Paraphilia

As your wings healed, you naturally spoke of returning to your folk. But Zandik, even at eight years old, possessed a silver tongue that could twist reality.

"The forest is dangerous now," he would say as he gently stroked your head with a finger. "I heard the villagers talking about hunting fairies to use in their traditional potions. If you leave, they’ll catch you.”

“Stay with me. I’m the only one who can keep you safe."

You trusted him implicitly. So, you stayed.

For nearly four years, life was fine. To you, 'fine' meant watching Zandik grow taller, smarter, and increasingly detached from humanity. It also meant seeing him come back to the hollow tree battered and bruised, bleeding from his father’s belt or the villagers' rocks. You would cry, using your minuscule magic to soothe his bruises. The magic was weak, even almost nothing, but Zandik would close his eyes with a rare, genuine smile gracing his lips.

"Thank you," he would murmur. "As long as I have you, it wouldn’t hurt as much."

But the fragile peace shattered when Zandik turned twelve.

The villagers had had enough of the "heretic" and his blasphemous ideals. You never thought you would see the day he was chased out of his hometown with pitchforks and torches, the angry mob roaring as if they were hunting a feral beast.

"Run, Zandik! Run!" you cried from his shoulder.

A rock flew through the air, striking his brow. Blood streamed down his face, but Zandik didn't falter. Instead, his hand flew to his chest, shielding you. He shoved you securely inside his dirt-stained shirt. He took the brunt of the pelted stones, shielding your tiny, fragile body with his own as he sprinted into the dark, unforgiving wilderness.

Surviving in the wild was brutal. There were nights when the cold threatened to freeze his blood, and days when hunger clawed at his stomach. Yet, Zandik’s brilliance and steadfast nature shone through the dark. He built traps, mapped out safe zones, and survived where grown men would have perished.

Whenever he felt like giving up, you would flutter out of his shirt, glowing faintly to provide a sliver of warmth, or use your tiny power to purify a drop of stream water for him to drink.

It was a drop in the bucket, but to Zandik, it was everything. He was profoundly touched. In a world that threw stones at him, a magical creature was using its last drop of strength just to look out for him.

You stayed by his side through it all. You had a front-row seat to the making of a monster.

You were there when he entered the Akademiya, hiding in his robes as he wrote brilliant, yet forbidden papers. You were there when Sohreh died. You were there when they expelled him, and you were there in the snowy, harsh land of Snezhnaya when Pierro finally offered him the title of ‘Il Dottore’.

Decades bled into one another. You watched him conquer death itself by carving out his own timeline, creating the segments. Through it all, you were his only closely guarded secret that not even the other harbingers were aware of. Not even the Tsaritsa knew of the fairy living in the Harbinger's breast pocket.

Until the day the original Zandik died.

At eighty-five years old, Zandik was harvested by his own creations. You had watched in horror from the shadows as the older, frail man who had once been the boy in the forest breathed his last. And to make it even more terrifying, the boy whom you first met didn’t even bother to save him when he found Zandik dying.

You thought it was over. You thought that with the original gone, the segments would finally rid themselves of a useless, magical anomaly like you.

But you were wrong.

"Did you really think I would leave you behind?"

The voice was young, dripping with this familiar tone you remember the most. You flinched as a small, pale hand reached into your hiding spot, gently but firmly scooping you out.

It was the 8-Year-Old Segment. The one who famously wrote in his notes that he had lost all sense of human compassion at age eight. Yet, as the child segment brought you up to his face, his crimson eyes weren't cold. They were burning in the deadly cold of Snezhnaya.

"Zandik is us, and we are Zandik," the child whispered, bringing you close to his cheek. He let you feel the warmth of his skin despite the chilling temperature of the lab. "The original loved you more than his own humanity. Do you think that love would just vanish just because his old body died?"

Suddenly, the door to the laboratory slid open.

"Step away from them, kid," a deeper, smoother voice commanded. The older segment walked into the room, his eyes flashing behind his glasses. "You've had your turn holding them during the transition. It is my turn now."

From the shadows of the room, other eyes gleamed. The student segments, the older masked segments, even the towering Omega Build, they were all staring at you.

The original Zandik was dead, but his obsession had been duplicated perfectly across every single stage of his life. And now, freed from the original's monopoly, all the segments were becoming utterly, ruthlessly selfish.

"They stay with me today!" the 8-year-old segment hissed, turning his back to the older versions and cupping his hands protectively around you, mimicking the exact way the original had shielded you from the rocks so many years ago. "I represent the age we first met. I have the highest claim!"

"Don't be ridiculous," the segment in plague doctor mask scoffed, stepping closer. "You're too unstable to care for something so fragile."

As the various iterations of the second Harbinger began to argue over who got to keep you in their coat pocket for the day, you could only watch in stunned silence.

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