Chapter Text
The witch hunts were not the only time in humanity's history where the human's waged war on the occult species they shared the earth with, it was, however, the most well-known. He didn't know what cruel twist of fate befell them, but he hadn't caught sight of them--any of them--in decades. Every full moon, he strained his ears to catch the playful howling of a werewolf pack; every sunrise, he narrowed his eyes against the glare to catch sight of the blur of a fleeing vampire; every solstice, he reached out with his senses in the hopes of feeling a coven celebrate the turning of the seasons.
But the moon remained unsung too, the sunrise chased only the night, and the seasons passed without comment.
He shook his wings out, his stone hide grinding--the equivalent of a human popping their knuckles-- as he moved for the first time in years, and stepped out into open space.
He flew along the coast, but found no selkie pelt hidden among the rocks. He perched on a defunct lighthouse, but could not find the shimmering scales of a mermaid's tail. He flew to the emerald isle, but heard nothing of the centaurs. He flew across the ocean, to the great plains, and strained his ears for the echo of a wendigo's screech, but even they were silent.
Defeated, he flew to Georgia, and perched on the first gothic church he found. He crouched along the edge of the great cathedral, nestled between two mundane gargoyles, turned his face down towards the bustling human's below, and remained unmoving for decades.
Gargoyles were much like golems--carved and chiseled from stone, meant to endure, and brought to life by the whims of another--however, unlike a stone golem, Gargoyles evolved and developed a will of their own.
His maker named him Dumah. Derived from the word 'doom' because she'd hoped that the name would shape him, rather than him shaping the name. Carved in the midst of the witch hunts, his intended purpose was to bring ruin and destruction to all who would seek to do harm to the innocent.
As she painstakingly carved delicate veins into his hands, she told him stories, wove the dreams of a better world into the air around them for him to take into his heart. And as she mapped out his wings, wiping the chalk dust away from the stone to start again and again and again, until she got them just right , she told him about the science behind the wind. Whispered the secrets of lift and drag into his big pointed ear--igniting an undeniable desire to be free, to explore, to reach for an ever expanding horizon.
He learned how to be patient from his own carving, learning how to listen to the words between the words--how to hear what people did not want him to hear. He watched his maker and learned the value of hard work, of determination, of perseverance, and of the suffering inherent in doing something you were passionate about. And every time she touched his sharp cheek, wiping the stone dust away with her thumb, he learned a little bit more about kindness.
She should've carved a golem instead of a Gargoyle.
His maker wanted him to bring destruction and ruin upon those who would seek to harm the innocent. She wanted a weapon. But it was the care she showed him that corrupted him, and as his heart beat for the first time, it beat freely.
Instead of an unfeeling stone servant, she got a son.
However, the power necessary to bring him fully to life killed her, and Dumah was left adrift, alone, in a world that feared, demonized, and hated the occult. His only defense was to pick a church, a castle, or a clocktower, strike a pose, and stay still.
At first, Dumah hated the humans--wanted someone to rise up and strike back. Even knowing that that had been his intended purpose, he simply couldn't find it within himself to strike that blow--but over time, as he watched them decimate the occult, he just felt tired.
He flew to Nepal and met a monk who put it into words.
The old man was missing an arm from a battle, and everyday, without fail, he would come to Dumah where he stood beneath a set of crumpling gates. He was clearly out of place--more at home with the architecture of Europe than Nepal--but no one tried to remove him, so he'd stayed.
Maybe it was because he didn't belong that the monk felt a kinship with him. Either way, the monk would come to him, sit at his feet, and meditate. Sometimes he'd talk.
He'd talk about his past, the hatred he felt towards his enemies before he'd become a monk.
"I no longer feel angry towards them," he said one day, "I just feel old, which cannot possibly be a sign of inner peace."
Old...
...Yes. Dumah felt old.
His hatred ignited into anger in 1914, when the wind told him of the war in Europe, choking on smoke and ash. Of course the humans couldn't be content with the annihilation of the occult. War and fire seemed to be in their blood, and now they were turning against each other.
And for what? He asked the wind.
And the wind said, Revenge. Revenge for an archduke. Revenge for Ferdinand.
A war for the vengeance of one man. No wonder the occult didn't stand a chance.
Well, then, let them eradicate themselves.
Let them die screaming and in pain.
Let them know darkness and misery.
The first time Dumah decided to hide in a garden was the very same day he met the kid.
Posed as a stand alone statue, hands open as if he should be holding a book, with his wings held half flared behind him, he kept his back straight; strong and confident. An older gentleman with a fine suit walked the garden once, twice, then three times, eyes shifting from place to place, searching for something while keeping a close eye on the people around him. Dumah would've called him paranoid if he hadn't seen that look on spies the world over.
On the fourth time through, the gentleman stopped in front of Dumah and considered him before he put a black book in his hands and walked away.
At first, his disgust made him want to close his fingers around the book and never let it go, hold it so tightly that whoever was meant to come for it would inevitably destroy it trying to get it back from him. But then he thought of his maker.
Perhaps, he thought to himself, he could fulfill his intended purpose. Perhaps he could stand here and be the drop-off point for these spies and guard their messages, and be a secure point...and in that manner, he could help bring destruction and ruin.
That night, when it was dark enough to need a flashlight, a young man with blond hair walked through the garden, his light swinging from statue to statue as he looked for Dumah. When the kid's light swung to him, the rude bastard held it directly in his face. His eyes swept him head to toe, taking in his beak, his bat nose, the broad leaf of his ears, his prominent knuckles, and curved claws.
"Life sized," the kid said to himself, "unorthodox but okay." and Dumah couldn't really say anything to that--after all he understood the sentiment--statues were supposed to be larger than life, imposing, and Dumah was...not. He was the same height of most men, his shoulders and chest were broad only because his wings demanded it.
When he took the book from Dumah's hands, he expected him to leave.
He did not.
The kid sat at Dumah's feet, much like his monk, but, unlike his monk, this kid leaned back against Dumah's leg, and flipped the book open. The wind giggled at him as Dumah spluttered, because, really!
He was a Gargoyle, not a piece of furniture!
Time passed, and Dumah came to know his circle of spies.
There was Pike, the older gentleman who came to him first. Then there was Jim, the blond who had a tendency to lean against him. There was a dark haired man with strong brows named Spock, who stood as if he was competing for the gold medal in Posture. And finally, Uhura, a woman with dark skin who liked to wear her hair up. And for some strange reason, people either avoided Uhura--too weary of her to afford letting her step outside their line of sight-- or glared at her as she walked by--too suspicious of her to be friendly.
For the life of him, Dumah couldn't understand why. It wasn't like Uhura was actively threatening anyone or otherwise acting like she was a breath away from exploding into a violent rage. She simply slipped him the book as she walked one way, oftentimes leaving it for Spock, and then took it back when she walked the other way.
Uhura was not blind to the attention either, and instead of shrinking away from it, she endured the glares as if she was accustomed to them. As Dumah watched, he realized that Uhurah was watching her fellow human just as wearily as they watched her. Neither one was willing to fully trust the other.
She was human and yet there was something setting her apart--something that eluded him but seemed plain as day to the humans.
Dumah found himself with the sudden desire to protect her from them.
And then one day his spies stopped coming.
Where are they? He asked the wind.
And the wind said, Europe. Germany .
Dumah waited a month for one of them to come back--to be entrusted with the black book again-- and when they didn't, he sighed and let his hands fall to his sides.
Damn it. He grumbled.
Damn it! Dumah snarled as he went crashing through the rose window, the delicate stained glass caught the light and glittered as they fell. His wings beat against the roaring Gargoyle that had attacked him. If Dumah resembled a bat, then the German bastard looked like a grotesque goat; curved horns, cloven hooves, and bulging eyes. They slammed into the ground and shattered the tiles. Dumah rolled and came up jumping, wings flapping twice, before he landed in the crossing, the altar at his back.
His eyes flicked around the church, checking the nave and transepts for his spies, and found them ducking behind a column in the aisles.
So much for keeping a distant eye on them.
Dumah had flown to Germany and, following the wind, found them meeting in a church with a few of the resistance's spies. Only...turned out they hadn't been part of the resistance-- they were something called a double agent-- and guns had been drawn by the time Dumah got tackled.
The goat roared-- a high pitched bugle that stabbed at the ears. Dumah answered; his roar was deeper, more akin to the sound of a dry violin bow sliding against brittle strings. He was painfully aware that between the two, a demented elk sounded far more intimidating than a dying violin. But that thought was quickly pushed from his mind, because there was something wrong with the goat's eyes, something known only to the corrupted rot and stone.
Dumah braced himself, his heart shivering with the hot fear of fighting one of his own, of potentially dwindling their already sad numbers, of committing to his original purpose: ruin and destruction.
The goat pawed at the floor with an aggressive snort, scratching the tile, and then charged. Dumah had a second to think 'fuck it' before he broke out into a sprint; meeting charge for charge. Nevermind that the goat had horns and Dumah did not. They met with a harsh bang, stone against stone; Dumah's claws skating off the goat's muscled shoulders, wings beating furiously behind him--not to get away, but to reach around Dumah and bludgeon the goat--his beak snapping at the goat's face.
The goat tossed his head, trying to get enough room to headbutt Dumah, to bash his horns against his face.
They didn't fight like men--taking stances that've been cultivated for centuries specifically for hand-to-hand combat. They didn't fight beautifully; no roundhouse kicks, no perfectly timed punches.
They fought like beasts--snarling and roaring--like monsters--snapping teeth and raking claws, and sweeping wings--like the occult--stone hides scraping and grinding against each other, ricocheting the bullets from the goat's allies as they shot at them and at Dumah's spies.
And they were the goat's allies. Humans didn't simply accept the occult--turned into myths and legends--unless they already knew they still existed. At the least, those bastards should've still been gawking--like his spies had been before they'd been fired upon. Alarm bells were ringing.
Dumah slammed the goat into a column and got a hoof to the guts for it. He was sent flying back into the wooden pews that shattered under his weight. The wind came through the ruptured rose window to wrap around Dumah and whispered frantically in his ear. Dumah heaved himself up and over the next pew just as the goat rammed the empty space he'd just been, wing snapping open as far as it could, and caught the bullet meant for Pike.
The goat roared, enraged, and Dumah swirled around to face him again, doing his best to ignore the bullets. The goat had charged him with such strength that he wasn't able to stop, and he'd ended up burying his head in the wall. Snorting and kicking, it took him a moment to get unstuck; stone dust and small pieces of damaged wall followed him as his head abruptly came free. When he turned, Dumah caught sight of the damage done to his horns; it wasn't the simple chipping he expected, rather, the goat was suddenly missing large chunks. The curve of his horns was gone--simply a flat plateau.
Something was very wrong.
Dumah knew himself as his maker knew him--knew that he was chiseled from granite--and yet when he took a swipe at the goat, claws racking against his chest. He left marks .
The goat was made of marble.
Dumah's eyes went wide with realization.
The goat was younger . But that was impossible. The witch hunts had eradicated them all--even the skin walkers--there simply wasn't a witch left alive that could breathe life into a Gargoyle.
The revelation made Dumah slow and sloppy. The goat headbutted him, stone clacking harshly against stone, making Dumah stumble, wing flaring to keep him balanced. Jim squeezed off a shot. The bullet hit the goat, his head jerked violently, and one of his horns--weak from ramming into the wall--shattered at the nonexistent curve and went flying through the air, leaving him with only half a horn.
Things happened quickly after that.
One of the double agents shouted, short and sharp; a command. The goat immediately broke away and Dumah, stunned and suddenly blank, didn't have the mind to follow; frozen as he was. His spies got off a few more shots at their retreating backs before Jim tried to follow and got systematically held back by Spock and Pike.
"We can't let them get away!"
"Yes, we can!"
For the first time in Dumah's life, his ears were ringing, and a strange numbness spread through his body. He could hear the humans arguing about troop movement and 'they know that we know that they know' and 'we know who they are' and 'they know who we are' and 'we need to go after them, Pike' and 'I don't know what world you live in, but I live in a world where stone trump's skin' and 'we need to return to base. Clean up. Move on to site B' and and and and...but it seemed so far away and unimportant. The wind swirled around his feet, concerned.
"Hey!"
There was something wrong with the goat other than being made out of marble--something missing--a spark in his eye that should be there and wasn't. Dumah's mind was a jumbled mess, unable to comprehend that there was a...fake...half-made...incomplete...Gargoyle in the world.
Marble .
As a metamorphic rock, it was one of the softest types of stone to carve a statue from. Whereas granite was an igneous rock and therefore one of the hardest. His maker had used enchanted tools to get the delicate whorls in his ears.
"Hello, anyone in there?"
It made no sense to make a Gargoyle out of something like marble...unless they weren't meant to last. Unless they were nothing more than a tool--not even a weapon--just a blunt instrument. Cannon fodder. How easy would it be to win a war if your troops didn't sleep, didn't eat, didn't get tired, and didn't bleed?
"Hey!"
Uhura huffed and made her way over to the destroyed pews, her boots clicking against the floor. She considered a few pieces of broken wood before she found one that was up to the task. She scooped it up, tested the weight, then made her way over to where Jim stood waving his hands in Dumah's face.
"Out of the way, Kirk." She said.
"Uhura--" Spock tired.
"No, no, let her do it." Pike said.
"What, why? Whoa!" Jim threw himself out of the way as Uhura swung. The plank broke over Dumah's shoulder, one half remained in her hands while the other went sailing, end over end, to clatter to the floor.
For a moment, there was stunned silence, then Dumah cocked his head.
"Now that I have your attention." Uhura tossed the plank back from where she'd found it, and planted her hands on her hips as she turned back to Dumah, "We have questions and you are not leaving until we get answers."
He couldn't be 'Dumah' anymore--he just couldn't--ruin and destruction were not things he could embody and he was a fool for trying. He felt like he should be shaking--trembling with the horror of knowing that someone was attempting to recreate the process of breathing life into a Gargoyle--but he was made of stone, and stone didn't shake.
His spies were surprisingly okay with him.
Suspiciously so, treating him like he was one of their own--part of the team. It was...unnerving.
"Hear any good gossip today?" Jim asked, leaning so far against his back he might as well be sitting on him. For the past month, he'd been crouched in another statue garden. Ever since that night in the church, Jim had taken to touching him more; leaning against his side when he was posed standing, sitting against his back when he was crouched, and, on one memorable occasion, nagged him to move his wing when it was raining until Jim could use it as an impromptu umbrella.
Pike had taken to giving him discrete, respectful nods when he dropped off the black book.
Uhura would thank him when she took the book and would often say, "Here you are." when she handed it back, and bid him goodbye when she left. Every single time.
Spock was also polite to him but there was just something about the man that made him want to antagonize him a little bit. Had he been a braver Gargoyle, he might've made faces at him. As it was, he was too deeply unsettled by this new comradery to commit to it. When Spock handed off the book, he'd taken to throwing out a peculiar hand sign: fingers held together as if he was a creature with three fingers rather than five. At a loss of what to do, he'd copied Spock, and it'd quickly become their hidden greeting.
Life went on, as did the war.
Whenever his spies moved, he moved with them, continuing to be their safe drop-off point.
"God, I envy you some days," Jim sighed, exhausted--dark smudges under his eyes--flipping the book open to check that all the information he wanted passed on, got passed on, "I mean, look at you, you have no schedule. You get to sit here all day, soaking in the sun, watching beautiful women walk by."
Sun, he said, willfully ignoring the fact that the world was about to see another winter solstice.
"By the way, Pike got us a new recruit, some Scottish fellow. Uhura's gonna bring him by next time," Jim leaned further back, bracing himself on his shoulder, and used the opportunity to rub his thumb against the sculpted muscle reassuringly, "Don't worry, he's not a double agent. We checked this time." There was something darkly amused hidden within the blue of Jim's eyes, and it made him wonder about the hoops they made this new Scotsman jump through.
True to his word, Uhura brought another man along with her that night.
"Wee bit weird, don't you think, meeting an informant in a garden. The hour, I understand. But a statue garden? Anyone could be hiding here."
He heard Uhura huff an amused breath, somewhere between a stifled giggle and a chuckle, "Not to worry, Mr. Scott." The light from her flashlight stayed aimed at the ground as Uhura stumbled to a stop, the light swept along the empty piece of lawn he'd previously been crouched in. However, he'd thought it best to move after he'd caught sight of the same unknown redheaded woman sweep through the garden five times that day.
Before Uhura could panic, he called from his new perch atop a stone fence, the hauntingly harsh sound of a long, drawn out, note from a dying violin pierced the air and echoed off the surrounding statues, bouncing the sound back at them and making it near impossible to triangulate the origin. Mr. Scott jumped and whipped around, hand hovering next to his waist. Uhura, well accustomed to the sound after two years of working with him, turned in a slow circle, taking in each statue until her light came to rest on his wing.
"Good evening, Mr. Stonne," She smiled and made her way over, until she was standing under him, face to face with his claws, "This is Montgomery Scott. He's proven himself quite trustworthy." Uhura had the same dark amusement that Jim carried.
Mr. Stonne? He grumbled. Couldn't his spies come up with something better? That was a bit on the nose--a little tongue in cheek--to be an effective alias. Although...no one would believe the truth anyway so, maybe it had merit.
"Uh, lass?"
"Come now, Mr. Stonne. There's no need to hide."
With a huff, he jumped down to land in front of Uhura, and ignored Mr. Scott's yelp as he stumbled back and tripped over his own feet to land in the grass, "Stonne?" He asked, his hide made a grinding noise as he tucked his wings close to his back.
"You can thank Pike for that one." Uhura said, "Kirk wanted something a bit more--" she gestured with her hands, "--you know?"
He did not know. Though he wasn't sure if he was going to call himself 'Stonne.' He was, after all, still getting over 'Dumah.' And he wasn't able to shed one name only to put on another like they were coats, worn only for a certain occasion and then discarded. He shoved the book at Uhura, unwilling to touch that can of worms just yet.
Mr. Scott was still staring at him. At least he wasn't screaming.
Uhura chewed on her lip, thumb tapping nervously along the book's spine, before she came to a decision and looked up to meet his gaze, "We found the goat."
The goat's name was Lithais, which was apparently Ancient Greek for 'Stone'.
He wanted to bang his head against a wall.
The wind laughed at him even as Uhura winced apologetically.
"So we're just going to ignore the fact that we live in a world where magic exists?" Scotty asked and knocked back a shot of alcohol for his nerves.
"No," Spock said from where he was leaning over their make-shift table, scrutinizing a map. He was dressed down in just a white shirt and slacks, the suspenders of which accentuated his shoulders, "To do so would be illogical and put us at a disadvantage, especially considering that our enemy has long since embraced the occult and are trying to raise an army of Gargoyles."
He growled, the violin in his throat screeched. The humans winced but before he could feel guilty about it, Jim threw his arm around his shoulders and tried to jostle him. Not that it worked but the thought was there and he appreciated it.
He shook his head in disgust, "Can't believe they're using marble ."
"What's wrong with marble?" Scotty asked. Uhura leaned over to quietly explain it to him.
"Makes our job easier." Jim said, "Just gotta drop a bomb on 'em. Stone that soft won't stand a chance."
"We would need permission first." Spock said, "Which we cannot get without proof that our target is more than a simple statue factory."
"Why?" He asked. Despite the fact that he'd been watching the humans since 1692, he still had a hard time understanding their cultural nuances.
"Because the explosives we'd need might be put to better use somewhere else." Jim said, "like a higher priority target."
"Or," Uhura said, "a target that would help cripple our enemy's forces; a weapons depot or a supply line, for example."
He looked at them, took in their thin clothes, the dark circles under their eyes, and the lean lines of their faces, and shook his head. The humans back during the witch hunts had been a lot more brutal, using their superior numbers to overwhelm a race of people who had clung to the 'Notice-Me-Not' game to the bitter end. It would seem the modern human had other tactics.
The war dragged on into 1918 where it ended with the signing of a treaty. Years of blood and pain and mild starvation, and the humans were willing to set it all aside...for a piece of paper.
8.5 million soldiers dead.
Soldiers .
Whoever called the final count didn't deem it important enough to count the civilians or the spies or the scientists that cranked out the machines of war.
Jim had called him 'Leo' at the end.
The Gargoyle factory went up in a blaze of ill timed explosives, throwing masonry and steel support beams through the air. Lithais bugled and struggled in his talons as he gained altitude, great wings carving through the air currents like a paddle through water, before he dropped him-- left him to fall 1,000 feet and shatter against the ground. Almost the same height as the Eiffel tower.
It had all gone to plan, until it suddenly hadn't.
Pike had been shot right as he'd placed the last bomb, the timer set far too short. When it went off, it set off a chain reaction that took out the entire complex, including the prisoners that the mad scientists were using to bring the Gargoyles to life; sucking out their life force to fuel the stone. Without a witch's magic to fully bind the life force to the Gargoyles, they remained incomplete, unable to feel, unable to speak, and unable to value their own life; turning them into suicide runners.
Things had quickly gone to shit after that.
Even though he'd been there, he still wasn't sure what'd happened. All he knew were the basics.
And the basics were thus:
Pike got caught. Pike got shot. Pike didn't have time to properly set the bomb. Bomb did as bombs do and went 'boom'...lots and lots of 'boom.'
Ant hill had a lot of ants in it. Ant hill got kicked. Ants got angry.
Gargoyles had horns and claws and wings. Spock was impaled by Lithais. Uhura's skull was crushed. Scotty was shot. He killed Lithais. And, somehow, Jim had been buried under the rubble.
When the fight was over, he'd been surrounded by fire, broken stone, and human corpses.
He looked at the destruction and ruin, and suddenly hated his maker. This was what she wanted from him. This should've been his purpose. Yet when he kneeled down to lift a slab of concrete off Jim's chest, his heart broke, and he wanted to cry. Jim's chest had been crushed--not enough to kill him outright, but enough that he couldn't get a full breath without wincing. His organs turned to mush.
"Pike overrode me on 'Stonne'." Jim choked, blood bubbling past his lips from a collapsed lung.
"I know."
"I wanted--I thought it'd fit you better," Jim's eyes glazed over and lost focus. For a moment he thought Jim had slipped away, but then his eyes slid to look at something over his shoulder. A smile twitched at his lips, "Leo."
Leo. Lion. People who were brave.
He didn't feel very brave...just old.