Chapter Text
The first time, the elytra slip off like nothing, and he tucks them into a chest, hidden beneath his gear.
It was a one off, a secret. He'd never use them again, they'd served their purpose.
The second time, it's exhilarating. Even if it isn’t real flight, even if it feels like slipping through the air with the heat of explosives chasing him. He still takes them off though, he didn’t need to become any larger a target than he already was, and the mechanical wings would only attract mercenaries, and the curious.
The third time ends immediately after he finds Slime. He goes to take them off as soon as he touches down, but it’s hard to take them off. He looks at them like one would look at the back of a limb, unfamiliar, but still intrinsically a part of him. He takes them off anyway.
He swears he can feel his fingers ghosting the membrane as he unclasps them.
He decided to go out. Maybe to fly, maybe just to wander through the sand until his mind quieted. Until the crushing hurt burned itself out.
Now that he had seen the skies, he found he liked that option of escape. Like a hidden ace. Something tucked up his sleeve that no one else knew of, and no one else had access to. It was almost a feeling of safety, having this. He felt at home in the thin clouds, gliding through the night air like one of the desert birds, or perhaps like the phantoms that haunted sleepless players, watching the pale, endless sand slip behind him as he spun through the skies.
It was well past midnight when he touched down and ducked back into the casino.
Quackity pulled the harness loose, but the couldn't-be-leather straps slipped right off his frame and fell to the floor, pooling over his boots. The paper thin weight of the elytra remained stiffly on his back. He tilted his head over his shoulder and felt his throat tighten. The two, incandescent, smoke-stained wings folded tightly across his shoulder blades, brushing at his cheek as he craned his neck further.
Okay. The elytra straps fell off. He could probably fix that. Or find someone who could. Who would. Maybe Foolish might know something. He was told explicitly not to let anyone know about the elytra, but he'd figure it out. He always did.
He reached for the elytra shells, arm straining crookedly to reach the peak of his back. Then he stopped.
He didn't know why.
But he couldn't make himself touch the shells.
He stiffly craned his neck to look at them again, something cold trickling down his throat.
The elytra looked odd. They always had, it wasn't like they were native to the overworld- heck, he didn't even know where it came from. For all he knew, the realm god had just willed the things into existence. The shell-wings were an odd mix of airy, dust-blotched feathers, with sinewy membranes ribbing the joints. From a distance, they looked more mechanical than organic, or even natural. They were unearthly and strange.
But now they looked loose. Relaxed. Like some kind of tension had finally been released in the mechanisms, and the wings could go slack, feather falling against feather, and membrane folding over membrane until they looked like one solid surface.
Quackity reached for the elytra again, his fingers ghosting the tip of a wing. The shells seemed to pulse and- he could feel them shudder, an unsettling rattle from his ankles to his spine to the very peaks of his shoulder blades and suddenly beyond.
He whipped his head around, darkness briefly flickering over his good eye as he caught sight of the shells and they had moved they had shifted they were different-
The dusty, void-drawn elytra he had asked the server god for, on a whim, was on his back.
He pointedly looked away, drew in a sharp breath, and started for the bathroom he knew was down the hall with something electric yet hollow in his veins. As he leaned to take a step however, his feet caught in the harness still on the ground and he stumbled. He grabbed at the wall, trying to regain his balance, and suddenly, there was this odd tugging sensation in his shoulders, of something spreading out, stretching. Moving.
His knees hit the ground first, then his palms. The ice in his gut writhed and twisted as the space behind him shivered. He risked another look over his shoulder, and the elytra had unfurled. Nearly twice their usual size as individual feathers were suddenly much more apparent and more visible than they ever were before.
This- this was impossible, this-
The wings twitched, and he felt it in his chest. He gasped.
He swallowed, before stumbling to his feet and shoving open the bathroom door without bothering to turn on the lights. He hissed in pain as the elytra clipped the doorway and immediately curled into his shoulders.
His eyes went wide as he forced himself to look in the mirror.
The elytra, they rested on the peaks of his shoulder blades, right where the rear straps of the harness would’ve sat. The root of the shells look like they tore right through his shirt.
They looked like wings.
Quackity crumpled forward, catching himself on the counter. The elytra moved with him, fluid in a way they never were before.
He could feel them move. He could feel his pulse throbbing in his ears as something hard rose in his throat and suddenly the elytra are flaring above his head, and he can’t help but to think back to Technoblade's botched execution. Philza Minecraft had been brought to spectate, horror dawning across his face while the man’s large, pitch wings had inched higher and higher as the anvil was pulled into place.
He curled into his shoulders, staring into the sink as his lungs ran ragged.
There were fucking elytra stuck on his back.
He lifted his gaze, slowly meeting his own mismatched irises in the mirror. In his peripherals, the elytra drifted up and down with his concave breaths. He tried to imagine tugging at the elytra in the same way he would pull to tighten or loosen the harness and nearly stopped breathing.
He gingerly reached over his shoulder, and prodded at one of the elytra shells.
He flinched. Something that tore through his entire body like a bolt of lightning.
With a shaky breath, he pressed his fingertips to it.
It felt like feathers and oil and dust. They seemed to buzz and twist beneath his hand, sparking like static. They almost felt like the realm god had, all muffled and crackling and energy and void.
But they also felt alive.
They rose and fell with the trembling of his lungs. They shifted with an unnatural, unfamiliar grace, moving on foreign impulses outside of his control.
Quackity pulled his hand back to his side, wrapping it tightly around his opposite arm. Almost as if in response, the elytra mutely shifted to tent over his head and shoulders. The muscles that wrapped around his ribs and back pulled and strained with the alien movement.
He reached behind him until his fingers brushed the joint between the shells and his back. It felt like muscle. It twitched and tightened and pulled in time with his lungs and the pounding in his chest.
The frayed threads of his shirt licked at his palm as he withdrew his hand. They really were attached to him.
The end-wings drew themselves back, flickering like misty shadows behind his reflection as he shifted his weight.
His bad eye looked dead in the mirror.
“Quackity from Las Nevadas?”
Quackity startled away from the open door with a shout. The door that he had left open. He was a fucking moron. He remembered the wings that were now high above his head, brushing against the mirror and the door frame. He was a fucking moron.
“Slime!?” He exclaimed, backing further into the bathroom. The elytra found the wall far too quickly. “What are you doing here?”
“I didn’t know you were avian, Quackity from Las Nevadas!” The sapient slime tilted his head, light from the hallway filtering through his opaque form and casting a greenish kaleidoscopic sheen into the dark bathroom. Slime smiled. His head began to slowly coalesce into his shoulder. He didn't react.
“I’m not.” Quackity said, hunched over and stalking backwards until his hips hit the wall. The elytra flicked away from every surface they touched, remaining tense above his head. “Estás hablando como un loco. You're crazy, Slime.” They felt too stiff.
“Oh.” Slime blinked. “You might have wings then. Did you know? Are they new?”
“I-” He drew the elytra close to him, shivering as he felt them fold over his back. The longest feathers brushed against the backs of his calves. “They’re not wings.”
Slime frowned. Quackity stared back at him. The elytra pressed deeper into his spine.
“I know an avian.” Slime said. “He was flesh and bone, and end and dust. He is alone.”
“What are you talking about, man?”
“He was very sad.” Slime frowned, brows furrowed. “I don't know why. Are you okay, Quackity from Las Nevadas?"
Quackity coughed. His throat felt hot. “I’m fine, Slime.” The elytra shifted behind him.
“If you say so, Quackity from Las Nevadas.” The slime's frown quickly inverted, unnaturally serene. He didn’t move.
Quackity eyed him warily as the elytra twitched and unfurled slightly. He then pushed himself off the wall, stumbling slightly while the elytra righted themselves behind him. He edged around Slime, who was simply watching him, eyes wide and impossibly green.
Quackity kept walking, shuddering as the shell-feathers skimmed across Slime’s… slime.
He swore when he hit the doorframe on the way out.