Entry tags:
Fic: The Boundless Sky (Gen, 1/1)
Title: Once More, This Time to the Left
Fandom: Star Trek: Discovery
Characters/Pairing(s): Michael Burnham, Amanda Grayson, Sarek, Spock, Gabrielle Burnham
Rating: All ages
Word count: 1,961
Spoilers: None
Summary: Growing up as a human on Vulcan is hard. Growing up as a human with wings is even harder.
Author's notes: Written for the Wingfic square on my Keep Fandom Weird bingo card. Hey, it's baby's first wingfic!
Some dialogue taken from "Such Sweet Sorrow," parts 1 & 2. Many thanks to![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
lizbee for the beta.
::xposted to AO3
The hard nubs at Michael’s shoulderblades were new: the stiff ache of stretching skin and shifting bone. Michael dropped her sponge in the bath, prodded her back with soapy fingers. Two horns, each the diameter of her thumb, that hadn’t been there yesterday and now stubbornly extended with a symmetry that suggested deliberate function rather than danger.
Her mother had never discussed this possibility with her, but like every other child, Michael had read Missy, the Winged Girl of Wheaton.. Missy’s mother had guided her through this transition with love and support even though she hadn’t grown up with wings; surely Michael’s mother would do the same?
Instead, Michael was on Vulcan with a foster family, and her own family was –
Breathe in five counts; out seven. Again. Let memories drift past her as if they were a holovid rather than real life. She was still learning to understand Sarek – Vulcans might claim to be emotionless, which was simply a lie meant to excuse archness and condescension – but Sarek and Amanda had held her hands when she shook, and Sarek had instructed Michael firmly but calmly about meditation to control traumatic response.
When she was centered again, she dried herself off, pulled on her nightclothes, and found her foster mother.
“Amanda,” Michael started. Breathe in five counts; out seven. Again. “There are bumps on my back that weren’t there before. This is something I read about in a book – a true story about a girl on Earth who grows wings? And I think ... I think it might be happening to me.”
“Really? Are you sure? How unusual. Turn around, let me see. May I lift your tunic a little bit?”
Michael nodded. Amanda’s cool fingers traced the bones of her upper back, then dropped the tunic back in place. A long breath; a sigh as Amanda settled back into her chair.
“Michael,” she said softly. “I’ll have to confirm with a tricorder, but I think you’re right, those are wings. Do they run in your family?”
“Mom and Dad didn’t have them. We didn’t ... we didn’t really get a chance to talk about it.”
“Come here,” Amanda said.
Michael, all elbows and knees and sharp points, new and old, folded herself onto Amanda’s lap, where warmth, human warmth, soothed the edges.
Amanda pressed her lips to Michael’s forehead. “We’ll talk about it now.”
* * *
The rest of Michael’s adopted family took the news as expected.
“Apparently that this is a rare but not unheard-of mutation in your species,” Sarek said. “It is likely to be the origin of the angel mythology found in multiple cultures on Earth alongside a considerable number of conspiracy theories. After the Eugenics Wars, it became an even more suspect mutation. It seems illogical that your parents or instructors would not have discussed this prejudice with you during your history lessons.”
“I have sequenced the genome responsible for wing mutations,” Spock said later, whispering while the instructor bot graded their linear algebra proofs. “Research indicates there is a genetic therapy if you do not want wings. But I find them fascinating and I hope you keep them.”
Michael did, in fact, plan to keep them, even if her upper back twinged and throbbed, and her clothes increasingly needed alterations to manage the winglets. Ash-gray pinfeathers spiked down the accordion of bones creased beside her spine. Every day Michael stretched them wide, over and over again until she was even more sore, the physical therapy treatment she’d found in the Earth archives only Sarek was supposed to be able to access, except that his children were Michael and Spock and fully capable of rendering access controls irrelevant.
The desert sparrows made flight look so easy, though. A quick push off the ground, a flutter, then arcs curving across the sky at speeds Michael couldn’t even dream of yet. Three months onwards, her wings were still comically small, barely spanning her back. Jumping off low rocks and flapping as fast as she could didn’t even raise a breeze, much less her body.
Little in the Earth documentation she could find explained the basics: how long would it take for her wings to fully grow in? How large would they get? How fast and high would she be able to go, and was she built for quick darts or long soars? She could at least calculate the likely g-forces for a range of speeds and heights, but all that was an abstraction until she could find out for herself.
And always, there were the nagging questions the computer could never answer, much less ask in the first place: why had her parents not told her about the wings? Had they simply not known this was a possibility? Would they have wanted her to keep them? She was always going to be the human on Vulcan, assimilated but never enough for the native-born, and the wings were only going to make a cruel situation even worse. Amanda and Sarek told her that the peers who either taunted or ignored her were behaving illogically and allowing fear and emotions to dictate reactions, even if somehow these illogical Vulcan children never grew any more logical or kind.
But the wings were Michael’s: undeniably, flagrantly human and absolutely hers. She could not hide them any more than she could hide the curve of her ears or her lack of inborn telepathy. She had and would continue to become as Vulcan as she could be. She would simply be a Vulcan with wings.
* * *
The explosion at school singed Michael’s wings and left her in the burn ward for two full days while the doctors tried to understand how best to heal this strange human girl and her unfamiliar body parts. The most helpful physician turned out to be the veterinarian Amanda furiously resorted to, whose recommendations the doctors roundly ignored.
“I shouldn’t have to do this. My daughter is not an animal,” she told the doctors, face tight and eyes narrowed. “Do your research and treat her with the respect you would give any Vulcan child.”
“Your daughter is not Vulcan,” the lead physician said, “and while we have experience treating humans, she is ... unusual.”
“Everyone is unusual in their own way, are they not?” said Sarek. “Will it help your research if you recall that one of the things that is most unusual about Michael is that she is my daughter?”
Michael was released later that week with a long-term treatment plan and further exercises from the veterinarian.
* * *
Michael understood, later, when Sarek told her she wasn’t good enough to join the Vulcan Expeditionary Group, what this really meant. That she was human and inferior. That she had mutations Vulcans found distasteful and unpleasantly reminiscent of her lackluster homeworld. That over a decade of life among them, raised as a child with their customs and their language and their food and their logic would still de facto never be enough for her to be considered an acceptable candidate to represent Vulcan in space. Her adoptive father might be a respected ambassador, but one with certain frailties that rendered his children, or at least this one, unworthy.
She managed her frustrations with a running leap off the Cliffs of Surak, pale gray wings stretched wide, soaring into the sunshine. Catching a thermal and spiraling as high as she could; tucking her wings beside her spine and diving into the canyon, gravity’s drumbeat thrumming in her head until she had to pull up barely fifty meters above the ground, her breath sweet and cool when it filled her lungs again. She skimmed across the lake, wingtips wet from the mist she raised, swooped back above the cliffs and rested in another thermal, heat lifting her higher without any effort.
The sun was above her and the sky was boundless and she would find a new home somewhere no matter what the sticks-in-the-mud running the Vulcan Expeditionary Force had to say about it. Sarek and Amanda had countless contacts in Starfleet Michael could call upon later. But now, her wings could take her anywhere, and she did a barrel roll and cried with laughter and was going to wring joy from sorrow no matter how long it took her in the air.
* * *
Her mother, improbably alive, trapped behind a containment field and in imminent danger of being pulled nearly a thousand years away from Michael again. Michael, trembling and teary, determined to use to the fullest what remaining minutes she might have with her mom. Stamets had sworn he’d done his best with this design, but Michael knew that meant he was only 90% certain it would work, and 10% was so, so much that could go wrong.
“The Red Angel has wings,” Michael said to her mom. “Wings. You didn’t need to design a suit with wings; you had a propulsion system. Why? Why didn’t you ever tell me about the wings?”
“I never had the chance. Your great-great-grandmother had them too. I was so little when she died; I only got to see them once. I thought I’d dreamt it until one day my mom told me they were real. She wanted me to know in case I had kids of my own, because it can skip generations and generations and then, out of nowhere: wings. And if I’m gonna fly, baby, I’m gonna fly.”
“Mom.” Michael closed her eyes for a moment and sent her wings wide: shimmering pearlescent gray feathers, each wing as broad as Michael was tall. “These are such a gift. It’s been hard sometimes, and I wasn’t always sure – but they’re mine, and it means so much to know that this is a legacy.” She curved her wingtips to the edge of the containment field, as close as she could come to enfolding her mother within their reach. “We’re going to make this work, Mom. You can stay here. The suit will go to the future and it’ll be okay, I promise.”
“You can’t make promises like that, baby girl, you know that. But this – this I can promise you,” her mother said. Her hands stretched to meet the wingtips at the edge of the field. “Your Dad and I loved you. I will always love you, every part of you. You’re so beautiful.
“But time’s not on our side, Michael.”
Michael survived Leland’s assault with two singed feathers and a hollow in her heart she thought had been filled long ago. Her mother had escaped. Somewhere in the future, perhaps she and the other Terralysians could rest easily now. But Michael curved her wings around her in bed and sobbed until she finally fell asleep.
* * *
We believed your mother was the only Red Angel. However, the bioneural signature identified another. You.
The new suit also had wings. But this time, they were designed to fit Michael instead of pay homage to an ancestor. Remembering her Vulcan meditation: slow breaths, her ego flattening to a single dimension, more slow breaths until she was pure focus. The entire universe depended on her, but she shrank that pressure to a point even smaller than her ego. Only her breath mattered; only herself, and a series of logical calculations leading step by step towards the future.
“It's your mother, and it's you. Trust what you've done together,” said Spock.
* * *
I will set the signals. I will move us forward. Her heartbeat thrumming in her ears, the only sound in space.
Discovery will survive. The universe will survive. I will see my mother again. Spock – Amanda – Sarek –
Another deep breath. Let go of your connections. There is only the mission. And only you can complete it.
Outside, ships and drones swooped like the desert sparrows of her youth. Breathe.
Michael unfurled her wings. Let’s fly.
Fandom: Star Trek: Discovery
Characters/Pairing(s): Michael Burnham, Amanda Grayson, Sarek, Spock, Gabrielle Burnham
Rating: All ages
Word count: 1,961
Spoilers: None
Summary: Growing up as a human on Vulcan is hard. Growing up as a human with wings is even harder.
Author's notes: Written for the Wingfic square on my Keep Fandom Weird bingo card. Hey, it's baby's first wingfic!
Some dialogue taken from "Such Sweet Sorrow," parts 1 & 2. Many thanks to
lizbee for the beta.::xposted to AO3
The hard nubs at Michael’s shoulderblades were new: the stiff ache of stretching skin and shifting bone. Michael dropped her sponge in the bath, prodded her back with soapy fingers. Two horns, each the diameter of her thumb, that hadn’t been there yesterday and now stubbornly extended with a symmetry that suggested deliberate function rather than danger.
Her mother had never discussed this possibility with her, but like every other child, Michael had read Missy, the Winged Girl of Wheaton.. Missy’s mother had guided her through this transition with love and support even though she hadn’t grown up with wings; surely Michael’s mother would do the same?
Instead, Michael was on Vulcan with a foster family, and her own family was –
Breathe in five counts; out seven. Again. Let memories drift past her as if they were a holovid rather than real life. She was still learning to understand Sarek – Vulcans might claim to be emotionless, which was simply a lie meant to excuse archness and condescension – but Sarek and Amanda had held her hands when she shook, and Sarek had instructed Michael firmly but calmly about meditation to control traumatic response.
When she was centered again, she dried herself off, pulled on her nightclothes, and found her foster mother.
“Amanda,” Michael started. Breathe in five counts; out seven. Again. “There are bumps on my back that weren’t there before. This is something I read about in a book – a true story about a girl on Earth who grows wings? And I think ... I think it might be happening to me.”
“Really? Are you sure? How unusual. Turn around, let me see. May I lift your tunic a little bit?”
Michael nodded. Amanda’s cool fingers traced the bones of her upper back, then dropped the tunic back in place. A long breath; a sigh as Amanda settled back into her chair.
“Michael,” she said softly. “I’ll have to confirm with a tricorder, but I think you’re right, those are wings. Do they run in your family?”
“Mom and Dad didn’t have them. We didn’t ... we didn’t really get a chance to talk about it.”
“Come here,” Amanda said.
Michael, all elbows and knees and sharp points, new and old, folded herself onto Amanda’s lap, where warmth, human warmth, soothed the edges.
Amanda pressed her lips to Michael’s forehead. “We’ll talk about it now.”
The rest of Michael’s adopted family took the news as expected.
“Apparently that this is a rare but not unheard-of mutation in your species,” Sarek said. “It is likely to be the origin of the angel mythology found in multiple cultures on Earth alongside a considerable number of conspiracy theories. After the Eugenics Wars, it became an even more suspect mutation. It seems illogical that your parents or instructors would not have discussed this prejudice with you during your history lessons.”
“I have sequenced the genome responsible for wing mutations,” Spock said later, whispering while the instructor bot graded their linear algebra proofs. “Research indicates there is a genetic therapy if you do not want wings. But I find them fascinating and I hope you keep them.”
Michael did, in fact, plan to keep them, even if her upper back twinged and throbbed, and her clothes increasingly needed alterations to manage the winglets. Ash-gray pinfeathers spiked down the accordion of bones creased beside her spine. Every day Michael stretched them wide, over and over again until she was even more sore, the physical therapy treatment she’d found in the Earth archives only Sarek was supposed to be able to access, except that his children were Michael and Spock and fully capable of rendering access controls irrelevant.
The desert sparrows made flight look so easy, though. A quick push off the ground, a flutter, then arcs curving across the sky at speeds Michael couldn’t even dream of yet. Three months onwards, her wings were still comically small, barely spanning her back. Jumping off low rocks and flapping as fast as she could didn’t even raise a breeze, much less her body.
Little in the Earth documentation she could find explained the basics: how long would it take for her wings to fully grow in? How large would they get? How fast and high would she be able to go, and was she built for quick darts or long soars? She could at least calculate the likely g-forces for a range of speeds and heights, but all that was an abstraction until she could find out for herself.
And always, there were the nagging questions the computer could never answer, much less ask in the first place: why had her parents not told her about the wings? Had they simply not known this was a possibility? Would they have wanted her to keep them? She was always going to be the human on Vulcan, assimilated but never enough for the native-born, and the wings were only going to make a cruel situation even worse. Amanda and Sarek told her that the peers who either taunted or ignored her were behaving illogically and allowing fear and emotions to dictate reactions, even if somehow these illogical Vulcan children never grew any more logical or kind.
But the wings were Michael’s: undeniably, flagrantly human and absolutely hers. She could not hide them any more than she could hide the curve of her ears or her lack of inborn telepathy. She had and would continue to become as Vulcan as she could be. She would simply be a Vulcan with wings.
The explosion at school singed Michael’s wings and left her in the burn ward for two full days while the doctors tried to understand how best to heal this strange human girl and her unfamiliar body parts. The most helpful physician turned out to be the veterinarian Amanda furiously resorted to, whose recommendations the doctors roundly ignored.
“I shouldn’t have to do this. My daughter is not an animal,” she told the doctors, face tight and eyes narrowed. “Do your research and treat her with the respect you would give any Vulcan child.”
“Your daughter is not Vulcan,” the lead physician said, “and while we have experience treating humans, she is ... unusual.”
“Everyone is unusual in their own way, are they not?” said Sarek. “Will it help your research if you recall that one of the things that is most unusual about Michael is that she is my daughter?”
Michael was released later that week with a long-term treatment plan and further exercises from the veterinarian.
Michael understood, later, when Sarek told her she wasn’t good enough to join the Vulcan Expeditionary Group, what this really meant. That she was human and inferior. That she had mutations Vulcans found distasteful and unpleasantly reminiscent of her lackluster homeworld. That over a decade of life among them, raised as a child with their customs and their language and their food and their logic would still de facto never be enough for her to be considered an acceptable candidate to represent Vulcan in space. Her adoptive father might be a respected ambassador, but one with certain frailties that rendered his children, or at least this one, unworthy.
She managed her frustrations with a running leap off the Cliffs of Surak, pale gray wings stretched wide, soaring into the sunshine. Catching a thermal and spiraling as high as she could; tucking her wings beside her spine and diving into the canyon, gravity’s drumbeat thrumming in her head until she had to pull up barely fifty meters above the ground, her breath sweet and cool when it filled her lungs again. She skimmed across the lake, wingtips wet from the mist she raised, swooped back above the cliffs and rested in another thermal, heat lifting her higher without any effort.
The sun was above her and the sky was boundless and she would find a new home somewhere no matter what the sticks-in-the-mud running the Vulcan Expeditionary Force had to say about it. Sarek and Amanda had countless contacts in Starfleet Michael could call upon later. But now, her wings could take her anywhere, and she did a barrel roll and cried with laughter and was going to wring joy from sorrow no matter how long it took her in the air.
Her mother, improbably alive, trapped behind a containment field and in imminent danger of being pulled nearly a thousand years away from Michael again. Michael, trembling and teary, determined to use to the fullest what remaining minutes she might have with her mom. Stamets had sworn he’d done his best with this design, but Michael knew that meant he was only 90% certain it would work, and 10% was so, so much that could go wrong.
“The Red Angel has wings,” Michael said to her mom. “Wings. You didn’t need to design a suit with wings; you had a propulsion system. Why? Why didn’t you ever tell me about the wings?”
“I never had the chance. Your great-great-grandmother had them too. I was so little when she died; I only got to see them once. I thought I’d dreamt it until one day my mom told me they were real. She wanted me to know in case I had kids of my own, because it can skip generations and generations and then, out of nowhere: wings. And if I’m gonna fly, baby, I’m gonna fly.”
“Mom.” Michael closed her eyes for a moment and sent her wings wide: shimmering pearlescent gray feathers, each wing as broad as Michael was tall. “These are such a gift. It’s been hard sometimes, and I wasn’t always sure – but they’re mine, and it means so much to know that this is a legacy.” She curved her wingtips to the edge of the containment field, as close as she could come to enfolding her mother within their reach. “We’re going to make this work, Mom. You can stay here. The suit will go to the future and it’ll be okay, I promise.”
“You can’t make promises like that, baby girl, you know that. But this – this I can promise you,” her mother said. Her hands stretched to meet the wingtips at the edge of the field. “Your Dad and I loved you. I will always love you, every part of you. You’re so beautiful.
“But time’s not on our side, Michael.”
Michael survived Leland’s assault with two singed feathers and a hollow in her heart she thought had been filled long ago. Her mother had escaped. Somewhere in the future, perhaps she and the other Terralysians could rest easily now. But Michael curved her wings around her in bed and sobbed until she finally fell asleep.
We believed your mother was the only Red Angel. However, the bioneural signature identified another. You.
The new suit also had wings. But this time, they were designed to fit Michael instead of pay homage to an ancestor. Remembering her Vulcan meditation: slow breaths, her ego flattening to a single dimension, more slow breaths until she was pure focus. The entire universe depended on her, but she shrank that pressure to a point even smaller than her ego. Only her breath mattered; only herself, and a series of logical calculations leading step by step towards the future.
“It's your mother, and it's you. Trust what you've done together,” said Spock.
I will set the signals. I will move us forward. Her heartbeat thrumming in her ears, the only sound in space.
Discovery will survive. The universe will survive. I will see my mother again. Spock – Amanda – Sarek –
Another deep breath. Let go of your connections. There is only the mission. And only you can complete it.
Outside, ships and drones swooped like the desert sparrows of her youth. Breathe.
Michael unfurled her wings. Let’s fly.