Fly With Me

Abby Ebon

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Disclaimer: I don't own "Sky High". You may pout or, alternately, cheer now.

Summary: Warren Peace is afraid of heights, yet his best friend, Will Stronghold, loves to fly. This, he thinks, will not end well. Slash, Warren x Will

Note; I know what your thinking, why the hell is Abby writing in a category she never touched before? It's a secret obsession, this pairing, and one I'm finally indulging. 'Sides, it might help me get over my writers block…

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"Don't you trust me?"

Warren had shoved his hands into pockets that felt too small. Frayed jean edges dug into his skin, reminding him he still was flesh and blood. As a flesh and blood sort (albeit, more resistant to bruising then most) that question wasn't the sort he should fear. Not when it came from his best friend (formal "arch enemy") who was – even at this moment – looking up with him, his eyes were too wide (he knew, damn it, that Warren did not want to do this) and his bottom lip was alternatively being offered up or nibbled on.

If it were anyone else, Warren knew he wouldn't be having this discussion. It was a no brainer. All the same, doubt had somehow been snuck in.

It was not fair that Will Stronghold had such pleading blue eyes.

"Sure." Narrowed eyes, smoldering blue, screamed otherwise.

"Though lets be fair, Stronghold," he drawled the rest of his words out, and Will's shoulders dropped a little - possibly pretending hurt, "this request… it has nothing to do with trust." Warren looked beyond Will, so he wouldn't be guilt dragged into making the same mistake twice; the mistake of meeting Will Stronghold eye-to-eye.

"Sure it does. Team trust exercises, remember?" Will stressed his words, as if he really was worried that Warren had forgotten.

"I remember fine, Will." Warren said softly, almost kind, utterly unlike the Warren others flinched from in the halls.

"Then why won't you?" It was a plea, Warren – still not tempting fate and damnation by looking Will in the eye – only shook his head, jaw clenched tightly.

"Will, I do not have trust issues, Mr. Medulla," that squinty-eyed big-headed (who if Warren ever caught alone was likely to loose that huge head of his) know-it-not; calmly Warren breathed in enough to smell smoke and know he was beginning to smolder, "was just pulling your chain, alright?"

"But…he's right, Warren, we've never had to do anything like in the midst of Save the Citizen, or with Gwen, when it's you know, normal stuff. What if we can't? Is that what our friendship is, just about the…battle-play?" Will, bless his heart, looked confused and saddened at that thought. Warren had never thought about it – about this, but once Will had something pointed out to him he'd gnaw on it until he was sure of himself. Warren had never had a friend like him. Most friends would get tired of him – or of whatever had drawn them to him – and let themselves drift off.

"What if it is, Will – does it matter so much to you, do you really want to break whatever it is we have going?" Warren surprised himself; his voice was hollow, thick with a sadness that he knew sprung up from being lonely most of his life. Sure, people looked up to him, thought he was strong enough to be on his own without someone watching out over his shoulder.

It was the way he had been raised; to be alone, to need no one. It scared him that Will had dug himself deeper then under the surface of his skin. Warren didn't want to see Will realize how much he meant to Warren. It was not the first time that Warren had feared Will would wise up and walk out of his life.

"I don't want that, Warren – I want to be your friend, I want you to trust me outside of a fight, with – you know – everyday things." Will was having a hard time with this, Warren knew. If Warren faced anyone else but Will he would have dropped it – or walked away, or gone though the motions without understanding the reasoning behind them.

Expressing his feelings wasn't something he had much experience on, but the words that ached inside him like ringing bells made the message seem perfectly clear. For the first time in his life, he saw where all the other friendships had started to die – he didn't want the same thing to happen to him and Will.

"Will…what do you want from me?" There was desperation and anger there – but urgency made his words quick. Will, for the first time that Warren could remember – as his friend, cringed away from Warren, his eyes flinching to the ground between them.

"Just…just trust me, prove to me – to us - that he is wrong – that they are all wrong, can you do that Warren, just this once?" They were hushed words, pleading to be heard though they were no louder then a whisper. Warren shifted his weight, feeling the guilt eat at him, ruining him from the inside out. He breathed in the silence between them, knowing it was strained – but knowing that nothing after this would be the same.

"Fine, Will, fine." He breathed the words out, letting them settle between them – a dividing line that would be crossed. Warren only wished he knew what would happen when that threshold was crossed.

"You'll do it? You'll fly with me?" Will asked, grinning now that he had gotten his way. Warren groaned as if in pain, closing his eyes he only nodded. He ground his teeth together, willing himself to keep from snapping out something he would only regret later.

"Great! I'll meet you at your place tomorrow morning…." He made the mistake of opening his eyes, seeing Will hovering there, his feet not touching the ground. He looked as if he wasn't meant to touch the ground and be tainted, at least not by the likes of Warren Peace.

"Thanks, Warren!" He only made the words out as he read Will's lips as his best friend took to the skies and flew away. It had been the one place where Warren dared not go – it terrified him. Will loved flying though, and Will wanted Warren to like it too. To trust him in his reasons for loving to fly, Warren understood it, that didn't mean he liked it.

'Yes, the great Warren Peace is afraid of heights, whatever would his Father think?' He curled his lip as he turned away from the skies and walked to the bus, as was his usual habit. A habit Will seemed determined to change; starting bright and early tomorrow morning.

O.o.O.o.O.o.O

Warren breathed it in, the smoke – it was choking him, killing him slowly. He felt the dampness on his dry cheeks. He was little, a toddler still – and it was that night. In some place in his mind he knows he was older, that this was a dream of a memory. He wailed, crying out weakly against the crackling of flame as it ate though everything – something in the power of it called to him. He felt an echo of that power in himself. He was weak though, a child little past the age of walking and talking. That power offered protection, offered a way not to be weak.

It hurt to burn, that first time. Flame ate at him, crackling mockingly when he cried out at the pain of it. This was not a true burning; there was no smell of burnt flesh – no scars. It was more then that – this was his power burning him – there was a reason most superpowers emerged when hormones awoke in the teenage years. It was not that the person had never had the power – that it was something new and alien to them, it was only now that the body told itself it was maturing that the power woke, summoned to use.

A toddler was not supposed to be able to waken to that sort of power.

Warren had.

"Momma!"

Curled into a little bundle, Warren had shaken while the house burned down around him, while he burned with it, unharmed physically. His mother still woke with the nightmare of that night, having heard Warren screaming for her, burning all the while – alive and unharmed, but afraid – terrified of the power woken to him, his power that had called him, boiled over and protected him even while he thought he would die.

Smoke still would have killed him, if he had not been burning.

Even when the house was embers around him, he burned.

"Do something, anything!" His mother was frightened, but she demanded action all the same.

"I'm sorry, we can't do anything…we'll have to wait until he burns out…" Warren till this day still did not know whose voice that had been…though he had his suspicions.

"You do that, my son will die. The shock of his power "burning out" of him will kill him." There was no doubt in that voice. Even when Warren had hated this man the most, he still knew him; Father.

"No – I won't loose him, I've already lost…" His mother's voice trailed off, full of a sadness that Warren only rarely now glimpsed in her eyes.

"Me? You'll never lose me, my dragon lady." It was a whisper, a promise that he could not keep even then.

"Please, just…save our son …" Pleaded his mother, Warren ached to know she was crying for them. She had confessed, once, that she thought she would lose both of them that night.

"May I do as the lady asks?" There was something mocking in his tone, though it was still an appeal in the truest sense. Warren had known that, even as young as he was.

"…Baron Battle …of course." It was a whisper, a trace of kinship that lingered.

Warren remembered the sensation of being lifted, the soft hiss of pain from his fathers lips – the smell of burning flesh. No matter how resistant his father was from harm, Warren knew he still felt pain. He felt again – as if it was happening even now – the lurch pulling at his navel, the sensation of being lifted aloft in his father's arms.

Warren remembered the cold; it deadened him, chilling the power – the flame – that flowed though him. His heart beat slower, the blood coming slowly with each beat of his heart. Warren shrieked when the pain of being cold and the pain of the flame seemed to become one.

Then his father fell, his breath no longer coming in the soft gasps – his heart no longer beating; Warren hadn't known what was happening – only that he was flying and cold and his father was dying, falling with him. He knew now that his father, desperate to stop the flames had flown as high as he could, breaching the sphere of air that encircled the planet.

Warren had only known he thought he was dead, even as a child – for the pain and cold had been unlike anything he had ever known. Worse, that he had killed his father. That, not even Warren could forgive even after so many years had passed. His father had regenerated alike a phoenix even as he fell. Warren did not remember the landing, only when he heard his father's voice did he stir from his shocked numbness.

"I am sorry, my Warren…"

"What have you done to him?!" It had been his mother's demand, Warren still did not know if she had ever been answered. He never would.

Bah-bump…

Warren woke, drenched in sweat, chilled with his fear. He had been forced in his dream to remember very keenly - in startlingly vivid detail - why it was he hated flying. Ironically, it only took a moment and he recalled equally as clearly what it was Will would asked of him come morning.

O.o.O.o.O.o.O

Note; in this story, Baron Battle had a certain resistance to harm – the same sort that Warren demonstrated when Will threw him into a few walls and he came back for more after standing up and dusting himself off. Also, I decided to make that statement about "multiple life sentences" make sense –if only to myself in my own little world – by making him into something like a phoenix, he dies, he comes back – thus making him "immortal" in a certain way, also I ask you, what bad-ass super villain does not fly?

Thus, the flying Baron Battle; compared to all that his mother being able to manipulate flame (note; this does not mean she could create or extinguish it) along with having advanced senses and a significant healing ability wouldn't be too much overkill.