Chapter Text
“They’re not healing as quickly as I’d hoped they would,” Hyacine said during his latest checkup, gloved fingers poking at the ring of scar tissue that ran around the base of Phainon’s left wing. The sensation was faint, nerves yet to grow back from where they’d been sliced - quite literally - in half.
With the amount of visits he'd made to the Twilight Courtyard over the past month, it wasn’t exactly the news he’d been hoping for. Considering the wings had been dismembered entirely, he’d thought that the wound having sealed behind scar tissue was a good sign.
Well, that was why Hyacine was the doctor of the two of them.
“Aren’t they?” Phainon asked. “They’ve stopped bleeding. And they don’t ache anymore.”
“At all?”
From where the pegasus had settled on a pillow nearby, Little Ica let out a doot doot that sounded particularly disbelieving. Even Hyacine’s own questioning tone didn’t seem quite as skeptical. Phainon wasn’t sure when exactly the little creature had learned to read through white lies but Ica was clearly excellent at it.
“Alright,” Phainon amended, “they don’t ache as much.”
Hyacine hummed as if she’d expected this. Then, she said, “I’m going to run us through some stretches, don’t resist, alright?”
The stretches were the same as always.
First, the stretch of folding and unfolding his wings - the limbs, stiff and tense, always ached the most at this point. Not to the point of hurting, but with a deep intensity that made Phainon want to fold them away entirely. They always remained stiff, but after a few stretches, the burn began to ease, if even a little.
Second, the raising of unfolded wings. With Hyacine’s aid the lift wasn’t too much. The muscles in his back only trembled a little with her bearing much of their weight.
“They’re not healing well?” Phainon asked, when Hyacine raised his right wing another time.
“It’s not that you're healing poorly,” Hyacine said, “it’s just that they’re a lot stiffer than I’d have expected them to be at this point. It's just taking longer than expected.”
“Ah.”
“I’ll need to reconsider the efficiency of your daily exercises,” she continued, a soft sigh echoing from her lips. “If they’re not helping with your mobility then I’ll have to rethink what we do from here.”
Wait. Daily exercises?
“Daily?”
Behind him, Hyacine paused. She lowered his wing with a slowness that only tired medical professionals could upon hearing that their patient hadn’t been following the advice prescribed to them.
“Yes, daily,” she said, with a tiredness that sounded like it ached more than his wings ever had. “We established that you needed to do daily stretches to build up strength in your wings.”
Had they?
Phainon really couldn’t remember. If he were being entirely honest,he spent a lot of their infirmary visits thinking about things entirely unrelated to his wings. Like what treats Castorice’s new baby chimeras might enjoy when he next visited - (he would be their favourite ‘uncle’ even if Mydei tended to be favoured by said creatures more) - or whether or not he should swing by the local patisserie for a sweet treat on the way home to the little cottage that he and Mydei called home.
“Right,” he said, lifting a hand to scratch at his cheek. “I must’ve been distracted.”
“I gave you a sheet and everything.” She sighed, but luckily, Hyacine didn’t sound too upset. Just mildly exasperated.
…In fact, Phainon could vaguely recall stuffing a piece of paper into his coat pocket. That had been the day he’d snuck baklava into the household despite Mydei’s insistence that whatever he baked would be much better. He must’ve mistaken the crumpled paper with the receipt and thrown it out.
“...I think I mistook it for a receipt,” he said, apologetic.
He couldn’t see her expression since she was standing behind him but Hyacine sounded entirely bemused when she said, “Of course you did.”
Honestly, he was a little surprised she wasn’t asking how and was instead simply accepting the words for truth.
“Alright,” she said. “Here’s what we’re going to do - I’ll send the exercises to your teleslate and you are going to start doing them. Every day. Without fail.”
“Of course,” Phainon agreed. Really, it wasn’t like he was avoiding the stretches on purpose or anything. It was just that the Era Nova had made him a little forgetful.
“And I’m going to send the same instructions to Mydei. You’ll need someone to help and I know for a fact that he’ll remember even if you forget.”
Of course he would.
Mydei didn’t follow the path of Remembrance but he sure had the memory of someone who did. And the body of a god. Titans… those muscles really were divine. When he got home, he was going to have to do his daily dose of admiring them. Maybe, if he were lucky and got to Mydei before Hyacine told on him, he’d even be able to fondle them a little.
For the sake of his own mental health, of course. No other reason.
“Oh no, Little Ica,” he heard Hyacine mutter, “I mentioned his husband. We’ve really lost him now. He’s seconds away from drooling.”
Phainon turned to look at her over his shoulder and, though flushing, let out a small laugh. Somewhat defensive, he said, “I’m not drooling over Mydei.”
“Not in my clinic you’re not,” Hyacine agreed and shooed him off of the infirmary bed.
He took that to mean that they’d finished his check up and that he could both fold his wings from reality entirely and put his shirt back on. The fabric had been folded alongside his coat. He was halfway to putting his wings away, shirt over his head when Hyacine said, “Wait.”
Waiting meant standing awkwardly in place with his arms raised and fabric pulled partially over his head but since he had been told, he did so.
“I think you should keep them out for a few weeks,” Hyacine said.
Phainon shimmied the shirt off of his head. “What?”
“Your wings,” she continued, “I don't think folding them away is helping. Each time you bring them out or put them away it puts a lot of strain onto the joints.”
Lowering his shirt, Phainon frowned. It wasn’t a bad idea, he knew that. It was just that… Well, his wings weren’t currently strong enough to be anything more than a pair of ornamental appendages attached to his back. A whole lot of limb currently capable of achieving nothing but getting in the way.
“Do I have to?” He sighed.
“Do you want them to heal well?” Hyacine countered.
Well that was a trick question. If he said no, she - and every other Chrysos Heir - would be saddened and tell him off for neglecting his health. If he said that he did, then he’d be lying. The truth was that, really, he didn’t think about his wings very often at all. They’d always just kind of been there. An afterthought.
Looking at the healer, he could see that her question was not rhetorical. It demanded an answer.
Phainon sighed and said, “Would you help me cut some holes for my wings into this shirt, please?”
Ten minutes later, following a rather lackadaisical search for the pair of scissors that had been removed from Hyacine’s drawers, Phainon was wearing a shirt that looked more like a poor attempt at arts and craft than clothing made by the hands of the Goldweaver. His wings drooped behind him, unfolded, the tips of feathers brushing against the floor.
“You’ll be fine,” Hyacine said, giving him the same soft smile that she gave to chimeras to cheer up whenever their ears pressed flat against their head. “We’ll see how things feel after a week and if you don’t think it’s helping, we can go back to the previous routine.”
He didn’t sigh again - not externally, at least - but he really wanted to.
Instead, he tried to fold his wings and proceeded to stumble when one folded quicker than the other and threw his entire sense of balance askew.
“One week,” he agreed. “It’ll be fine.”
Throwing his coat over his arm - this, he was entirely unwilling to cut holes into and would forgo wearing for the foreseeable future - Phainon waved goodbye to both demigod and pegasus and headed for the exit.
Only to let out a low hiss as the tips of his wings made a heavy thunk against the top of the doorframe on his way out.
Silence from behind him.
A lone, empathetic doot from Little Ica.
“Are you okay?” Hyacine asked.
“Absolutely,” Phainon said with little dignity. His wings trembled as he lowered them just enough to duck through the open doorway. “Didn’t hurt at all.”
A lie. There had been enough force that even his nerves, as damaged as they were, had felt it.
“Are you sure?”
“Yup. Just a momentary blip with my depth perception.” He offered a wave over his shoulder and intentionally refused to turn back. It was for the best that Hyacine did not see the golden flush of his own embarrassment. He had a reputation to uphold. He wasn’t exactly sure what said reputation was but it sure needed upholding. “I’ll see you next week. In all my winged glory.”