Chapter Text
Matt flared his wings and felt a twinge of satisfaction at the man’s small gasp of fear. He’s never seen his wings, but he knows they are intimidating, black and red; dangerous colours. He enjoyed it more than he should have, beating the crap out of the bastard who thought he could get away with hurting his own kid, and he could almost feel the black stains at the edge of his wings spreading. Violence in the name of righteousness, bleeding into the deep crimson of sacrifice for the sake of others. He might be an angel but he has none of God’s mercy.
His wings first manifested the day he went blind. Absolutely no-one was surprised. A kid who sacrificed his eyesight to save a strangers life, of course he’d manifest wings, and of course they’d be red. Even now few people are surprised when they see them in his lawyer persona, although some expect them to be touched a little with orange after seeing how hard he fights in court. Almost no-one notices the traces of black at the tips, he works hard to suppress that part of himself in day to day life for fear that people would see red and black and realize that he was the vigilante. Actually that’s not true, he suppresses the black because it worries people, they don’t like to know about other people’s capacity for brutality. It’s always there of course, Stick taught him how to manipulate the colour percentages in his wings but if something is in your nature there will always be at least a trace visible in your wings.
The black hadn’t started to bleed into his wings until he had met Stick, learned to fight, to do more than just take the hits. Stick had noticed it before him, had told him he’d have to learn to manipulate the patterning in his wings. He’d asked how Stick even knew what colour his wings were.
“The visual representation of wings is just your brains way of interpreting information that it gets on a far more basic level, boy. The only reason you don’t know what colour my wings are is because you haven’t been paying proper attention. Concentrate, and then tell me, what colours are my wings?”
“I don’t know, I can’t see them.”
“If you think you can’t then you won’t. Stop trying to see with your eyes and just think about the question, then the answer will come to you.” Matt let his conviction that he couldn’t know drift away, and concentrated on wondering what colour Stick’s wings were.
“Grey, they’re grey. With black tips?”
“Details” Stick demanded.
“They’re lots of different shades of grey getting darker towards the edges, I can’t tell if the tips are black or just really dark grey.”
“Very good, now what about your wings.”
“They’re red, quite a dark red, like blood, and the outer pinions are starting to turn black.”
“Do you know what that means?”
“I think so. Dark red stands for sacrifice, but black means brutality. It’s because I’m angry all the time isn’t it.”
“Close but not quite. Red means sacrifice, you are correct, self-sacrifice in particular, but black actually signifies the willingness to do bad things in order to prevent worse things. A man who steps in front of a bullet to save someone else, gets red wings, a man who shoots someone to stop him hurting someone else, gets black wings. It’s a powerful combination, it means you aren’t afraid to hurt people, or get hurt, in the name of what you believe is right.”
“What do your wings mean?”
“In some ways they are actually quite similar to yours. Grey stands for practicality, and black for ruthlessness, so I’ll always take the action that has the best outcome out of the available options, even if the action itself is a terrible thing to do. The greatest good to the greatest number and all that.”
Sometimes Matt wondered just how Stick knew so much about angels. It wasn’t common knowledge that’s for sure, even people who had wings often only had the most basic idea about what they meant. It was actually surprising just how badly understood the whole phenomenon was. All that most people knew was that when people took action, when they tried to do the right thing, they manifested wings, and the more committed they were to their actions, the more solid the wings would be, so that in some people they were just ethereal shadows over their shoulders, while in others they were real enough to fly with. Most people also knew that the colours had significance, and had at least a generally accurate idea about what the colours meant, white means healing, red means sacrifice etc. Stick knew a bit more, the thing about the wings only being the human mind’s visual interpretation of something a lot deeper, was definitely not something Matt had heard anywhere else. As for the techniques he’d taught Matt for manipulating the colour percentages in his wings, changing the proportion of black and red, well most people would say it was impossible.
Angels weren’t common, but they weren’t exactly rare either, although most never manifested there wings anywhere near as strongly as Matt. Current estimates put the number at around one in a hundred, although a lot of people chose to keep their wings quiet, folded neatly against their backs out of sight. Angel wings didn’t really have any physical presence unless their owner wanted them too, so when they were folded away, they were easily disguised under even the flimsiest of clothes. Wings tended to attract a lot of unwanted attention, and so a lot of people chose to keep them quiet and carry on doing their good deeds from the shadows. Matt himself tended to keep his wings folded, in day to day life, only flaring them when he needed to make a point. They weren’t a secret, but he didn’t draw attention to their presence.
At night when he was the vigilante it was different, he kept them fully visible, strikingly patterned in black and red, both a challenge to his enemies and a promise to those he protected. And it was worth all of it, every broken bone, every bloodstain he had to scrub out of his floor, because at night, as the vigilante, he could fly. A reward for obeying his conscience, and an advantage few of the bastards who went around hurting people had. Criminals tended to lack the necessary conviction to manifest even ghostly wings, and every time he could swoop down on them from above and knock them out before they even knew what was happening, left him with a gleeful sense of accomplishment that he really should be more ashamed of. He never had any doubts that being an angel was worth it. He couldn’t imagine what it was like to be one of those people who just walked by on the other side when they knew something was wrong, and honestly he didn’t want to imagine.