react.
He let out a long sigh, one that shook me. A sigh that he knew all too well: a sigh of defeat, of giving up.
"I'm too tired to fight anymore." He said softly.
I closed my eyes, nodding in understanding. He fought for so long, five long years. Never given a break, never given the recognition he deserves.
My chest opened up with the realization that any other person would have killed themselves long before Marvin even thought about giving up.
What else could I do but cry?
Cry for his sufferings, cry for my own. Cry for his soldiers that he couldn't save. Cry for his failures, cry for his triumphs never recorded. Cry for his family that he hasn't seen since he left them all that time ago. Cry for his family here, broken and separated an umptillion times. Cry for his choices that saved and doomed so many. Cry for the futures long left in the past. Cry for the numbness that curses so many like him
I cried... because he finally gave up.
I tried to take away some of that darkness, but it wasn't enough. I kept whispering to him, trying to make him feel better, but it wasn't enough. I stayed with him, offering my warmth and shelter, but it did nothing.
I sensed McManus and Travers standing solemnly for their captain, helmets off, unsure of what to do next. Qibli and Moon knew how important he was to me, so they stayed too. Neither said or thought a word.
I don't know how long we stayed like that. Too long. Darkstalker could have left with his army. Vaquero's flight might have been discovered. A wing of invincible NightWings might come down the stairs at any moment to capture all of us. But... I couldn't leave Marvin. I couldn't leave him, not like this.
He didn't leave us. He wouldn't leave us if he had a choice. He was here because of us, because of me. He... he couldn't let us be captured. He let us live, even though he knew he might get treated like this. He didn't hesitate, he didn't try and bargain. He made sure we were safe first and foremost, no matter the cost.
And as I saw his crippled figure once more,
And that cost was your hope.
What value is a life not worth living?
The sobbing died down. My breathing slow and labored. Tears welling in my eyes casting rivers. Everything was silent.
I didn't know what came over me, halfway between a whimper and a whisper.
"Miii Graciaaa." I softly sang. "Miii Graciaaa."
I felt him raise his head.
"Cóóómmo, teeee-aaaamo. Cóóómmo, teeee-aaaamo."
I pulled him in closer.
"Miiiiaaaa, pelliiitaaaa," I whispered.
It was my song, the song Marvin sang to me that first night in the Rainforest. The song that his momma sung to him when he was just a baby.
"Miii Graciaaa. Miii Graciaaa.
"Cóóómmo, teeee-aaaamo. Cóóómmo, teeee-aaaamo.
"Miiiiaaaa pelliiitaaaa."
It was the smallest thing in the world. A song, a memory, a reminder of someone who truly loved.
But it was enough.
That's the thing about Marvin. He was perpetually broken. Always repaired in the fleeting instants of the present, only to shatter mere moments into the past. He was a master of picking up the pieces of shattered worlds, including his own.