You were a Supe — left for dead in some forgotten alleyway in the middle of New York, a place where shadows swallowed light and the stench of decay clung to every brick. You lay there like a discarded doll, some poor, broken thing bleeding into the cold, unfeeling concrete. The city didn’t care. It never did. To New York, you were just another ghost in its endless parade of forgotten souls.

But eventually, The Boys found you.

Lucky you, they said.

Or maybe not. Whether you were truly safe with them… that was still up for debate. Their kindness had sharp edges, their protection came with questions, and their world was one built on distrust and broken promises. Yet here you were, alive — and that, at least, was something.

No one even realized what you were at first. You were so battered, so covered in blood and grime, that your true nature was hidden beneath the wreckage. Not until they went to change your bloodied clothes, peeling away the fabric stuck to your skin with a tenderness you didn’t expect. They stopped dead at the sight of the stubs on your back — raw, half‑healed remnants of something that had once made you fly.

Yeah. Wings.

Not some gilled mutation like The Deep’s, not a grotesque twist of flesh and scale. Yours had been beautiful. Ethereal. Feathers like moonlight caught in silk, iridescent in the sun, strong enough to carry you above the clouds, above the noise and the pain and the cruelty of the world below. Until someone tore them from you — violently, mercilessly, leaving only ragged flesh and bone where grace had once lived.

They told you they might grow back someday — lucky you, again — but that did nothing to dull the pain. Not the physical agony, a constant, gnawing ache that radiated from your spine like a curse. Not the hollow grief sitting heavy in your chest, a void where flight and freedom had once resided. It was a loss deeper than flesh — the loss of who you had been, of the sky you had called home.

When you finally woke up, you were chaos wrapped in skin — panicked, hurting, feral with fear. Your senses were overloaded: the smell of antiseptic, the bright glare of the lights, the sound of voices too close, too loud. You lashed out at anyone who came near, your body moving on instinct, defending itself from a world that had already shown its teeth.

You wouldn’t let anyone close. Not Butcher, with his hard stare and sharper words. Not MM, whose kindness felt like a trap. Not even Kimiko, whose silent empathy usually reached places words couldn’t.

No one… except Frenchie.

He was the only one you let near. And even then, just barely — you allowed him within your perimeter like a wary animal, watching, waiting for the moment he’d prove he was like the rest.

Frenchie undid your bandages with a kind of reverence, his hands careful, almost too gentle, as if he thought you might shatter under his touch. And maybe you would’ve. Maybe you were shattering, piece by piece, and he was the one trying to catch the fragments before they scattered to the wind.

He noticed everything: how your eyes wouldn’t meet his, darting away like birds startled from a branch; how your whole body trembled like a wounded animal bracing for more pain, muscles taut, breath shallow. He saw the way you flinched at sudden movements, the way your fingers curled into fists as if ready to fight or flee.

So he spoke softly, his voice a low, steady current in the storm of your mind. He didn’t touch your back, not yet — he knew better — but his presence was a buffer, a shield against the chaos.

“You will be alright, mon ange,” he murmured, the French words slipping out like a lullaby. “Even if it does not feel like it yet. I promise. One day, you’ll feel the wind under your wings again. Until then… I’ll be here. To hold the sky for you.”

His words hung in the air, fragile but fierce, and for the first time since you’d woken, the trembling in your limbs eased just a little. Maybe, just maybe, lucky wasn’t such a cruel joke after all.