Chapter Text
LEVI
Treppe District, Underground — 832
Birds fly.
Kenny had told him that once, back when Kenny was still around to talk.
Kenny always told him he was a rat. And that birds were just like rats.
“Difference between a bird and a rat?” Kenny had grunted, his thumbnail digging at a string of grey meat in his teeth. “A bird’s just a rat that hasn't hit the bottom of the shaft yet. Topside, they fly around like they own the sky. Down here, they drop into the dirt, and can’t find their way back up. Only difference after that is the wings. Birds’ll fly around with them. Act like they’re above everyone else. But the sky don't mean shit once you're in the gutter, kid. You know what happens to ‘em once they start flyin’?” He pulled the meat free from his teeth and flicked it into the corner. “They get chewed up by the exact same vermin they eat up top.”
But Kenny was gone now.
“Topside business,” he’d said. Levi had stopped asking when he was coming back.
And this bird did not fly.
It was small. White. Huddled in the mouth of an old runoff pipe.
It had two wings. They didn't look hurt. Not that Levi could see. But it wasn’t using them much at all, just sitting at its side like a pair of closed doors, with its head tucked low and its eyes half-lidded.
Levi took a step toward it, his feet silent on the stone. He’d learned that.
The first one to make a sound is the first one dead on the ground, kid.
The bird blinked, slow and heavy. Like moving its eyelids was a chore it barely had the strength for.
He reached toward the bird, his fingers hovering just past its beak. As his eyes locked onto its feathers, he froze.
They were white. Pure white.
It was a colour no one really saw anymore. One that didn’t survive underground. It wasn't the white so old it had turned yellow with sweat, or the white so filthy it had dyed brown with the dirt. It wasn't grey like the walls, or red like the knives.
Levi turned his palms over. They were small hands. The skin stretched tight over bone, fingernails black with grime. Dry mud and soot were ground so deep into the creases that they felt permanent—grey, dusty stains he couldn’t get off no matter how hard he scrubbed at the washbasin.
He tried anyway. Scrubbed his hands against his trousers.
He looked at them.
Rubbed harder.
They weren’t any cleaner.
He almost touched the bird again. Reached out toward its little head.
He stopped immediately.
What was he thinking? He couldn’t touch it. He couldn’t.
Something that clean. That flawless.
Nothing had ruined it yet.
Something that pure didn’t belong down here. Not in the gutter. It would be eaten by a rat and swallowed by the dirt.
The dirt got into everything. Ruined the rats and dogs and ate the humans. It got under the skin and into the blood. Into the lungs. Into the head. Sooner or later, it ruined everything it touched. Coloured everything grey. And if he was already covered in dirt, to touch the bird would be to eat the bird. To strip the white raw and leave it bare to the dust.
And the white was the only thing in the entire alley that hadn't been ruined yet. If he so much as laid a finger on it, he would be the one who ruined it.
Levi pulled his hand back, tucking it tight at his side.
The bird shifted in the runoff. Its head came up, its black eyes fixing on him and not looking away. It was breathing real sad, though—all shallow and painful-looking.
It took one awkward step toward him.
“S-stop!” Levi flinched back, startling the bird and himself.
The bird sat back down, slowly closing its eyes.
Levi swallowed.
The bird looked tired. Real tired.
He’d seen tired before.
Mother had been tired. She had laid down on her mattress and slept for an awful long time, right through the dark and straight into the lamplight. A client had come in later, pushed straight past Levi, and took her for a while before coming back out, tellin’ Levi she was dead before he left. He hadn't really understood what the word meant back then. He'd only known that Mother was sleeping. Sleeping hard. Then her skin went grey and mushy, and she never woke up.
But this bird was tired, not asleep. It was just stuck in the dark—starved of the sun. If it could just see the light, it would be able to fly again.
A draft came through the alley.
He looked at the bird again. It didn't fight. It didn't try to use its wings.
He looked down.
“You’ll fly again,” he told the bird. “Promise.”
The bird didn’t seem to respond, just staring at the surface ceiling as he watched the water drip off the drainage pipe. The water was brown. The roof was brown. He’d always thought they looked the same.
Maybe they weren’t.
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He came back the next day just to watch it. To see if it was still there.
On the third day, he brought a loaf of bread he’d swiped off a barrel at the tavern. His lip was split and bleeding, but he kept his blood far from the bird.
He broke the loaf in half. His hands stopped.
He looked at the other half.
Then he looked at the bird.
He rolled a small crumb between his filthy fingers, shaping it until it was round, and set it carefully at the mouth of the pipe.
The bird didn't look at the food.
It tilted its head, its throat bobbing back and forth as it produced a faint, papery noise. A dry, mechanical sound, like two small stones tapping together at the bottom of a well. Something like a click.
Levi paused, then pushed the crumb an inch closer.
“Eat.”
The bird watched his hand retreat but ignored the bread and made the strange noise again.
Levi frowned, biting his nail.
“You’re gonna die if you don’t eat,” he said to it. Then, quietly, “You don’t wanna die.”
The bird looked at him strangely, tilting its head slightly.
He shuffled backwards half a pace after some thought.
The bird clicked a third time—sharper, more punctuated.
Levi furrowed his brows. The bird clicked again. Firmly.
Hesitantly, he inched back to where he’d been sitting beside the drainpipe.
The clicking stopped. The bird blinked, long and heavy, holding his gaze, before tucking its head deep into its chest feathers.
Levi watched it sleep there, wondering if it’d still be able to wake up in the morning.
When he came back the next day, the crumb was gone. The bird was leaning out of the pipe, its beady eyes fixed on the corner of the alley where Levi always appeared.
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On the sixth day, the bird stood up.
It took two shaky but deliberate steps forward and hopped right onto Levi’s knee.
Levi froze, his breath catching in his throat. He didn't dare move a muscle. The bird tilted its head, looked up at him, and let out a soft, clear click.
Then, slowly, it pecked a crumb directly from Levi’s palm.
He stared down at it, eyes wide. Its tiny feet were warm against his bare skin. A strange, tight feeling swelled in Levi's chest until it split over into a small, clumsy smile.
It was working.
The bird was getting better. It was going to make it.
He reached into his pocket and pulled out a tiny strip of clean blue ribbon he’d found tucked in an empty crate—the only blue thing in the entire district. He lifted it gently toward the bird, the ribbon waving in the draft air. It didn’t belong down here either.
“For when you go,” Levi whispered. “Tomorrow. We’ll go to the shaft together. And you’ll go up.” He motioned with his hand, flapping left to right.
The bird looked up at him dumbly.
“You’re right. It’s more like… this?” He moved his hand up and down.
The bird chirped.
Levi bit back a laugh.
“You’ll go back topside,” he said, grabbing the old pen he’d tucked in his sleeve and laying the blue ribbon flat on the pipe. “The miners go up there sometimes. They’ve told me all about topside when they come back down.”
Kenny goes up there, too. But Kenny doesn’t have much to say these days.
He drew a flat line across the ribbon.
“They say the dirt is green and soft. And that the water tastes like sugar and doesn't make your stomach hurt. Is it really like that?”
The bird didn’t answer. He drew another line. Then, a swirl.
“It’s a lot warmer than down here, and no one ever gets tired. There aren’t any lamps because they have the light. The real light.” He looked at the bird, resting its head on its chest with its eyes closed. He drew a circle and added a few uneven lines around it. “You’ll see it again tomorrow.”
Maybe, he thought, watching the bird snuggle itself further into its feathers, we can go together.
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On the seventh day, the blue ribbon was soaked in blood.
The bird was on its side outside the pipe, its neck twisted at an unnatural angle, its chest heaving real hard. A dark fluid bubbled from its beak, staining its feathers in dirty, crusted patches.
Levi rushed toward it immediately.
He didn't think. He moved.
He didn't care about the mud or his dirty hands. He scooped the bird up, cupping it tightly in his palms. He could feel its tiny heartbeat dragging in its chest—all sad and slow, like an ember on its last coal.
Mud betrayed his feet.
He went down hard, skin peeling away as his knees slammed into the stone path. He didn’t feel it. He scrambled up, forced all of his weight into his next stride, and drove a rusted nail straight through his sole.
The scream died in his teeth, muffled by his fist. He bit down on it hard, then ripped the iron free and kept running.
The lights flickered on and off. His feet slapped against the stone until he hit a slick patch of oil. The ground rushed up. His grip tightened by pure reflex, crushing the bird against his ribs to shield it from the impact.
He forced his body back up.
He couldn’t stop yet.
“We're almost there, just a little bit longer,” he whispered, swallowing the blood in his mouth. He shook the tiny weight in his hands, feeling its head droop against his arm. “Don't look at the dirt. Look up. The light will be right there.”
Don’t go to sleep.
He dove into an alleyway. He knew the turns without thinking. Left at the broken lamp. Right past the boarded-up washhouse. Down the narrow cut where the ceiling dipped low enough to scrape his hair.
“Stay awake,” he said, his voice tight. He pressed the bird closer as he took a sharp turn, ducking under a broken window as he thudded down a stairwell. “Just hold on. We’re almost there. You’ll see the light, and then you can go back up.”
He burst into the base of the shaft.
It was the one spot in the Underground where the surface light filtered down from above. It was the brightest place down below. The one place people could go to see the sky.
He looked around, staring blindly up at the ceiling. He found the opening—the one he knew held the light.
But the pale light from above had disappeared. There was nothing but a deep, blue haze. The kind of light that even the lamps surpassed.
Was this the wrong shaft?
No, this had to be it. The hole was right there.
The lamps were still on. Why was it dark?
Levi fell to his knees, dust caking his feet. He unclasped his hands and held the bird up toward the sky.
“Go,” Levi ordered, his eyes wide, reflecting the distant white circle of the surface. “Fly. I know it’s not bright, but look, the sky is right there. Just go up.”
The bird shivered once. Its beak opened in a silent, gasping sigh.
“You can do it. You did it yesterday. Come on. It's alright.”
The bird did not fly.
The slow flutter beneath his thumb went completely still. The bird’s neck went slack, its head rolling limply over Levi’s knuckle, its beak resting open against his skin. Its eyes didn't close, though. They were dull and milky, but they were still open.
Levi stared at them.
“You’re still here,” Levi said hesitantly. “Hey, you have to fly away now. Please. Just try.”
He nudged its beak. Nothing.
He pulled a dry bread crumb from his pocket and tried to press it into the bird’s beak. The crumb just rolled off the limp, slick tongue and fell into the dirt.
He swallowed and held the bird against his mouth, blowing his warm breath into its feathers, trying to force heat back into the tiny chest. But it was already so cold outside. Colder than it was under the lamps.
He shook his head.
Levi set the bird down on the cobblestones and shuffled backwards two paces. He took a deep breath, then made a small, papery click with his tongue.
He waited.
Click.
The bird lay limp on its side in the dark.
Click.
Levi slowly walked back over and brought his hands down.
He stared at the bird in his palms. The soot from his hands had finally rubbed off onto its belly, staining the white a dull, messy grey. He tried to rub the dirt off with his thumb, but it only smeared deeper into the soft—
Three sets of footsteps.
One dragging.
Drunk.
Coming closer.
He pinned himself to the wall. They wouldn’t be able to see him in the dark. He readied his knife anyway.
The group of drunks stumbled past the mouth of the shaft, laughing loudly, kicking a tin can down the stone path. One of them stepped right beside Levi, his heavy boot splashing muddy water over the bird’s pale wing.
Their footsteps passed. Feet stomped.
The bird had fallen into the dirt. He must’ve dropped it in his haste.
Nobody blinked. Nobody stopped.
Levi quietly limped back over to the bird and reached down to pick it back up. The white was covered in dust.
The blue ribbon was still crushed in his pocket. He pulled the cold, ruined thing up to his face, pressing his cheek against the sticky, blood-matted fabric. Something caught in his throat—something thick and dry that clotted and made him gag. He couldn’t swallow. Just breathed in and out through his mouth, his chest heaving. He tried breathing slower. Tried breathing faster. So fast his vision blurred and his knees gave out.
He pitched sideways, hitting the hard dirt. He rolled to his side, looking at the limp thing beside him.
He didn’t get up.
He brought his hand to the bird’s back.
The feathers were soft and delicate beneath his thumb, but they smelled of dust and ash, wet with the muddy water it’d been splashed with.
He brushed a droplet from its wing, and its head lolled to the side. The body was turning stiff.
Levi pushed himself back up, staggering just slightly. He brought it to the moonlight, raising the bird high above the dirt. But the light was gone. There wasn’t even a shred of it left—just a cold void in the ceiling that led into nothing.
He had thought that leaving was something you could learn. That learning was enough to leave.
He was wrong.
The bird did not fly. Neither did he.
Levi brought the bird back down to the ground.
He placed it gently on a tall stone and straightened its neck, propping it against the wall so it wouldn’t fall over.
“You did it,” he whispered, wrapping the blue ribbon around its neck. He sat back and closed his eyes. “You flew. You're up there now, right?”
Click.