Multi-Fandom One Shots

The Daughter Who Never Was (Bookverse Alma Peregrine)

You hated birds. Hate women who turned into birds. Feathers weren't to be touched and Ymbrynes were to be fled from.

They filled you with an unfamiliar and barely understood terror. You trusted one. What a mistake that had been.

She stood before you, cold resolve encompassing the kind eyes you'd seen before. She had her feather, she towered over you. You knew what this was, remembered from her Ymbryne lesson. Memory wiping. They wanted you to forget your home. Wanted you away from them. Well, they could have their wish.

You'd run. Run so far and so fast, they'd never find you unless you wanted them to. And you never would. If Normals couldn't be trusted, and Peculiars couldn't be trusted. You only had yourself. You looked after yourself. And that was enough.

Despite the belief that you were deeply unwanted and unloved, you moved on. The children at the home were used to being unloved by the outside world. You could get used to no one wanting you. You just... had to keep moving. You gift helped with that. And it meant, even if anyone found you, they couldn't touch you. You walked on walls, flew high in the sky, froze from the atmosphere, but it was fun.

Time didn't exist up here and it rarely took you any time to get anywhere. So, you supposed it slowed up here. It was the best time to clear your head and sometimes it worked too well. You would clear the everyday chaos and return to the very first act. That was never a pleasing time.

But up here, you could drift for hours, just flying around the planet. While your time in the sky could be cathartic, it could also be a danger. You were very exposed up there and a much larger target than a bird. Oh, you weren't the only bird hated out there. There was an entire faction of beings dedicated to hunting down bird-shifters and the children they minded.

Oh, you should explain. You were known as peculiar, or syndrigasti to those who also were. You answered to "Mildred Somfield" a name you made up out of necessity. Your true name was Y/N Bloom-Portman. Rather telling, the name would cost you your anonymity. Not flying kept you very anonymous. But, still, you had your paranoid safety mechanisms. You lived alone, isolated, and you moved quite frequently. You'd been to nearly every country, though you never lingered, and you'd met many people.

Some followed you. Like whoever had the gall to shoot you. You'd been flying still, no stealth to speak of distracted by your thoughts of the distant past, when a sound louder and clearer than a WWII plane (you would know) rang out. You would have jumped out of your skin.. if you had been on the ground and therefore in a position to jump. Instead, you dropped. You hit the ground hard, knees buckling under the force of the fall. Your Peculiarity, the manifestation of your status as syndrigasti needed no further explanation beyond the three sets of large, feathered wings along your upper and down your lower back. They were all thick, muscled, and deeply intimidating. Especially when you rose back on straight legs. The man before you had milky white eyes, giving away his sub-species of Wight, a twisted and ruthless version of a peculiar. However, the way his eyes grew in diameter gave away how unprepared he was. He feared you and your grand stature. He began discharging his weapon at random, a rather stupid yet effective method. One grazed your left, bottom wing while another pierced your hip, lodging itself there.

But nothing so trivial could slow you down. You disarmed him like it was nothing, which it basically was, with his empty cylinder leaving his gun with only clicks as first you kneed his gut and ducked his hand-to-hand blow. Hos second and last had barely landed before he blew back, then landed on his back.

Your wings folded back against your back. You were doubled over when he moved to sit back up, hand digging in his pocket. You kicked his face, rendering him unconscious. Your hand retracted from your sternum bloody. You wore a very short crop-top, cloth reaching just below your bullet wound. Your tiny naval and rob-bony stomach was shown off, blood leaking down. The sleeves came off your shoulders and the entire back was tied with ribbons which looped around the bony bases of your extra appendages.