Chapter Text
Heart pumping, lungs burning, he ran on and on, beyond what should have been physically possible. Faster than he had ever run in his life. Running on adrenaline and little else, his crisp suit, his hat, his swagger long gone in the flight, fleeing for his life. His heart was painfully throbbing in his chest and his breathing was almost louder than the breaking of twigs underneath his feet as he dashed and weaved past trees and underbrush. He always had to hide what he was his entire life, but this was very different from the verbal abuse and the discrimination those like him usually faced. It was a terrifying new threat. He heard the pot shots. Heard the braying of the hounds. He was being hunted. Hunted like the animal they shouted he was. The filthy animal his father had called him on that last fateful meeting.
The part of his brain that was, and always would remain a policeman, a detective, was outraged at the illegality of this. No matter the derogatory terms people used, he was a person, and killing him was murder. It enraged him that he should have to flee like this, from the likes of these men. These men that were, he sickeningly realised, getting closer. He ducked as another shot rang out, splintering the tree by his head. He was barely far enough to not get hit by the debris. He could hear the men laugh behind him. The dogs were nearly snapping their jaws at his feet. Then he ran into a clearing. There would be nothing slowing down his running in this clearing, but he would no longer need to run now he had the space to use the ability that set him apart from most people.
Edgar unfurled his wings, ripping through his shirt. His beautiful golden, buff wings. They were as soft as down, but very powerful. Edgar had become the animal. The bird he kept inside him so often. His lung capacity expanded as his chest grew, ripping his shirt further. He felt himself becoming lighter as his body literally changed for flight. His sight and hearing increased to levels other people couldn’t even start to imagine. The sun stung his eyes a little, a sensitivity he didn’t have to deal with when he transformed at night, which was the time he usually flew at when he felt brave enough to do so. He flapped his wings once, testing them briefly. Their emergence often causing them to be ruffled. In the air he would be quicker. In the air he would be graceful. In the air he would be free. When he flew he was unhindered by the rules of human society. Rules that forced him to keep a part of him secret, less he lose the things he loves again because of it. But also rules that allowed him to make sense of the people surrounding him. A social contract that dictated behaviour. A social contract ripped to shreds one bright afternoon in the Cotswolds. Stepping off he flapped his gorgeous huge wings and rose, his stomach dropping in exhilaration. He quickly put more distance between the hunters and himself. With every life giving breath his mind settled. Flight was what he was supposed to do. Was what his body wanted. To soar high into the sky. To feel the air currents underneath his wings. To be part of nature. To be of the sky itself. Rather than the staid, boring world of humans. He was greater than them, better than them, his barn owl brain told him. Those secret thoughts that usually only came to him tossing and turning in sweat soaked dreams that flooded his brain with endorphins. He was great. He was owl. He was Anima.
His mind brought him back to that fateful night from his childhood. That first terrifying transformation. He had barely noticed at first in the adrenaline of escape and the fear from the fall. Then he realised he was alive and free. Not really understanding what had happened, but instinctively knowing how to use his new wings to fly. His enlarged lungs filling with air for the first time. Breathing out without fear of his father for the first time. Without fear of anyone, feeling like himself for the first time. On the ground he kept himself behind the mask of the policeman, the repressed and lonely face he showed the world, but whenever he took flight, which was rare, he felt like this and part of him wanted to stay free like this forever. Edgar could only hope that the gift that saved his life all those years ago would save it again this day. Right now Edgar could not let himself get lost in the joy that was flight. The hunters were still after him and he had not yet made it to safety. He looked down to see where he was. Edgar was still above the woods, but now he could see the meadow that was the home of the only other Anima Edgar knew in Kembleford. Standing beside his ridiculous caravan was Sidney Carter. The man seemed to be looking up in Edgar’s direction, but Edgar couldn’t be sure. If Edgar could see Carter, he had to be close to home, nearly back in Kembleford. His own domain, safe. Hope was starting to rise within him.
He didn’t hear the shot, but he felt the impact. The pain shooting through him, knocking him from his flight path. A reminder of why he had taken flight during the day, when he could easily be spotted. He flapped again, but it was useless. The pain increased as he realised with horror that one of his wings was damaged. Like a sycamore seed he started to twirl to the ground. He desperately reached out with human hands to slow his descent, trying to catch branches. As he continued to fall his limbs and wings tangled. Edgar crashed through leaves and sticks in a confused, painful muddle. Branches tore at his skin and clothes and thick trunks would make his whole body rattle as he crashed into them. The world stopped spinning suddenly as he hit the ground. Edgar was winded, pained and confused. No longer a powerful creature of flight, but a scared and terrified wounded animal. Like Icarus he had flown too high, but it was not the sun burning his wings that made him fall or ocean rocks that painfully ended his descent. Instead it had been a gunshot and the forest floor.
He could hear the dogs again, and the shouting. Staying where he was was not an option if he wanted to live. He tried to stand to continue running, but agonising pain shot through every part of him when he tried. It wasn’t just his wing that was hurting and which he now could no longer retract, but his human limbs. Edgar must have broken something. As he tried to limp, his vision became blackened. He wanted to vomit from the pain. The sounds were closing in on him, but he couldn’t move any faster than the snail’s pace he was going at. The certainty that he was going to die in agony descended on him like a dark cloud. He was going to die in the woods, so close to civilisation. Edgar could almost smell the gold leaf tobacco, earth and engine oil aroma that always clung to the man that was a crook, a chauffeur and a handyman somewhere ahead of him. That smell, the sense that someone was in front of him seemed to be getting closer. Edgar knew it was an illusion. His soon to be dead brain imagining safety, someone to help him. He could almost hear the crashing of someone thundering through the forest in front of him. With a sinking feeling he realised he wasn’t imagining the sound. They must have surrounded him. How they could’ve gotten ahead of Edgar he did not know. He closed his eyes, willing the end to be quick at least.
His traitorous eyes sprang open again as someone crashed through the trees just in front of Edgar. The smell he had previously believed a figment of his imagination became overpowering. His, now addled, brain recognised Carter. Edgar could scarcely believe it. Had the man really been looking in Edgar’s direction? Or had he turned when he heard the shot and had only seen him fall? Had he come in a rush to help him? Even though he couldn’t possibly have known who had fallen out of the sky? Carter must have known it was as dangerous for him as it was for Edgar. Why had he come running in without backup, potentially risking his own life? Any relief Edgar might’ve felt when he saw Carter’s familiar face was overshadowed by worry.
“Run” Edgar stuttered out, but the man just grabbed him around the shoulders in an attempt to pick Edgar up.
“What the fuck happened?” Carter asked, concern clear on his face.
“Just run-” Edgar gasped “-they’ll… just run”. He needed to make the other man understand. Edgar was done for, but Carter still had a chance. If only the man wasn’t so stubborn.
“Come on” Carter begged “just move with me, you’re hurt, we’ll get you help”
Edgar looked desperately over his shoulder. “Hunted, they’ll come, Anima” Edgar gasped again. He was in agony. His lungs seemed too small for the air he needed even though they were still enlarged like they usually were when he was transformed. The dogs’ barks were so close. As were the shouts from their masters. Edgars arms were lifted by the crook’s, as the man started to drag Edgar away. He tried to fight. To allow Carter the chance to live. Didn’t the stupid man understand? Understand that they could easily hunt him too. Could easily kill him too. Edgar was a policeman and truly believed in the mantra ‘protect and serve’ till his dying breath. Carter may be a crook, but he’s a civilian and it was Edgars job to protect him.
“Ah, there it is.” Said a voice behind them and Carter turned to face the men that had just arrived. ‘This is it’ Edgar thought. He was going to die.
“Run” he hissed again at Carter.
“Oh now, look at that wing, it’s fucked, have to get the taxidermist to fix that.” One of the hunters cried distressed, sparing no thought to the feelings of the man in front of him. They probably didn’t think of him as a person whose feelings and emotions were something to consider. The policeman in Edgar was horrified at their casualness. Carter moved out from underneath his shoulders and Edgar realised he was on his own. But then he felt the man move to stand between Edgar and the hunters.
“Look mate, we only want the bird.” One of the hunters told Carter “Fuck off will you?”
Edgar heard a low growl and at first thought it came from one of the salivating hounds. But then he registered the timbre of the noise, it was too deep and loud for a dog. It also sounded too close. That noise surely couldn't be coming from the jovial young man in front of him. Carter was one of those rare Animas, one of only two Edgar had ever come across, who transformed happily into their animal persona in public and did so regularly. Unlike the whore he had met on the streets of London, who transformed into a sinuous exotic snake to allure men, Carter transformed partially into a badger to use his claws for digging. He was the village gravedigger and the first one people called to help with their gardens or allotments. Unlike some of his other enterprises, Carter’s Anima wasn’t an (illegal) secret, but something he proudly displayed. Edgar was used to seeing him covered in dirt, scratching away for all the world to see. Edgar could admit to some jealousy, wishing he could fly whenever he wanted.
He watched as the crook’s shirt became tighter as fur and muscle grew beneath it. He watched as Carter’s hands turned into claws. He watched as the fur traveled up his neck and the soft brown hair turned almost green and yellow as it coarsened. This was all familiar to Edgar as he had seen this man transform before. But the transformation did not stop where it usually did. What Edgar saw happening now was new. His head seemed to become elongated and fur continued to spread to his cheeks and beyond what Edgar could see as he stood behind Carter. Carter’s ears changed as well and something in the back of Edgar’s head called them adorable. Edgar suddenly had a desire to stand in front of the man so he could see Carter’s face stretched into a badger’s. To see the black and white stripes and the wet nose. Edgar thought that the face of a badger as the last image he saw wouldn’t be the worst. Perhaps he shouldn’t be at peace with dying next to a man who had gone through a full and terrifying Anima transformation. And die was what the both of them were going to do. Edgar could see the look of delight on the hunters' faces. They had gone out to hunt one Anima and now they were getting two. The hunters both raised their guns and Edgar ducked behind Carter, tucking himself into a tiny ball. He heard two shots, moments apart from one another, and felt the man in front of him stumble backwards into him.
Edgar had a brief moment of horror and sadness to think about how this grinning young man, so loved in this village, was dead and how it was his fault. If Edgar had taken a different route to safety, Carter would not have seen him drop from the sky. Carter would not have come to help him. Carter would not have revealed himself to the two Anima hunters. Carter would not have taken two gunshots to the chest. His feelings of melancholy were interrupted when he heard the growl again. Carter had not dropped down to the forest floor, dead. The man had only stepped backwards because of the force of the blasts. Somewhere in the back of Edgar’s mind, he remembered being told that a badger's fur is so coarse, so thick, as to protect it from anything other than a full bore shotgun blast at close order. Carter would’ve known that this also applied to him when he was transformed. That those hunters could not harm him if they shot him in the chest, the area they were most likely to shoot at. The hunters had brought hunting rifles to shoot at birds, not shotguns to go after badgers. Carter’s decision to become a barrier between the hunters and Edgar suddenly didn’t seem so reckless, but instead very threatening.
The hunters obviously had the same realisation as their next shouts were panicked. Their hounds fled, unwilling to face the danger that was Carter to defend their masters. Carter moved to, presumably, pounce on the first hunter. Having lost his support, Edgar fell to the ground and landed in a painful heap. He looked up to watch in horror at what was happening in front of him with disbelieving eyes. He had read Carter’s file. It contained theft, robbery, breaking and entering and the odd drunk and disorderly. This was the gentle giant who helped little old ladies cross the road and joked with the local priest. This was the man who would stand on tables to sing in the Red Lion when drunk and comforted lost children. This was the man that was so well liked in Kembleford in spite of his criminality. Edgar watched him pick up the first hunter as if he were no more than a child’s toy and use those huge powerful claws to rip the hunter to shreds as easily as if he were made of the soft gingerbread Edgar had been told Carter made for Christmas. As blood and viscera sprayed over him, the badger dropped the hunter turned victim. The bloodied meat splattered onto the woodland floor. The butchery of it made Edgar heave dryly.
Carter turned to the second hunter. The man was terrified, but seemingly rooted to the spot. Though the hunter had his rifle trained on Carter, he did not pull the trigger. Instead he just shakingly pointed it at the Anima that had just killed his hunting partner like it was nothing. The man didn’t even try to move away as the first claw hooked into his right arm and yanked it fully away, tearing it right off the shoulder it was connected to. As Carter discarded the limb behind the hunter, the man turned his head to follow the flight trajectory of his lost limb in disbelief. This movement opened his neck to, what Edgar now realised must be, sharp, carnivorous teeth. Edgar had not been able to clearly see how it had happened, but the hunter’s head ended up detached from his body which was ripped open from the ribs. Blood had sprayed out of the dead man and had coated Carter’s thick fur. Edgar shrank back as the other Anima turned, his wings trembling. The gentle, caring, young man long gone from the creature in front of him. Carter’s face was bloodied and only his beautiful, soulful eyes seemed to still exist from the human face Edgar knew. Edgar wondered if there was still enough humanity left for Carter to recognise that Edgar wasn’t a threat. He had heard of Animas losing their humanity before, though he luckily had never encountered such cases himself. Was Carter lost in a murderous berserker rage and was that how Edgar would die? Torn apart as if he was made of nothing but paper and dumped on the woodland floor?