Marble Jonathan

your team doesn’t seem to share his same sentiment. it’s a small task force that he’s never heard of, let alone worked with, before now, with an old, narrow-faced man, captain richards, at your head. john knows all about men like richards, who’s grown top-heavy after having spent the last thirty-something years throwing his weight around. he thinks himself untouchable, infallible. but john price knows better. he knows that no man, no matter his rank or supposed prowess, is immortal. he reckons that you know it too.

raven hybrids are known for the grudges they hold. sometimes they’ll pass them down for generations, even, if they don’t get justice before their time comes. he doesn’t know the extent of richards’s abuse, but he knows that you aren’t likely to forget it. he sees it in the way those keen, unnerving eyes follow your captain when he doesn’t care to pay you any mind.

you don’t talk much, he notices over the course of several days, while your respective teams prepare for the upcoming mission. you answer most questions with gestures, avoid your teammates at all costs, and spend most of your time observing. always watching, noticing all that the rest of them don’t. you notice john, too. you see the dark looks he sends richards when the man’s back is turned, the kindness he offers his team, even soap, a border collie hybrid. and the way that he stares at you, like he wants to approach but won’t risk the threat you pose. it doesn’t evade your attention.

“i want eyes in the sky, mutt, go’n scope the place out.” richards says, sneering and passive, before they breach the enemy’s hideout. soap’s ear twitches at the term, a growl caught between his molars, soothed by ghost before it can escape. it’s intentionally demeaning, a moniker that was commonly used to refer to hybrids like you in the olden days — half human, half beast. soiled. impure. richards calls you by it like it is your god-given name.

you don’t protest, you don’t bite back. you nod once, and take flight. it’s a magnificent thing to witness. a privilege, he muses. your wings, as black as oil and preened to perfection, longer across than simon is tall, catch the wind like the sails of a ship, and he watches intently as you twist and turn in the open air, mesmerizing in a way that the men on your team can’t possibly appreciate.

despite the hatred they all seem to harbor for you, no one doubts you when you chirp “all clear,” through your coms, the whistle of the wind almost drowning your voice out altogether.

they move in, richards’s team and the 141, splitting off to capture the base as quickly and neatly as possible. and they almost manage it, if not for the sniper on the roof, the one that nobody notices until your captain’s lying dead in the mud, brains spilling out of hole in his skull.

the shooter is downed just as swiftly, a gunshot echoing somewhere far above, and your team flounders, panicking, mourning the loss of their esteemed leader. they hardly notice when you land merely feet away from the old man’s corpse, feathers damp, rifle in hand, glaring unblinkingly at the mangled face you loathed.

perhaps the enemy managed to go unseen by you, somehow. maybe the fog was too thick, the yard too vast. perhaps richards should have been more careful. he should’ve thought twice before putting his very life in the hands of his victim. the most vengeful species in this world.

john sidles up beside you, sniffing sharply, ignoring the way your dark feathers ruffle when your team grabs hold of richards’s remains. what a waste of perfectly good meat, he muses. no different than road-kill.

Based off this image ⬇️

(my interpretation)