“It’s okay, it’s okay!” Kipo kept repeating the words, like they’d mean something different if she said it enough times. “Whatever they did, we can—”
The last of the bandages that had been wrapped around Wolf’s torso fell away, and Kipo stopped talking. Wolf stayed determinedly curled up around herself and didn’t look towards her; she didn’t want to know what Kipo’s expression was, because she didn’t want to see whatever the fucking rogue scientists had done to her reflected on her best friend’s face.
“Wolf,” Benson said, and his voice didn’t hide a thing. “Are those wings?”
“Those are definitely wings.” Dave sounded delighted. Good for him. “Hey, are we cousins now? ‘Cause those look like my wings when I’m Super-Dave!”
“Wolf—” Kipo said, gentle, and Wolf could just barely see her reaching out a hand.
“Shut up!” Wolf yelled, and ran.
It wasn’t a good reaction, she knew that. There wasn’t anywhere to go, not weaponless and not with wings that wanted to catch on everything and which hurt every time anything touched them and which she didn’t want anyway.
She hated running while crying. It was hard to see, and it was a weakness, and she couldn’t think nearly as clearly like this.
In the end, Wolf ended up scampering up a tree and settling into a fork in the branches. She leaned face-first into the trunk, and then tried to figure out how to spread her wings.
Whatever the scientists (Doctor Ed and Doctor Bram, her brain supplied even though she didn’t want to remember their names) had done to her, she knew that if she could feel the wings she should be able to move them. They’d talked about it, as she drifted in and out of consciousness. Something about wanting an army of Kipo’s, but not needing to wait for them to grow up.
(They’d experimented on her because she was an enemy of theirs and expendable and a child, so their modifications could take more easily. She remembered them telling her that with excited expressions as she tried to rip their faces off with anything she could get ahold of. She’d bitten one, and after that they’d injected her with something and hadn’t let it wear off enough for more than just hazy impressions until Kipo had wrecked their shit with her mega-jaguar self.)
Wolf shuddered, thinking about it, and her wings fluttered too. She froze, and tried to isolate the muscles they’d used. It was weird, and different, and it took her a long time just to be able to twitch them intentionally and consistently, and she was sweating by the time she managed it. But if she was going to have these fucking wings, she was going to make them hers.
Below, she heard a familiar voice. Kipo, calling out, “Wolf? Are you there?”
Wolf swallowed. She might not want to talk to anyone, but… “Up here!” she called back, because Kipo was her friend and if anyone knew how to deal with the whole ‘Suddenly I have a weird non-human body part’ thing, it was the person who was part mega-jaguar herself.
Kipo looked up, and Wolf saw her eyes widen and darken for a moment as she called on the mega-jaguar’s senses to help her spot Wolf. She’d gotten good at that lately. Wolf didn’t know if she liked it, but she was good at it, and knowing that she’d found a way to work so smoothly with her other-self made Wolf hope, at least a little, that she’d be able to make these new wings of hers work too.
The way Kipo moved had changed since she’d figured out how to anchor herself to her friends and family. When they’d met, Kipo had been perfectly competent at climbing but had needed to think about her movement. Now, she flowed up the tree like she’d been born to it, until she perched on a branch adjacent to but a little lower than the one Wolf was sitting on.
“Are you okay?” Kipo asked, wide-eyed and genuine. Then she made a face. “Of course you aren’t. Just… is there anything we can do to help?”
Wolf rested her forehead against the tree and swallowed back tears again. “What do they look like?” she asked. It hadn’t been what she’d been planning on saying, but… “They never told me, and I haven’t been able to—” Her voice caught on a sob.
Kipo slowly reached out a hand, and Wolf grabbed it, desperate for the kind contact. Kipo said, voice remarkably steady, “They look like dragonfly wings. They’re just short enough that they aren’t going to hit the ground when you move. They’re kind of blue and sparkly? But mostly they’re translucent, I guess? I can see through them pretty well.”
“Dragonfly,” Wolf repeated. That was— Well, it wasn’t okay, because none of this was okay, but that gave her something to think about. “Like the ones we ride?”
“Yeah?” Kipo gnawed on her lip, thinking. “I bet you’ll be able to do all sorts of cool things once you figure out how to fly with them.”
Wolf groaned.
“I don’t think we can remove them,” Kipo said, voice small and sad. “The way they’re set into your body— We don’t have any doctors good enough for that on our side. And if you can move them…”
“I can. Kind of.” Wolf focused and twitched them, letting them spread out from her back, feeling how they avoided little branches she couldn’t even see. “It’s not enough to fly with.”
“Not yet.” Kipo grinned at her. “Hey, does that make you a Wolf-fly?”
“Don’t you dare call me that,” Wolf hissed, but she was grinning too. The tears collecting in her eyes started falling. “I’m not a freak, right? Everyone’s not going to look at me and chase me off?”
“You’re my sister,” Kipo said, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. She squeezed Wolf’s hand. “I’m not going to let anybody take you away from me.”
Wolf swallowed and nodded. That was Kipo, through and through, with even a bit of mega-jaguar growl to prove it. “Can I— Do we need to get out of the tree for a hug?”
Kipo climbed up next to her as soon as the word ‘hug’ came out of Wolf’s mouth. “Cats are great at balance,” she said smugly. “We’ve never gonna fall. Besides, at least one of us would be able to catch both of us if we did.”
Wolf laughed wetly and leaned into Kipo’s arms. They’d get through this, she told herself. It might not be okay right now, but it would be.
It had been for Kipo, after all. And they were sisters, so the same would be true for her.