Snakeskin & Dove Wings • [AO3]
Teen | 1.2K | Jamil & Vil | Mad Science AU, Developing Friendship
A/N: This is the beginning of an AU inspired by Episode 6/Ignihyde's arc. Please refer to my notes on AO3 for more about what to expect from this verse in the future. Also, all my love to @villainsnest for her invaluable insight and assistance with dissecting Vil like a frog! <3
CW (spoilers): Implied scientific/medical experimentation, forced imprisonment and surveillance, humanoids without equal rights, semi-graphic prey animal death, and themes of trauma and abuse.
Jamil doesn’t dream. Not anymore. Not for a while now.
Jamil doesn’t dream, so he knows it’s real—the whirr and screech of old gears as the vent grille opens somewhere above him, the sound of skittering feet on metal, the rapid heartbeat, the hesitation—
Someone pushes a broom in from the end of the vent.
He hears the sweep of its bristles—shallow, quickening breaths—the subtle impact of a body hitting near in the sand. Six and a half pounds, he thinks idly, and from the smell of it, a rat. He lets it scamper away to where it thinks there is safety, or even a chance of escape—
The sound of its digging almost lulls him back to sleep.
Almost, except—
There is someone crying.
He can feel it through the sand—the faint tremors from across, in the adjacent enclosure. He can scent it in the air when he raises his head and his tongue flicks out and all he tastes is salt—all he thinks of is the ocean. He’s never actually seen it, but he’s dreamt it before.
Before all this. Before, when he dreamed.
He doesn’t dream anymore.
He doesn’t cry, either.
His tears have all dried up here, under the red glow of a heat lamp, on the sands of his small desert. He doesn’t cry, but he thinks—if he could—if he could. He thinks… that it might feel good. Like releasing something. Like letting go. He can’t remember what that feels like.
It’s been so long since he let go of the last thing he had.
His anger.
He opens his eyes and sets his chin on his arms, crossed in front of him on the sand. He’s laying on his belly with his tail coiled behind him. The heat lamp, right above him, makes the world a soothing scarlet—beyond that, though—beyond the divide of thick glass walls that hum with magic, there’s another enclosure—
This one, lit up in blue, hosts what looks like an angel (if such things were real, or could ever hope to be real in a place like this one). Jamil had glimpsed the “angel” earlier, kicking and scratching and yelling into his gag. He’d been forced to his knees outside the enclosure, his neck injected before he was collared and his wings were freed, just to droop on the floor, shedding violet-white feathers…
They had all been collected by one of the white coats.
Now, the angel is awake with his huge wings curled around him, almost glowing under blue light. He is silent as he cries, save the rustling of feathers; Jamil can see them quivering, see their ends splay over concrete. Cold, hard ground. That’s all there is for him.
So, Jamil thinks to himself, they hadn’t planned on an angel.
He yawns and starts to shift, pushing himself up first onto his elbows and then to his full height, stretching his arms out—
There’s movement in the burrow that the large rat has dug.
Jamil turns slowly toward that corner, toward the rocks and meagre brush. He listens to the heartbeat of his prey in the sand, gets a hold of its rhythm and begins to softly sing, “Shway, shway, shway, shway.”
The reaction is immediate. The sands shift in the burrow.
Jamil continues singing: “Ghanili ghani wkhud 3ayneya…”
Out of the corner of his eye, Jamil sees movement from the angel. He has shifted his wings to uncover his face, and Jamil can feel it—those eyes on him. More intense than the eyes that watch him through the soulless black lenses of the cameras in the ceiling, but all the same—
Jamil ignores it.
“Il-maghna Hayat il-ruH yasma3ha, il-a3lil tishfih witdawi…”
The large rat emerges from out of its burrow and clambers onto a rock, black eyes fixed on Jamil. It takes a few more graceless steps, then goes stumbling off the edge, snout over tail, into the sands—
“…kabid majruH tiHtar il-3aTibba3 fih.”
Jamil slithers forward to where his shadow drowns the rat, striking all light from its eyes as his song fades to a whisper, then a hum—
Then, his face contorts as his jaw unhinges and his eyes flash silver.
He strikes at his prey with fangs dripping venom, muffling the rat’s squeak with the wet flesh of his mouth. He can feel its scrabbling paws trying to latch on his human molars, can feel the way its tail lashes out and almost tangles with his tongue—until, at last, his venom does its work and the rat is forced down quietly—
Not even its heart beats in panic, though it does still beat.
Jamil closes his eyes and listens—listens until it stops, until it is good and dead inside of him—until the lump of it has moved down from his throat; then, shifting around, he returns to the exact spot he’d been lying before, under the heat lamp, and begins to settle—
“Wait,” comes a voice from across the way, beneath the blue light; it is a small, hoarse voice and the word is punctuated by a sniffle, but something about it commands Jamil’s attention—and so, he turns.
He turns to see the angel struggling to his feet, one hand pressed against the glass, a chain extending from his wrist. He might look defeated—if not for his eyes. His eyes are like gemstones, hard and polished to a shine. His eyes are unbroken, even as his voice cracks: “Y-your song…” He smiles a little—not insincere, but forced—as if he’s terribly out of practice. “I never expected… any beauty here.”
Jamil just stares at him, unblinking.
“It… may be strange to say,” the angel continues as his hand slides from the glass to drop back at his side, causing the chains to clink against the concrete floor, “but I wanted to thank you…”
Flicking his tail, Jamil looks away. He’s the first to break eye contact and he doesn’t know why, because he doesn’t owe deference—and he’s not trying to show it. He knows that, at least. He just… doesn’t know how to even have this conversation, after so long in silence…
The white coats talked about him, over him, and at him—but they never talked to him. No one has since he was taken, long, long ago.
“I’m Vil,” the angel speaks again, unprompted.
When Jamil looks this time, he sees the angel has drawn his wings back, exposing his collar and a drab gray uniform. He has blonde hair to his shoulders, dyed light purple at the tips. His skin is pale and decidedly human—no feathers sprouting from any odd place.
If they cut off his wings, he would pass for human.
Jamil’s gaze drops to the bare skin of his torso, from which a long red-and-gold scaled tail extends to more than twice as long as what is human about him. He’s more animal than not, the white coats say.
Speaking somewhere in all that, Vil must have asked for his name.
He’s backtracking now, responding to the silence—telling Jamil that he doesn’t have to say, that they don’t have to speak, that he’ll give him his space; but then, almost without thinking, Jamil answers—
“No.”
“No,” Vil echoes with a lilt of question, locking eyes with Jamil.
Jamil nods, slowly—hesitates—then, slithers closer, raising a hand to the glass as Vil had done earlier. “My name,” he starts to say, forked tongue flickering as he pauses to inhale. “My name is… Jamil…”
Thank you for reading! Reblogs are always appreciated. If you’d like to leave a kudos or comment on AO3, I'd really love that, as well! ♥
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