"It looks like the swelling from the stitches is finally going down," Niles said, squinting at the surgical site a few days later. 

Ashton looked over his shoulder at him, and Niles sat back in his chair. He took off his glasses while Ashton turned to face him. 

"The good news is that means you're almost done with your bandages," Niles said.

Ashton's pointed ears perked up at this, and Niles couldn't help but smile. He knew that Ashton wouldn't like this next bit, though.

"The other news is that we can start massaging the surgical site to improve blood circulation, reduce sensitivity, and prevent the skin over your developing scars from stretching too tightly. We'll need to do that about four times a day."

Ashton made a face at the thought of still being touched every day, and Niles let out a small chuckle. "Tell you what," he said. "We'll go outside twice a day to make up for it. Does that sound better?"

Ashton bit his lip and shrugged. Niles figured that was the best affirmation he was going to get and continued. 

"Do you want to start massages before or after breakfast?" Niles asked. 

He watched Ashton carefully. Now that Ashton was becoming more responsive, Niles wanted to increase his involvement in decisions regarding his care. He hoped that doing so would help Ashton feel more in control and spark more proactive movement from him.

Ashton was quick to answer. "After." 

Niles held back a laugh. Of course, Ashton would try to put it off for as long as possible.

Niles nodded. "Alright." He pushed away from the desk and stood up, Ashton following him with his eyes. "We'll start then. I'll get you breakfast, and then we can go outside."

As Niles dug up the weeds around the goldenrod later that morning, he glanced over at Ashton. The visiting garden pixies had tried befriending him weeks ago, but Ashton had just stared at them silently until they left him alone. Niles had told the pixies to give Ashton some space, and Ashton seemed to prefer being alone anyway.

He was sitting on his usual stone bench now, staring up at the gray sky and absent-mindedly petting a pill bug that had crawled into his lap. Not for the first time, Niles wondered what he was thinking about. 

Ashton was always so quiet, and Niles hoped he wasn't stuck ruminating over his captivity. It was bad enough to have lived through it once. But experiences like that were impossible to forget, and Niles hoped that if Ashton was reliving those five months in his head, that he'd be able to snap out of it eventually.

***

Another day passed, and something new shook up their normal routine. It came in the form of a flash of color that caught in the corner of Niles' eye, and he glanced out the window. Ashton was already sitting up in his hammock and staring, which Niles found odd, since Ashton was usually asleep in the afternoon. They watched what looked like a pink butterfly approach, and Niles grinned when he realized who it was.

"About time she got back," he said, reaching over Ashton to unlatch the window. Ashton flinched out of the way, and Niles looked down.

"Ah, sorry, Ash, didn't mean to startle you," he said. He swung the window out, and the little butterfly shape flew right in, slamming into the side of Niles' neck.

"Hi, Niles!" A bright voice said. Niles laughed and wrapped a hand around the fluttering form to return the hug. "Nice of you to finally show up," he responded. "How was your trip?"

"Uh, it was so long," the little pixie sighed dramatically, her voice muffled against Niles. "And Will is a terrible driver. I was carsick twice!"

Niles pulled her away from his neck, and she sat there cupped in the palm of his hand, scowling and still fluttering her pink wings.

"You poor thing," Niles said. He gently tugged on a strand of her long blonde hair, and she batted his fingers away. Niles could see that she was trying to keep her frown in place and failing.

"But why are you back so late?" he continued, feigning ignorance. "It's been a month. Will got home from the conference two weeks ago."

"I... uh... may have stopped to visit Mara," the pixie said, avoiding Niles' eyes. 

Niles looked at her knowingly. "Long visit," he commented innocently. She pinched him in response.

"It was Sandraheim!" she insisted. "Autumn preparation for winter! I couldn't miss the opening festivities!"

"Oh, but you could miss my birthday, hmm?" Niles teased, and she hugged his fingers. 

"My poor baby brother," she mocked him. "How can this dear sister of yours possibly make it up to you?"

Niles glanced down at Ashton and choked back a surprised laugh. Ashton had slipped down from his hammock and was leaning on his crutch, frozen on the spot. It looked like his eyes were going to fall out of his head, they were that wide with surprise and disbelief.

"I'd love to hear your excuses for being gone so long, but first, I have to introduce you to someone." Niles lowered the pixie to the desk, and she stepped off his hand daintily.

"Lucy, this is Ashton," Niles began, gesturing to the frozen faerie. "He's one of my new patients. Ashton, this is Lucy. She's my best friend and roommate."

Lucy stood there with her hands on her hips, sizing Ashton up. She was tiny compared to him, not even reaching his shoulder. Niles had rarely seen the biggest and smallest faerie subspecies stand side by side, and the size difference made him smile, especially since Ashton, the larger of the two, seemed so cautious.

Suddenly, Lucy's face split into a wide grin, and she pulled one of her wings around in front of her. Like butterfly and moth wings, faerie wings were made up of thousands of chitin scales, though the scales on faerie wings could be touched and were just big enough to be seen with the naked eye. Her fingers combed through it carefully, looking for a loose scale, while Ashton watched her silently.

Finally, she found one, and offered it to him, still smiling. "Nice to meet you," she said. 

The tiny pink scale sat in her palm, smaller than the tip of her finger, and Ashton stared at it like it might bite him. Niles waited with bated breath, wondering what would happen next. He was surprised that Lucy had chosen to give Ashton a customary woodlands greeting as opposed to a water sprite one. Ashton didn't look anything like a woodlands faerie, and Niles was impressed that Lucy was able to tell that he was one. 

Or maybe Lucy simply didn't know any water sprite greetings. Water sprites were notoriously reclusive, even around other faeries. And Lucy had spent most of her life with humans, so she might not have gotten the chance to know a sprite well enough to learn their customs.

Ashton hesitantly reached out and closed his talons around the small scale. His nails had grown in the last month and were back to the usual pointy claws of a water sprite. According to woodlands etiquette, he was supposed to present one of his wing scales to Lucy, and the two would magically fuse the other's scale to their own wings to show their goodwill towards one another. But now, Ashton just held the scale awkwardly, the bandages across his chest standing out starkly against his skin.

Lucy nodded and folded her wings down against her back. "Did you guys eat lunch yet?" she asked, turning to look up at Niles. 

Niles tore his eyes away from Ashton's still form to address Lucy. "Yes, but I was just about to get Ashton a snack. Is there something special you want me to make?"

Lucy chattered on, and Niles couldn't help but glance back at Ashton as they talked. He was still standing on the desk, lost in his own world, and staring at the pink scale in his hand. 

Niles groaned inwardly. Lucy's greeting had been culturally correct, but it was probably insensitive, and frankly triggering, for poor Ashton. Niles wasn't sure if such a gesture would make Ashton feel like he had regained a part of his heritage, or if it would only serve to further remind him of what he had lost.

As Lucy fluttered up to sit on Niles' shoulder, Ashton suddenly moved. He ran a talon along the top of the bandage on his chest, slicing off a long, thin strip before peeling off a single thread. Niles watched him curiously and waited to make sure Ashton wasn't about to try to rip off the bandages completely. They hadn't had any incidents since Niles had started leaving the bandages off of Ashton each morning, but Lucy's wing scale might change that.

Ashton didn't make any more moves to remove his bandages. Instead, he used the tip of his smallest nail to pierce the top of the wing scale, carefully threading the strand through the hole and tying the whole thing around his neck. 

Niles felt a lump in his throat as he watched Ashton study his handiwork, laying the pink scale against his bandaged chest. And then his hands were moving again, busily carving out a miniscule, scale-like shape from his bandages. Finally satisfied, he offered the shape up to Lucy, who paused in her talking long enough to look back at Ashton.

"Oh!" she exclaimed, her red eyes bright with interest. 

She flew back to Ashton's side and took his offered makeshift scale, finding the spot where she had removed her own scale and fusing his in its place. The little white circle stood out against the pink and the patchwork of browns and greens that Lucy had collected from other woodlands.

Niles breathed out a sigh of relief. "Ash, Lucy and I are going to the kitchen," he explained. "Do you want to come with us or stay here?"

Ashton eyed his hammock by the window and then looked back up at Niles, pointing at the hammock. "Alright," Niles said. He smiled at Ashton. "We'll see you soon, then."

***

Niles put up the protective railing before he and the pixie left together, and Ashton pulled himself back up into the hammock. He lay on his side, facing the window. A garden pixie, Ashton mused. He hadn't seen one up close in a long time. This one smelled weird, though. Not in a bad way, just in a not-so-pixie-like way. 

She still had the shimmering, nectar-like scent of most pixies, but it mingled with the darker undertones of a woodlands. Apparently, she hadn't seen Niles for over a moon, yet she still carried his scent on her as well. Just how well acquainted was this pixie with the Niles human to smell like him?

He looked out at the garden in the backyard thoughtfully. Suddenly, Niles' attentiveness to his garden made a lot more sense. He wasn't just keeping it up for all the pixies who frequented it; he had probably made it in the first place just for her. 

How odd, Ashton thought. A pixie living with a human.

The other garden pixies all seemed quite comfortable with Niles, but none of them showed the same familiarity with him as this new Lucy pixie. And unless they needed Niles' help with something, they never came towards the house, let alone inside of it. And they definitely didn't smell like him. 

Ashton lay his head down and kept staring out at the garden, watching a hummingbird and a few bees join the pixies to hover around the aster blossoms. He was asleep before Niles and Lucy came back.

***

"So, what's this new guy's story?" Lucy asked as Niles cut up an apple into tiny pieces for her and Ashton. 

She snagged a piece from the plate and munched on it happily as she waited for his answer. Niles frequently had faerie patients stay at their house for round the clock care. While Lucy was no doctor, she helped new patients feel more comfortable around Niles, so he always updated her whenever a new faerie came to temporarily live with them.

"I've had him for a little over a month," Niles explained, focused on his task. "He's that faerie who was kidnapped up by Sharpstown."

Lucy dropped her apple. "Shit, he's that faerie?" she wondered, her red eyes wide. "Didn't his captor cut off his wings or something?"

"Yeah," Niles replied, and Lucy winced.

"Well, damn," she said. "If I had known that, I wouldn't have given him a wing scale. I didn't realize that the bandages were for a wing amputation. I thought he was a sprite who didn't have wings to begin with, and that the bandages were for a chest wound or something."

Niles rolled his eyes. "If you thought he was a sprite, then why did you give him a woodlands greeting in the first place?" he demanded.

Lucy shrugged. "He smells like a woodlands, so I greeted him like one," she explained. "Simple as that."

"Oh, he doesn't smell like a water sprite?" Niles asked curiously. Ashton looked like a sprite, so Niles had always assumed that his sprite genes were dominant.

"Not even a little bit," Lucy told him. She paused for a minute, looking confused. "I didn't see a crest on him, though. Does he have a clan?"

"It's on his chest," Niles answered, gesturing to the place over his heart. "You can't see it with the bandages, but it's there."

"Over his heart?" Lucy asked, and Niles nodded.

Lucy whistled. "He's probably a firstborn, then."

Niles nodded again. Crest placement was very important to woodlands, as each location had a different meaning. Only firstborns had the right to place their clan crest in a prominent position like their chest.

"What's the crest look like?" Lucy wanted to know. She made a face as Niles cut a fried cricket in half. "I don't want that," she informed him.

Niles sighed. "It's for Ashton," he assured her. Most garden pixies ate crickets, but Lucy had lived with humans for so long that she had completely lost her taste for them. "I'm making you sugar water instead."

Lucy's eyes lit up, and she snuck another apple off the plate. "Ashton's crest?" she prompted.

"Oh, yeah. I've never seen one like it before. It's a dragonfly. The shape of its wings is odd, but it's too small for me to make out the details."

Lucy blinked. "Hmm," she mused. "I've never seen anything like that either. Definitely not a clan from around here. Must be deep woods." She looked up at Niles. "Do you know where he's from?"

"No clue," Niles admitted. "Ashton won't say anything about his family or where his clan is. I wish I could take him back home, but I don't know where he lives."

"Maybe his family was killed by the human that kidnapped him," Lucy suggested. "And he doesn't have a home to go back to."

"Lucy!" Niles was aghast. "Don't even suggest something like that! That's horrible."

He sighed again and placed his kitchen knife in the sink. "Besides, if that was the case, why wouldn't Ashton just say that he has nowhere to go?"

Lucy pursed her lips. "Denial?"

Niles frowned at her and picked up Ashton's plate. "Whatever. Come on, you morbid little thing. Let's go take care of Ashton."

Lucy fluttered up to his shoulder and perched on it, gripping the collar of his shirt to avoid slipping off.

"What's up with the railing around the desk?" Lucy wanted to know next. "You never have that up."

"Ashton still isn't used to being flightless," Niles explained. "With his broken leg, he's a little unsteady on his feet, and I've noticed he'll flex his flight muscles under the bandages when he stumbles to try and keep his balance." 

Niles closed his eyes briefly, remembering. "He always looks so surprised when no wings open up to steady him, and then his face just crumples into the most devastated expression I've ever seen."

Lucy patted his shoulder, and Niles continued. "Anyway, since he forgets about his wings sometimes, I'm worried he'll try to jump off the desk to fly. You know how woodlands like to climb up to the highest point they can find and then just fall off it."

Lucy nodded. "It's easier than trying to takeoff from the ground," she added.

"So, I put up the railing when I'm not in the room with him. To prevent any accidents."

Lucy shrugged. "The desk isn't high enough to injure him too badly, though," she said. "Woodlands are tough, and sprites are even tougher. It would take a fall from a much greater height than that to kill him."

"I know, I know," Niles said. "But he's still so weak. A fall from that height might not bother a healthy woodlands, but he's nothing but bones right now, Luce. I've only had him for a little over a month."

She was quiet for a moment. "Is he doing alright?"

Niles shook his head helplessly. "It's hard to tell," he answered. "He's doing so much better than when I first got him. But... he's terrified of me. It's hard to treat a patient who flinches at the sight of you."

"Well, let me have a go at things," Lucy suggested. "I'm sure that he'll loosen up with another faerie around, especially when he sees me interacting with you. He'll figure out pretty quickly that you're not a threat once he sees how much I trust you. And I'll see if I can get him to tell me more about his clan." 

She raised her eyebrows. "It will be a bit harder to figure out where he's from since he's mixed, though. Do you know if he's predominately woodlands or a true halfling?"

"No clue," Niles admitted. "His appearance and the dragonfly really throw me off. I thought he might have sprite ancestry mixed in on his mother's side, which could explain how the predominant portion of the clan crest became a dragonfly. But he looks too much like a sprite to be anything less than a halfling. And now you're telling me that he smells like a woodlands?"

"Yep," Lucy confirmed. She patted Nile's ear with one tiny hand. "Don't worry. I'm sure I can figure out what he is. It'll be easier to locate his clan and get him home once we know which side of his bloodline is sprite and which is woodlands."

Niles cupped one hand behind Lucy's busy pink wings. "Thanks," he said. "I guess we'll try things your way and see how he does. I really do want to get him home, though. Poor thing. He's absolutely miserable here."

___________________________________________________________________

A/N: You guys finally get to meet Lucy! My chaotic pixie gremlin. She is incorrigible, but she has enough emotional intelligence to be serious when the need arises. I absolutely love her, and I hope you do, too. 

Feel free to ask questions or leave comments if you want! Thanks for reading and see you in the next part!