Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

(The Past)

Kun | Age 13

“You’re late.”

Kun frowns as he slips onto the cool metal of his seat. “I’m early.”

Ten rolls his eyes. “Okay, whatever, you’re less early today.”

The clock confirms that it’s true, if only by a few minutes—minutes that Ten would normally be spending messing around with Hendery, trying to catch up on sleep before class starts, or working on the small set of drawings etched into the bottom of his desk. But today, he’s too busy glowing. Literally glowing.

Kun squints through the glare. “You’re blinding me.”

“You’ll live.” Ten leans across the aisle, nearly far enough to tip his entire seat. Energy is bleeding off him in visible pulses. That happens with all their abilities—big emotions mean big expressions—but Ten’s is the hardest to ignore. Probably because, unlike the vast majority of super-powered humans, he likes being hard to ignore.

This morning, his expression shows in a faint shimmer around his hands as he drums his fingers against the desk, in the ends of his hair, less golden strand and more fire, and in the usual warm gold of his eyes, edging cooler as the light waves oscillate towards violet. They’re locked on Kun, and daring, teasing, as if today is about to become the day everything changes, but not before Ten holds it over his head first.

“Guess what,” Ten all but sings in Kun’s ear. “Guesssss… whattttt…”

On one particularly ambitious lean, he gets close enough that his breath tickles Kun’s ear, making him flinch before he can stop it.

“What?” Kun snaps, rubbing his ear. “What’s so important? What happened?”

Ten just grins, shoulders stretching up like a cat. “Oh, nothing yet.” He rocks back in his chair, light flickering at his knuckles like sparks. “But… I heard the handlers talking after breakfast.”

Kun goes to reply, then pauses. It’s needling at him, slightly, that Ten knows full well that the handlers are as precise as clockwork. That if they enter to anything less than five forward-facing, prepared trainees, there will be laps, and laps mean lunch gets abbreviated again. Ten, in his protest against the fruit cups they were offered for breakfast, will be starving by then. Even Ten—who treats lunch like the food is just an accessory to talking—wouldn’t risk that. This means he’s playing another game.

 “The mayor died,” Kun guesses, “and we’re watching the funeral live.”

Ten’s face contorts into one of genuine confusion. “What? No. Why are you always so morbid?”

“Then just tell me,” Kun shoots back, flat-faced, confident that this is nothing.

Before Ten can respond, a third voice pipes up behind them. “Is it callsigns?” Xiaojun glances back and forth between them. “It’s—we’re choosing them today, right?”

Ten immediately wilts, grumbling about a ruined surprise.

Meanwhile, Kun’s heart jumps to his throat. “Are you serious?”

“I mean, I think I heard them talking about it last week…” Xiaojun trails off, rubbing his arm. Ten’s frown deepens at the news, annoyed that his own intel was late. Neither of them notices the private, internal hurricane going on in front of them.

Callsign day. It’s an event they’ve been waiting for since… well, since they got here, almost seven years ago. And thought no one ever outright said it, it wasn’t hard to get the impression that earning their hero names will be the keys that unlock everything—that once you had one, the rest would fall into place around it, including knowing exactly what to do and when.

Kun doesn’t believe that anymore. But his heart keeps skipping beats anyway, just second-long, singular betrayals, and he hates that anyone is close enough to see the shift in his breathing, hates even more that Ten can still twist him up like a windup doll just to see him jump and that Xiaojun never thought to tell him in the first place. Most of all, he hates that his hopes, against all intervention, have just gotten up. They’ve been training for So. Unbearably. Long.

He grills both boys for more information, but neither has any beyond vague, overheard whispers and a mysteriously unlabeled block of time on the schedule. So it might not even be true.

“Why don’t you ask them and find out?” Ten looks exceedingly self-satisfied.

 “You play too much,” Kun scolds, desperate for more information with an intensity that he doesn’t like. Will they name themselves? Will they pick their station? What if something’s happened in the city, and they’re about to be the first under-18 hero team to be deployed by the government? Worse, what if they’re not going to be a team at all?

Ten’s smile drops, even as his eyes continue to shimmer. “Kun,” he starts, but never gets to finish.

A set of rhythmic chimes sound, only once, but it’s enough to make Ten’s mouth snap shut in one. Saved by the bell—the closest thing the Nest has to one, anyway.

It’s one domino after another: Kun straightens before he realises he’s doing it, half out of respect and half to be a good example; footsteps are echoing in the corridor, growing closer, the nearing sound of people who expect everything to be in order, and for good reason.

Hendery drops a pencil. It rolls out of sight a second before the door swings open, the mood escaping with the wind out of it.

An instructory handler enters boot first, tablet tucked against her forearm, two others following behind her: a stout man and a sinewy woman who walk quickly towards the back of the room, out of sight.

If the grey, military-inspired uniform does most of the intimidation work for them, that part does the rest. The knowing there’s someone there mixed with the impossibility of verifying it without getting scolded for being distracted. Kun is starting to think the tickle of an urge to look over his shoulder is never going to fade, not even after he graduates.

In front of him, the lead handler squints at her tablet from the front of the room, stylus hovering, feet planted firmly on the ground. She wears no name tag as per policy, to prevent the trainees from forming attachments or preferences. The logic is sound, Kun has to admit: Authoritative attachments complicate things, and familiarity breeds expectation. So, faces rotate in and out often enough that no one should grow comfortable relying on one. That used to feel unnatural, unsettling, but after a few years, it just became part of the structure, same as the blue walls or the floral hand soap or the wide skylights in the cafeteria.

“This slot is…” the handler trails off, lost in the maze of schedules on her tablet.

Now that Kun’s had a chance to get a full look at her, he’s fairly sure she’s the same one who dropped an extra mango cup onto his tray last week, done with enough subtlety that it wasn’t obvious whether it was deliberate or not.

“Social Sciences,” he offers after an awkward pause. “We were covering jurisdiction of inter-provincial missions.”

Xiaojun makes a small noise of disappointment. It’s actually kind of nice in comparison to how Yangyang would’ve just kicked his seat. Sure, it’s not their most exciting unit, but it’s important. You shouldn’t do helpful things just to hear thank yous, in any case.

“Right.” The handler smiles thinly. “We’ll have to table it for today.”

Next to him, Kun feels Ten practically lift off the seat.

“I won’t draw this out.” She folds the tablet against her arms and looks at them properly for the first time. “Your most recent evaluations exceeded expectations once again. Your abilities aren’t just stabilising, but differentiating. That gives us the ability to categorise them with more accuracy. And like with all ARMs, that means you’re ready for an identity. As of today, you’re no longer classified as trainees. You’re heroes.”

“Heroes,” Hendery echoes in a whisper, like he can’t keep it back. Kun almost joins in. Almost lets go of gravity entirely. God, is it brighter in here?

Yangyang drums his feet, unable to keep still any longer. He looks about to run out the door. “We’re getting out?”

“Slow down,” the handler says, lips pressing together as Yangyang clenches his fists. “I know it’s exciting, but one step at a time.” There might be a smile buried somewhere in that restraint. It’s hard to tell.

“So? What’s the first one?” Yangyang asks, anxious.

They’ve studied heroes for years, analysed their successes and failures, watched the grainy footage of their rescues from back when fighting deviants wasn’t a job, but an internal, moral drive without accolades. It’s been the plan to become them for a long time, but never the reality, never so close that Kun actually feels the taste of it on his tongue like he does now.

Seven years is a long time to wait for the one promise sitting between you and the same tall, wide walls. One day, the doors will open, and past it, the world won’t be theoretical. It will have colour and consequence, with people in it they’ll know by their names, and civilians instead of mannequins to save. And it will be full of ways they can help, instead of just avoiding the hurt from uncontrolled abilities.

“Heroes,” the handler says, pulling him back to Earth, “need names.”

The presentation starts without ceremony, the room dimming as neon-green holoblocks assemble along the front wall, their light spilling outward until it washes over the desks and their faces alike. The colour has always been unpleasant, not painful exactly, but insistent, lingering long after you stop looking straight at it. When Kun was younger, it used to make his eyes burn and water, his vision blurring at the edges until a handler would remind him to blink. These days, his eyes sting only faintly, more out of sense memory than actual strain, and the feeling fades so long as he doesn’t let himself dwell on it.

The projected holo spreads, covering the floor in darkness and swallowing up the doorway, turning it all black and green. For a second, it feels as though they’ve been swallowed, too. But then Ten’s glow returns, and with it, everyone’s faces are a little more defined.

Kun relaxes. This isn’t the sim dome; nothing has shifted beneath their feet, nothing has recalibrated to immerse them. The concrete is still there, unchanged, and if he pushed his chair back too hard or stamped his heel, it would answer him the same way it always does. He holds onto that, letting it anchor him, even as the part of him trained to respond to environmental changes stays alert, waiting for a cue that doesn’t come.

Someone pokes his back. Hendery blinks bugishly through the dark. “Did you know?” He whispers.

Kun shakes his head, but he can’t really say ‘no’ and leave it there, can he? “Not before Ten.”

Hendery nods as the holoblocks begin to rearrange themselves behind his head, creating a fuzzy picture that grows clearer with every passing second. Once set, a video plays automatically, drowning out any conversations. It’s old footage with a familiar voice narrating what they already know, almost by heart. HDA must have made this for public release as well as for the Nest. Fine. What’s a few more minutes compared to six years of waiting, right?

It goes like this:

Forty years ago, the first Inherent was born: a baby girl with a piercing sonic cry, comparable to a jet engine or pneumatic drill. While Trujillo used her abilities responsibly, it wasn’t long until other Inherents were born, children who struggled to understand their ability—much less control it—and soon, the first deviant Inherent emerged: Lyle Raker, nicknamed ‘Quaker’ by the public, for his ability to manipulate tectonic plates. In the middle of the American Unification, Raker levelled the Old Midwest, rendering it uninhabitable and displacing hundreds of thousands of citizens. Through the devastation, it became clear that the government’s choices were either to adapt or watch the world wipe itself out. 

Then came the military’s answer: “ARMs,” or Ability Replication Modulator (ARMs) drugs, specially created to counter deviant Inherents before they could cause harm. These drugs mimicked the pathways that Inherent mutations act on, granting grown adults similarly preternatural gifts that they could be taught to control.

Kun knows this next part word for word, and he murmurs it under his breath as it plays, images flashing as fast as the words run: as soon as access was created, it fell into the wrong hands. Knockoff ARMs hit the black market with impressive speed, and despite government interventions—which made possession or solicitation a felony charge (carrying a mandatory 15 years in prison)—deviant ARMs continued to be an additional problem for the country.

Here’s what the video doesn’t say: it’s because of these knockoffs that they’re here today. All five of them: Kun, Ten, Hendery, Xiaojun, and Yangyang, have been ARMs since birth. The only ARMs since birth.

Sometimes, really truly, Kun almost forgets about that part. Functionally, they’re basically Inherents, and he couldn’t remember the lab if he tried. Not that he would—if memories were code, he’d swipe the first six years of his life without hesitation.

Barring that, he’ll do what he can. He’ll make the rest of them better. For all five of them.

Lights flash once before another next slide appears, and Kun finds himself pulled back. Bright gold lettering appears across the holo. The name is a surprise, even though it really shouldn’t be: Team Sparrow, set beneath the logo of a stylised bird mid-flight. HDA’s is a rising sun, so this… this must be their own. Goosebumps spread up Kun’s arm in response.

Ten nudges him with a pointed foot. “Told you.” It’s not bragging. It’s antsy, happy. It’s a glowing boy who just got glowing news.

For once, Kun can easily concede the point. Less because Ten deserves the gloating rights, and more because it’s hard not to feel like they’ve just collectively placed their hands on a doorknob, and turned it.

All those years ago, HDA found them, pulled them out of dangerous hands, and gave them structure, safety, purpose, and a place to understand what they were becoming before they could accidentally hurt someone with their abilities. Now, here, they’re taught to make something good out of the bad. And someday soon, they’ll be old enough to leave.

Better yet, they’ll be heroes. Real heroes.

Kun folds his hands tighter as the thought demands to overtake. His gravikinesis is always there, a muscle that wishes to be stretched, but strong feelings only serve to make it worse, and he’s let himself mentally wander too much today. There’s a scrap of notepaper fluttering an inch above the floor by the door.

Before the handler can catch wind, Kun releases the barest gravitational pulse of anxiety, similar to letting the carbonation out of a fermenting jar, then wills it back to normal.

Yangyang shoots his hand up fast as a rocket, and the air ripples as Kun’s focus ebbs again. It’s poor luck; the paper by the door hadn’t even fallen completely flat yet.

“Yes, Yangyang?” the handler asks without looking up from her tablet.

Yangyang’s hand drops at once, a blur that resolves only when it hits his lap. “Um, so—” he starts, then hesitates. “Can we pick a different name? For us five?”

Hendery’s foot darts under their desks and whacks Yangyang’s shin in warning. “Dude!”

“Wha…” Yangyang trails off, confused about where he went wrong.

Kun tries not to look back. He fails, catching Yangyang just as his eyes begin to widen, realising the mistake. He’s only eight, and looks it, fringe hanging over his eyes, crumbs from breakfast coating his uniform sleeve.

“Sorry,” Yangyang says with a grimace.

The handler’s eyebrows stitch just the barest bit. She doesn’t reprimand Yangyang, only nods at one of the other staff at the back, who jots something down, then underlines it twice. Kun can feel its emphasis from across the room.

Yangyang has been slipping in his evaluations lately. Not enough to be formally flagged, but enough that his feedback sessions are starting to drag on longer each week.

It’s easy to remember him so much smaller than this, and the way he used to have to toddle to keep up. Sometimes—more often than he’d wish to admit—that older image overlays the present one enough that Kun half expects to watch the kid open his mouth and start babbling again.

Maybe that’s what Kun is seeing now; maybe that’s his excuse for backing Yangyang’s question, taking the hit even as Ten tuts in the back of his throat, judgment obvious. He thinks Yangyang can stand on his own, and that Kun only makes it worse by stepping in. But the point stands: most heroes in history fought alone, and most failed. Their team has to be different.

The handler moves on, clicking through diagrams and notes on public-facing branding, how the team’s colours were chosen for visibility and comfort; how reassurance is a visual language; how a unit of five children with Inherent-like abilities will someday soon keep the public safe.

Kun absorbs each detail without resistance, despite the fact that it’s all kinds of dry, tiny and boring compared to the shiny insignia above her head that they’re all still staring at. It’s a necessary reminder: the Nest has poured years into shaping them, so the least they can do is meet the standard. However golden, however tall.

When the uniform schematics appear, Kun tries to keep himself still and his expression polite. But the designs are far braver and more polished than he expected, and the grin appears without permission. They’re exactly like the uniforms he’s seen on active operatives, only these aren’t general SkyGuard—they’re made just for them.

Blue mesh covers the model's arms, legs, and torso, while gold accents adorn the rest, intentionally catching the light. Across the chest sits a blank panel, waiting for an emblem they’ll help design once their callsigns are chosen. The schematic spins to reveal—

“Man,” Hendery grumbles under his breath, disappointed.

—no capes, because capes belong to children’s cartoons. Instead, the back plating design features two angled devices resembling wings, with slits cut at angles to create the illusion of movement.

Ten leans forward, unconsciously reflecting purple off the walls. Hendery doodles something in the margins of his notebook, though his focus is still tuned to the front. Yangyang bounces his leg in uneven bursts, trying his best to pay attention, though his gaze still shoots to the window every few minutes. Xiaojun sits exactly as he always does, upright, polite, and very still, not showing a thing save for that usual vague, diluted vigilance.

When they pause for questions, Xiaojun’s hand goes up without hesitation. He doesn’t look at anyone when he speaks, gaze fixed somewhere just past the projection. “What if the wings make people think we can fly? None of us can fly.”

“You won’t have to.” The handler taps the wing schematic, and the wings highlight in response, annotations popping up along their edges. They’re even functional, apparently, or at least that’s the intention once the prototypes behave. “These will handle lift and propulsion.”

Xiaojun’s hand falls as a twinkle enters his eye, and another excited ripple sweeps across the room. Flying, they’ve never tried, not in a single sim, and while abilities can shift as they age, none of them is likely to develop something that far out of their scope now.

“Safety in the sky,” the handler concludes, the holo projection around them disappearing with a snap. The room stays dark. “That is who you five will be for this city and for the country, a new generation of operatives who won’t lose precious minutes pushing through transit tunnels or sitting stuck in evacuation traffic while the damage only compounds. You’ll be where the problem is, when it happens. Our new primary guardian unit. If,” she adds with the faintest smirk, “you think you can handle it.”

Across the classroom, too large for their small class, five backs straighten in unison. It’s completely silent. No one’s in the hall, the aviary is too far away, and no one wants to break the spell by doing anything unnecessary as breathing.

New Cascadia City isn’t far. Kun has seen it through reinforced windows on transport runs and watched the skyline from the roof, but he’s only ever actually touched it in simulations.

Millions of people live in that city. They all need protecting, and they won’t behave like variables or offer re-tries. It’s… a heavy weight.

Kun intakes another tight breath. ‘Weight’ is a complicated concept for him. Gravikinesis makes it negotiable, something that can be shifted or redistributed or manipulated when he focuses (and sometimes when he doesn’t.) But that doesn’t mean it disappears, and if anything, it demands more attention, because if and when Kun slips, people get hurt. There’s a reason Earth’s gravity stays constant on its own.

Ten jokes about rules like they’re optional, but Kun has never found that comforting. If his ability ever fails him—and statistically, all systems fail—then the only thing left will be how well he understands the rules he’s been bending. He tries to keep that in mind. 

Behind the handler, the HDA emblem rises into view, gold against the dark blue of the room. Five silhouettes rise beneath it, scaled larger than life, faceless, blank, identical. They resemble the SkyGuard operatives Kun has studied, down to posture and spacing, with the addition of the wing structures extending from their backs.

It’s strange to think that this is how they’ll be seen eventually, their individual figures anonymised into something symbolic. Stranger still to think that the five of them will someday soon match the shapes projected in front of them. Will the rest of SkyGuard accept them? Will the city?

“This is how the public sees you,” the handler speaks in monotone, “Identityless.”

The silhouettes drop away, replaced by a map of New Cascadia sketched in radiant lines. Dots populate it by the thousands, then the tens of thousands, then more, spreading outward until the city is dense with them. Each one marks a person—someone who will one day trust them to show up.

Kun’s head swims. There are too many. The ratio doesn’t make sense: five heroes to millions who need them, and desperately. He knows this truth well; he’s seen the numbers. He also knows that this is what they’ve been preparing for since before he had a hold on proper nouns. It won’t be too many for five Sparrows.

The map dissolves into overlapping feeds. Dozens of simulations unfold at once: fires spreading across rooftops, bridges jammed with stalled evacuations, a flood flowing through the piers, a child alone under a streetlamp crying for help. Each scenario is one that Kun has run before, but never all at once, never layered until they become unmanageable, endless. On the display, the five black specks representing the Sparrows dart from crisis to crisis, but with each one addressed, another pops up; chaos continues to reign.

Kun’s throat tightens. He presses his heels more firmly into the floor, grounding down, down, down. It’s not real. Not yet. This is what they train to prevent.

“No one trusts a hero they don’t know,” the handler says, still standing where she left herself, tablet tucked back under her arm. She doesn’t raise her voice or pause for effect. “When you choose your callsigns, remember this. Everyone remembers the name of their favourite bird, and everyone smiles to hear it sing. Why?”

Kun answers because it’s his turn, because the question has a correct response, and because it would feel wrong to leave it hanging. The phrase has been painted along the wall of the aviary for as long as he can remember, letters stencilled clean and even above the perches, impossible to miss if you ever looked up. “The birds only sing when it’s safe.”

 “That’s right.” The emblem behind her brightens almost in response, a soft gold against the darker blue of the projection field. “You five will be the singing in the sky, the sign that everything is going to be alright.”

Hendery raises his hand, elbow knocking against the side of his desk. He doesn’t wait for permission. “But what if we can’t fix it? What if it isn’t all gonna be alright?”

The handler looks at him for a moment longer than she needs to, eyes narrowing slightly. “Hope does more heavy lifting than you’d think. And faith actively influences success. You, of all ARMs, should know that.”

Hendery’s mouth tugs to one side, unsure if that’s supposed to be comforting or scolding. He looks down at his desk, then back up again, weighing whether to ask another question.

But before he can press, the holo glitches. In an instant, they’re brought back to real-time, real-place, overhead lights flashing on without warning.

The transition is always disorienting, like stepping off a treadmill after a long run, but Kun absorbs it with the ease of someone raising their brows. It’s an old habit at this point.

Xiaojun isn’t faring as well. His shoulders are rigid, his face is tight, and his feet are planted too firmly for how little balance he has left. It’s not his fault. It’s his ability holding onto sound that isn’t there anymore—he once described it as the buzzing left behind when white noise cuts.

When he stumbles, grabbing at the corner of his desk, a handler scribbles down a note as Ten offers him a hand.

 “Grab a techpad,” another handler instructs without transition, gesturing to the devices docked in their usual neat line. Yangyang calls them ‘fidget boards’ because of the satisfying clicks the haptics make when you press the corners. They’re not toys, but that’s never stopped him before.

Each screen comes alive as they’re lifted, turning their faces pale with glow. One phrase populates all displays at once: 

CALLSIGN IDEAS

The handler waits until they’re seated before speaking again. “As a reminder, your callsign should reflect both your ability and your strengths. Take SnowStorm—”

Yangyang whispers, “Cool-guy name,” under his breath.

She lifts a finger, already knowing where the sound came from. He stops.

“—for example, a deviant Inherent whose weather-based abilities overwhelmed responders. He was defeated by our very own Rewrite, who could generate the inverse of any ARM or Inherent ability on contact. Accurate names, both, but neither prioritised public trust. And without trust, civilians won’t call for help. When that happens, we all lose. It’s that simple.”

She lets the statement soak in as she scans them one by one. “This is an area where each of you has room for improvement, save for Xiaojun.”

Xiaojun squirms in his chair, clearly wishing she hadn’t singled him out. He hasn’t even typed anything yet, but his finger still rests near the delete key, unmoving.

“If you fail to choose a callsign,” she continues, “or choose one that cannot be approved, we will assign one to you.” Her eyes dart to the clock mounted above the door, the hands moving silently. “You have until half past.”

Yangyang’s hand shoots up. “What if we want to change it later?”

Kun expects her to bristle, but if anything, she seems amused. “You’d be the first in history.”

All three handlers shuffle out of the room without goodbye, leaving the five of them alone with their thoughts.

Suddenly, no one knows what to do with their hands, thoughts, or screens. The techpads glow patiently on their desks, empty of ideas. Pressure is something they’re well used to, but not this much all at once. Callsigns are lifelong.

Yangyang is the first to break the spell. He spins in his swivel chair, pushing off the floor hard enough that the wheels squeal. He doesn’t look anywhere near as sick as Kun feels. If anything, he’s still as giddy as they all were the second the insignia appeared in front of them. He snaps his fingers, pointing nowhere in particular. “Smokeheels.” 

Xiaojun lifts his head from his own tablet, thick brows scrunching in confusion. “What?”

“Like I’m running so fast my shoes catch fire,” Yangyang explains as he types proudly. “That’s it. That’s me. Boom, done.”

Kun pinches the bridge of his nose and holds it there as long as he needs to tolerate this idea. “Yangyang, you can’t put ‘smoke’ in a hero name. That implies fire, and fire implies emergency. It makes you sound like a safety hazard.”

“It makes you sound like a safety,” Yangyang starts to mimic in defiance.

Ten cuts him off before he can finish. “I like it for a rap name. Save it for later.”

Yangyang nods, listening to Ten in a way he rarely does with Kun. “Smart.”

Ten winks at Kun. They try to tag-team keeping Yangyang on track. As the youngest, he’s naturally behind the others, and the more they emphasise his immaturity, the closer HDA gets to cutting him from the lineup and saving him for the next one. That can’t happen. It just can’t.

Xiaojun sinks back into his chair, shoulders folding inward as he stares at his untouched keyboard. “I have no idea what to write. I don’t even have a name for my… thing yet.”

That’s not entirely true. ‘Sound wave manipulation’ isn’t a bad start to describing Xiaojun’s ability. It’s just not as snappy as ‘super-speed,’ ‘super-lucky,’ or ‘super-glowy.’

“You will really soon,” Hendery says. “When you get your full ability, it’s gonna be the best one out of all of us.”

Xiaojun looks at him tentatively; the relief is visibly fighting through. “You think?”

“Yeah, why not?” Hendery taps his own techpad for emphasis, which is already full of text. Kun can see the list from his seat. He wishes he couldn’t. With every scroll downward, his eyebrows hike a little higher.

“Hendery,” Kun says, after a moment, “we’re meant to be thinking of hero callsigns. These are—”

“—cool,” Hendery cuts in, already defensive.

“They all sound like deviants.”

“Shut up, no they don’t.”

Kun points at one. “The FateMaker?”

Hendery squints at the glowing text. “Whatever. Maybe not that one,” he shrugs. But he doesn’t delete it.

“I… fine.” Kun lets it go. He could keep arguing, but Hendery’s on a roll, so logic won’t touch him. Besides, he’ll exhaust himself eventually; he always does. There’s no sense in burning energy correcting him when time will do the job just as effectively.

Around the room, keys tap in uneven bursts. Ten whispers something to Yangyang that sets him off snorting, Hendery gives himself a pencil mustache, and Kun… Kun should not be paying attention when the more he looks at the others' ideas, the clearer it becomes that he has none of his own. The handlers love reminding them to “secure your own oxygen mask before assisting others,” even though planes are mostly relics now. Lightspeed rail has replaced long-haul flights, but the metaphor is apparently eternal.

It’s just that… a callsign is supposed to represent everything you are, an entire story in three or fewer syllables. And Kun’s story is—is what? It’s easy enough to float milk cartons or moonwalk on the ceiling during downtime just to make the other trainees laugh. But unless he’s going for the moniker ‘Partytrick,’ his callsign is going to have to encompass more than that, including the side effects that a visiting hero once called ‘nightmare material,’ unaware Kun was within earshot.

The worst part of that memory—which is saying a lot considering the words play in his mind as automatically as a radio—is that Kun hadn’t disagreed. And still doesn’t.

Which isn’t a great place to start.

Yangyang’s foot starts tapping fast enough to rattle the tile below him. Kun seizes the excuse to redirect his own spiralling. “Yangyang, you’re buzzing.”

Yangyang startles. “Sorry.” He sits on his own foot to pin it down, sneaker twisting. “Hey, what about…?”

‘FAST GUY’ sits on his screen in all caps. He deletes it and replaces it with ‘FASTER GUY,’ as if that was the obvious leap.

Hendery pokes his arm. “Just write ‘Fastest Guy.’ Go for gold.”

Yangyang nods excitedly, filling it in. “Or maybe—”

A handler pokes their head through the door. “Yangyang’s ability allows him to travel at extraordinary velocity. ‘Dash’ is thematically sound.”

Yangyang’s eyes go comically wide. “How did you know? I didn’t get to write it yet.”

She only nods at his screen. Yangyang types it in obediently, sitting up a little taller as he commits to it.

Hendery drums his fingers across the board, faster and less rhythmically than he probably thinks he is, and the screen fills with a jumble of letters that look like someone sneezed mid-typing. “What if I’m just, like… ‘Unnamed’? Keep it mysterious.”

“‘Unnamed’ is still a name if that’s what everyone calls you,” Ten teases.

Hendery caves inward a little, lower lip jutting out as he realises he’s just contradicted himself into a corner.

A line from a misfiled report Kun once glimpsed surfaces uninvited: Note the increased coherence in ability when Hendery believes the outcome is already seen as favourable. It’s not his business to know that, and he didn’t mean to, but once something gets into his head, it tends to stay.

“But it’s not a bad direction,” Kun adds, nudging the idea back to life. “People like mysteries. Just… maybe not that literal.”

Hendery perks up in real time, returning to his list.

Kun bites his lip. At least Hendery has something on his page. Kun’s tablet, by contrast, is completely blank, the pulsing cursor staring at him in accusation.

He’s just about to try again when the atmosphere shifts; something rolls through the air. It’s a familiar but hard-to-describe feeling, something like the sensation of pressing your hand against a speaker. Kun feels his heartbeat slow, his thoughts relaxing from tightly packed to a more coherent stream. Even the corridor beyond the door seems calmer for it.

He twists a little in his chair. Xiaojun has his chin tucked toward his chest, completely unaware he’s doing anything more than passing the time. His frequencies slip out naturally, untrained but instinctual.

“New melody?”

Xiaojun peeks up, confused, unaware he’d been doing anything. After a beat, he nods. “Sorry, I didn’t know I was—”

“Not your fault.” Kun shakes his head immediately. “I have a headache.”

Xiaojun nods, ears warming as he reins it in. Kun doesn’t like asking, but the last thing Xiaojun needs is another note about unregulated output, another reminder that even the things that come most easily to him are subject to review.

The word on Xiaojun’s screen is backwards from where Kun’s sitting, reflected in the techpad's glass, but it doesn’t take long to read.

‘Songbird.’

It’s fitting; it’s sweet. It’s exactly what Xiaojun is to the rest of them. Kun doesn’t say anything beyond the smile he knows Xiaojun will understand. No need to crowd him with praise that he won’t know what to do with.

“Do you need help?” Xiaojun asks, leaning in just enough to see, stopping himself before he crosses whatever invisible line Kun keeps around his space.

Kun shifts the tablet back toward himself, more out of habit than defensiveness. “Actually…” He looks at the screen again, the green light catching on the edge of his thumb. “I think I’m okay. Thanks.”

Time is still ticking, even if he can’t hear it in analogue. But it stops mattering, or maybe it never mattered in the way he assumed it should.

This is how Kun understands it—actually understands it, instead of feigning a confidence he doesn’t truly feel or own. The hero in his mind has never been a muscled silhouette or a booming voice, and they don’t need a name that sounds impressive when read aloud, or one that implies future achievement before he’s even done anything good. Besides, the handlers already know what he can do, and the public will learn soon enough.

What he needs is something that matches the Kun who already exists, whose days look like waking first, listening for movement in the hall, standing when others stay seated, adjusting his position without thinking so that Xiaojun isn’t closest to the speakers; Ten isn’t the one fielding attention alone; so Yangyang isn’t drifting toward trouble faster than he can stop himself. These aren’t choices he congratulates himself for, or thinks someone else should. They’re just what happens, because they’re just who he is.

‘Big Brother.’

It looks plain next to the others; there’s no spectacle, no shine, and no other options. But it feels right. Kun submits the name with a single tap.

At the hour mark, a handler walks the row, checking each screen, offering no feedback. She pauses when she reaches his, her boot dragging. “Hm. Cute.”

It’s… hard to know what to make of that.

The chimes sound overhead a moment later, that artificial birdsong they use to mark the end of sessions, and Kun is on his feet before he realises he’s moved. The trainee salute follows, ingrained enough that he doesn’t have to think about where his hand goes, a folded thumb to his palm, his index finger brushing from his nose outwards. The others copy him, a beat behind, watching to make sure they’re doing it right.

Before today, it had no name, just fit under the umbrella of respect. Now, it’s to be part of the Sparrow brand, a ‘Sparrow-Salute.’ It seems… a smidge egotistical to assume that people will buy into the show of that, but a hero without a brand is just a vigilante in better clothing, so. Maybe it’ll catch on just fine. Maybe Kun should stop worrying about things which aren’t his problem or part of his training.

Dismissed, they file down the hall toward the Field Simulation dome. Hendery calls it The Playpen every chance he gets, mostly to wind Kun up, and mostly, annoyingly, it works.

They’ve been training together more lately. It’s meant to teach cohesion, but it also means if one trainee crashes and burns, the whole team loses points. For them, that’s still Hendery. He keeps forgetting that boosting his own luck skews the probabilities around everyone else, too, tanking the team's success rate. Despite that, the handlers keep scolding everyone but Hendery, so Kun shoots him a look, something between focus and please, for the love of God, stop gambling with my grade.

Hendery doesn’t notice. He’s busy watching Xiaojun braid a strip of simulation grass into a bracelet, smiling like this is just another afternoon instead of one of the most important days of their lives.

Kun sighs. He’ll get there. They all will. And if they don’t, he’ll drag them up behind him, one by one, because that’s what big brothers do.

Or, at least, that’s what this big brother will do.

Tonight is hero visitation, which most of the trainees treat as a minor holiday. It reliably outranks movie night, which is absurd, given that this week is Kun’s turn to choose from the stack of old DVD’s, and he’s already informed them he’s choosing The Sound of Music.

Kun lets himself fall a step behind as the rest of the group barrels down the hallway toward the community room. He does this often enough that no one comments on it anymore. He never knows which hero they’ll send, which should be exciting, but most of the time, just makes his stomach twist into knots of uncertainty.

Which is unfair. Most of the heroes are nice, and interesting, and do their best to live up to the time that Buoyant Boy made all the trainees balloon animals. But some of them look at Kun specifically, and strangely, sizing up his ability before he’s even introduced or telling him his smile looks ‘stiff.’ And somehow, feedback like that always hurts more coming from them than it does the handlers. It’s one thing to be corrected by the people training you; it’s another to be dismissed by the people you’re meant to grow into.

The hallway is loud. The others are still so excited by this morning, and they show it, shoes skidding where the floors have been scrubbed too clean, voices overlapping because no one wants to wait for anyone else to finish their sentence.

Kun is about to catch up, corners of his mouth lifted before he could think about it, when he catches something else: a hushed conversation slipping through a classroom door that hasn’t been fully sealed. He keeps walking for three steps before he realises he’s slowed.

He shouldn’t stop here. Eavesdropping is wrong, and he knows exactly what the consequences will be if he does, down to the number of drills and the specific muscle groups they’ll target.

He stops anyway.

He tells himself it’s just… more practice. Fine air compression is still logged as an area for improvement in his last evaluation, and this technically qualifies. It becomes permission he probably shouldn’t grant himself, but does. He pushes gently, flexing the muscle of his ability until the pressure on the door eases and the sound comes through more clearly. When he does this during 1:1’s, they tell him to think of it like channelling a radio, but given that Kun’s never done that, he thinks of it instead like when they trained for riptides, learning to move parallel with a superior force instead of fighting against it.

Kun doesn’t own or command gravity; that would make him much, much more than just an ARM. It’s more like… gravity is a friend to him, and it holds its ear out for very specific, necessary requests.

And also some less necessary ones. Sometimes.

If Xiaojun were here, it would be easier. Kun thinks that without any sentiment attached; it’s simply accurate.

But Xiaojun would also refuse to do something like this without permission. He’d feel awful about overhearing something that wasn’t meant to be heard, apologising before anything even happened. He’s good like that. Pious, with a strong sense of where the lines are supposed to be without being told. He’ll end up made into a statue for sure, probably not even that long into being official heroes.

Kun isn’t. ‘Good like that.’ ‘Good’ with a period at the end. Kun has a different role here.

The pressure gives, and with it, a handler’s voice comes through the door, clear as if they were standing next to him. “Songbird. What a joke. These kids still think it’s playtime.” The tone is different from before. Harsher, more matter-of-fact. It’s hard to know for sure just how much of this is truth, and how much is performance for other adults in the room, but it’s probably closer than anything they say in front of the trainees.

Kun’s hand rests against the frame, fingers splayed. He can feel a tremor, but it’s unclear whether it’s coming from him or the structure he’s fighting against.

“Not all of them,” someone else says. “Ten’s stabilising. He’s taking things more seriously than he used to, and you’ve gotta admit that some of these could make for a decent pitch. Firebird, SunStream, Lighthouse? Not bad.”

There’s a pause, but it’s brief. “Workable isn’t enough. We’re wasting time letting them—”

A shadow interrupts the light at the end of the hall.

Kun jerks back so fast he loses control of the frame entirely; it rebounds with a loud metallic creak he hopes doesn’t give him away. He straightens as a figure steps fully into view, broad enough to narrow the space on either side. The silver belt is the first thing Kun registers beyond the shadow. Then their face.

“They sent me to get you,” the hero booms. Kun recognises him instantly as Chameleman. He’s seen his holo-videos in HDA history lessons, but the real thing is… different. Not bad, not better, just different. “Birds should come when they’re called, kid.”

“Sorry.” Kun swallows whatever protest wants to climb up his throat about not being a kid.

“Walk with me.”

Kun falls into step beside Chameleman, letting himself be steered toward the Nest’s version of a living room: a set of worn plush couches in mismatched colours and a gleaming line of sodas on the table, rewards for good behaviour. There are only four, and Yangyang’s chair is empty. Again.

When the handlers start orbiting Chameleman—arranging his holo pictures around where he stands, offering last-minute suggestions that Chameleman obviously isn’t listening to—Kun slips one of the soda cans into his sleeve. It takes a little concentration to keep it from clinking against his wrist, but the one time it does, they pretend not to notice, which is its own kind of permission.

Yangyang shows up a second later, hair flattened on one side, cheeks flushed from being dragged into remedial studies by someone who probably forgot to soften their grip. “What’d I miss?” He takes a seat next to Ten, like he always does.

Kun palms the can into his hand as subtly as he can manage. “Here. Don’t take obvious sips. And don’t chug it.”

“Cool. Thanks.” Yangyang’s grin is beaming and grateful and lasts maybe half a second before he’s magnetised to the hero like he never missed a beat.

Right. Kun relaxes a bit. The kid is resilient; he could stand to remember that.

Chameleman launches into his demonstration, voice booming, stance wide like he’s posing. Apparently, that’s just his default. His camouflage ability ripples across his skin, his suit, even the air, the perimeter of himself spilling outward, borrowing surrounding light and colour until he’s nearly invisible, basically just a ripple in the air.

HDA calls this ability a ‘visual phenomenon.’ It’s projected behind Chameleman’s head like he’s accepting an award. Kun secretly thinks that sounds like a museum label for a butterfly wing in a glass case.

“It would’ve been even easier if I started when I was young,” Chameleman says, staring at his own rookie picture. “I didn’t become ARMed ‘til I got out of the Navy. But you all, you’re practically Inherents. Wear that with pride.”

“I have a question!” Yangyang raises his hand before anyone can shush him. At least he’s set the soda can down. “Did you fight Quaker?”

They all know this story. They’ve known it since they were small enough to sit on floor cushions during lessons, tracing the outlines of ruined cities on holograms. It’s the reason the HDA exists, and also the reason that the Old Midwest is only inhabited by tumbleweeds.

It’s also decades old.

“Kid, do I look like I’m from the Quaker era to you?”

Yangyang shrugs, unbothered. There’s a dribble of soda on his chin. “Dunno. The videos are grainy.”

A couple of handlers stiffen at that. One steps forward, ready to redirect, but Hendery speaks up before they can. “Who have you fought?”

Chameleman looks annoyed. His face is tight, and his camouflage is gone. There’s a long, awkward beat where he seems to calculate how much enthusiasm he has left to spend on this room full of kids who are half-hungry, half-tired, and fully unpredictable. Then he rattles off, “Aciddator, Three-Face, The Bug Queen. It’s not all breaking news, you know.”

Kun can track the exact moment the groups interest drops off. None of those names come with collapsing buildings or total-grid catastrophes. None of them headline the Nest’s greatest hits module. They’re the group of villains who get one paragraph in the handbook, and no holo tie-ins. The Sound of Music doesn’t sound so ‘boring’ now, does it?

He steps in regardless. “Could you please do the wall thing for us?” he asks, and he tries to sound interested even though his heart is doing that nervous flutter that happens when he’s not sure what reaction he’ll get. “The full blend?”

This, at least, Chameleman seems game for. “If it means that much to you, why not!”

He melts backwards into the room’s faded wall panel, colours sliding over him until he’s more shimmer than traceable figure. Hendery cheers; Ten audibly oohs. Yangyang looks impressed again, which is saying something.

Across the room, mango-cup-handler catches Kun’s eye. Good job, she mouths, subtle enough that the others don’t see.

He lifts, momentarily proud, momentarily forgetting what he heard in the classroom.

Handlers hand out a set of crisply laminated nametags, each still warm from the machine. The plastic is stiff and a little too pointy at the corners, catching Kun more than once as he peels the backing away, the adhesive grabbing skin before it finds fabric.

The room is over-bright, and the light flattens everyone out, making them look younger and older at the same time, a kind of 2D version of themselves, same as their nametags. They’re meant to sit on the front of their training shirts for now, a trial run before HDA commits to printing anything permanent. Kun privately finds this bleak in a very specific way: this suggestion that an identity can be issued, peeled off, and replaced if necessary.

“Stand in a line,” one of the handlers calls, and the trainees move into place without missing a beat. It doesn’t take thought anymore; the arrangement sets itself.

Kun instinctively takes the position farthest from the door, feet aligning with the tape marks on the floor. Ten lands at the other end.

“Three o’clock,” gets called, and they all pivot. Kun feels his nametag shift slightly, the adhesive failing to grip the spots he hadn’t pressed completely down. Now it hangs crookedly, swaying with each tiny adjustment of his stance, deciding whether to jump ship. He should fix it, but he doesn’t, filled with the small hope that watching it fall will be their deciding factor in changing it. Which is childish. Stupid. Ignorant. Wrong.

He still doesn’t fix it.

SPARROW-SHIELD. That’s his callsign. That’s what they gave him.

Is ‘Shield’ a comforting name? It sounds so… harsh, reminiscent of icy metal, and when Kun stares down at it, the laminate reflects a warped outline of his chin, making him look strange.

He waits for that rush of pride he’s supposed to feel, the one he owes the Nest, the place that pulled them out of nothingness and gave them a future. He’s loyal to this place in a way that feels important, even though he’d never admit out loud—Ten would make fun of him for the rest of their lives for being overly sentimental.

Kun drops the tag. He needs to refocus on the now, the here, the speech he’s not listening to but should be. Personal opinion aside, they chose this callsign for him, and they’re older, smarter, better at this. He’ll just—he’ll just grow into it. It’s only uncomfortable because it’s new, and new things always feel wrong at first. The same happens when they replace their sneakers; it takes a second to learn how to walk right in them. He’ll make them proud no matter what name is printed across his chest.

Also, there is, an undeniable positive here: at least they didn’t let Hendery walk around as The FateMaker. Or God forbid, Mr. Dice, Mr. Maybe, Mr. Coinflip. Kun regrets ever doing storytime with the Little Miss series for the younger three before they learned how to read.

“Very marketable,” a handler is saying to Ten. His nametag hangs perfectly, almost mockingly straight. She adjusts it anyway, smoothing the corners with a pride that Ten absorbs instantly. It reads: SPARROW-BRIGHT. “This name fits you well.”

She’s right. ‘Bright’ is exactly the kind of thing people want in a hero. In Kun’s mind, it takes the same blurry shape that their outlines did during the callsign presentation, backlit but warm, a sign that everything is going to be okay.

No, not just okay, Kun amends as Ten’s glow increases, chin tipped up, pleased. Better. Brighter.

He catches Ten’s eye by accident, and Ten winks.

Xiaojun and Yangyang—SPARROW-HOPE and SPARROW-SPRINT, respectively—crane their necks to get better looks at everyone else’s callsigns, their curiosity unguarded. Yangyang is already calling Xiaojun’s boring, and Xiaojun is threatening something he won’t follow through on. It makes Kun feel maybe 10% better in a way he doesn’t understand, but wishes very much he could lean into.

“Did I pick this?” Comes from further down the line. Hendery is frowning at his own chest, pinching the nametag between two fingers to pull it closer. SPARROW-LUCK. He’s not being sarcastic; Kun can tell. Hendery is wondering if maybe everyone else got an A+ on their ideas that he didn’t.

“No. None of these are our ideas,” Kun says, and Hendery relaxes, nodding as he lets the plastic fall back into place.

A handler claps briskly, the sound snapping through the room loudly enough that Kun distantly wonders if she’s ARMed. “These are your official designations. Learn them well. You’re no longer just yourselves,” she pauses, and Kun half-wonders if he’s imagining the sparkle in her eye as she ends the sentence with, “you’re Sparrows.”

A chill passes through Kun, maybe anticipation, maybe pride. For a moment, he’s overcome by the memory of that emblem glistening in front of his eyes. Soon enough, he’ll be wearing it across his back.

Lights-out never actually means darkness in the Nest. The emergency strips along the floor make the hallways appear underwater, and when the door is cracked—which it always is, if only slightly—the colour seeps in just enough to highlight vague, lumpy shapes. Tonight, there’s a jacket laying across a chair, its shadow creepily similar to that of a crouching person, still and waiting.

Kun is too old for scary stories, but as God is his witness, that image is terrifying.

He turns over again, his back to the chair. Everyone’s supposed to be asleep by now. Most of them are; Ten definitely is, but Kun isn’t even close.

Not for lack of trying. He’s tried every position his body knows: scrunched-in-ball, soldier-straight, fetal, less fetal, skydiver. But tonight, none of it works. Each and every attempt only ends with him flat on his back, staring up at the slats of the bunkbed, watching the faint blue grid shift each time Ten breathes too deeply and makes his mattress lift.

That might be it, Kun muses, briefly hopeful. Maybe if he tries the breathing pattern that Ms. Ren drilled into them during wellness week: slow in, slower out, slow in, slower out, slow in…

… No dice. He can’t get past the first three. The sim from earlier today is a superior caller to sleep.

That’s the core of it, if he’s honest. He’d lost control of gravity for a moment, dropped a concrete block too fast, and nearly crushed a handler. He hadn’t even been reprimanded, but it’s still fresh in his mind, just hanging over him, and the memory echoes with shame, shame, shame.

Shame is a nightmare emotion. Surely humans should’ve evolved past it by now.

Worse, he must’ve played it off well enough to fool the others, because Hendery had reenacted the whole scene at dinner, full sound effects included, until Yangyang was doubled over with laughter. Even Xiaojun was biting his lip against a chuckle. Ten hadn’t joined in, hadn’t said anything at all, but Kun still caught the cringe behind his tray, as well as the effort it took to hide. It was what affirmed to Kun that the incident really had been that bad. He wasn’t catastrophising. It just hadn’t earned him a demerit, which somehow only serves to make the feeling in his stomach worse.

A rustling noise comes from above. Ten’s mattress gives its habitual squeak as he props himself up on his elbows. “I can hear you stewing, you know.” His voice is so thick with sleep that it sounds like he’s speaking through molasses.

Kun rolls toward the wall, muttering into his blanket, “That’s impossible.”

The mattress squeaks again as Ten leans over the edge. The resulting warmth is enough to make Kun sweat. Ten’s attention has a radiating temperature at times: what he feels spreads. Sometimes it’s like butter. On nights like tonight, it feels like pathogen.

“Kun, c’mon, the sim wasn’t that bad. Seriously, just let it go.”

That’s enough to make Kun’s throat bob. Mortifying. What would crying help? “You didn’t see it.”

“I didn’t need to,” Ten’s voice takes on a lilting tone. “Hendery’s impressions are getting like, really good.”

“Ten…” Kun groans and drags the pillow over his entire head, praying he can suffocate the memory out of existence. The pillowcase stinks with industrial detergent, and his plan doesn’t work, obviously, but at least it’s something to hide under instead of meeting Ten’s shrewd eye.

“Hey.”

“'Hey' what?”

“I’m not teasing.”

Kun pulls the pillow down, frowning because yes, Ten was, but also: “You’re always teasing.”

There’s a pause long enough to feel deliberate, dramatic. Then a chunk of tangled red hair appears at the edge of the frame above him. “Not now.” Ten sounds like he means it. Really means it. “Not about you.”

“Really,” Kun returns in a complete monotone, ready to be proven right.

“Really,” Ten echoes immediately, overlapping the word he’d already predicted Kun would go with. “Do I need to sing it?”

Kun doesn’t answer this time. It’s a little uncomfortable, if only because this version of Ten doesn’t come out to play a lot, and as a result, Kun isn’t entirely sure what to do with him. Meet him where he is? Be the teasing one instead? He’s so used to parsing out Ten’s true feelings with active, assessive effort that when the real thing gets dropped in front of his feet, he no longer knows how to accept it.

The reality is that heroes are meant to be buoyant, resilient, and constantly repelling negativity as they go. Which is reasonable to train, and even more so to expect them to aim for. But when it’s just them, when no one else is there for a performance, Ten isn’t a hero. He’s just Ten.

It’s nice to know that Just Ten is very firmly on his side.

“Kun. You didn’t crush him,” he whispers into the dark. There's an orange glow coming from between the slats, and it makes Kun's eyes burn even worse. “You redirected the block.”

“Barely.”

“But you did,” Ten insists, with that certainty he never seems to run out of. “Do you know how hard it is to correct momentum mid-fall at your level? You’re not a telekinetic; you did what you could, and it was enough. No one blames you but you.”

Heat rushes up Kun’s neck. It’s embarrassing, really, how fast his body betrays him, and he resents how it’s always so visible, so immediate. “You don’t have to make me feel better.”

“I’m not making you feel better,” Ten says, matter-of-fact. His hair disappears as he returns to his own bed. “You’re stupid stubborn and won’t let yourself feel better. Someone’s gotta do it for you.”

Kun frowns. “You’re saying you’re going to feel better… for me.”

“Yep.”

There’s a muted thump as Ten’s arm drops over the edge of the bunk, hanging loose in front of Kun’s face, palm open.

Kun stares at it for longer than is reasonable, half-debating taking it, half-wondering how many people will eventually get to see this version of Ten—the one that reaches out first. He doesn’t linger on whether it would be selfish to want that number to be one.

“Are we playing rock-paper-scissors?” Ten wiggles his fingers. Blue light catches on the wall and warps their shadows, reminiscent of the shadow puppets they used to make when there were five of them to a room. “You can take it or not. It’s there.”

Kun doesn’t take it, but he doesn’t roll away either. Why is it actually… kind of working? “You’re impossible,” he mutters.

“Thank you.” The phrase seems to drip with saccharine, though Kun knows he means it.

“It wasn’t a compliment. I—”

“Please, it so was,” Ten interrupts, digging in deeper. “You meant it like you loooove me,” he says, sing-songy, back to the teasing, back to the trying to seep the bad feelings out by infusing annoyed ones in. “Don’t say a word, you don’t have to confess to me. I can already tell.”

Even when he knows exactly what Ten is doing, Kun somehow ends up helpless to the bait. “Yangyang is making your head huge. You don’t know everything.”

“I know you,” Ten says, “better than you do.” The sing-song is half absent from his voice, and now, Kun can’t tell if he’s being serious or not.

A handler tracks down the corridor, boots thudding, keys clinking. Kun closes his eyes out of habit, even though they don’t get scolded for staying up anymore. Some habits outlast the rules that required them.

When he opens his eyes again, Ten’s hand is still hanging, waiting him out. It has to be numb by now, or at least tingling. Leave it to Ten to be stubborn even when he’s trying to be nice.

Kun just stares at it for a moment, then reaches up and bats at it without much effort. “Okay, you’ve made your point.”

This turns out to be a mistake. The contact sends a prickle up his arm, making him hiss and shake his hand until it fades. “Seriously, Ten, don’t fall asleep like that,” he mutters, more out of habit than anything. “It looks creepy when I wake up to pee and you’re just… dangling.”

Ten makes a small, offended noise and wiggles his fingers again, as if to prove a point. “You used to call me a nightlight.” But he relents, pulling his arm back out of sight.

Kun is left to stare at the same boring white wall and brown bedframe. But at least he’s not ruminating anymore. “Thank you. For…” he trails off, unsure how to phrase it.

“Anytime,” Ten says through a yawn. It sounds close enough that Kun can almost pretend he’s right there instead of above him. “But, you know…” The slats below him groan as he settles. “Sometimes I wish you didn’t make me squeeze it out of you. We’re supposed to be, like, in it together, or whatever.” He sounds grumbly. He sounds… hurt? Does that make sense?

Kun bites his lip, guilt surging all over again. He could say the exact same thing to Ten. But that’s the problem. This only works if they’re all in together; if neither of them is holding back more than the other. And it has to work. They have Hendery, Xiaojun, and Yangyang to look after, the same as they’ve been doing since before they were rescued from the lab. Those kids need them. Which means they need each other, whether it’s comfortable or not. That’s just that. But it's also… becoming a big ask, lately, and Kun is starting to fear why.

“You’re being unfair.” Ten has taken his silence the wrong way. “I got your back, you got mine. That was the deal, right?”

It was. It is, even though there are some days when Kun doubts it, right before and after the days when he trusts it more than anything, his one and only remaining memory from the lab. A younger version of Ten, a squeaky voice, ill-fitting PJs, and a pinky promise made between two clammy fingers.

It’s been a long time since he thought about that night. HDA came knocking down the door not long after.

“Yeah,” Kun whispers into the dim blue air. This is his own version of a held-out hand: believing in something that costs something every time he chooses it. “That’s the deal.”

He hopes that’s enough. He hopes they really can make it out of this place intact. He hopes that whatever intact ends up meaning for them, it’s a version they can live with.

“Good,” Ten sounds satisfied. And sleepy. “Then don’t wake me up again. Save the stewing for tomorrow.”

If the hand were still there, Kun would knock it away out of principle. He has alternatives, but they all sound immature, so he lets the opportunity fade.

A little while later, Ten’s breathing evens out properly, back to sleep. Not long after that, just before Kun’s eyes close in earnest, a hand drops again, on the off chance he takes it, on the off chance he opens his eyes in the night and just needs to see it’s there.

(The Present)

Kun | Age 27

“I got stuck with android baristas again,” Yangyang announces, pushing the Sparrow lounge door open with his elbow, coffees stacked so high that they sway with each step. “So if anything tastes like wheel grease, don’t, like, bug me about it. You know why.”

Hendery reaches up and takes the top cup before it topples. “I like the androids. Androids don’t bug me for winning lotto numbers when I’m enjoying a sandwich.”

Kun remembers that sandwich. He also remembers Hendery abandoning it—along with the conversation, the shop, and Kun with the bill—the second the civilian’s questions began.

“Eh… they’re getting a little creepy, aren’t they?” Xiaojun says, catching the next cup before Yangyang’s grip slips.

“Yes, creepy,” Yangyang mutters, passing more into Xiaojun’s unready arms, “yes!”

“They’re starting to act too human,” Xiaojun says, accepting his fate of handing out the rest of the drinks. “And those face meshes… I don’t know. I don’t like it.”

The conversation blurs into the background of Kun’s attention as he finds his own order. It’s been marked decaf. Not a surprise. Ten’s been on a crusade lately about everyone’s sleep habits, and Kun is always his first casualty.

Most days, he doesn’t mind the interference too much. It’s easier than pushing back against the fact that Ten is usually right when it comes to things he feels strongly about. But today, he really could have used the boost.

He glances over automatically, anticipating the faux-innocent grin that says, yes, I did this on purpose, aren’t you grateful for the withdrawal symptoms.

Except Ten isn’t hovering nearby, waiting to be caught. He’s by the windows, sketchbook resting against his knee, one foot braced on the lower ledge, entirely absorbed in whatever he’s building on the page. Sunlight finds him as a like thing. He’s glowing orange.

Of course, it helps that they’re at the top of the city, surrounded by floor-to-ceiling glass. HDA HQ is a skyscraper in its own right, but the addition of the Sparrow floor means they’re about as close to touching the sky as possible. And while most of it is branded in blue and yellow, they’ve left their own touches here and there. Outside of their apartments, it’s the closest thing they have to a place that’s truly theirs.

Hero life has been kind to them in all the ways that look great in a magazine spread: nice clothes, a custom lounge, and Ten has a tiramisu dish named after him at Chico’s, among other things. But honestly, the real treat is this: the windows, the view that reminds him there’s still movement outside these walls, that they’re not sealed in, no matter how safe it all looks on paper.

Ten would call it ‘making your trauma response work for you.’ Which, from his perspective, works. He’s the best example of it, especially now: on Ten’s sketchbook page, Memorial Park is coming to life. Kun recognises it instantly from oddly shaped paths that make people slow down without noticing. There’s a cluster of orange, black, and brown blobs near the benches, probably the feral cat colony that lives there, half a dozen regulars and twice that number of occasional visitors. They find Ten when he visits and follow him to the gates. He feeds them when he can, and leaves the park with fur on his jacket more often than not. Since no one’s managed to convince him to change clothes before briefings, it’s now a PR point for interviews.

Kun watches him for a moment longer than strictly necessary, coffee cooling in his hand, before Yangyang draws him back by way of flopping loudly into the nearest cushioned chair with the same lack of spatial awareness he’s always had, impact rattling both of his own drinks, coffee attempting to escape from the rims.

Yangyang always orders one hot and one iced, as if the future version of himself can’t be trusted to want the same thing twice. He balances them on his knees, talking all the while. “All the androids are like, stupid advanced now. I miss when they were punchable toasters. If—”

“If you talk robotic revolution over my mocha, I will baptise you in it,” Hendery warns.

Yangyang just grins. “And pay the cleaning fee? You won’t.”

Kun takes a long sip from his cup, but the decaf does exactly what decaf always does, which is absolutely fuck-all except burn his tongue. His patience is working on fumes from here, so the best he can offer is, “Yangyang, don’t poke the bear.”

“Eh, he’s kinda right,” Hendery says immediately. “They always overcharge us for that shit. The last time I spilled a protein shake on the carpet, they bought a new one for the whole floor. Heated. They’re just using us as excuses for upgrades.”

“To be fair, they are upgrades you enjoy,” Xiaojun hums, stepping around Kun’s legs to perch on the arm of his chair and lend him a sip of actually useful, caffeinated coffee. Kun takes it without comment, hoping the gratitude comes through without him having to say it. Xiaojun never needs those things spelt out. “Does everyone know that I caught you—”

“Don’t,” Hendery says at once.

“—napping on the floor in the middle of the mission coordinator meeting?”

Kun’s heart sinks. Yangyang looks delighted.

Hendery, on the other hand, goes taut, ears flattening against his head. “They… didn’t.”

“To be fair…” Xiaojun nudges Kun to move over. There are more than a few extra chairs around, but they always end up compressed together regardless of how much space there actually is. It’s not efficient, but it’s familiar, and no one’s tried very hard to stop it. “He blended in well.”

“Exactly,” Hendery says, relief seeping back in now that someone’s on his side. “No one noticed.”

“That’s not true,” Xiaojun says, calm as ever. “I noticed. I was the one who noticed.”

“Hendery,” Kun says, aiming for disapproval and missing by an inch because the whole thing is amusing despite the headache behind his eyes. He’s sort of hoping that Xiaojun took a photo as evidence. “We have crash beds for a reason.”

Hendery attempts to reassemble his dignity in real time. “H e a t e d!” he insists, hand slicing through the air to gesture at Xiaojun. There’s more animation in him now than there’s been all morning. “Did you not hear that those floors are now heated!”

“Dude, it’s so unfair your ability still works when you’re sleeping,” Yangyang complains, kicking his heel against Hendery’s chair leg. “What the hell.”

“Not my abilities,” Hendery fires back, a little too pleased with himself. “Just blessed.”

“Just blessed,” Yangyang mocks.

Hendery mocks back, which immediately locks them into the kind of pointless back-and-forth they’ve been doing since they were kids, neither willing to be the first to stop.

Kun’s headache spikes. This could go on for days if nobody intervenes.

“Kids.” Ten turns from the window when the bickering reaches a volume he considers hazardous, sliding his pencil back into the spiral of the sketchbook, clocking out of his own head. “Anyone wanna swap shifts with me?” The hope in his voice is very sugary and very doomed, which means he already knows the answer.

It does its job regardless; the argument dies on impact, and both sides go completely silent.

Ever since they passed their rookie years, the Sparrows have been on a 24/7 shift coverage model. They run on an overlapping rotation at all times: two active, one on prep standby, two on rest. It plays well with the public, and it’s responsible, but in practise it means that full days off are theoretical, and full days off together might as well be folklore. The singular reason they’re here right now is that deviancy takes sizable breaks when the weather is nice enough.

Ten is technically already on shift, the only one in full uniform. So is Yangyang, but the hoodie he’s pulled over it kills any authority it once had.

“It’s a little late for your best option.” Kun tips his chin toward Xiaojun, who has somehow managed to fall asleep through all of this. His cheek is heavy against Kun’s shoulder, mouth slack with exhaustion, the end of his coffee cup drooping. Kun steadies it before it can fall, his thumb slipping briefly on the condensation, and lets Xiaojun keep sleeping because he clearly needs it after the early-bird shift this morning. From the corner of his eye, he catches Hendery glance over and then pointedly away, the jealousy coming off him in visible waves, which is funny considering Kun is currently wearing a sweater with a drool-shoulderpad and would trade places in a heartbeat.

“Anyone besides Jun?” Ten tries again, sketchbook folded shut against his chest.

“Hendery can,” Kun says mildly. “He’s well-rested from his carpet nap.”

“I’ll take your red-eye,” Ten offers.

“Nope. I like the red-eye,” Hendery says from his sprawl on the couch, not even bothering to lift his head. “Less pictures.”

At this news, Ten slumps, forehead thunking against the window in a small, physical surrender.

“Pause,” Kun says, softer this time, careful not to ruin Xiaojun’s sleep. “What’s actually going on?”

Ten presses his forehead more firmly to the glass, debating whether this is worth articulating. “My schedule’s been the same for weeks, and today the park’s perfect. The light’s gorgeous and my favourite stray’s out.” A sigh pushes through him, fogging a small patch of the window. “I want to draw him while he’s happy. It’s—it’s like, y’know. Enrichment time.”

“Like at the zoo,” Yangyang nods, alternating between iced coffee, hot coffee, and torturing his teeth with the subsequent damage.

Ten shoots him a glare with enough annoyance to get the point across, but Yangyang only responds puzzled, not apologetic. “What?”

Hendery groans into the couch cushion, head rolling until his chin hooks over the backrest. “Fine, fine.” He drags himself upright, swallows the last inch of his coffee in one go, and gestures Ten up. “I’ll take it. But you owe me.”

Ten all but ignites, light flaring off him so intensely that Kun has to blink spots out of his vision. “You always were my favourite,” he declares, leaning in to plant an affectionate kiss on Hendery’s cheek, arms looping over his shoulders.

Hendery ducks it deftly and slips out of Ten’s grasp. “Yeah, okay,” he says, rolling his eyes. “Fly a blimp about it, goddamn.”

Somehow, Kun ends up trailing Ten all the way down to the park.

The somehow isn’t much of a mystery. Ten had simply glanced at him once by the elevator, not asking, not even lifting a brow in question, and Kun folded like he always does, despite an entire childhood of being trained to resist worse things. To name a few: psychic interference, torture, drowning.

Apparently, one sickening flirt trumps them all. By the time the elevator doors slide open, the decision has already been made, and Kun is only catching up to it as he steps inside.

Kun used to scoff at the concept of kryptonites. All those lessons drilled into them at the Nest about how some of the best heroes were brought to their knees because of a single ridiculous weakness: peanuts, pollen, a childhood teddy waved as emotional blackmail. It just never made sense to him. Large attack, large damage; small attack, small damage. These make sense, because these are the rules. Input should match output.

Yet here he is, paperwork be damned, all so he can run off with Ten on some senseless side mission to find an orange tabby with a missing ear and scratch his chin hello.

Ten is right where Kun expected him to be at the entrance, sketchbook tucked under one arm, watching the lobby doors instead of the TV above the reception desk. If he’s still in uniform, Kun can’t tell; Ten is swaddled in a long black jacket that covers everything except his face, neck, and hands.

As it turns out, Kun does have an Achilles heel after all, and it comes with fine, perceptive features, an excess of impulses, and a habit of waiting exactly where he can’t ignore.

Ten’s eyes briefly flash violet when they find Kun. “Ready?”

Kun nods in lieu of answering, and they’re off.

The walk is brisk—not quite a hurry, but close, thanks in part to the end-of-the-workday crowd moving around them like river streams around rocks, nudging them forward. Memorial Park sits just past the tramline, and the anticipation rolling off Ten is compelling enough that Kun starts feeling it, too.

The entire time, Kun stays half a step behind without meaning to, keeping inventory of potential threats, issues, and fans, like he’s used to. He’s still mildly surprised by how much less often people recognise them out of uniform. Not that anonymity is ever guaranteed—he hasn’t left home without a Sharpie for years—or that it’s a small amount by any measure of the word, but by comparison, yes, and even more when they attempt a disguise. Today, it’s baseball caps, sunglasses, and medical masks. To Kun, hiding in plain sight feels about as true to life as kryptonites—that is, depressingly, embarrassingly, effective.

They stop at one of the corner shops for squeeze packs of cat treats. Ten tries to get Kun to eat one, dead serious about it for a full three seconds, enough so that Kun has to remind him that he’s not Yangyang, and to cut it out before he leaves Ten outside holding all the bags.

Ten only laughs. Kun ends up paying anyway. This could be the two-sentence summary of it all.

Outside the shop, Ten halts so abruptly that Kun nearly bumps into him.

“Aw, buddy.” He crouches to scoop up a frightened lizard, frozen in the middle of the walkway and at risk of being stomped on. “Poor choice of hangouts.”

Ten glances around for a second before finding a patch of grass to set it down on, nodding in satisfaction as it skitters away towards the safety of a bush, green disappearing into green.

“Lucky it didn’t drop its tail,” Kun says, feeling useless where he stands, bags in hand.

Ten twists his lips, dusting off his hands as he stands. “I guess.” Then something seems to occur to him. “Oh my god,” he says as the crowd pushes them forward again, “do you remember Chameleman? Like… bottom fifty heroes I would’ve guessed goes rogue.”

Well. “Rogue.”

Chameleman wasn’t a defector so much as a man who convinced himself he should be. A few months after touring the Nest, he’d decided the justice system moved too sluggishly, and attempted to take the reins himself. It was a bizarre case: he’d begun staking out the homes and offices of “potential” suspects, people who were still nothing more than a hunch in some PD analyst’s notebook. It could’ve been a major problem considering his access.

‘Could’ve’ being the operative word.

Chameleman’s very first target had been a city councillor whose office was covered, floor to ceiling, in motion sensors. This part, Chameleman really should’ve anticipated. Advanced motion sensors simply don’t care if you’re the same colour as the wallpaper.

Kun feels the corner of his mouth pull upward. It’s probably unfair. But he was never Chameleman’s biggest fan, and it’s a ridiculous story no matter how you cut it. “He’s a nursery rhyme now, isn’t he?”

“Is he?” Ten taps his lip, innocent on purpose, baiting. “Doesn’t ring a bell.”

Kun sighs, indulgent, and murmurs a single line: “Chameleman, Chameleman, wanted his story told, thought that being sneaky made him big and made him old.”

Ten claps, delighted, startling a couple walking past. “Encore!”

Kun pulls his cap tighter. “One show only, sorry.”

By the time they reach the park entrance, afternoon is beginning to take its leave. Lilies line the walkway, fighting a losing battle against the smell of traffic exhaust, and vines wrap around the tall metal archway at the entrance, a single name soldered in: Maxwell Memorial Park, erected fifteen years ago in honour of Maxwell Park, sitting Governor at the time.

Park revolutionised New Cascadia’s economy by passing a bill prohibiting android employees from occupying more than 15% of a company's workforce. Today, he’s a memorial park without a single statue, not even a plaque on the benches. Funny what legacies become when you’re no longer around to police the people who plan them.

If there’s a bit of bite in there, it’s because, to be frank, Kun never cared for the man himself. Park famously called ARMs “Frankenstein's Monsters” in a past speech that leaked when Kun was still in the Nest.

That soundbite still circulates on history channels sometimes, and every time he hears it, it stings all over again.

Maybe that’s the part that really bothers him. That even after all this time, even though he knows better than to take the brunt of someone else’s ignorance personally, some things just embed too deeply before you can shield against them. The irony isn’t lost on him.

Ten, knowing this full well, glares at the archway like he’s hoping to settle the score on behalf of all ARMs. “‘Villain,’” he quotes in a whisper just to Kun, because he thinks it will make him feel better, “‘I have done thy mother.’”

It does. Better, it makes Kun smile, if only because it’s definitive evidence that Ten actually paid attention during his choice of date night—a stage reading of Titus Andronicus at the park, Xiaojun in between them (not his choice).

“Let’s go in,” is Kun’s only response, because he knows Ten will linger until he hears it. It’s the one time he won’t take the first step.

As they pass through, Kun joins the people tapping the final K on the archway with two fingers. It’s a small, habitual sign of respect, and all things considered, a good policy is a good policy; even if the man behind it was a bit of a dinosaur.

Ten follows, hands in pockets.

Autumn is showing off today, or that’s what Ten says when they reach the trees, and Kun is inclined to agree. All around them, the leaves are coming down in swarms, catching on clothes and staying there for the ride.

A clump of three small ones land in Ten’s hair, oranges and reds that blend in easily. Thanks to his ability, they become something almost unreal, a glistening, flickering mirage, similar to light dancing on water but much harder to look away from. Ten glances up but doesn’t brush them off, careful not to let them catch fire.

Not so many years ago, he was basically a walking candle. How fast things change.

Kun watches the memory fall with the leaves, disappearing into piles, undetectable from the others. The residual nostalgia is strong enough to make him tuck his hands into his jacket pockets. He’s not cold, not even close, but it’s safer to keep them put, keep them from drifting to places he knows better than to touch out here.

“I’ll never get tired of this place,” Ten sighs, looking around. “So pretty.” He shouldn’t be standing this comfortably in the sun, not when his baseline temperature hovers around forty-something degrees, but he absorbs heat like it’s nothing, like he’s charging himself, and Kun tries not to think too hard about how obvious it is when he’s happy.

“You’re in a good mood,” Kun says, adjusting his mask even though it hasn’t slipped.

“No reason not to be,” Ten says liltingly, head bobbing a little like a cat recalibrating its balance. “I’ve got the afternoon off, and I get to spend it in my favourite park, with my favourite person, looking for my favourite cat.”

Kun purses his lips. “Now you’re just blowing smoke. You called Hendery your favourite not one hour ago.”

“Hendery was my favourite an hour ago. You’re my right-now favourite.”

“Because I bought the cat treats.”

“Because…” Ten’s sunglasses hide his eyes, but Kun swears he can feel exactly where they’re resting. “… because you just are. Be proud. It’s a very exclusive title. VVIP.”

Kun snorts lightly, shaking his head. “I’m blessed, is that it?”

“Exactly.” Ten glows. “The park spirits decided all the love for that dick should be doubled and given to you.”

“If park spirits are blessing anyone, it’s you.” It’s not a flatter; it’s the truth. Ten clocks hours here like he’s staff. “What if they rename it Bright?”

Ten wrinkles his nose. “Hard pass.”

“Still waiting on an oil painting?”

“Hm. Among other things.” Ten winks. “First, we have to see my baby.”

The search for Ten’s favourite stray doesn’t last long. A few metres in, they spot an orange cat pawing at the splintered beam of the old gazebo in the park’s centre.

The moment Garfield—assuming this is Garfield, Ten is basically the pied piper for cats—notices them, he perks up and trots over, swerving around pedestrians with an attentiveness that says he’s used to tolerating bicycles, children, and whatever else ends up in his way.

Ten grabs Kun’s wrist and pulls him down the path like the cat might vanish if they don’t hurry to meet him first.

Kun startles, feeling a spark of concern for where they are compounded by who they are. But it fades decently soon. No one’s watching, because no one knows there’s something to care about. This is… fine.

They stop at the foot of the gazebo steps, where the overhang gives them a curtain of privacy. Ten perches on the stairs while Kun stands a foot or so away next to a bramble bush, just off the path.

“This is him?” Though they take these walks semi-often, and Kun has become acquainted with several of Ten’s stray friends (even the ones he hasn’t given names), he’s never actually seen Garfield, just heard about him in legend.

“Yes,” Ten confirms with pride.

So. Apparently, the legend was generous. Up close, Garfield is…

… yeah. Kun can’t sugarcoat it. That cat is objectively unfortunate-looking. His tongue hangs out at a strange angle, most of his fur is matted, and his eyes stick out bugishly. That’s not even mentioning the missing ear, which Kun isn’t counting, because he has standards, not cruelty.

“Why don’t you just check if he’s chipped and take him home?” he says as Ten crouches and brushes a hand over Garfield’s head. The touch is gentle, filled with care. It probably feels like heaven to a creature that’s spent years sleeping under benches.

“Don’t,” Ten says, pouting instantly, “don’t you dare get my hopes up.” He stands to dig through the bag for the treats. Garfield takes the chance to wind around his legs, purring all the while. “I could never take care of him the way he deserves. I’m gone all the time.”

“Is that what you think?” Kun baulks. “Ten, you are literally the patron saint of Memorial Park strays. If you opened a cat commune, half the city would donate.”

Ten finds a packet and goes to tear it open with his teeth, only to remember the mask. “Flatterer,” he says in a chiding tone. He rips off a corner and holds it out to Garfield, who accepts greedily. “You get women into bed with that mouth?”

“I got you into bed with this mouth.”

It’s so much more daring than he usually risks; it surprises even Kun himself. Maybe it’s a result of the caffeine, and he really should cut back. Or maybe it’s Ten’s influence. Maybe it’s both.

Ten makes a chiding sound in his throat. His attention is still glued to Garfield, who has almost cleared the entire packet, but he’s almost definitely smirking. “Cute.”

“So…” Kun trails off, pretending to take in the view he already knows too well. He glances toward the lake, toward the path, toward anything that isn’t Ten, but it’s a pointless attempt at deflection; Ten could read his tells blindfolded. “Does this mean you’re done being mad at me?”

“Why would I be mad at you?”

Oh, brilliant. Now they’re both feigning innocence. That’ll solve everything.

“You know why, Ten.”

“And you know where I stand,” Ten replies, not unkindly, but immovable all the same. “Ball’s in your court.”

The old argument comes crashing down on what was otherwise building up to be a nice afternoon. Kun supposes he can’t blame anyone but himself for that, but it still smarts.

Last week, Ten had finally said it outright, everything that had been building in him for months: that he wasn’t meant to live in shadows, sneaking around like they’re doing something shameful. That either Kun stopped hiding, or they stopped altogether. No more sex, no more stolen kisses in the locker room, no more kind-of-dates that end up getting crashed by another Sparrow member with no idea what they’ve just walked in on. Just… no more.

Kun had hesitated, because he always hesitates, because overthinking is his curse, and Ten had taken it as an insult, too stubborn for his own good. It was the same song and dance as usual, only this time, Ten stormed off before it could be resolved. And now here they are, trying to talk over a wall that wasn’t standing between them a month ago.

Wasn’t standing for Kun, anyway.

Ten sees this problem as simple, but Kun can still see all the ugly outcomes they can’t walk back from if it goes south, even without a precog to consult. Outcomes like losing Ten. Losing the team. Losing the one place that ever felt like home, all over something that wasn’t HDA’s—or the public’s, for that matter—business in the first place. Because what does it matter what they do in their offtime, anyway? Why does this job demand it all?

“Ten… it’s not that I don’t want—” Kun stops, because wanting has never been the problem here. “Look.” He pulls his sunglasses off. It’s reckless, and will almost definitely get him recognised at some point, but he just can’t have this conversation looking like he’s cosplaying Men in Black. “Of course I’m a yes on making it official to the team. And if we had real families, I’d be a yes on them too. But it’s just the five of us and HDA. And we both know they’ll freak.”

“Do we?” Ten asks, squinting at him through his own shades, which at this point feel like a deliberate advantage. Garfield has climbed fully into his lap now, and purrs louder, acting as moral support. “You got a crystal ball you’ve been hiding from me? Is Eight Ball in your pocket?”

Kun sighs. It figures, that Ten would guess his choice of metaphor in his own private, mental spiral. “Ten. The section in our contracts where inter-team relationships should go is just one giant black hole.”

Ten straightens; his hair flares like flame. For a second, Kun almost thinks he’s about to jump up and start a revolution right here on the gazebo stairs. “Then fuck the contracts. We’re not indebted to HDA anymore. We’ve more than paid our dues.” But he sinks back down, shoulders rounding.

Kun drops beside him without asking. Neither of them needs the permission anymore. And he’s tired—not of Ten, never of Ten—but of the roundabout fights, the acting like either of them has A) an ounce of control in any of this, or B) a way to glean what the right choice actually is.

For years, they’ve survived on numbers and simulations, doing things over so many times that when it finally happens for real, there’s no way not to get it right. But this isn’t a fight simulation, and it’s not pollable; more and more, it's looking like they’re just going to have to choose blind.

Which stings. Because Kun’s been choosing like he’s supposed to, but then, there Ten is every time. And it never goes away, the Achilles heel he’s become. The internal pull.

It’s not some over-the-top soulmate thing, not fate or prophecy or anything else Kun might actually buy into if he tried hard enough. It’s not like there’s just the love, burning intensely, but that that’s it, that there’s nothing else attaching them. The reality is, Kun genuinely likes Ten, likes the way he thinks out loud and assumes Kun will get it, likes that most of the time, Kun actually does, likes that he still has the palette of a child, likes that he can read most rooms like a book, likes that he makes everything a little event just by virtue of being there. Most of all, Kun likes that, quite plainly, he wouldn’t be half the man he is today without Ten’s influence bulldozing its way into his life.

So then how do you compile all that just to end it on, ‘it’s not worth the fight’? Ten has always been one of the few fights worth taking the hit for. Kun can’t pretend that isn’t true.

Ten has grown quiet. So has Garfield, still happily curled up in his lap. Kun stays beside him, close enough that their knees could brush if they fancied a scandal, just like an Austen protagonist. Another ‘almost,’ hanging there like always.

“We shouldn’t talk about this here,” he settles on. It’s genuinely the best answer he could come up with, which is a little pathetic. 

Ten tries for a snort. It comes out as more of a resigned wheeze. “Fights taste better in your own apartment, don’t they?”

Kun glances sidelong. It’s such a peaceful spot; it’s a miracle no one has joined them here. Though maybe they can just sense it from afar, the lurid tension of a kind-of couple getting into and then attempting to dig themselves out of a hallmark fight.

Ten’s sunglasses have been repurposed to act as a DIY headband. Underneath his jacket, that familiar shade of blue sticks through, reminding: once a Sparrow, always a Sparrow.

Kun pulls the jacket up just enough to cover it. Ten lets him. That’s… something.

“Imagine a universe in which this all goes right.” Thought experiments are neutral territory, or at least less treacherous than the real thing. “What does that look like?”

Ten gives him a strange look. It’s the same one he gets when he’s drained and trying to remember a call code. Kun makes it easier for him. “It’s not a trick question. I’m genuinely curious.”

“Ah, I see.” Ten strokes Garfield absently, long, slender fingers moving slowly down the lopsided spine. “I quote Shakespeare once, and you remember I have multitudes.”

The sardonicism is a good sign, if a baiting one. “Humour me?”

“Humouring.” But Ten still doesn’t answer the question.

Kun is about to give up on the question completely when he lifts.

“I’d get the hell out of GRTA, that’s for sure.” Ten says the acronym the way everyone back at the Nest did, with two syllables: greta. “In a dream universe? I’d have this guy,” he decides, lifting Garfield’s paw and wiggling it. “We’d have actual days off. Like real, full ones. And we’d go Northeast for holiday, all of us, because Xiaojun and Yangyang would ugly-cry if we saw moose without them, and Hendery needs the fresh air.”

Kun can picture it too easily. Ten with snow melting in his eyelashes. Yangyang rolling around in fresh powder like an overgrown puppy. Xiaojun refusing to get on a snowmobile if Hendery even looks at the keys. Hendery trying to add something phallic to their snowman. For a moment, it feels all too possible, a life large enough to hold all of them without cracking. “What else?”

Garfield purrs, almost in response, and Ten smiles. “We’d get our own cabin, and at least one day, but no more than two, we’d get snowed in and have to survive on hot chocolate and snacks we smuggled from the lightrail.” He catches speed, the ideas flowing without thought. “And when we came back, people wouldn’t just call me Bright. They’d call me Ten. And you’d call me something gross and cheesy that I’d pretend to hate. You’d call me it publicly.” He pauses.

Kun almost speaks first, because he knows what comes next.

“I don’t think I like this question anymore.”

“Ten…” Kun reaches out, hovering for just a moment before entwining Ten’s fingers through his. “I’m sorry.”

Ten shrugs. It lands like a damp towel. “Not your fault.”

He’s not even sad; he’s just resigned. The old adage is apparently untrue: some men would actually be much happier without their delusions.

The two of them sit there a long moment, letting what feels like the entire world move around them. Soon, the trees will be bare, and their previously peaceful walks here will turn into Ten radiating heat like a public furnace, attracting strangers and dogs and small children alike. Kun tells himself he doesn’t loathe the idea.

Across the road, a billboard changes, and Hendery’s face appears, beaming over a bowl of sponsored cereal. Start your day the lucky way with Luck-O Loops!

It’s one of their cringier ads, but it sets Ten in better spirits. He lifts their joint hands. “If someone gets a picture of this, what do you think the cover-up headline reads?”

Kun thinks for a moment, then chooses the option he hopes will make Ten laugh. “Sparrows Clasp Hands in Symbolic Gesture. Sub-headline: When will the world truly unite?”

It works, but only just. Ten’s laugh is brief, and polluted by other thoughts he’s not letting Kun in on. Kun soaks in it like sun regardless. Unlike Ten, he has to let it go the second the weather changes. He’ll enjoy it while he can.

“I should moonlight as a journalist, shouldn’t I?”

Ten shoots him a prickly eye. “Not too much, now.”

Too soon, Kun watches him go from the gazebo steps. Ten’s jacket is covered in orange fur; his entire left side looks dusted in it, little clumps dropping off like breadcrumbs. He’s the entire reason they have a locker dedicated to lint rollers and fabric freshener. It’s hours before his night shift, but when he used it as an excuse to leave, Kun didn’t stop him. At least they’re not licking their respective wounds anymore.

Garfield trudges after Ten for a few paces before realising he’s leaving for good, circling back. He hops up next to Kun and stretches with a theatrical little groan, eyeing him with fresh suspicion now that his preferred human is gone.

“Yeah, I’m not your biggest fan either,” Kun tells him, though he still reaches down to scratch under his chin. Garfield leans into it with his entire body. Shameless creature. “But we’ll probably end up living together at some point, so you might as well get used to me.”

Kun pauses, another thought coming to mind. It’s absurdly sentimental, and the cat is definitely not going to answer him, but once the words appear in his head, they don’t leave. “Do it for him, okay?”

Somehow, it’s the most amiably Garfield has ever looked at him.