Finding Freedom

Icarus: pt 2

TW: fighting, infections, injuries, PTSD, needles, panic attack
Please let me know if I missed any

"Icarus, just give up, we have your partner." Sparrow reasoned as they stood on the rooftop.

"All the more reason for me not to surrender, what kind of vigilante would I be if I were to give up that easily." Tommy spat.

"One who cared about their teammate."

"You know nothing about how teammates work. I'm not going to trap myself because Astin is trapped, that would be dooming us both!"

"Then what? Just give up the way Runa gave up on Phantom?" Sparrow yelled.

Tommy curled his hands in on themselves, the wind billowing around the two avians.

Twins birds with opposite views, controlled, and free.

"You have no right to speak of her like that." Tommy said quietly. Not after everything she has done.

"Runa gave up on her teammate, shrinking back into the shadows like a coward." Sparrow spat.

"There's a big difference between being a coward, and going into a fight you can't win. Then what? We leave the civilians without protection?" Kit walked into the library, deep mahogany framing the entrance.

"Being a leader isn't about being smart, or strong. It isn't invincibility, and Caz and I took that role knowing that it's about making difficult decisions for the good of the majority." Kit said, her fingers trailing across the black shelves of the library. "And living with the consequences."

"But what about the minority? What about friends? What about brothers?" Tommy asked, hands resting on a large table in the circular room.

"Sacrafices have to be made." Kit said, looking down at the floor.

"Caz knows it, Phantom knows it." Her fingers linger on a certain book, "at least I hope so." She whispered, so quiet it might've been the wind.

"You don't have to call yourself out on the lack of impulse control you have." Tommy said, mock pity dripping into his voice like a saccharine sweetener.

"What?"

Tommy's smile curled upwards. "You let your heart make all the decisions, and you head makes none."

With the skill of reading people, comes the ability to pick them apart.

"What do you mean?" Sparrow asked.

"Well, you say the first thing I should do is be captured to be with my teammate. But what will happen to the people I protect? Have you ever thought of that?"

The hero sputtered.

"Oh, right, you think I'm too dumb to think outside of my team." My brothers. It echoed in the silence, and the wind whipping around them.

My brothers, my best friends, my teammates. Have to stay calm and not jump. Everything must be calculated. Everything is calculated.

"I don't understand vigilantes."

"I don't understand heros, but I do understand fights."

It was the first time Tommy had started a fight, but it wouldn't be the last. There was no more trading blows, no more fighting hit for hit.

Heros were awful, horrible people, and they couldn't see shit. Tommy vows to get them all glasses at some point to fix it.

Tommy slammed down blow after blow on Sparrow, never actually hurting him badly.