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For as long as he could remember, Tommy had been living on borrowed time.
A stupid, wannabe villain— that was all he was. Living in the shadow of Sleepy Boi’s Inc, the most feared villains in the city. And his idols.
He still remembered the first time they’d met— the anger that had flashed in Siren’s eyes when Tommy had snatched some of their loot, and the pride it had sparked in Tommy’s chest. The hunger for more.
From then on, it was his primary goal. Even his desire to feed himself fell by the wayside in his one-sighted mission. He wanted the villains’ attention, by any means possible.
He got it in a dozen different ways. From fighting to intruding to stealing, Tommy found there were numerous ways to bring about the villains’ ire. It became something like a game to him, spurring on their irritation and pulling them into a chase that got his adrenaline pumping like nothing else.
He jumped off a building once to escape the Blade, floating quickly down with the use of his small wings. (He knew better than to try that maneuver on the Angel of Death. The man was the closest Tommy had ever seen to a bird of prey in the flesh— he was liable to swoop down and snatch Tommy right out of the air.)
Mostly, though, Tommy made a nuisance of himself. That was his job, after all, as a small-time villain, stealing to survive and generally creating problems. It only added to his entertainment when those problems went on to irritate Siren, the Blade, and the Angel of Death.
Tommy was almost cocky enough to say he was friendly with SBI.
It had been almost a year of their little game of cat-and-mouse. That was all it was: a game. When it came down to it, he was pretty sure the villains enjoyed the chase just as much as he did, following his trail with taunts flying from both sides.
Sure, the Blade’s knives had nicked him more than a few times and maybe he enjoyed pushing just a little too far with his taunts, but when the heroes came, the villains always kept Tommy out of the limelight and away from the focus of the authorities.
He wasn’t safe with them, not by a long shot— he wasn’t stupid enough to think they wouldn’t kill him in an instant— but so far, he’d managed to maintain himself as an entertainment to them in a way that prolonged their tolerance of him.
Until his life came crumbling down in the span of an hour.
He’d been caught. Not by the villains, with whom he could potentially leverage their game.
Rather, he’d been caught by heroes. The city’s top heroes, no less.
Less than twenty-four hours they’d managed to keep him, but even in that short amount of time, they’d outdone themselves with their treatment.
His wings were ruined. His downy, flightless feathers were heavy with the weight of his own blood— where feathers even remained. There were patches missing, the bony, pale skin of his wing joints sickeningly visible in certain areas.
His throat burned. He’d screamed himself raw just hours into the torture, and still they’d continued. So blinded by pain, he was unable to recall the questions they’d asked him. Maybe he’d answered. Maybe he hadn’t. Even if he had, he wasn’t sure it would have mattered. Dream was having too much fun torturing the thief who’d evaded him for months.
The green of the number one hero’s armor still flashed across the back of his eyelids when he tried to close his eyes.
Tommy was pretty sure he’d killed someone in his escape. He didn’t know who and he didn’t really care.
He was miles from home, bloody and panting, stumbling through the dirty streets as he did his best to cover his tracks. There was no doubt in his mind that the heroes would be after him, and this time, they wouldn’t take so long to kill him.
Tommy couldn’t do this anymore. He wished they’d killed him the moment they first caught him. Even now, having escaped, he wanted to die. He just didn’t want to be alone as he did it.
But he had nothing and no one. He was alone.
His exhausted mind drifted to the only people he deemed important enough to want to be close to.
He wanted to die. Siren, the Blade, and the Angel of Death wanted to kill him. It was a match made in heaven.
And anyway, what was one more chase?
Some distant part of him recalled the burner phone he’d swiped off of Siren the last time he’d gotten close enough to taunt the man. It was long gone now, but Tommy had memorized the single phone number it contained.
There was a payphone at the end of the block. Tommy found himself within its walls before he fully realized it. He left a bloody handprint on the clear plastic, but he didn’t care enough to wipe it away. There were quarters on the ground. He inserted them into the machine, pressed the buttons with shaky fingers, and listened to the old phone ring.
He half-hoped he’d just bleed out like this. With the illusion that someone was with him. That he wasn’t really as alone as he was.
The ringing stopped. Tommy’s breath hitched.
“Who is this?” The villain sounded almost bored as he answered the phone.
“Siren?” Tommy’s voice cracked horribly and he cringed, wiping away a stray tear as it escaped.
A sharp inhale came from the other end. Then something shifted. The sound— almost muted at first— became more open, like the audio had been switched to speaker-phone.
“Red.”
Tommy shuddered. That was the Blade, flat and unforgiving. It was his wrath he feared the most. He’d seen the way the villain manipulated blood, twisting it in someone else’s body as if taking ownership of it.
“Come and get me.” It came out sharper than Tommy meant it to. It sounded like a challenge and in that moment, he realized that that’s exactly what it was. “If you can.”
The Blade scoffed. “That a challenge?”
Tommy shrugged stiffly before he realized that they couldn’t see it. “If you want it to be. You wanna kill me? Come and get me.”
Silence greeted him on the other end.
“Red.” Siren sounded oddly hesitant. “What the fuck are you talking about?”
Uncertainty crested like a wave in his mind, but he pushed past it to continue his taunt.
“Thought you wanted a chase,” he sneered. It came out broken. Weak. “That’s what I’m giving you. A chance to see if you can beat the unbeatable.”
It sounded pathetic even to him, but he needed the villains to latch on to the taunt. He couldn’t stand it any longer; if he was going to be killed, he’d rather it be by them than Dream.
“Mate.” The Angel’s voice came next. It was pitched oddly, like he was treading on very thin ice. “Tell us what you want.”
A sob overtook him, silent, shaking every inch of his body to the core. He pressed his palm over his mouth and shuddered, frightened, as he was asked to bare his soul.
“Kill me,” he forced out after too many seconds of silence. “I— you don’t have to chase me if you don’t want to. I just— I thought you wouldn’t want such an easy kill.”
There was a strange, wounded sound from the other end.
Tommy’s little wings left streaks of blood on the inside of the payphone booth as he struggled to stay upright.
“Where are you?” The Blade’s tone was sharp. Insistent. Tommy was too tired to do anything, but obey.
Yet the fear in his throat stopped him.
“Wait.” It came out hushed and broken. Tommy wanted to bury his face in his arms and cry. He wanted to cut off his wings and jump from the city’s tallest building.
There was a hum on the other side. Then Siren’s voice— silky but strangely hesitant— answered. “What is it, sunshine?”
Tommy let out a shuddering breath. He couldn’t bear to hear the man’s nickname for him. Not when the future spelled only pain.
“Promise me?” It sounded impossibly childish, but Tommy couldn’t pretend anymore. “You won’t—” His throat seized, but he pushed past the pain to insist: “You’ll go easy on me? If I don’t fight, you— you’ll make it quick?”
Silence met him on the other end. Tommy trembled.
It took too long for the Angel of Death to answer: “We’ll be gentle. We promise.” His tone was unreadable, but Tommy had no choice but to trust him. “Now can you tell us your location?”
Tommy shivered. He couldn’t tell if it was from the cold or not.
“I don’t know where I am.” It was a whispered admittance, but all he’d done today was bare his vulnerabilities. What was one more confession?
“That’s okay,” Siren assured him smoothly. “We have other ways of finding you.”
Tommy wasn’t sure he wanted to know what that meant. Something small flew overhead, a caw exiting its throat. Tommy flinched. His wings burned at the movement.
“I won’t move,” he promised. Then he hung up.
The booth felt unbearably small without the villains’ imagined presence. He stumbled out of it, uncaring of the blood he left streaked along the clear walls.
He made his way to an alley nearby, where darkness shrouded him once again. The villains would be able to find him in the darkness better than the heroes would. And right now, the extent of Tommy’s choices came down to the way in which he would die.
He settled himself in the corner of the dead-end alley, pulled his knees to his chest, and rested his head on his folded arms. He was glad he’d been able to grab his jacket in his escape. Though it was bloody, it did its part in keeping the chill out. Still, his teeth chattered.
He didn’t know how much time passed before the shadows shifted and the city’s most menacing silhouette appeared at the mouth of the alley.
“You didn’t run.” The Blade’s voice was as flat as ever, but there was a note of surprise to it that made Tommy want to curl up and hide.
Tommy swallowed against the dryness of his throat. “I can,” he offered, “If you’d prefer a chase.” He was pretty sure he meant it, though in this state, he doubted the chase would last long. If the Blade wanted to take him down like that— running— Tommy wasn’t sure he’d really mind. After all, the Blade had always been the hunter out of the three of them.
The Blade’s expression didn’t really soften— Tommy wasn’t sure the man was capable of that— but his head did tilt, as if in interest.
“I don’t want you to run,” he said finally.
Tommy swallowed hard. He wasn’t sure what that meant for him. He half-wished for the Blade to just sink a knife into the soft spot of his stomach, to hold him as he bled out.
But Tommy could never be that lucky.
“Techno?” Siren looked oddly flustered as he appeared in the mouth of the alleyway, like he’d spent the last few minutes sprinting. “Tech—”
The Blade held up a hand. Siren stopped in his tracks and his yellow eyes fell on Tommy’s hunched form.
“Oh.”
Tommy shrank under his gaze.
Siren took a slow step forward. The Blade’s eyes were sharp on him, almost like a warning, but Siren only half-heeded him.
“You meant it.” The villain sounded some strange mixture of impressed and horrified. “You stayed.”
Tommy was too defeated to give any excuse.
Siren’s gaze consumed him, taking in every detail as it was. Tommy realized all at once then that his mask was gone. That his blood-matted hair and battered face— still round and soft with youth— were on full display.
“You’re just a kid.” Siren sounded unjustifiably aghast.
“We knew that,” the Blade muttered with a quirk of his brow.
“I’m not a kid,” Tommy insisted, though his voice cracked on the word.
Siren didn’t look all too impressed. “You know what you’ve gotten yourself into by calling us then?”
Tommy couldn’t help his shiver, but he jerked his chin out despite it. “I make my own choices. I’m just…” He swallowed, mouth still tangy with the taste of blood. His shoulders slumped. “I’m tired.”
Something strange flickered across both Siren’s and the Blade’s faces. But Tommy didn’t have time to read it properly because a rush of wings signaled the arrival of the Angel. He touched down just outside the alley and Tommy watched as his shadow advanced.
“Boys.” He acknowledged the other villains, stepping past the Blade as he approached Tommy. “Mate—”
The Angel went very still. His wings lifted, abrupt and angry. A hiss escaped his mouth, something inhuman.
“Your wings.” It was a snarl, low and infernal. Tommy was too frightened to meet his eyes. His bloody wings fluttered uselessly, pain shooting through them as he attempted to pull them in.
He closed his eyes and pressed his lips tight together to keep them from trembling. “It’s fine,” he said, altogether defeated. “It won’t last forever.”
Because he’d be dead, hopefully. He had no interest in the long process of healing.
He opened his eyes, glancing up to meet the Blade’s impassive eyes. “Are you gonna do it here?” He hated how much he sounded like a child, but he really couldn’t help it anymore. He lifted his hands in a helpless gesture. “‘Cause I’m ready if you are.”
“No,” the Blade said coldly, and Tommy’s heart sank. “We’re not killing you here.”
Siren closed the distance between them, his steps oddly careful. “Can you stand?” he murmured, holding out both hands in offerance.
Tommy nodded, getting his feet under him and standing shakily. He ended up braced against the wall, his wings on fire as they instinctively stretched to steady him.
Siren must have been able to read how his face pinched in pain because he moved to support Tommy immediately. But Tommy flinched away at the hand at his elbow and to his surprise, Siren didn’t push it.
They led him out of the alley, and to his surprise, there was a car waiting for them on the street. The Blade slid into the driver’s seat, the Angel in the passenger’s, while Siren guided Tommy into the backseat.
They didn’t restrain him. In some distant part of his mind, he was aware enough to be surprised. Then he realized: In an enclosed space like this, with Siren next to him, there was nowhere for him to go. Even if he did muster the courage it would take to attempt an escape, he’d be overpowered before he got halfway out the car door.
He was grateful they didn’t make him buckle his seatbelt; he didn’t think he could bear the way it would constrict his raw wings.
“Lay down.”
Siren’s voice implored him and Tommy couldn’t stop it when his body lowered itself to go lax across the backseat. He ended up with his head pillowed half-in Siren’s lap, the man’s long-fingered hand resting gently on his hair.
The engine hummed beneath them and after a moment, the car began to move. Tommy wondered if he was being taken closer to or further from his home. He didn’t know where he was to start with and he supposed it didn’t really matter, but some part of him hoped he’d die close to home.
The Angel of Death twisted to look at him from the front seat. His eyes were glued on Tommy’s wings. Instinctively, Tommy pulled them close to his back to hide them, but he only succeeded in causing a painful twitch through them.
“Someone hurt you.” It wasn’t a question. For all his villainy, Tommy wasn’t sure he’d ever heard the Angel of Death sound so dangerous.
Tommy nodded.
“Tell us, sunshine,” Siren implored, his tone sickly sweet. It ran like melted candy through Tommy’s mind, easing him into compliance. “Who?”
“Dream,” Tommy’s mouth said before he could think to stop himself.
The temperature of the car dropped about ten degrees. Tommy started shivering again.
“Dream,” the Angel repeated flatly.
Tommy swallowed past his dry throat. “Um, he wanted—” He stalled. He wasn’t sure what the heroes wanted, besides to make him suffer. “I don’t know. They wanted me.”
The Angel’s eyes flashed dangerously. “You’re just a thief. What could the top heroes want with you?”
Tommy gave a weak, little shrug. “They’d seen me interacting with you. They thought I might know something. Something they could use.”
From the front seat, the Blade let out a low growl and panic seized Tommy by the throat.
“I didn’t tell them anything, I swear!”
“Easy,” Siren crooned, stroking his gloved hand over Tommy’s tangled hair. “No one’s upset with you. And if you did give out information, no one would blame you. They were torturing you, sunshine.”
“I didn’t,” Tommy insisted. He didn’t know why it was so important to him that they understood that.
The Blade let out an impressed sort of huff. “He’s a firecracker, eh?” It seemed he wasn’t speaking to Tommy anymore.
Siren ignored the Blade, focused instead on the hopeless task of working some of the tangles out of Tommy’s hair. “You’re safe now, sunshine. No one’s going to get you.”
No one but you, Tommy didn’t say.
Instead, he said, “Oh.” He felt very stupid as he said it, but his mind was empty of everything but stupor and his dull fear.
They drove for a while longer. Tommy did his best to stay awake, despite the drowsiness that threatened to overtake him.
“How old are you?” The Blade’s tone was pure curiosity. “You’re awfully short.”
Indignation reared in his chest and he lifted his head just enough to send a glare to the rearview mirror. “I’m not short. And I’m…” He hesitated. He’d spent so long hiding his age, but he supposed it didn’t matter anymore. He’d be dead by morning anyway. “I’m fifteen.”
Siren’s gloved hand tightened minutely where it rested in his hair.
“Fifteen?” That dangerous hiss was back in the Angel’s voice. “And you’ve been doing this for how long?”
“At least a year,” Blade said flatly. “That’s when I noticed him anyway.”
Tommy filed away that piece of information with some degree of pride. The Blade had noticed him before he’d ever made contact with SBI. That must mean he was doing something right as a villain.
“A year,” the Angel repeated stiffly. “Jesus.”
Tommy shrugged. “I made my choice.”
“You’re a kid.”
“I’ve lived long enough,” Tommy said bitterly. He wasn’t sure where this courage came from to speak so brazenly to the city’s most feared villains, but he supposed it had something to do with the knowledge that he’d be dead in a few hours time. “It sucks. I’m tired.”
It seemed the villains didn’t have a retort for that. Tommy felt strangely satisfied, like he’d bested them somehow.
A few minutes later, the car rolled to a stop. The engine cut out and all three of the villains shifted to get out. Tommy did as well, sitting up with shaking arms beneath him. Siren helped him and embarrassingly, Tommy didn’t have enough strength to deny him.
“Come on,” Siren murmured, guiding him out of the car and towards an oddly normal-looking townhouse. Tommy followed without much thought. He supposed it didn’t matter to them if he saw one of their safehouses; after all, he’d been dead soon.
“All right,” Tommy said as he was guided to sit on a couch. He lifted his wings slightly in an effort to stop the smear of blood on the cushions, but gave up as pain shot through his joints. He held up his hands. “I’m ready. I don’t really care how you wanna kill me— just make it quick.”
He was shaking again. He had no idea why.
The Blade considered him, still towering above him. Only Siren had sat beside him, his body warm where Tommy slumped slightly into it.
“No one’s killing you,” the Blade said stonily.
Tommy felt his mind stutter to a stop. “What— what do you mean?”
“No one’s killing you,” the Blade repeated.
No. No, they couldn’t.
“You promised.” He hated how childish he sounded, like a toddler who didn’t get his way. But he’d never felt so betrayed.
“We promised we’d be gentle with you,” Siren corrected. “We didn’t say anything about killing you.”
Tommy felt faint. He wondered if this was the blood loss hitting him late.
“No.” Panic was crawling up his throat. “No, you can’t.”
“Wilbur, you’d better—” The Blade waved his hand, apparently unconcerned. “Just put him to sleep. He’ll understand better when he’s healed and had some rest.”
Siren and the Angel exchanged terse looks before the Angel nodded his approval.
“Wait—” Panic was clawing up Tommy’s throat. They were keeping him alive? “No, no, please—”
“Easy,” Siren said, pushing Tommy’s hair back from his forehead. Tommy could already feel the lilt of his magic, slipping between the cracks of his fear and easing him into sleepy compliance.
“No,” Tommy whined, turning his head uselessly. “Please. I can’t—. Just kill me. I can’t do this anymore.”
“No one’s killing you. No one’s hurting you. You’re safe here.”
That couldn’t be true. Tommy knew better than to think that was a possibility. No one wanted him alive, unless it was to suffer.
But the touch of Siren’s hand was soft and even the Blade’s eyes held no malice as they observed him.
“No one will ever touch you again, mate. You’re one of us.” The voice of the Angel of Death was the last thing he registered, lulling him to sleep over the sound of the Siren’s lullaby.
Tommy wondered how many others had died this way. He wondered why he couldn’t be so lucky.
Against his better judgment, his fear melted away. With a strange sense of safety closing in on him, Tommy slept.