borne on wings of steel

by black_banners_raised

Summary:

It always starts with a fall.

Chapter 1: when he came down didn't even look scared, just eased on back into the veldt

Summary:

Sometimes, it also ends with one.

Notes:

Chapter title from "The Bends" by Doomtree.

Warning for depiction of drowning, bleeding out, and dying.

Lin Lie was falling.

It wasn't an unfamiliar sensation -- the sound of wind rushing past him, the dizzying feeling of his stomach in his throat, the faint trails of red in the corner of his vision as his scarf streamed out from him.

No, it was the burning, stinging pain in his arms that was unusual, the glittering green that surrounded him as he fell. The fact that he was still falling, that the sword hilt he was clinging to hadn't yet swept him back up the cliff face to Ami's side.

The sword of Fu Xi was broken. His family's sword. Shattered. Pieces cutting through his sleeves, digging into his arms and hands.

That part was new.

Lie could hear the river beneath him. He remembered something Pearl had told him once, when they'd been helping Jimmy teach Dan Bi to swim.

From a certain height, hitting water is like hitting concrete. It breaks bone.

He hit the water.

It was a different kind of pain from the one in his arms and hands. It felt like the thousand times he'd gotten knocked on his ass in training, in combat, except worse. He would have lost consciousness there if not for the sheer cold of the water. He was pretty sure he would be one giant bruise when he got out of this.

If he got out of this.

The water was soaking into his clothes, dragging him deeper into the river as he tried to kick upward. He was exhaused, and his arms were on fire, and his entire body hurt. Red and green shimmered around him.

It took him a moment to realize that the red was blood. His blood, mixing in with the water and the shards of his sword.

His vision was beginning to darken around the edges, the colors and light blurring together. His lungs burned. His legs were like lead.

He just had to hold on long enough for Ami to pull him out of the river. That was it.

The air escaped him in a rush. Bubbles floated absently to the surface of the water, trailing behind as the current carried him further down the river. His ribs still stung, dulled slightly by the chill. Dimly, he realized he was losing a lot of blood. Was it coming from his arms?

Lie tried to move his hands, bring them where he could see them, but his shredded sleeves weighed him down. He didn't have the energy to try for the surface of the water anymore. The river was getting colder. He was sinking.

Please, Ami.

He needed to breathe. He needed to swim. He needed to conserve the little oxygen he had left.

His lungs spasmed, and water filled his nose and mouth, but it didn't hurt.

That had to be bad. It was something Shang-Chi had told him. Pain was--

He couldn't remember. All he could hear was Shang-Chi telling him to breathe, in that ever-patient tone of voice.

Lie tried to stop coughing, to calm his body down, to regain the control he needed to get himself out of the water. He was freezing. His arms were numb now, tangled in the remains of his sleeves and his belt. His vision had turned sepia-toned, like the old movies he'd watched with his father when he was small.

He was so tired. His body was heavy, dragging him down as the current pulled him along. He thought, dimly, that maybe he should be panicking, or struggling, or trying, somehow, to keep himself alive, but he was exhausted.

And he was already dying.

He could figure that much out. The blood. The water, cycling in and out of his lungs. The coughs that were slowly becoming weaker.

Better me than Ami.

As if in response to his acceptance, his vision went black. He couldn't feel anything besides the cold.

At least it didn't hurt anymore.

Chapter 2: I know it's over, icarus says to the sun

Summary:

Lie has been falling since he was a child.

Notes:

Chapter title from "Fun (feat. Tove Lo)" by Coldplay

There was a swing in the communal yard of their apartment building.

Lie was eight, watching Feng soar higher and higher, swinging his legs back and forth to push himself into the sky. His older brother was just beginning to grow his hair out, and it trailed behind him slightly, caught up by his momentum as he pumped his legs a final time and jumped off the swing.

As soon as he landed, Lie bolted up to him. "I want to try!"

"Sure." Feng helped him onto the swing. "You want me to give you a push?"

"I can do it," Lie protested, already swinging his legs.

"Sure," Feng said again.

He stepped back, giving Lie room to swing higher and higher, until the momentum was tugging at his hair and the ground felt far away.

"How do I jump?" he shouted down to his brother.

"Push off," Feng yelled back, "when you're just about to start going backward.

Lie nodded and pumped his legs. He made one more arc, then two, then three.

"Just do it," Feng told him. "Don't be a chicken."

Lie pushed off.

For a few seconds, he was soaring, weightless above the patchy grass.

Then he wasn't.

He hit the ground hard, skinning his knees. His palms and shoulder stung from the landing, too, sending little sparks up and down his arms

Hands jammed under his elbows, and Feng hauled him up. "Little brother. Are you--"

Lie's eyes started to fill with tears.

"No, no no," Feng said quickly. "You're fine. You're fine. Don't cry."

"It hurts," Lie whined.

"I'll get you a bandage." Feng reached into his pocket and pulled out a small wooden box like the kind in their father's office. "Here."

Lie sniffled and took it.

"It's a puzzle box," Feng added. "I can't get it open. See if you can solve it for me? I'll be right back."

He disappeared into the building before Lie could answer, leaving him sitting in the dirt with bloody knees and the puzzle box in his hands.

One of the corners of the box was loose. Lie prodded it away from the rest of the wood, then tugged at the other corners until another piece came off in his hand.

By the time Feng returned, Lie had completely disassembled the box and was chewing on one of the pieces of candy he'd found inside. He held the other out to Feng.

"You got it open already?" Feng asked him, carefully sticking the bandages over the scrapes on his knees.

Lie shrugged. "It was easy."

"If you say so." Feng unwrapped the candy and stuffed their trash in his pocket. "You didn't want this?"

"One for each of us," Lie replied around the last of his candy.

Feng was quiet for a long moment.

"Let's get you cleaned up before Dad sees," he finally said. "Don't want to get in trouble."

Lie nodded and carefully picked himself up off the ground, following after his older brother.

Chapter 3: and now I'm melting from my wings

Summary:

Things are starting anew.

Notes:

Chapter title from "Angel on Fire" by Halsey.

Warning for flashbacks to the events of chapter 1.

Lie came awake slowly, blinking in the darkness of... wherever he was.

He was lying on something soft, staring up at a stone ceiling. His head felt dull and fuzzy. The rest of his body was distant, a vague impression of arms and legs. The sensation reminded him of the few times he'd been given painkillers when he was with the Agents of Atlas, for a particularly nasty wound or a couple of broken ribs.

He didn't remember getting hurt.

He didn't remember anything.

His arms wouldn't respond to his brain's commands at first, but he managed to get one elbow under him and start to lever himself up from wherever he was lying.

Immediately, his vision tilted. Unfamiliar hands caught him by the shoulders and eased him back down.

"Careful. You speak English? Mandarin?" a voice asked, switching fluidly between languages as they added several more Lie couldn't recognize.

"Mandarin," he mumbled, unsure which language he was actually speaking. "English. Whatever."

"Okay," she-- Lie was pretty sure it was a woman, but everything was sort of vague and cloudy-- said. "Whatever. What's your name?"

He started to answer, but his brain caught up to the situation just in time. Stranger danger, Dan Bi would have said, crinkling her nose at him like she always did when she thought he was being stupid. So keep your mouth shut.

"Still with me, didi?" the stranger asked.

He ignored the prickling familiarity of being called little brother and let his eyes drift closed again. "Where am I?"

"I can't answer that," she said. "But my name is Sparrow."

A name for a name, then. "Lie."

"Do you know what happened to you, Lie?"

Her voice was careful, measured, but Lie had spent enough time with Shang-Chi to be able to pick out the concern that edged her words, even with his head clouded. "What do you mean?"

"You were in bad shape when you washed up here," she told him. "Your arms were full of shrapnel -- still are. We couldn't remove most of it without risking--"

The rest of her words were lost to the rush of water in his ears, the burning sensation of air trying to escape from his lungs, the cold of the river around him. He couldn't feel his arms, but they stung sharper than he'd felt anything since coming to.

Breathe, someone was saying, and he couldn't answer. I can't. I'm dying. I'm sorry.

Something pressed down on his ribs, heavy weight sitting in the center of his chest and forcing the last of his air out of his lungs.

He sucked in more air, not water, when the pressure lessened into hands at his collarbone, holding him still as he coughed and gasped his way out of his imagined drowning.

"You're alright," Sparrow was saying from somewhere above him, "you're alright, but you need to breathe. It's alright. Breathe."

She kept repeating it until Lie could inhale without his lungs spasming or his throat closing.

"I'm okay," he told her, blinking his eyes open when he couldn't make his arms bat her hands away.

Sparrow was a young woman, apparently, with long black hair and an unfamiliar sigil on the chest of the armor she wore -- and perhaps more importantly, a thick strip of white cloth over her eyes.

That explained how dark the room was, at least.

"I'm fine," he said again when she didn't move her hands away from his shoulders. "I'm good."

She tilted her head slightly, and Lie could imagine she was raising an eyebrow beneath the blindfold. "I can feel your heartbeat."

"You asked me what happened." He allowed himself another deep breath before adding, "I think I drowned."

Ribbons of red flashed in front of his eyes, and he squeezed his eyes shut until they went away. "Or bled out, maybe. Or both. And I saw--"

Lin Lie.

"You saw?" Sparrow prompted.

"A giant... dragon," he said slowly.

She sat down heavily, muttering something that might have been a curse word. "Did he tell you his name?"

"I kind of thought it was a near-death hallucination--"

"Lie. What was his name?"

"...Shou Lao."

He didn't know the word Sparrow hissed under her breath this time, either, but it was definitely a curse word. "Is that bad?"

"Honestly?" She sighed. "I have no idea."

Lie had no idea how to respond to that.

"Do you know who the Iron Fist is?" she asked after a moment.

Shang-Chi had mentioned him once, along with a handful of words in a language that sounded a lot like Mandarin but definitely wasn't. Lie was pretty sure they were friendly. He was also pretty sure Shang-Chi thought Iron Fist was annoying.

Shang-Chi thought Lie was annoying too, but he'd taught him to use his sword and hold his own in a fight, and given him a place to stay in New York, and kept him alive when--

Actually, Lie didn't want to think about Shang-Chi right now.

"Yeah," he said out loud. "Kind of. I never met him."

Sparrow hummed noncommitally, tilting her head as if considering something. The blindfold made the effect slightly eerie. Or maybe that was whatever painkillers they'd given him, fuzzing out his vision around the edges.

When she didn't say anything else, Lie tried again to push himself up to sitting. He went more slowly and managed to prop himself up on one elbow enough to see the rest of his body.

At some point, he'd been changed out of the clothes he remembered and into loose pants and a sleeveless shirt that tied closed in the front. His shoes were sitting to the side of the cot, dried from their stint in the river. And his--

his hands--

"What happened to my hands?" he asked, something detached and calm in his voice that did not match the panic slowly but surely making its way through his body.

Both hands were wrapped tightly in layers of bandages, immobilizing his fingers in a half-bent position and keeping his wrists locked in place. More bandages wound around and around his right arm, ending just below his shoulder.

Sparrow turned her head towards him and started to stand. "It's alright. We cleaned the wounds, and you're not at risk of any infection--"

"What wounds?" The last missing piece of the puzzle clicked together in his head, and he glanced frantically around the little stone room, searching desperately for--

"Where's my sword?"

"Lie--"

"Where did you put my sword?"

Sparrow pressed her lips together and reached under the cot to pull out the hilt.

The blade was gone, leaving only a few jagged scraps of metal attached to the guard and a handful of shards in Sparrow's other palm. The grip had swollen from being submerged in the water so long. Lie could imagine ridges and impressions where he'd clung to it -- he remembered that much.

He tried to reach out to take them, but his arms wouldn't respond to his commands, encased as they were.

"Where's the rest of the blade?"

She gestured to his hands. "We couldn't remove it without risking more damage."

"It's in my hands." His own voice sounded far away, half-muffled by the ringing in his ears.

"Most of it," she replied, back to that carefully even tone. Or maybe she'd said something else. Lie wasn't sure.

His sword was shattered. His father's sword. The sword that kept one of Chiyou's three tombs sealed. The sword it was his responsibility to wield. Destroyed.

"What else?"

"What?"

"Where else am I hurt?"

She nodded, once, curt and sharp. "Internal bruising. Some scrapes from the riverbed. You'd lost a lot of blood when you showed up, but we gave you a transfusion. Aside from your arms, you should be fine once the contusions heal."

He stared at her. "I fell off a cliff."

"You said you drowned."

"That was after." Hitting water is like hitting concrete. "I should-- my legs should be broken. Or at least my ribs. And I should be--" He was pretty sure there was a point, if you lost enough blood, where no amount of transfusion could save you. "I lost too much blood. I should be--"

He couldn't get the word out. Sparrow was no help, standing still at the edge of the cot with her head half-angled towards him, the hilt of his sword in one hand.

"Am I still in Korea?"

"No," she replied. "You're in K'un Lun."

Lie closed his eyes and tried to picture a map of the world with K'un Lun on it, to no avail. "Where's that?"

"In the Himalayas."

An earlier part of their conversation tugged at his brain, like instinctively knowing the next piece in a puzzle. This part -- thinking, solving -- was easier, even with his mind still fuzzy and worn. "You said you couldn't tell me where I was when I asked before."

The expression Sparrow made might have been a wince. "I did."

"So why are you telling me now?"

"Now I know you're supposed to be here."

"What does that mean?"

She pressed her lips together again, tighter this time, and told him, "You're the Iron Fist."

He had to have misheard. "What?"

"Shou Lao chose you. Healed you, I would guess. His egg cracked moments before you appeared. All signs point to you being the new Iron Fist."

None of that made any sense, and Lie suddenly found himself wishing desperately for Amadeus's logical explanations, for Ling's reassurance, for Jimmy's endless strategy, or even for Cindy to knock her knuckles against his shoulder and tell him to figure it out.

He couldn't be the Iron Fist. He was barely a swordsman, and that was only thanks to Ami and Isaac and Dan Bi and Shang-Chi. He routinely lost at hand-to-hand combat against every other Agent of Atlas even before his hands were filled with the shattered remnants of his sword.

The cot shifted slightly as Sparrow perched at the edge, head angled so they would have been making eye contact if not for the blindfold across her face. "Lie. Do you have family you want to contact?"

For a moment, Lie let himself entertain the idea that he had someone to call.

But his father was missing. Feng was firmly under Chiyou's sway. And with the Sword of Fu Xi in pieces, Lie couldn't afford to neglect his duty any further. He needed to get better, and fast. He needed to learn to fight around the shards in his hands so he could at least clean up the demons that had to have surfaced when the sword broke. He needed to figure out what it meant to be the Iron Fist, what he was responsible for now that Shou Lao had chosen him.

"No," he said. "It's fine. When do the bandages come off?"

Some inscrutable expression flickered across her face. "One of the students will check your wounds later today. She'll be able to tell you. You should rest in the meantime."

"Isn't that what I've been doing?" Lie asked.

Her irritated sigh sounded so much like Ami's that he had to close his eyes for a moment. "You can argue with her about it."

"Where are you going?"

"I have other responsibilities in the city." She set the hilt of his sword back under the cot, behind his shoes. "There are people in the hall if you need something. Don't go anywhere."

Lie couldn't if he wanted to. It took most of his remaining energy to ease himself back to lying down.

He was asleep again before she had even left the room, and he dreamed of falling and firey dragons.

Chapter 4: strap the wing to me

Summary:

Lifelines are a tricky thing.

Notes:

Chapter title from "Sunlight" by Hozier.

Warning for description of Lie's arms as they are now -- nothing too graphic, but it's not pretty, either.

It would have been easier to collect the shards of the sword of Fu Xi if the pieces that had embedded in Lie's arms didn't start humming as soon as he got close to one.

Maybe it was some kind of messed-up proximity alarm, a built-in tracking device designed to get his attention in the most painful way possible. It made it almost impossible to concentrate enough to summon the dragon chi he was still figuring out how to use.

Throwing a punch without the chi wasn't any better, he was quickly discovering. The demons hunting the shards disintegrated pretty quickly whenever Lie landed a good hit, but between his trembling arms and the fact that he still hadn't recovered his strength, good hits were few and far between.

He didn't have a choice in this instance. One of the shards -- a fairly large one, based on the pulsing waves of pain emanating from his hands -- had been picked up by a little girl and taken home, left on her trinket shelf next to a geode and some other sparkly objects. The shelf was visible from the fire escape, which is where Lie was currently fighting the last two demons.

Close quarters and flickering fists meant Lie did not have the advantage, and he couldn't come up with a better strategy than keeping himself between the demons and the girl's windows by any means necessary. It wasn't exactly going well for him.

The larger demon lunged, driving what passed for its shoulder into Lie's sternum and shoving him into the glass hard enough to shatter it and land them both on the rug inside. Lie jammed his hands into its gut and tried to pull some semblance of focus together before it bit his head off.

A clean line of orange light cut through the demon, head to toe, dripping cool sparks onto Lie that fizzled out immediately. The demon burst into dust, and a vaguely familiar figure extended a gloved hand to him.

Lie didn't take it, using his good elbow to lever himself to sitting instead. "Thanks."

"You're quite welcome," Doctor Strange responded.

The other demon screeched, and Lie glanced past him to see it encased in glowing red bands, visibly displeased about being restrained.

"What are you doing in Greenwich Village?" Strange asked him as another red band worked its way across the demon's mouth to silence it. "And-- did you change your costume?"

Lie looked down at the armor Sparrow had given him, complete with the Iron Fist insignia. "Yes?"

"You're not Daniel Rand."

"No." And for some reason -- maybe because Strange wasn't Shang-Chi or Jimmy, just some American superhero Lie had met once -- he reached up and tugged off his mask.

It took Doctor strange a moment to recognize him. "The boy with the sword of Fu Xi. Lin Lie."

"Lie's fine," he replied. He considered getting to his feet so Strange wasn't looming over him, but even the idea of putting weight on his aching hands was painful.

"Where's your sword?" Strange continued.

Lie jerked his chin towards the girl's shelf. "There's a chunk over there."

"'A chunk?'"

"Yeah."

"How did that happen?"

He shrugged. "Evil kumiho in Chungcheongnam-do."

"There--" Strange stopped, something pale and uneasy flickering across his face. "When was this?"

"I don't know. A couple months ago. Right after you died for a bit."

Strange didn't say anything, but he wasn't quite looking at Lie. Lie decided to ignore him and picked himself off the floor, hissing as he put weight on his hands to stand.

"Are you alright?"

"Yeah, it's fine. That's just the shards."

"The shards?"

"In my hands." Lie held them up. He hadn't had time to wrap them correctly before the demons had shown up, and the bandages were slipping down his arms and catching on the pieces that stuck out of his skin.

He knew his arms weren't a pretty sight. The bandages and wrappings meant he didn't have to look at them, and he preferred it that way. Even without the jagged bits of sword that littered them, they were a mess of scar tissue and visible nerve damage that looked nothing like normal arms, and the edges of the shards had cut through blood vessels and created internal bruising that hadn't yet healed.

Still, Strange inhaled sharply, eyes widening as they locked onto Lie's hands. "That happened when..."

"When the sword broke."

"When I was dead."

"Yeah."

Strange muttered something under his breath. "I'm sorry."

Lie shrugged dismissively. "Whatever." A few pieces of glass fell from the folds of his clothes onto the floor. "Is there a spell for fixing broken windows?"

"They shake?"

"The windows?"

"Your hands."

"Yeah. All the time."

"Mine used to." There was something oddly hollow in Strange's voice. "I was in a car accident when I was much younger."

"Did they get better?"

Something like a flinch passed over Strange's expression. "Not on their own."

"Ah." Lie tried to keep the disappointment from his voice. "So much for that."

"There isn't a shortcut," Strange agreed tightly. "But it will become easier over time. Trust me. And do your physical therapy."

Lie wasn't entirely sure how to respond to that, so he settled for shaking the rest of the glass from his armor. He checked the pouch attached to his belt where he was keeping the loose shards and counted the pieces inside to make sure he hadn't lost any.

"Is that where you're keeping them?" Strange asked.

Lie raised one eyebrow at him. "I can't leave them in K'un Lun when I'm not there."

"No," he agreed. "But are you planning to keep doing that until you find them all?"

"It's not like I have a magic box for them."

"I can make you one," Strange told him. "A puzzle box, so even I won't be able to open it quickly."

"You would do that?"

"It would make it easier for you to keep the shards safe and lower the chances of an angry ancient god making itself my problem." The casual expression on his face didn't match his tone. "Besides, it will allow me to use my forge for something challenging."

Lie nodded. "Thank you."

"You're welcome. You're the Iron Fist now?"

"I guess."

"Does anyone else outside of K'un Lun know?"

Lie focused on working the new shard off of its stand so Strange couldn't see his expression. "You're the first."

"I see."

The glass tinkled behind Lie, and he looked over his shoulder in time to see the windowpanes reassemble and slot themselves back into place. He put the shard in the pouch with the others as Strange inspected his work.

"That should do it. Can I take you anywhere?"

For a moment, Lie thought of Shang-Chi's apartment in Flushing, or the Atlas headquarters. But he had a job to do, and shards to find.

"The sidewalk's fine," he said.

Strange nodded and moved one arm in a circle, opening a round portal opposite them. He gestured Lie toward it with his free hand.

"Wait."

Strange raised one eyebrow. "It's perfectly safe."

"You said you have-- there's a forge? For... magical objects?"

"Yes."

"Do you think--" His voice sounded so childish, so full of hope, and he had to stop and clear his throat to bring it back under control. "Would I be able to put the sword back together there, if I had all the pieces?"

Every second Strange took to think about it sent Lie's heart sinking an inch lower in his chest. "You could try," he finally said. "I don't know how your sword was forged, so it may or may not be possible. But I'll do what I can to help."

Lie nodded and carefully stepped through the portal onto the sidewalk in front of the apartment. It fizzled shut behind him.

He ignored the part of him that wanted to turn back and wave to Strange, the part that wanted to go down to the subway and get on a train to Flushing, the part that wanted to borrow someone's phone and call any of the Agents of Atlas he knew lived in the city to come get him.

None of that would help, not until he'd fixed his sword and his arms and come out the other side.