A/N: Stars! It is I, back with another chapter of 5.5k! It's a pretty weighted one, and I'm excited to hear about what you think about the... mystery boi. Hehe. Without further ado, and thank you for waiting—enjoy.

______________________

The call of a hunter did not sound as sharp and radiant as the instrument had made it out to be; heard like the deep, rumbling of the heavens on the lowest note of majesty and despair, it made the creature within tremble like a loose leaf in the wind.

"They're coming," the raven guide had turned to Viktor at once and the others, blood drained from their faces, had their eyes raised to the sky in trepid fear. "Shift! Go now."

He kick-started an emergency signal in his Link at once and anyone who had access to it would know at once understand the situation but giving the grounds a quick survey, he was incapable of filling the space of two absent members.

"I'm missing some people," he told the raven guide who had her eyes trained on the formidable trees towering above her and in the direction of the hunter's call, as though what she'd expected was a giant-sized god whose hands possessed the power to destroy all. "And what about you?"

"They aren't hunting for ravens you idiot," she told Viktor in a voice low and urgent, hissing at his further inaction. "No one hunts for ravens. It's the reason we're posted here—to wait for them to show up." She'd muttered something else about the accuracy of their aim and barrels of wicked length, staring into the darkness that was a bullet ready to settle in blood and flesh.

Viktor did not need to provide further instructions to the Merlin and his partner for the next thing they heard was the firework of a rifle; its ricochet sending a blast through the soundwaves of the forest that was once still and serene, circling up into the sky. All creatures, within and beyond, startled and frightened by monster, began to flee.

The condor began urgently paging for his step-brother the moment they were in the air and skimming the forest canopy in search for a sign, leading the rest of his team away from danger and mapping a route to the lodging in which the school had arranged. He picked up some form of an answer; a clearing up ahead that housed a barren tree in its heart and on the forest floor, what looked like its dried, fallen leaves. A diseased tree, then.

In the split second they'd passed the clearing, he could make out the shapes of two to three human beings, raising their hands and turned aggressively towards a shadow beyond the clearing. Luka had picked up the signal along Viktor's Link and, joining the team at the far back, a safe distance away, he conveyed that his partner might have made a dangerous discovery.

But Viktor would not have liked to hear about some ground-breaking revelation, critical to the mission or not—he needed to know if the only person he considered family was alive and safe. Yet, as the head of the operation, he was incapable of leaving the team up in the air to fend for themselves.

You just left him there?! The condor had unintentionally raised his voice at his student and in an attempt to rein in the rest of his emotions, he led them to a thick convolution of trees and brought the party to a stop. Sullivan, you're his partner.

Luka did not appear at all troubled by what he did, to the extent whereby he almost seemed incapable of understanding Viktor's frustration. He's Vaughn.

_____________________

The vulture was not the kind to be fazed by loud sounds despite the numerous assumptions of it being the case with the added feature at the end of his long-time pistol friend, a barrel of silence. He quite appreciated a good thunderstorm; one that raged and cracked open the skies with a deep rumbling of the heavens, dark and grey as the shade of his hair.

At present, he'd merely turned his attention to the chief officer for an identification of the horrid, blood-curdling sound that had, to him, felt almost otherworldly and hellish on instinct—almost as though he'd been programmed to understand what the call had meant to incite. Already, he could hear the creature in his cage thundering against the bars. His familiarity with orchestral instruments did not aid in his identification of the thing that produced the call—a trumpet, or horn of some sort.

"Wha'sat?" The man posed to one of his assistants, squinting in the direction of the sound as though he would, by some miracle, make something out among the trees of weighted branches.

"Just a hunting horn, sir," she'd declared in turn, following his gaze. "Been a while since we heard it but uh, every now and then, I guess."

The officer laughed at once, glancing over his shoulder straight into the eyes of the bird of prey perched atop the barren tree. "They better be huntin' for ones like you, eh?"

And as though on cue, an instant wave of rustling branches and leaves saw a flock of black birds taking off into the sky, fleeing towards them and away from the hunting horn, heading further east. This had the humans raising their weapons on guard, aimed at an entity beyond the trees that was a phantom to them as much as they were to the animals of the forest. A haunting.

"You think they'd cause trouble for us here, sir?"

"Nah, can't be. We got a policy with'em hunters all 'round. The department ain't takin' any delays."

Opportunistic was the prime characteristic of Vaughn Alekseyev no matter the circumstance; evidence of his discovery was key and if furthering the information they had at present was the task entrusted to him, fulfilling it would therefore suggest a form of risk.

Observing distracted gazes and faltering attention, he landed on the forest floor, hopping, as vultures often did, around the pool of crisp brown shards, a mimicry of fallen leaves. Moments earlier with his suspicions roused and instincts stirred, Vaughn had dismissed the thought of dying trees shedding leaves and now, just inches away, he could finally see what they were.

The wings of Atlas moths—torn and shredded, singed on the edges, gathered in heaps around the tree as though just moments earlier, they'd began to detach themselves from the branches and fall dead. He searched for his partner.

It had become an odd and unsightly habit of Vaughn's to confirm his sanity and existence through a gaze, exchanged. The receiving end of this no one other than Luka Sullivan, who remained still and unmoving amidst the shadows of a tree just along the clearing, keeping watch.

But birds were a mess when startled and even in the form of his Avian, Luka could not resist the ruffled feathers and the electricity of instinct, sparking a fizz under his wings as soon as he heard the first bullet of a hunting rifle, freed from the barrel. The single shot, seemingly close in distance, had its soundwaves travelling across the clearing in the beat of a heart, slamming into the vulture's chest and right past the bars of his cage in a frightful shudder.

Victoria and Nox were at once geared for flight instinct, furthered by the sudden triggering of an emergency signal at the back of their heads. It was Viktor.

The golden eagle said nothing in their established connection; merely stared his partner straight in the eye in warning. Death, he had not scheduled to meet so soon. This heart, housing not one but two, bore a weight more than himself.

Go first, Vaughn knew not where this sudden streak of insensible righteousness and desire for the justice of truth was coming from. All he could hope for was that Iolani Tori had no part to play in this.

"Officer, I think I see 'em."

The team of officers and their number plates in a sundering circle that appeared almost like a ritual, the exact locations where the dead bodies had been found this very morning and in the middle of it all, a barren tree of summer, branches naked from what could have been a foliage of moths the shade of earth, blinking in the wind and now, dead.

Whether this was a mystery to be solved by deduction and reasoning or myth and legend was up to those capable of piecing the evidence into some form of a whole and so Vaughn did what he'd never thought he would do.

In his hooked bill that was rounded and thick, he had a mouthful of shredded moth wings. His feet, very much unlike those of eagles who relied on talons for a kill, saw them slipping through the gaps from a grip that was weak.

"Hey... going on..."

"I see ya'll better be... reportin' for the delays."

Are you gone? He asked and to his relief, received no answer. What a lovely headache he'd have for Luka Sullivan to be dead for then, he'd have to face not one but two grieving widows and by skies, he was not going to deal with any of that horrendous situation again.

The vulture did his best to maintain the state of the papery wings in his bill to no avail. Bit by bit, he could feel them crushing, morphing in his mouth. He made a break for the shade of the trees by propelling himself towards it, half in low flight and half hopping his way there.

Spitting the evidence out of his bill and shifting as soon as he was under the cover of thick undergrowth and trees, Vaughn hurriedly gathered what was left of the Atlas moths and secured it in a pocket of his uniform before bracing himself for the next consecutive shift.

But how was it like to feel the impact of a bullet in one's fingertips; the tremor of an earthquake in the bark of a tree in which it was lodged, oddly loud and exaggerated in the mind of man, frightened like a beast running from its hunter.

How odd. He hadn't heard the firing of a shot.

In was in times like these that one would so desperately fall into the belief that breathing would give one's position away and so stop completely, struggling to still the beat of the heart and shrink into the shadows.

The footsteps of another—careful but weighted—brought the moment to a standstill. What a time to be deliberating between shifting into his Avian form and staying in his current, equally fragile state. Found out, there was no other option but to deem the vulture suspicious; a human like himself in the middle of a forest or an avian species never once spotted in these parts of the earth.

Vaughn was not armed.

He had not a blade or the readiness to wield anything against anyone from down below it was a first, daunting prospect that crept into his cage and though he had his pistol tucked away at his hip, there was no guarantee such magic would work itself on a hunter.

A twig, he picked and sent flying two trees down to a soft, crinkling of an impact that seemed to have caught the attention of curious feet.

The footsteps began to lose their gravity and weight but the distance between them both was vague and Vaughn was aware of the noise he would be making in the kind of shoes he wore. Would his appreciation and adoration of aesthetics and fashionable items ironically lead to the gruesome state of his end? He'd never thought this was the way he would be going.

"Easy now... I know you're here."

The voice was as alarming as the arrival of its owner, gentle enough to remind Vaughn of a certain shrike and without a streak of sinister intent, he could almost think of it as a matter of coaxing.

Carefully, the vulture pulled out his weapon and with one hand, cocked the pistol. The metallic sound was to him, muted by the slowed movement of his fingers and the fact that he'd placed his other hand over the barrel of the gun but its inherent quality struck a note that, to the enemy, was like the ring of a bell. Resonating.

The silhouette began to turn and Vaughn rotated accordingly on instinct, abandoning the moment of silence and he shifted and took to a higher perch with gunshots at his back, firing away.

The vulture's hop—that was quite the hobble with its neck often low—did not get him far with limited agility and all that he had to rely on was the help of Nox's instinctive movement, ducking low and swerving every now and then to avoid the direct path of a bullet based on the previous shot.

Hm, what a nice little first encounter with a friendly hunter from below, his Avian was oddly in the mood for jokes and upon gaining that bit of distance between them and the enemy, Vaughn took cover behind a tree and fired his first shot.

A glimpse of the hunter, near enough, saw a light in his eyes as though the thrill of a catch was, to him, an addiction and alas, the swift raising of his rifle for an aim down the barrel.

It wasn't news to Vaughn that black vultures weren't the fastest of the avian world nor were they ones who possessed keen eyesight like the many other bird of prey he'd had to go up against for it was the art of a mind, cunning and clever in its work, that had him rise.

Far before, he'd worked out the impossibility of human eyes in identifying a black bird amidst shadows, undergrowth and foliage and decided then that facing the enemy was far better than running away and soon allowing him an idea of what sort of Avian he was. Either way, they were after this heart.

"You missed, little bird."

"It was on purpose," lied the vulture, straightening up and giving away his position with the false reloading of his pistol. "They sent a pheasant like myself to lure you into something better. Do you prefer being dead or alive in the hands of the enemy?"

Something was coming. Vaughn wasn't sure if the hunter he was facing had sensed the presence of a third but without a natural Avian who wished to aid him in his human form, he deduced the likely answer.

"So you're just a pheasant?" He could tell the hunter was surprised. An amateur, then. This was going well. "Mm, would have done with something like a hawk but, you'll fetch a price. Some people like your type." He took aim.

"Black pheasants?" Vaughn scoffed, raising his own and stepping further into his space. Closing in. "I'm no peacock. Also, I've missed once but you've fired dozens of shots that gave away your position. And assuming your comrades are on their way to aid you, or, perhaps not, then I suppose they will have to deal with a lot more trouble with the officers around than this... quiet thing I have."

It was nearing, whatever it was. Vaughn felt no ill intent but seemed for some reason, able to understand that it was here to help him. Members of his team would have used their established Link. This person was clearly a stranger.

By now, Vaughn was close enough to give the hunter a good glimpse of the barrel of his gun and upon noting the suppressor attached to the end of it, the man seemed to pause. "I don't get your point, missy. I could get your heart in a silver cage so be glad you aren't a bronze at least—"

He pulled the trigger at point blank and on instinct but Vaughn had done so pre-emptively, sending the hunter into an odd fit of madness as the gun he'd fired in his last moments of control fell to the forest floor with an alarming clang—a clash of metal against metal—and an equally alarming thought of being faced with not one, but two Winged.

The man collapsed in violent spasms, shuddering with his eyes open at the one who'd disarmed him.

The mark of a passenger pigeon filled the back of a slender, dark silhouette in the lithe ebony suit of an assassin, positioned between the hunter and Vaughn, standing over the former with a blade in his hands having used it to knock the hunting rifle out of reach. This person was of a small frame which had naturally come as a shock to the person he'd somehow saved.

"Kiku?"

It was not him. So he'd sent one of his men to watch them? Despite the offense he'd taken from their visit and demands, ultimately sending them out of his den in quiet fury. And as much as Vaughn the prideful wasn't fond of being the damsel in distress or having anyone else besides himself diving to his rescue, he admitted to an alternate universe where he might have had a bullet lodged in some part of his body.

"Tell your boss he has my thanks," the vulture had muttered under his breath, stowing his pistol away and preparing to shift. In the distance, he could see phantoms, moving shadows that appeared to be searching for the source of the firing. "I'll be leaving now."

His apparent lifesaver made no gesture of acknowledgement or will to turn around and the blade in his hand, although clean, seemed to hunger for a taste at the angle in which it was pointed but it was something else that made Vaughn Alekseyev hesitate in leaving and be all of a sudden overcome by the urge to look at the assassin's face.

It was the snow-white wisp of a down feather in his hair.

But the voices neared and the blur of humans began to come from all sides and Vaughn knew at once better than to stay for another second of his time and so he shifted and took off—leaving the small, lithe frame behind.

What an odd way that feather seemed to stand out in hair so dark and inked.

___________________

The look on Viktor's face would continue to haunt the dreams of a certain baby vulture who, above anything else, had never quite seen his step-brother lose his cool or wear an expression beyond a seemingly teasing nature, free of care and concern. He'd nearly jumped out of his skin, the moment their eyes met after an hour or so of quiet flight—in which the head of operations had decided to turn the entire team back in search for Vaughn and spotted him flying just above the treetops, following the emergency signal that would take him back to Viktor—ending the day at a blend of tourist lodges that would have helped the team fit into the 'odd traveller' stereotype.

"I was honestly hoping to wrap things up by today but I know you're all dead tired so we're going to do that first thing in the morning on the flight back to the island," Viktor had said whilst handing out the keys, glancing at the bags that had started to form under Zijun's eyes. "Get ready for a full account of what happened. Write it down after a bath, before you sleep, anything. It's a two-paged report from each of you."

The members of the team nodded briefly, and when Viktor had turned to the knighted pair of eagle-and-vulture to present them a key to their shared room, Vaughn almost caught himself heaving a sigh of relief. His partner's Avian had stared.

Well, in my rational defence I would like to point out that no one would be in the right mind to sleep alone after seeing the things I saw. Vaughn had privately requested for some plastic at the registration counter to store the crushed moth wings he'd obtained and was now handing them to Viktor for safe-keeping. Luka couldn't tell if this emotion was the kind that needed some shoulder-patting.

It was something he'd saw Dmitri do every now and then; convenient for adoption when it came to Io but not so much when assessing the emotions of others. He'd somehow become quite well-versed in it.

"You're a little bitch, Eve." The Andean condor had the harsh tundra of winter in his eyes whilst receiving the piece of evidence and sandwiching it in one of his folders. Vaughn was very naturally blinking his way through this.

"Excuse you, I was under the impression that we were trying to bring this case away from the standstill it's currently—" Okay, why were there arms around him and a crushing weight on his chest.

Luka promptly deemed his shoulder-pat unnecessary.

*

The night had breathed a shudder of release in the hands of darkness by the time they'd retired to assigned rooms for a bath and following that, a good night's rest. Outside, the sweltering heat had hardened into a frosty chill that came in bouts, carried by the wind as it willed the trees outside into bending, running its fingers through branches of leaves that trembled at its touch.

Vaughn was not a fan of the weather. He'd made this clear upon emerging from a shower, wrapped in the warmth of a cosy bathrobe provided by the hotel, head tilted to the side as his hair, dripping wet, came under the heat of a blow-dryer.

A glimpse past the doorway saw his partner seated in the only armchair in the room, gazing out of the window, up at something in the night sky. It did not take a genius to make wild guesses at what it was, and Vaughn was certainly not in the mood to interrupt a seemingly pensive, unguarded Luka Sullivan as it both amused and infuriated him terribly. In fact, his prime choice of action was to look away.

Unfortunately, the eagle had other ideas. Whether it was the fault of his blasting hair dryer or a general misdirection of his gaze, Luka had surprisingly taken his eyes off that which he had been admiring in the night sky, turning to Vaughn with a pause.

"What's that?"

"Hair, Sullivan. Hair," came the bitter cookie, jumping to the insecure defense of his appearance that he assumed was coming under attack. While his partner had, indeed, paused at the sight of a very different-looking Vaughn (the last he recalled, his hair did not look so flat and tangled and he'd never seen the vulture in anything other than the predator's uniform), he hadn't the slightest idea of what it meant to be making jabs at the appearance of a fellow human being.

"No, I meant..." he gestured at the air-blowing, heat-waving, contraption, electronic, gun-thing. It was making a lot of noise and he found that effect unexpectedly pleasant, perfect at filling the silence that would otherwise have been uh, comfortable, nevertheless.

The all-knowing vulture had blinked, turning to the device in his hand. "It's a hair dryer," he soon enlightened, glancing at the digital clock on the bedside table between a pair of single beds. "I'll be done in a minute, so. Um. Apologies for the wait."

It took his partner a full minute to register what had been said, and even then, he'd responded to it by dismissing the apology and retrieving a bathrobe of his own from the wardrobe, completely oblivious to the fact that it had been the first apology he'd received from the vulture himself.

Once the latter's hair was beautifully styled for beauty sleep and he'd retreated into the corner of his bed, Luka took his place in the bathroom with shower thoughts—which happened to include how the room and the sheets and the towels and the robes smelled very much like Io and that the next mating season was only a month away. That aside, he'd also noticed that the complimentary bottles of soap had mostly remained untouched, save the bottle labelled 'conditioner'. That one was visibly empty.

Eyes closed and with water running down his head, falling like rain and breathing steadily amidst it all, he saw them. Images in frames or moments of the day playing one after the other, complete with gaps with darkness as he'd often experienced. The crevices of the mind in which memory could not reach—leaving the sediment at the bottom untouched and undead, all the way to the box under his bed.

And as he would do at this time of the day, alone in the shower, drowning in water, he'd attempt to reach past the bars of his cage and into another, past the rattling that wasn't his own.

You there?

Then came the wait. To attempt a conversation with the owner of the heart resting in his stomach was unheard of in the Avian world, where the act of consuming another of their kind had only ever been considered by Hunters, to fulfil a selfish desire that would inevitably result in the suppressing of the original spirit. Over the course of the weeks he'd come to adopting the ritualistic habit, Luka had become accustomed to identifying the end of his supposed wait, in which the answer he received was the darkness of a window beyond and the empty howling of the Wind, echoing in the depths of an abyss that gulped and swallowed and sucked a spirit dry.

Even then, a single word would surface on occasion, like an answer from the deep. A word that the former owner of the heart could not seem to forget.

*

The eagle emerged from the shower room to face a mirror that was practically beyond use, taking a moment to put on his bathrobe and brush his teeth before leaving the bathroom door ajar to let some of the heat escape.

He hadn't planned on coming out of this quite literally steaming hot, walking past the doorway and into the bedroom with a smaller towel over his head. Vaughn had spared his partner a glimpse before returning to the folder in his lap—opened to a detailed autopsy report of one of the victims.

How persistent the image was; of that snowy feather stroking the ends of darkened blades. He couldn't help but feel it somehow connected to the folder of reports in his lap.

"Viktor came?"

"No," the vulture snapped the folder shut, placing it aside. "He hasn't sent his Avian, or dropped by to say a thing about the hunting call." He sighed, raising his gaze with a frown. His eyes narrowed further upon observing the seeming paleness of Luka's face. "You're not ill are you?"

Victoria's groan could be heard almost a mile away, perched atop the roof of a nearby bakery for warmth. The boy is sick, he is.

"I am well aware where this is going and I refuse to participate," Vaughn was quick to announce, pointing at the light switch. His partner had little difficulty interpreting this gesture and headed over to it on instinct. Going to bed without the company of small talk or troubling conversations was an optimal decision made by the vulture. "I had the intention of holding a meaningful conversation with you about what happened back there, but I now see that you are otherwise unfitting, so. Good night, Luka Sullivan."

The lights went out in an instant, settling over the pair like a duvet of the night in which silence was their pillow and the soft lapping of the wind against the window, a lullaby. There were moments of rustling, of finding their comfort on a foreign bed, searching for sleep; until an unexpected voice began to fill the quiet in the heat of its embers, sizzling under the light of the moon.

"Back there," Luka stared at the ceiling. "Were you scared?"

"Fear does not come to me very easily and if it does, you are dreaming," clarified his partner almost at once, as though he'd anticipated some before-sleep, sudden conversation. He was also lying. "Please don't let this become too sentimental. You couldn't have been frightened by something of that calibre."

"Okay, but I was." The eagle did not sound like he was searching for sleep and the honesty fazed his partner quite severely. "I might have a... dream."

Vaughn had hesitated to respond with a half-hearted scoff. "You mean, a nightmare?"

"Io says nightmares are part of dreams. We just think its bad because they show negative things. But they might not be bad... so it may not be a nightmare."

"Good night." The vulture declared almost at once, turning to face the wall and adjust his covers so as to erase the wretched concept from his past two seconds of memory. Trust Luka Sullivan to catch him off guard and by doing so impose the thoughts of his greatest enemy. How absolutely cunning.

"I thought I was okay being alone," his partner went on regardless, and Vaughn didn't quite know what to do with a Luka Sullivan going off on conversation. "I used to be."

Well, the vulture thought quietly to himself, it certainly is the first time you two silly beings are spending time apart in the form of hours in completely different worlds.

"I think this is what 'missing' is," said Luka to the ceiling. "I miss the nest."

How odd it was to be hearing someone like his partner utter the very sentimental word of nest, a near term that officialised one's—a Winged's—connection with an area, a place of home; to the land, and to the people.

"I don't have Io with me."

"Mm indeed," Vaughn could not resist the opportunity he was given and snatched it up at once in false nonchalance. "What tragic circumstances. You'll never survive."

"Okay."

And while the truth remained, that the vulture was working his way around the surprise he was feeling at present by his partner's candour, he didn't quite know what to feel about it either. If, for all intents and purposes, the sparrow and eagle were somehow together every moment of the day (that must be the case anyway, since, well, the latter was not exactly handling this current separation well), this must be some miracle that they were willingly apart.

With this running around his mind and a bed underneath that wasn't his own, Vaughn was not feeling at all comfortable. He was the kind of person who had trouble sleeping in beds that weren't his own; harping on the nightmares to come and, without the comfort of kimchi in his fridge in which he'd always count on in the middle of the night, the absence of a solution. What a way to be embarrassing himself in front of Luka Sullivan, should he experience some form of sleep-talking.

"Know what matching pyjamas are?" He said, out of nowhere.

There was a pause before Luka responded. "No not really."

"Just pyjamas that match, you moron. It was a rhetorical question," Vaughn scoffed under his sheets, begrudgingly shifting his position once more. "I used to like them as a child. Thought it would be nice to have someone who'd wear them with me, but my brother never liked them."

"Viktor?"

"No, the other one."

"I don't know that one."

"It doesn't matter," already, the vulture was experiencing a bad case of conversation fatigue mere seconds into this and there was no backing out. He blamed himself for choosing to have spoken in the first place. "You and Iolani could order yourselves a pair. Might make the nights separate from each other more bearable, to say the least. Since neither of you can stand being apart from the other."

There was another moment of thought before Luka came up with the answer that presented Vaughn with the largest serving of surprise that night.

"Io can."

He'd put forth. Out of nowhere. And to say that Vaughn was traumatised by this would most likely be the perfect understatement of the century. The vulture had sat up in his bed at this and while both he and perhaps the entire Avian world would have never expected Luka Sullivan to admit, let alone say such a thing aloud, he could for some reason begin to digest the fact that he just did.

Just acknowledged that Io was alright with being alone and that both he and Vaughn knew this perfectly well. Even alone, he was going to be fine.

And for the longest time, the vulture knew not what to say in response which was, very naturally, a rare occurrence by itself since all the salty thing never lacked was comebacks of premium quality but now, he was lost. He kept his mouth shut. But then after the moon had disappeared and emerged from the clouds several times and he doesn't quite know how long after that was, Vaughn Alekseyev finally came up with an award-winning response that he deemed would swing the argument in his favour.

"Just because he can doesn't mean he would choose to."

He turned to catch a glimpse of his partner's response but saw the eagle's eyes closed, fast asleep—or so he'd thought.