#Rifle Scope Market

[soaringthroughthegalaxy]

Hi. Can you write something spicy with Wrecker x f! reader with the prompt 62. “Is that my shirt?” Maybe reader needs new clothes during a mission and she forgets her spares on Kamino, leading her to wear Wrecker's. She takes advantage of the situation to tease him a little, but we know Wrecker is a little innocent, until Crosshair opens his eyes.. "If you don't fu** her, I will." 😂

Hi,

Thank you so much for this request, I absolutely loved writing it!

What's Mine is Yours

While working on a mission on Corellia, a clothing mishap leads to much more than you anticipated.

Pairing: Wrecker x F!reader

Word count: 4.2k

Rating: 18+ MINORS DNI!

Warnings: accidental clothes sharing, reader described as busty, lewd comment as motivation (one guess who it comes from…), confession of feelings, idiots in love, first kiss, oral (f!receiving), face sitting, fingering, semi-clothed sex, unprotected PiV, squint for size and strength kink.

“Where the hell is it?” You huff, hands scrambling through your backpack as you pull out your belongings, scattering them across the dresser in the dingy hotel room.

You and the boys had been sent to Bela Vistal, a small mountain city on Corellia. The Jedi had caught wind of a shady auction, with whispers of a Holocron up for grabs. It was your job as a squad to scope the place out, gather as much intel as possible, and strike and extract the Holocron if the opportunity presented itself.

By now, you’re used to working with limited information. As a civilian handler, it was your job to fill in the blanks and help the boys with anything they needed to successfully complete their missions – something you’d spent over a year doing remarkably well at. Today that had included wandering around the city with Tech, pretending to be together – out of them all, his appearance was less likely to arouse suspicion. You’d conversed politely with market vendors and cantina owners, asking subtle questions to discover more about the auction.

Ultimately, it had been a fruitless endeavour, and the pair of you had returned to the hotel as the sun had been setting, food in hand. You’d excused yourself after eating, slipping back into your room via the door connecting the two rooms you’d rented for a quick shower.

And now here you were, furiously rifling through your belongings for a clean shirt. You’d packed one; you swore you had. Fingers finding soft fabric, you let out a small noise of triumph, prying the material from your backpack. Towel falling to the floor, you shimmed on a clean pair of panties and some sleep shorts before dragging on the top. Only once it was over your head did you realise something was off. Either you’d suddenly lost a lot of weight or…

Scrambling for the neckline, you twist and turn until you can see the tag and the large ‘W’ sewn into it. “Dank farrik.” You mutter, teeth sinking into your lower lip at the realisation that you’d somehow packed Wrecker’s shirt instead of your own.

Taking a deep breath, you looked at yourself in the mirror on the back of the fresher door. The oversized garment hit mid-thigh, the sleeves extending far beyond your hands. The only saving grace was that your boobs took up enough room that it gave the shirt a little bit of shape. You couldn’t help but laugh at the absurdity of the situation.

The thought of going out into the field wearing Wrecker’s clothing was hilarious, but your laughter soon subsided as you really looked at yourself. Oversized it might be, but it almost…suited you. And though it was clean, you lifted the collar to your nose and inhaled, picking up on a sweet scent that seemed to linger on all of Wrecker’s belongings.

You’d found great comfort in that scent over the last few months, drawn towards Wrecker and his infectious grin. Lips tugging into a smile, a tender warmth spread through you as you thought about the countless times Wrecker had been there to lighten the mood with his quips and laughter and how his protective nature made you feel secure amid the uncertainties of life.

The realisation of what your feelings meant hit you like a wave, and as you stood there, a myriad of emotions swirled within you. The laughter that had filled the room moments ago was replaced by a soft, introspective silence. As you continued to gaze at yourself in the mirror, you couldn’t help but acknowledge the depth of your connection with Wrecker. It went beyond the professional companionship forged across dangerous missions. It was something more personal, something that had quietly grown amidst the chaos of your work.

“Oh, kriff…” You whisper, staring at your own wide-eyed reflection. The sound of a knock on the connecting door interrupts your thoughts. Startled, you turn towards it, momentarily forgetting about the shirt you were wearing. Smoothing down the fabric, you move across to open the door, revealing Hunter.

“Thought you might’ve drowned.” He quips as the door opens; your showers never usually take so long. Gaze dropping down, Hunter takes in the sight of you, chuckling. “Well, looks like you’re drowning, alright.”

“I must’ve grabbed the wrong shirt in our hurry to leave Kamino.” You admit sheepishly, feeling warmth in your cheeks as Hunter steps aside, revealing you to his brothers.

To his credit, Tech offers you a reassuring smile while Crosshair snorts in amusement. But it’s Wrecker’s reaction that catches you off guard the most.

Wrecker’s eyes widen as his gaze rakes down your body. “I-Is that my shirt?” He asks, swallowing thickly. Heat creeps across his cheeks as he admires you, the curves of your body making it look entirely different than it did on him. He can feel the heavy thud of his heart, and for a moment, the room is filled with an almost tangible tension. Wrecker stands frozen, his eyes locked onto you.

“Yeah, I, uh, must’ve grabbed it by mistake.” You stammer, suddenly feeling self-conscious under his intense gaze.

Wrecker blinks, tearing his eyes away from you to glance at Hunter, Tech, and Crosshair. Hunter raises an eyebrow, clearly finding the situation entertaining but not commenting further. Tech adjusts his goggles, a knowing glint in his eyes, while Crosshair smirks, thoroughly amused. Clearing his throat, Wrecker manages to break the silence. “Well, it looks... good on ya.”

The sincerity in his voice surprises you, and you catch a flicker of something in his eyes that you can’t quite place. You give a nervous laugh, trying to diffuse the awkwardness. “Thanks, Wreck. I’ll wash it and get it back to you.”

“Nah, keep it.” He says quickly, almost too quickly. “Looks better on you anyway.”

The room falls into another awkward silence as Wrecker scratches the back of his head, unsure how to navigate the sudden shift in the atmosphere. It’s rare to see the big, boisterous man at a loss for words.

Hunter, always the pragmatist, breaks the tension. “Alright, enough of the fashion show. We’ve got a mission to focus on.”

The seriousness of the mission looms over the room, momentarily overshadowing the awkwardness. You gather around the table, holomaps of the city and your datapads spread out as you discuss the action plan.

As the discussion progresses, Wrecker finds his eyes straying to you often, trying to commit the vision of you in his clothes to memory, the way it drapes over your frame and the subtle scent of your shampoo that he knows will linger on the garment now too.

The realisation hits him like a ton of bricks – the feelings he’s been trying to suppress, the concern that goes beyond the missions, the warmth he feels when you’re around – it’s all there, staring him in the face.

Wrecker clears his throat again, attempting to focus on the plan you’re all hashing out, not the crazy beating of his heart. He chimes in enthusiastically, but his mind keeps drifting back to you. As the planning continues, Wrecker catches the knowing look Tech throws him. He shifts uncomfortably in his seat, trying to concentrate. He wonders if you feel the same, if the newfound awareness is mutual.

Finally, the planning ends, and with your usual round of goodnights, you’re back in your room, the connecting door firmly shut. Only once you’re gone does Wrecker feel like he can breathe again.

“Real subtle there, big guy,” Hunter comments, giving Wrecker’s shoulder a pat as he passes him.

“What?” Wrecker questions, playing dumb. He’s not quite ready to admit his feelings to his brothers; he’s just starting to come to terms with the recent revelation.

None of them are fooled. Tech reaches up, adjusting his goggles. “You were admiring her quite intently.” He points out.

“I would, too, if she were wearing my shirt.” Crosshair chimes in, leaning back on the small couch in the room, propping his feet up on the table as he feels Wrecker’s eyes narrow in his direction. “But hey, if you won’t kriff her, I will.” He comments, unafraid to poke the bear.

In sync, Hunter and Tech facepalm.

A flash of anger courses through Wrecker. “You wouldn’t.” He growls, hating the very idea. 

“Wouldn’t I?” Crosshair goads. “She’s a pretty little thing. Bet she’d looked even prettier underne-“

“Hey!” Wrecker’s sharp shout cuts him off. “You don’t talk about her like that. She deserves better, and I won’t let ya disrespect her. Not when she’s the best thing to happen to us in a long while and always lookin’ out for us.”

Amusement curls at Crosshair’s lips. Truth told, forcing those words out had been horrible – he respected you too much – but it had given him the ammunition he needed to make his point. “Hm, sounds like you might have some feelings there, Wrecker.”

Realising he’s been caught in one of his younger brother’s traps, Wrecker groans in frustration, shooting Crosshair a glare that bounces straight off him. With a sigh, Wrecker’s shoulders sag, and he glances over his shoulder towards the connecting door to your room.

Worry curls through him. He did have feelings for you, that much he’d realised, but he wasn’t sure how you felt. The thought of making things awkward or disrupting the dynamics of the squad by introducing personal feelings weighed heavily on Wrecker’s mind.

Hunter picks up on his brother’s internal struggle. “Wrecker, if you’ve got something to say to her, just say it. We’re all adults here. We’ve faced worse than admitting feelings.”

Wrecker sighs. “I just don’t wanna mess things up, y’know? What if she don’t feel the same way, and it makes things weird?”

Tech chips in with his usual logical perspective. “Statistically speaking, relationships formed within a close-knit team can enhance cooperation and overall performance. Emotional bonds can be beneficial.”

Wrecker shoots Tech an incredulous look. “You suggestin’ I tell her I like her ’cause it’s statistically beneficial?”

Tech pushes his goggles back up his nose. “I am merely presenting a logical argument in favour of expressing one’s emotions.”

A noise of frustration slides from Crosshair’s lips, and he pushes himself off the couch. Grabbing Wrecker by the arm, he drags him over to the connecting door, banging his fist against it a few times. “She was eyeing you up, too. Don’t overthink. That’s Tech’s job.” He insists, returning to the couch, shaking his head while muttering about Wrecker’s lack of game.

Hearing you say the door was unlocked, Wrecker takes a deep breath before pushing it open, sliding into your room, letting it click shut behind him.

With Wrecker gone, Hunter, Tech, and Crosshair exchange glances before arranging themselves on the couch to play Sabacc. “You swapped her shirt out of her pack,” Hunter comments as Tech deals the deck, his eyes darting over to Crosshair.

With a shrug of his shoulders, Crosshair doesn’t bother answering; instead, he picks up his cards. Hunter couldn’t prove anything.

Looking up from the dresser, where you’d been trying to organise your belongings back into your backpack, you smile at the sight of Wrecker standing with his back pressed to the door. “Hey, Wreck. Everything okay?” You ask, abandoning your repacking to give the gentle giant your full attention.

Wrecker’s heart pounds in his chest as he steps further into your room, the weight of the revelation he’d shared with his brothers settling in his chest. He grapples with the best way to express his feelings to you, scratching the back of his neck out of nervous habit.

“Uh, yeah, everything’s fine.” He mumbles, avoiding direct eye contact for a moment. “I, um, just wanted to talk to ya about somethin’.”

You tilt your head curiously, a small smile playing on your lips. “Sure. What’s on your mind?”

Wrecker took another deep breath, his gaze finally meeting yours. “Well, it’s about... us. I mean, you and me. I’ve been feelin’ things, and I just gotta say it. I really like you. I like ya a lot.”

The sincerity in his voice is unmistakable, and your heartbeat quickens in response. Surprise paints your face, delight seeping into your veins that your feelings were returned – that he’d come here to share them with you.

“Wreck.” You begin, your voice soft. “I’ve... I’ve been feeling the same way. I just didn’t know how to say it.”

Relief washes over Wrecker’s features, and a wide, genuine smile spreads across his face. “Really?” he asks as if confirming that he wasn’t dreaming.

You nod, your own smile mirroring his. “Really.”

Wrecker chuckles nervously. “Well, guess Crosshair wasn’t entirely wrong about us eyein’ each other up.”

Your jaw drops a little. You’d thought you were being subtle, but you should’ve known the man with super-human vision would catch you out.

Wrecker takes a step closer, gently cupping your face in his large hands, his eyes searching yours for any sign of hesitation. “I’m not great with words, but I really do care about ya.” He confesses.

“I care about you too, Wreck. And you don’t need to be great with words.” You reply, your eyes locked with his. “Actions speak louder.”

“Then let me show ya.” Wrecker murmurs, head dipping down to kiss your lips tenderly. Large hands move to rest on your hips, pulling you closer. One of your hands finds home at the nape of his neck, keeping his lips against yours as the other settles on his upper arm.

You taste like heaven, like everything Wrecker has ever wanted and dreamed about. His grip on you tightens ever so slightly, but he’s cautious, not wanting to accidentally hurt you. The kiss breaks a moment later, eyes locked on one another as you pull apart, chests heaving. Desire swirls in your gaze, and Wrecker wants to worship you. But he’s conflicted – is this too soon? Do you want this too?

Palms smoothing across Wrecker’s body, you take his hands in your own, walking backwards the few steps to the bed. Sinking to sit on the edge of it, you guide Wrecker down with you, a thrill zinging through you as he wraps an arm around your middle and hauls you further up the bed before settling above you. With one hand supporting most of his weight, you marvel at how warm and broad he is, your body hidden under his as he presses against you, lips finding yours again for a searing kiss.

You’re so small beneath him, so delicate and so pretty, with your hair fanned across the sheets, your beautiful eyes looking up at him with such adoration. Wrecker can’t resist kissing you again, savouring your shared feelings. Tentatively, his hand roams to your thighs, large palm smoothing across soft skin, creeping up, ruching his shirt as his fingers skim under the edge of your sleep shorts.

The gentle touch makes your breath stutter, a low noise sliding from your lips, muffled by the kiss.

Wrecker pulls back, watching as your eyes flutter open. “Too much, babe?” He asks quietly, unsure whether the noise is good and not wanting to push too much.

Shaking your head, you lean up to pepper kisses across his jawline. “More. Please.” You ask, heat building in your belly.

Thrilled, Wrecker breaks out into a grin, shivering as your hands pry his shirt up and off his body. Your fingers fan over his bare chest, tracing every muscle and scar. His pants are next to be discarded, your sleep shorts joining them on the floor before your lips meet again in a needy kiss. Your panties go, followed by his boxers, but as you go to remove his shirt, Wrecker’s fingers still the action.

“Leave it on, babe.” He admits, a flush on his cheeks. There was something so intrinsically hot about you wearing his clothes.

A noise of delight leaves you, followed quickly by one of surprise as Wrecker rolls you both, placing himself beneath you. Straddling him, it’s impossible to ignore the press of his thick, hard cock. It feels enormous, and you’re almost afraid to look down.

Thankfully, you’re spared as Wrecker grabs your ass, huge hands dwarfing it as he hauls you up his body.

Wrecker groans, hands squeezing as he draws you further up. “Want you to sit on my face, babe. Lemme eat that pretty pussy before I kriff ya.”

Heat strikes through you, pussy clenching around nothing at Wrecker’s request. “I-I don’t wanna suffocate you.” You worry as you’re lifted over his face, knees on either side of his head. Warmth blossoms across your cheeks as he stares right at your cunt.

“Ya won’t. And even if you do, what a way to go.” Wrecker growls, tongue darting out to wet his lips as he gazes up at your pussy. Gently, he encourages you down, groaning in satisfaction as you rest lightly against his face – nose and mouth brushing against your slick folds. “That ain’t sittin’.” He grumbles as he notices you trying to hold up some of your weight. Using a little more of his strength, he pulls you down until you’re firmly against his face, his nose pressed to your clit as his tongue laves over your entrance.

“Oh, hells…” You cry out, holding onto the headboard with one hand while the other lands on Wrecker’s head. That first lick of his tongue had felt incredible.

Wrecker feasts, your pussy his new favourite meal. The taste of you fills his mouth, and he moans, dragging his nose across your clit, tongue sloppy as he laves at you before pointing it and pressing it into your hole. He takes a breath whenever he can, drawing the flat of his tongue up through your folds to flick across your clit, lips latching around the sensitive bud so he can suck on it, brushing his tongue over it at the same time.

White hot pleasure is all you can feel, hips rocking as you ride his face, chasing your high. Your hand strokes across his head, fingers gliding over scarred skin. “Kriff, Wreck. Yes. Just like that.” You encourage, pleasure building quickly.

The stretch catches you off guard, two of his thick fingers pressing into you, crooking, as his mouth focuses on your clit. Head thrown back, his name falls from your lips as you come, thighs shaking and pussy spasming around his fingers as the pleasure rolls through your body.

Working you through the high, Wrecker gently pries his mouth off your clit, fingers slowly scissoring as he stretches you out a little more now that you’re more relaxed. He knows he’s big, and the last thing he wants is to hurt you.

Your hips roll slowly, grinding lazily against his face once again as he continues working you open, another thick finger joining the two already buried inside you. Biting down on your lower lip to muffle your moan, the trembles from your orgasm subside.

Fingers slip from you, hands finding your hips. Lifted, you’re moved back down Wrecker’s body until he can kiss you, mouth and chin covered in your juices. You gasp at the taste, at the way his tongue presses into your mouth, and you lazily make out.

Slowly you draw apart; Wrecker’s fingers that weren’t buried in your pussy move to push your hair out of your face tenderly.

The throb between your thighs intensifies, and you lift your hips, shifting until you can grind down against Wrecker’s cock. The rumble in his chest does funny things to your inside, and you smile. “I wanna ride your cock, too.” You state sweetly, enjoying the delight that flares in Wrecker’s eyes.

Scooting back just a little so you rest on his thighs, you drag your gaze from his face to finally take in his cock. It’s much thicker than any you’ve seen before – in person and on the holonet – and longer than average.

He curves a little to the right, the tip flushed a deep red, a bead of pre-cum in the slit. Taking him in hand, his groan reverberates through the room, and you can’t help but dip down to lap at him, the tang on your tongue dragging a sound from you that Wrecker echoes.

Your fingers don’t touch around him, and for a moment, you worry you won’t be able to take him. Shuffling forward a tiny bit until you’re back in your previous position, you line him up with your entrance, pressing just the tip in, and slowly start to sink down, letting gravity do the work.

Wrecker’s pretty sure he’s shaking – from anticipation or barely-there control, he’s not sure. All he does know is that his hands are wrapped around your hips to help guide you but not force you down, and inch by agonising inch, his dick is slowly being enveloped in the heat of your pussy.

The stretch burns a little, even after an orgasm and three fingers working you open. Taking your time, you let out deep breaths as you sink down until you’re finally flush, feeling fuller than ever. 

“Stars above, Wreck.” You pant, holding his gaze as you adjust to the feeling. His jaw is clenched, soft brown eyes looking at you with such profound adoration, like he can’t quite believe this is happening. His hands on your hips slide upward, under the edge of his shirt, until he’s grasping at your waist.

Steadily, you give a small roll of your hips, rising ever so slightly before sinking back down. The action pulls a moan from you, Wrecker’s head tilting back against the bed, his groan mingling with your needy sounds. Finding a rhythm, you lean back a little, hands resting on his muscular thighs as warmth builds in your belly with every rise and fall. The burn of the stretch dissolves into pleasure.

Chin tilting down, Wrecker watches as you ride him, how your lips part with every little whimper and sigh, and your tits bounce beneath his shirt. The sight goes straight to his cock, hand sliding up from your waist until he can palm your breasts under the garment, fingers pressed against soft flesh. You’re a handful, even for him, and he grunts, thumb and forefinger tweaking your pebbled nipples.

The whine you let out is delicious, and his gaze roves down your body, settling on where the two of you are connected, watching how he slides in and out of your pussy. The sight, the sounds, and the feeling of you around him push him closer and closer to the edge. Fingers smoothing back down your body, they press against your clit, firm circles rubbed against the sensitive nub.

“Kriff. Kriff. Kriff.” You curse, eyes screwed shut as the warmth grows towards an inferno. Pitching forward, you change the angle, hands resting against his broad chest, providing better leverage as your pace quickens. Your thighs start to ache, but you’ll be damned if you let that stop you.

“That’s it, babe. Hells, your pussy feels so kriffin’ good.” Wrecker pants, his words helping push you over the edge. Your body goes taut above him, pleasure contorting your face as you clamp down around him, coming on his cock with a cry of his name. He keeps his fingers moving, working you through the high until the tremors in your body stop and your hazy eyes open to meet his.

You share a soft smile, and Wrecker surges up, lips meeting yours for a passionate kiss as he grasps back at your hips. Holding you in place, his hips snap quickly as he fucks up into you, chasing his high now you’ve been satisfied.

Tongues meeting, the kiss is frantic and messy, noises muffled by each other’s lips. You pull back just enough to gaze down at him. “Come in me. Please.” Your needy whine reverberates around the room.

You were perfect. So perfect. Your pleading words, the grip of your tight pussy around him… Wrecker’s thrusts falter, and with two more sharp snaps of his hips, he pushes himself deep inside you, growling out your name as he’s swept into pleasure, filling you.

The room falls silent except for your harsh breaths, gazes locked before you steal another kiss. Slower and softer, the lust dissolves into something sweeter. Strong arms wrap around you, and you’re rolled onto your side, pulled flush against Wrecker’s body as he pries his lips from yours. He smiles, and you can’t help but match it, a giggle bubbling up and out. The sound of Wrecker’s chuckle melds with yours, happiness simmering between you.

“You okay?” Wrecker asks, one hand smoothing across your cheek, cupping your face.

You lean into his touch with a small nod, eyes fluttering shut. Wrecker’s hand is warm against your face as he caresses you, his thumb tracing gentle circles on your cheek. The aftermath of shared intimacy leaves you feeling content and connected.

Overjoyed, Wrecker presses a lingering kiss to your forehead, hand sliding down your body to wrap back around you as he holds you close. Now he has you, he’s never going to let you go.

In the cocoon of his embrace, you slowly drift into a serene slumber, knowing you’ve found a sanctuary that feels like home in his arms.

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[crosshairlovebot]

birthday revelations / crosshair x gn!reader

pairing: crosshair x gn!reader (no y/n). reader has a nickname.

description: crosshair discovers it's your birthday, and in an effort to try and understand birthdays, he gets you a gift.

word count: 3,793

warnings: none. crosshair ovethinks a lot

Another request! Maybe not technically a request, but @starrylothcat sent in an ask for an ask prompt and said it would be nice to see me write a fic where crosshair buys a gift for the reader for their birthday or christmas and it's been stuck in my head since! so here you go! i hope i did it justice!

also posted this on ao3. feedback is welcomed, reblogs are appreciated <3

Crosshair didn’t like crowds. He gritted his teeth as he walked alone through the market on Sorgan, sidestepping people as they entered his path. It was noisy, but that didn’t bother him so much. Vendors called out to passersby, promoting their various goods for purchase with enthusiasm. Voices chattered and laughed. The smell of food wafted through Crosshair’s nose and his stomach tightened with hunger. Rations were poor choices compared to the sizzling of flavourful meat on grills, but he didn’t have enough credits to buy himself something to eat.

He only had enough to buy something for you.

He had been helping Tech with cataloguing files when he saw one on their nat-born medic. You had joined Clone Force 99 just over half a standard cycle ago with your plucky yet kind attitude, falling into the group dynamic easier than Crosshair had thought. Sure, it had taken some adjustment for him and his brothers to become used to another presence they had not grown up with, but it was inevitable you would eventually find your place in the team. You were hardworking, strong and compassionate. You paid attention to each of his brothers, giving them your undivided focus during conversation and indulging them in questions about what they were doing or their chosen skill. He had watched you talk with Tech about data decryption, Wrecker about proton-based explosives, Hunter about tracking strategies, Echo about ARC trooper training, and of course, him about sharpshooting.

He recalled the way you sat next to him for the first time on his bunk during their time in Hyperspace. He had disassembled part of his Firepuncher rifle, readjusting the scope and the barrel after it had unexpectedly jammed on their previous mission. He’d been annoyed – his prized weapon never faltered, and he was trying to figure out why it had failed on him when the thin mattress dipped next to him, and you asked what he was doing. When he’d given a particularly surly response, you nodded and then just continued to watch him. His eyes had slid to you.

“Can I help you with anything else?” He hadn’t meant it to sound so icy, but he had been frustrated with this rifle, with himself.

“Can you…explain what you’re doing?” you had asked hopefully.

He had looked at you sceptically. “Why?”

You just shrugged. “It looks interesting.”

He had studied your expression, trying to discern if you were being genuine. But you were. You always were with things like this.

So, he explained what he was doing, answered your questions and by the time his weapon was fixed, he didn’t even really remember his initial annoyance. You had smiled at him, your mouth stretching in a way that made your eyes light up. He felt a little flicker of something in his stomach before it was promptly extinguished.

Since then, you have spent time with him like that more often. Not just when he was cleaning his rifle, but other things. Like throwing Lula back and forth across the bunks as you both talked, joking about things that happened on missions. Sharing looks over briefings. Stealing Wrecker’s snacks.

But his favourite time with you was drawing on your datapad and trying to guess what the other was drawing. He had learnt you liked to draw and enjoyed drawing out something other than a medical diagram. He felt a sense of pride in making you laugh so hard you cried with his silly caricatures during long hyperspace trips. Exaggerated doodles of his brothers, tookas and the like, a portrait of you with a funny expression. You liked to draw him with a smile too big for his face, chuckling as you drew and then collapsing into laughter when you showed him. It always made the thing in his stomach flicker.

He really liked having you around.

So, when he came across your file when helping Tech, he couldn’t help but open it. You had told them all any information they had asked for, and information they had not. There wasn’t really anything you kept secret. But when he saw your ID holo looking particularly embarrassing: with wide eyes and a half-formed expression – like you were taken off guard by the photo, the corner of his mouth twisted up in an impish smirk.

He had intended to tease you about it; set the holo to the show on every Marauder screen so it was everywhere.

He opened the file to take a copy of the holo when he spotted details about your age and date of birth.

He frowned at the date. “Tech, what is today’s galactic date?”

Tech looked up from his datapad, adjusting his goggles before rattling off the date. “Why?”

He said your name before telling him, “It’s their birthday tomorrow.”

“Oh.” Tech blinked.

Age and birthdays were almost foreign concepts to clones. With accelerated aging and growing in a capsule, they didn’t really matter to them. Awkward to calculate, they weren’t celebrated. Crosshair had no idea when he had been ‘birthed’ or decanted, and if the Kaminoans documented such dates, then it was classified information. He knew his chronological age, but his biological age was a little murky. He knew he was a “mature clone”, however with the accelerated aging, he didn’t know where exactly he stood. None of their brothers knew any of these details. It was normal for them.

He read the date and your age. What would it be like to be so sure of something like that? To be sure of the parts that made up who you were?

Crosshair cleared his throat and closed the file without even copying the ID holo. He frowned to himself. Maybe he should’ve asked you about it before, but birthdays weren’t a part of his world, so he hadn’t thought to. But they were important to nat-borns, weren’t they? At least that’s what they’d all been told during their training modules.

When he lay in his bunk that night, he circled his mind for all he knew about birthday traditions. Gatherings. Food. Gifts. Would you like all that? Did you like all that? You seemed like you would. He didn’t know if it was something he would enjoy if he had a birthday…it didn’t really seem like his thing, but maybe he would. He would never know. He thought that Wrecker might be the only one who would enjoy a birthday. Maybe Echo too if you did it right. Same with Hunter.

But you hadn’t said anything about your birthday.

He had tossed and turned. You were part of their squad. You cared. Listened. Laughed. Did you not feel you could share the date with them? He didn’t know, and a part of him felt a little hurt that you might not feel you could. Were you not friends? Crosshair didn’t have many friends, but he knew they were supposed to tell each other things.

He turned again, crossing his arms against his chest as he faced the wall. Why did he even care? If you didn’t want to tell him it was your birthday, fine. He wouldn’t mention it.

He squeezed his eyes shut before sitting up on his elbows and craned his head to see you sleeping in your bunk. Through the darkness, his enhanced eyes saw you curled in yourself, and your nose twitched as you breathed deep and evenly. Something in his chest pinched. He sighed before laying back down and pulling the thin blanket over his head.

Now, as he found himself in this market the next day, he wondered what he was even doing here.

Once they had landed on Sorgan, they completed their mission easily with no complications. But Crosshair was still distracted by your birthday. You hadn’t even said anything when everyone woke up this morning. Just acted like it was any other day. You had just smiled at him as you tucked into a ration bar, saying good morning before throwing one to him to eat.

It puzzled him.

When you all started walking back to the Marauder after the mission, Hunter could tell something was up with him, nudging his shoulder.

“You alright?”

Crosshair had scowled at his brother. “…Yes.”

“You look deep in thought,” Hunter pointed out, falling into step with him.

Crosshair broke his gaze and looked away, back towards where they came, to the village they had just liberated. The thought had barely formed before he said, “Do we have time before the next mission?”

Hunter’s surprise showed in his voice. “We have a couple of hours, why?”

“I’ll be back later,” Crosshair walked off in the direction of the village before Hunter could say anything. His long legs carried him to the marketplace, where he stood now amongst the bustling bodies.

He just couldn’t get your birthday out of his stupid head; that you hadn’t said anything because clones didn’t celebrate birthdays. Just because he didn’t understand them, doesn’t mean he couldn’t try…for you.

He started combing through the vendors, most of which were finishing up resetting their stands after they fled suddenly several days prior. He moved from stall to stall, gazing at the different items over people's heads. Kriff, what were you even supposed to buy people for birthdays? Something they needed? Something they wanted? It was all a little overwhelming. And Crosshair didn’t get overwhelmed.

“Looking for something in particular, my friend?”

Crosshair startled and looked up to see the vendor, a greying man with a wrinkled face, horns protruding from his forehead and curled up in an elegant spiral shape.

Crosshair frowned, clearing his throat. “It’s…my friend's birthday today.”

The man’s face lit up. “Wonderful! Birthdays are special.”

Crosshair’s mouth tightened as the man continued to speak. “What were you thinking of gifting them?”

The hairs on Crosshair’s neck stood up with nerves. “I…I don’t know.”

The man’s face lit up. “Perhaps I can help.”

The man then went through the different items at his stand. He held up scarves, strings of beads, and handmade pottery. Crosshair thought they were all nice enough, but he wasn’t swimming in credits. And none of the items really felt like you. The vendor was patient, more patient than he should’ve been. Either he really wanted to help or was desperate for a sale in a competitive marketplace.

After many minutes and many items, Crosshair felt himself gradually stiffening, becoming more and more on edge and uncomfortable. He felt so out of his depth. He was always so sure of everything, and trying to do this thing he had no experience in, made him more vulnerable than he had in a long time. It was not a feeling he felt comfortable with. Never had been.

And as much as he liked you, maybe this was all a stupid idea. You hadn’t mentioned your birthday for a reason. He shouldn’t bring it up. If he did, he’d have to explain how he found out…and he didn’t want to go through that awkwardness. He was about to open his mouth and tell the over-enthusiastic vendor: thank you, but he wouldn’t bother with a gift, when the vendor clapped his hands loudly, making Crosshair jump.

“I may have something back here, hold on,” he said as he turned away to rifle noisily through a crate behind him.

Crosshair felt his fist curl at his sides, and this should’ve been his opening to slide away unnoticed until he looked down and saw a brown leather book. Crosshair halted and lifted a gloved hand to the soft worn cover, running his fingers over the engravings in the bound leather. He opened the cover, seeing it was a blank notebook, and it had a writing implement tucked into the spine. Not many people recorded things the traditional way anymore; datapads were much more efficient and stored more information than the pages of a notebook. He flicked through the pages, fanning them with his thumb. The dust drifted up and it was a smell he didn’t recognise, but he supposed it was the smell of paper.

“That’s a good choice.”

Crosshair retracted his hand as if he was a cadet being scolded, and looked up at the vendor, who held an oversized pot that would break the second it came aboard the Marauder.

“That would be a perfect gift,” the vendor continued, nodding at the notebook.

Crosshair looked at him before picking up the notebook – more surely this time, and turned it over in his hands. He imagined you in your bunk, scribbling in it at night with a torch in one hand. He imagined you keeping it under your pillow for safekeeping. He imagined you doodling in it, showing him your drawings with that smile on your face. He imagined drawing in it with you. The corner of his mouth twitched upward.

“How much?” Crosshair asked.

“It’s yours.”

Crosshair’s head snapped towards the vendor. “What?”

The vendor waved him away. “Take it.”

Crosshair blinked, confused. “…I have to pay you.”

“No, you don’t. I’ve been trying to sell that for years. You’d be doing me a favour.”

Crosshair furrowed his brow. “…Isn’t the customer supposed to be right?”

The vendor barked out a laugh. “Not this time, my friend.”

Crosshair dug into his pocket anyway and pulled out half the credits. “For your patience…at least.”

The vendor chuckled and took them. “Thank you. I hope your friend likes it.”

Crosshair didn’t respond as the man turned away, placing the pot down before calling out to other marketgoers, trying to entice them.

Crosshair walked back through the market, the notebook feeling heavy in his hand. Leaving the village, he made his way back to the Marauder, thoughts swimming in his head.

Kriff, what if you hated it? Or thought it was stupid? What if all his knowledge on birthdays was completely inaccurate and you would think him strange for giving you something? Or what if you just thought he was weird for getting you something at all?

Crosshair’s grip on the notebook tightened. He just wanted to do something nice. Like you always did for them. But this is why he avoided it. It was so vulnerable being nice. Being nice left you open for hurt, open for aching. It was much easier to keep it at bay, to restrict it. To hide it behind actions inconspicuously where it wasn’t out in the open. Being so open with it for you…he wouldn’t admit it out loud, but it scared him. The doubt crept in. Crosshair had conviction and confidence, and he wasn’t used to it wavering like this.

He was just about ready to throw the notebook into a bush and never speak of it again when he heard your voice ring out from the steps of the Marauder.

“Crosshair!”

You placed your datapad down and ran over to him. He hid the notebook behind his back with both hands, gripping it so hard he knew his knuckles would be white as you approached him with a smile.

“Hey,” he said, hoping he sounded normal.

“Where’d you go? You disappeared after the mission.”

“I was just…looking for something,” he said carefully. Dank farrik, how was he supposed to do this? He thought he might just leave it on your bunk when you were distracted with a little note written inside the cover saying, ‘Happy Birthday’. That way he could avoid your reaction when you saw it. He didn’t even know how to get into the Marauder with it now that you were here in front of him.

You tilted your head with a quizzical smile. “Looking for something?”

Crosshair nodded. “I couldn’t find it,” he lied.

“Oh…okay,” you looked at him weirdly. Would you look at him like that when you saw his gift?

Crosshair nodded to the Marauder, desperate to get on board and stow the notebook away until he could leave it on your bunk. “Should we go inside?”

You looked at him, narrowing your eyes. “What are you hiding?”

“I’m not hiding anything, meshurok,” he lied, his grip tightening again.

“Yes, you are,” you sidestepped him to look behind him and he leapt out of the way. You grinned. “You are! What are you hiding, Cross? Why can’t I see?” you tried to chase him around, but Crosshair kept angling himself away. Kriff, he had never felt so stupid in his whole life.

“It’s nothing. Get your meddling hands away from me, you di’kut,” he walked backwards in a circle, his face and neck hot.

“Crosshair,” you chided, smiling at him. “Come on, is it really that bad?”

“Go away,” he grumbled, hands aching from holding the damned notebook so tight.

“Crosshair,” you said his name again, and your face was stretched in that playful grin that he’d unwillingly memorised. That thing in his stomach flickered again.

Then he remembered how you didn’t tell him about your birthday. And how you were friends, but you didn’t say anything about it. And how he had this unexplainable feeling he couldn’t name sitting in his stomach that compelled him to go to a village market and pick out a stupid gift for a birthday tradition he didn’t even understand just to do something nice for you the way you did for him and his brothers.

Crosshair’s expression flared and he shoved the notebook at your chest. You startled at your hand came up to grab it, sliding against his like a searing snake. He pulled his hand back and balled both at his sides as he gritted out, “Happy birthday.”

All he saw was your eyes were wide before he stalked off, almost stomping his way to the Marauder. His face burned, and embarrassment flooded his body. He felt so stupid, and he hated feeling stupid. He hated the feeling of being on the end of someone’s judgement. He hated knowing that he’d just been forced to make himself vulnerable. But mostly, he hated the feeling of you not trusting him with what was supposed to be the important parts of you.

“Crosshair!”

Your voice came from behind him, but he didn’t turn around. He was already planning different ways he could avoid you. He was going to lock himself in the ‘fresher until the next mission and make sure Hunter placed him on watch at opposite times to you. Whatever it took. His heart panged. You were one of the only people outside his brothers he liked. He would mourn the shared jokes and laughter, and time spent with you, knowing it couldn’t happen anymore.

“Crosshair, wait.”

He felt a hand on his arm pull him back. He swayed backwards, but he let you stop him. He avoided your gaze, scowl burning an outline in his brow as he stared off into the middle distance. Your hand stayed on his arm, and he felt it through the plastoid wrapped around his forearm, squeezing him there. It felt like part of him, and that made him feel both warm with content and spiked with anger simultaneously.

“Cross, please look at me,” your voice said quietly, and his heart squeezed. He slowly moved his gaze, looking down, then sliding his eyes to your bare hand on his arm before they lifted to your face. Your brows were slanted downwards, looking at him with such softness in your eyes he felt the flickering in his chest again.

“How did you…” your voice was soft and trailed off, notebook in your other hand.

“It doesn’t matter,” he dismissed with gritted words.

He felt your hand flex with your grip. “It does to me.”

He studied your face carefully before saying, “…I was helping Tech with cataloguing his files. I saw your birthday in yours.”

You continued looking at him with an indecipherable gaze and moved your hand slowly from his arm to his wrist, your bare fingertips brushing his gloves. You gently grazed his fingers as you let his hand drop softly. He watched you as you inspected the book, hands turning it over, fanning through the pages. He studied your expression, trying to discern what you thought, feeling anxiety grow in his stomach, his throat tightening. He felt something hot poke inside him as he watched your mouth turn up into a smile as you gazed at his gift.

“I’ve been so busy this year that I forgot about my birthday.”

Crosshair hoped he hid his surprise. You not telling him about your birthday…it was never about him. Of course, you had forgotten. The past six cycles had been a whirlwind for you trying to adjust to a soldier’s lifestyle, countless missions and trying to fit in with his brothers. His face burned again. He was a fool.

You looked up at him, a smirk itching the corners of your mouth. “Been too busy keeping you boys in line.”

Crosshair scoffed lightly, letting a puff of breath out of his nose. Your smile widened.

“This is a beautiful gift, Cross. Thank you for getting it for me,” you place your hand on his arm again, squeezing gently to show your appreciation He felt his heart lift and his cheeks redden, but this time, not in embarrassment.

He nodded at you. “I’m…glad you like it. I don’t have much experience with birthdays.”

Your smile touched the edges of your eyes. “That’s what makes it even more special.”

You reached up on your tip toes and wrapped your arms around his neck, embracing him. Crosshair stiffened in shock and surprise before he slowly wrapped his arms around your torso. His fingers grazed your sides, and there was something wildly comforting about holding you like this. He could feel the side of your face pressed into his neck, just below his ear, and your breath tickled the sliver of open skin not covered by his blacks. You were so warm. He felt you squeeze him gently and he didn’t stop himself from squeezing back.

You were his best friend, after all.

You pulled away, but not before you cupped his face and placed a kiss on his cheek. Crosshair flinched and his eyes widened as you lowered yourself back down on flat feet with one of the most joyful smiles he’d ever seen gracing your face. The action had surprised him more than anything else had.

“I’m going to show everyone what you got me,” you said before running off towards the Marauder.

“No, don’t, they’ll—” Crosshair started but you were already halfway up the gangplank. His brothers’ teasing was going to be ruthless.

He sighed, shaking his head before following you, that thing flickering in his chest. He didn’t understand it, but he didn’t try to extinguish it.

banner art by @vimse

mando'a / meshurok = gemstone thank you for reading! i did find this one slightly challenging bc it's very much crosshair in his head and i tried to write him how i thought he would react to a situation like this, but if it's a little OOC, i apologise! but i think he would react like this if someone he cared about didn't tell him something important about them; someone who was his friend and who he liked very much. i think he'd be kinda mad and hurt but he cares too much to not do anything at all. i have more gen requests on the way, so stay tuned if you're interested! <3

tags @starrylothcat @sinfulsalutations @moodymisty @nahoney22 @freesia-writes @nobody-expects-the-inquisitorius @bobaprint @crosshairsnose @jesseeka @thegalaxys-edge @snarky-mans-gf @chopper-base @wenalena @shredderwest @leavingkamino @rexamongthestars @r2d2staser @bluebird-dreams @pb-jellybeans @a-streakofblue @theawkwardartist12 @mylifeisactuallyamess @padawancat97 @littlecrowtime @jedipoodoo

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[lethalchiralium]

High Water | Happiness Series

a/n: okay guys, I have ONE MONTH left of school for the semester, THEN I WILL HAVE TIME FOR THIS I PROMISE. a lot has happened since I last updated, this was all written over a six month period and of course finished three weeks after my major breakup w my bestie of 7 years LOL ENJOY

a/n 2: and thank you always to @as-is-above-so-below for not killing me over taking forever to update and for letting me fall down her stairs and (separate incident) get a splinter from her floor LOL

warnings: military talk. TW: TORTURE

summary: Price has to make a difficult decision.

PREVIOUS << | >> NEXT | SERIES MASTERLIST

Night vision, gloved finger tensed on the trigger of his rifle. The back alley was secured, Soap kept two feet behind him at all times as Price unlocked the side door of the “abandoned” factory warehouse. 

Four pairs of boots were muted against the cracked concrete, rifles pointed upwards and watching for any hostiles in their way. The mission was to collect intel and neutralize any threats - hopefully this would deliver them to the target. A man who was a ghost just like Simon Riley, but just… tied up in debts that span decades. Expendable men were set in the center of the warehouse, a table set up with chairs, chips and cards strewn about the wooden surface. Silence was a friend to the Russian men’s killers, but not to them. A small radio lowly played some sot of music, it was melancholy and heavy on the sax. Blues, Simon reflected, fitting.

One Russian - wearing a white shirt and black pants, a deep purple bruise on his fair face - pulled a chair from the table, setting down a laptop on a handful of worn cards.

“Boss has two targets with him, they’re to be sold by the end of the week.”

The man with a green jacket shrugged, as he sat down too; kicking his feet onto the table. “Not sure if there’s a big enough market for screaming babies, друг.”

“We’ll be getting a big payout if we get them to auction before their family finds out.” 

Simon’s stomach clenched, he almost shot them both right there if it wasn’t for Gaz grabbing his arm and squeezing it. He couldn’t imagine it being you and the girls, it wouldn’t be anyway. Calm down. He focused on slinging his rifle silently over his shoulder, taking hold of the corner of sturdy boxes, wrapped up in plastic film. He hauled himself up, keeping his balance and grip focused on climbing up since the crate was the height of his shoulders. He placed his right foot on the top, pushing himself up before repeating the action with the next and final crate. It was routine the way he retrieved his rifle from his back, laying prone on the hefty crate with his finger parallel to the trigger and his eye in the scope. He was swift, it was second nature; his breath didn’t falter when Gaz settled on his torso beside him with his tact scope in his grasp.

“Bravo 0-7, do you have sight on the target?”

Ghost’s eye closed, the other focusing through the scope of his rifle. 

“Affirmative.”

There was a loud screech of the door Gaz was watching, Ghost’s chest clenched with anticipation as he watched the intel walk in - wearing joggers and a long sleeve shirt, talking loudly on his phone in Russian. 

“Soap, detain the target as soon as he is within range. Gaz, Ghost, drop ‘em as soon as Soap is clear.”

There wasn’t a beat of silence after that, as everyone launched into action. Johnny was quick to tackle the man, the other two dropped dead within milliseconds. His gloved hand seemed to cover the man’s whole jaw, fingertips pressed uncomfortably into the man’s skin. Ghost had dropped from his position in seconds and across the room in a few strides.

“Where is yer boss?”

Gaz slid a chair behind the man, Soap shoved him into it. Struggling hands were strapped to it, the man with dark blond hair and joggers spat out vicious words towards the skull balaclava. He barely caught Price snatching the open laptop from the table before he looked back to Soap and the hostage, the Sergeant dug his nails into the Russian’s face. The Lieutenant pulled a rag from his vest, watching them intently. The 141 was a well oiled machine, oiled with the saccharine taste of blood. 

“Where the fuck is yer boss?”

“You’ll never find him-“ Ghost shoved the cloth into the man’s mouth before in a flash, his knife found its new home in the hostage’s knee. The screams muffled, he leaned closer. The words spoken were low, but enough to elicit a snarl from the hostage before another scream.

Price only gazed at Ghost for a moment before looking back at the laptop, checking through folders for measly information. Gaz was stood by the door, watching for any  intruders - hand on his rifle, ignoring the muffled screams of the last threat alive in the room. But he wouldn’t be alive much longer with Ghost’s knives sticking out of his body like decorations. Don’t ask for mercy, my hounds won’t give you any, he remarked.

He looked down at the dashboard, seeing a browser left open. He clicked on it, seeing an encrypted chat log with the target and his right hand man - the man screaming for his life in the chair. 

Don’t be late

The damn baby is losing it

If I have to hear another word from this girl I’m going to kill her

Price is a stoic man, one hardened by war - barely scared of anything; yet, Price wasn’t prepared when he scrolled up. His heart shot straight into his throat, eyes widened by a fraction, his hand gripping the table could’ve broken it in half. He blindly grabbed his phone, taking a picture of the screen before slamming the laptop closed. It was secured between his arm and chest in three seconds, tapping a number on the screen of his phone before he walked past Gaz and out of the room. The building was secured, he knew that - yet, he felt the fear that he may be watched. The secure line droned on for only a moment before there was an answer.

“John?”

“Laswell. What the fuck happened?”

There’s crying in the background, he could recognize Winnie’s voice anywhere. They’ve been gone for three days. Nothing was supposed to get to Simon’s second chance, John thought he was sure of it. No, he was sure of it. He cased the house himself, did all the work to make sure one of their strongest and toughest allies would stay and protect them. What the fuck happened?

There’s a breath. “König’s been shot. Someone took Mellie and Y/N.”

“And the other one?” 

John’s stomach settled like concrete, weighing him down and making him sick. 

“She’s okay. She’s with us at the hospital. We took her to the park like her mother asked and when we came back, the door was kicked in, König was unconscious and bleeding out, and Mellie and Y/N weren’t there.” There was a pause. “There was a fight down here. König killed seven of them before going down.”

Okay. At least they could ID the bodies, link them to the mob - or at least, former associates of the mob. Any lead he could get.

If he could run his hand through his beard, he would’ve. It was a comfort, especially now that he has never felt this stressed in his life. Simon cannot know. Simon will destroy everything we’ve worked for to save them. 

“It has to do with the target.” 

John’s eyebrows furrowed. “Their intel is here. I am holding their intel.”

“John, these men are Russian. They are escaped convicts in the mob, known associates of the target.” There’s a pause, a short yell from Winnie, and Laswell sighing. “König left one unconscious. Roach is interrogating him now on base.”

“How long ago were they attacked?”

“Yesterday.” Another pause, soft words from Laswell to who he assumed was Winnie. “Listen, I’m working on this, but I need you. We need Ghost to run the rest of the operation, and we can’t do that if you tell him about this.”

There’s shouting behind the door, screaming from the victim that Ghost was torturing. John looked down the empty corridor, knowing he has to go to keep his friend safe. 

“Because if they came after the girls, that means they’re coming after him. And they need him alive.”

His hand could have snapped that laptop in half. “He needs them alive.”

“I know, John.” 

There’s more shouting in Russian, a loud thud and more incessant screaming. 

“Keep this on the down low. I only need you. Make sure Ghost knows how to proceed.”

“With caution and safety off.” John murmured, muscles clenching in his chest. This is not going to end well. 

“Get back to Manchester immediately. I’ll call if we’ve found something.” The line goes dead, Captain Price slipped the phone into his pocket before taking a deep breath. 

He opened the door back to the room, being submersed in the victim’s screaming as Ghost’s black blade dragged into the muscles of his leg. Price shut the door, standing tall with worry on his mind. Gaz nodded to him, hands out for the laptop - John shook his head. 

“Lieutenant.” 

The skull mask didn’t look away from his target, the one screaming Russian that he didn’t know anything, stop, you’re hurting me, go to fucking Hell- Soap took the man by his throat, forcing his head back before spitting some choice words at his face. Eyebrows furrowed, Price tried again.

“Mactavish, take over for the Lieutenant.” 

The Scot nodded, hand ripping Ghost’s knife out of the man’s thigh - all that filled the room were screams. Ghost finally looked to Price, an enraged look in his eye as he stood and walked towards him. 

“What the fuck-”

“I’ve been reassigned.” The Captain spoke with an even tone. Nothing is wrong. Believe me, Simon, believe me. “You will be running this operation until I get this assignment under control.”

It seemed that anger swelled throughout the Lieutenant like a poison, invading every space of the menacing man. “What the fuck did you get reassigned for?”

“Diplomat’s wife and daughter have been kidnapped.” The lie slid off of the tongue like butter, smooth as easy to go down for some people. For others… it’s unsettling. Price was a good liar, it came easy, but his lieutenant was always able to tell. Not always immediately, but he will know sooner or later. “I have to run this. Are you okay doing this assignment-“

Ghost patted his Captain’s shoulder. “Got it under control.”

Price smiled, strained. “Knew I could count on you.” He glanced to the man in the chair; blood poured down his face. He then looked back to his Lieutenant, his right hand man with as straight of face he could muster. “We need to hurry this up. Only 10 minutes remaining.”

“Rog.”

•••

The front door was covered in a tarp, the front porch light on and curtains drawn. John Price felt the cold sickle of Death slide down his spine as he could see blood splatter on a home he once considered sacred. Simon’s home, your home, was under red tape, unknown to anyone the military who wasn’t close to Ghost. Simon created a home from nothing for his child, then opened it for you, then his new little one - God, was John proud of him. Creating a life more than worth living, in a quaint house that should have never been found - even when it was hidden in plain sight. Even the most holy grounds have had blood shed upon them. 

Kate knew he was walking up the steps, she always knew, so she opened the door enough for him to slip through. Instantly, he’s met with the remnants of the carnage of your entrance way. Bullet holes and stains of blood decorated the walls and floors, even when they had been mopped and wiped clean. Dents in the walls, the floor - John imagined the beast that was König wrestling some of those fucks to the ground, snapping their necks with the twitch of his wrist. He couldn’t imagine your screams, couldn’t think of little Mellie wailing in terror. 

Did you scream? Did they drug you? Hurt you? Did they dare to touch the baby? God, Simon is going to burn the world.

He looked to Kate, there’s a hardened glint in her eye. He handed her the laptop, which hadn’t been scanned yet - it would take too much time, they both knew that. She took it without a word, turning back into the front room. John strode forwards, stepping over the baby gate that was recently put there. He assumed it was to keep Winnie out of the carnage that was the front entrance, he continued on to the living room where he could see Alex sitting on the couch. A little head peered over the side of the couch and as soon as her eyes saw John, she stood at full height with tears instantly pouring down her face. 

“Unc’John!” 

His heart felt bruised then, the beat of it aching with every stride he took to her. He instantly plucked her from the couch, holding her to his chest as she loudly cried. “Winnie, sweetheart, it’s alright.”

“Where-Where’s Mummy and Mellie?”

John could only bear to mutter a soft, “We’re finding them, sweetheart.” He couldn’t bring himself to say that the bad guys got them, that her daddy couldn’t be the hero she knows she wants him to be because of John’s decision. He was quick to bring her to the kitchen - which seemed untouched compared to the adjacent entryway - and settled her on the countertop, right beside the sink. He grabbed a glass from the cabinet to the right, filling it with water before handing it to Winnie. The five year old took greedy sips, breathing through her nose as tears raced down her face. “Put the water down, love, you need to take some deep breaths.”

He took the glass back, only for her to reach for his hand - he took it, giving it a small squeeze. God, he can’t even remember the last time he had seen his niece cry, let alone sob. Had it been that long since she had gone without you? 

“Are you hungry? Tired?” He set the glass on the counter, seeing her hiccup as she tried to catch her breath. He squeezed her hand again, all Winnie could do was let more tears fall down her face. 

“Where’s Mummy?” She begged, John’s tongue felt dry. He hated lying to her, he hated not knowing anything, he hated seeing her bawl her eyes out. She didn’t witness anything, thank God, but going without you after not having to for years is terrifying to a little girl. “N’Daddy? Why-Why isn’t Daddy home?” Her hand squeezed back, much harder than she did before. “M’scared.”

“I know, Winnie.” His throat began to itch, he wanted to desperately tell her that everything would be alright - that today was just a bad dream she’ll wake up from tomorrow, that her parents will be here in the morning with her baby sister. He also wanted to scream at God and tell him that it was fucked forcing him into sacrificing Simon’s family for a stupid fucking lead, even if it did lead back to you and Mellie. He didn’t want to have the possibility of telling his niece that neither of her parents were coming home, instead of the off chance of one; he hated delivering condolences, but he wasn’t sure he could do it to a five year old girl who he has watched grow up. “I think we need to go sit down again.” A little nod and she was scooped up into his arms again, held tight as he walked back into the couch; Alex nowhere to be seen, which was fine with John. He took his normal seat at the end of the couch, resting little Winnie on his chest and pulling the blanket from the back of the couch to lay on her. He tucked it in around her stomach, making sure to cover her socked feet before gently petting her hair. 

His eyes wandered to the TV, to the stupid blue dog show that she seemed to love - yet she held no interest right now. His eyes darted across the floor, seeing little firetrucks and airplanes and dolls scattered across the floor; then to the little mesh play pen that sat underneath the window, the blinds pulled up enough to where Mellie couldn’t reach, the strings tied up even higher. Soft toys and colorful blocks scattered inside of it, not to mention a few blankets and a pillow or two. Winnie’s been sleeping down here. She’s petrified. 

His gaze moved to the ceiling, hand gently patting her head with a calm rhythm. He’d lay here all night, way past when his back would get sore, way past when his legs would cramp, just to give Winnie some sort of stability. He refused to think about the possibility that he may have to follow through with his promise of being her godfather - he just never imagined that it might possibly be just Winnie, not Winnie and Mellie. The thought stirred nausea in his stomach, more than any whiplash, concussion, or shitty helicopter ride could give him. He had already made the silent promise to find you and Mellie, but just for tonight, his whole goal was to make sure Winnie isn’t more scared out of her mind than she already is. 

“Unc’John.”

He hummed at that, looking back down her. “Yes, sweetheart.”

Her little chin swiveled to rest on his chest to look up at him, her sweet brown eyes full of tears as she whispered, “I don’t wanna visit my Mummy at-at the cemetery like Mum G-Grace.”

I don’t want to visit my Mummy at the cemetery like Mum Grace.

I don’t want to visit my Mummy at the cemetery like Mum Grace. 

The words that leave his mouth are soft, spoken like a twisted prayer. “This isn’t like your Mum Grace.” His eyebrows furrowed, petting her hair back with a gentle touch. “I swear it.”

The five year old’s lip quivered, “Promise?”

John doesn’t promise anything, he never makes a promise he wouldn’t be able to keep. He never dared enter the realm of uncertainty, knowing he could fail and hurt someone he cared about. Hell, he rarely makes promises on equipment orders for his men. He doesn’t even promise his mother anything, not since he promised he wouldn’t go into the military and did it anyway. But as he watched his friend’s daughter, his niece and goddaughter, sob quietly on his chest, he felt he had no choice but to nod. “Promise.”

At that, Winnie’s head finally fell to rest on John’s chest, he watched her eyes close as it was evident she had only held out to hear his promise. She had stayed awake to see and hear someone she trusted and knew well, she waited to close her eyes until she knew he would find you, even if she didn’t directly ask him to. 

John felt obligated to keep Simon’s family alive since he knew just how much the deaths of his mother, brother, sister-in-law, and nephew nearly killed him, how the death of Grace and embracing fatherhood almost drowned him, and just how much his daughters and wife saved him from saying “Fuck it.” and stepping into enemy fire. Not only that, he felt obligated to you - to find you and Mellie, bring you home, keep Winnie safe too. You had many years left with Simon, John could see it. You couldn’t possibly leave Simon now, not when he needs you the most. 

John’s eyes blinked slowly, looking down to the dozing Winnie on his chest and holding her closer, reminiscent of when she was a small toddler sleeping on his chest when he babysat. Fatigue was catching up to him, the hours in the early morning were spent combing through data for the prisoner the 141 now in had in possession, and now - your kidnapping. Simon is a dear friend, John knew him too well to say otherwise. And he also knew that you, Winnie, and Mellie were his whole world - the monster Simon was, the one John had nurtured and cared for to create a weapon, was sitting dormant in the man’s ribcage because of the unconditional love he had received. John could never argue that Simon had “gone soft” because of it, Simon had weeping and infected wounds healed by the soft touch of his wife. The Captain’s previously abused and petrified weapon was now perfect, he was the epitome of the perfect soldier. But with the knowledge of his wife and child’s safety at risk, John knew what the military didn’t. 

“Captain.” 

There’s a reason your husband wasn’t alerted of your abduction. John Price knew the second he said that you and Melody were missing, Simon would rip his ribcage from his chest with the force of a thousand men to expose the monster underneath. The one you only hear about in movies, the one that is passed down through tongues to generations, the one you fear will come from the shadows to eat you alive. Simon Riley is what the Captain likes to call, the Monster Under Your Bed. 

“Captain.”

He grunted a little, looking over his shoulder to a stoic Alex Keller. “She’s almost asleep, Alex-“

“We might have a location.”

taglist: @idkwtftitbh  @blingblong55  @local-spidey  @sanfransolomitatm  @frazie99  @Awilan @cosmoscoffeee @khadeejarh  @babygirl-riley  @emi-flaces  @marini03  @jeannieboys  @koshehehe  @tutuwuworld @froggy-anon @cxltblood @egdeverauxx @freyjasfenrir @lexi-zsy09 @Hosshihusshi @Isopaine @eatingtheworldsoffanfiction @domaniquessidehoe2 @iaur @starsinyoureyes @graciereads @urfavoritepookie @ghost-with-a-teacup @moris666 @ghostwifeyy @ziggy0stardust @live-love-be-unique @magoopi @coririley @lunyyx @sterlizx

[millersdjarin]

in these trying times

Pairing: Din Djarin x F!Reader

Rating: G (all audiences, but my blog is always 18+)

Word Count: 2.7k

Tags/Warnings: diabetes, hypoglycaemia, almost-fainting, protective!din, secrets, food

Masterlist & Request Info

Based on this request! ❤️

It’s reckless, and you know it. Din would be furious if he knew what you were keeping from him; you’d be furious with him if he kept something so important about his health from you. Something that, as his partner, you should definitely know.

But it’s for the best. It was hard enough for Din to open himself up to the possibility of having a partner, both romantically and in the field, and he doesn’t need a reason to worry about you, not after he’s finally gotten over his anxieties. You’ve had this for years, and it’s under control; it has been for a long time. There’s no need to worry him unnecessarily. It doesn’t get in the way or change how you work, how well you fight. 

Life has been busy. There are always people after Din; people who haven’t got the memo yet that the kid is no longer wanted by the Empire. And, on top of that, you’re working for the New Republic, and there are always jobs that need done. 

Meals get skipped. Snacks are the last thing on Din’s mind. Not on yours; you sneak ration bars to missions and munch them down whenever you get chance. 

Din catches you eating one when you’re rushing down an alleyway back towards the ship, Imperials on your heels. 

He looks at you and almost stops in his tracks, confusion evident in his body language even though you can’t see his face. “Where did you get that?” He asks. “Why are you eating it now?” 

You shove the last mouthful in your mouth and grimace at the feeling of your partially-full stomach jostling around as you run. It’s better than the feeling of a low blood sugar, but still, not exactly pleasant. A needs must, you suppose. “I’m hungry,” you say to him, like that should be enough of an excuse. 

It’s not. “We don’t have time to have a picnic right now,” Din protests gruffly. The two of you reach the end of the alleyway, and as you stop at the opening to the street, Din turns back, shoots the two Imps on your tail in two quick blasts, sending them to the floor. “We can eat later.” 

You’re five klicks from the ship. You won’t make it ’til later. He doesn’t need to know that. 

Shoving the wrapper into your pants pocket, you shoot him a confident grin. “It’s not like these Imps are making it difficult,” you say with a shrug of a shoulder, “they’re making it a picnic for us.” 

More footsteps approach from behind you. Three stormtroopers are rushing forwards, lifting their blasters. 

So, not so much of a picnic. 

But it’s fine. Din drops it; maybe because he’s too busy fighting off the enemies dropping down from the surrounding roofs to question why you felt the need for a little snack mid-fight. 

-

It happens again when you’re trying to lay low in a market town as you hunt for your target. Din is on a nearby roof, watching you through his rifle scope. You’re trying to sift through the crowd unnoticed, a piece of beige fabric covering your head, helping you blend in with the residents, when you notice your hands start to shake. 

It’s been a few hours since you last ate. There wasn’t time on the way here to stop and grab something. 

You don’t have to test your blood to know you’re getting low; you need some sugar right kriffing now or this is going to go South pretty fast. 

There are some credits in your pocket and a fruit stand across the street. Casually, you head over, reaching for the credits and handing them over as you approach the vendor. 

“What are you doing?” Din’s voice in your ear asks, doubly modulated through the comms. 

You don’t answer him; you can’t without blowing your cover. Instead you just select some produce—a handful of berries that you know are good for sudden lows, and a bottle of pure juice—and offer the vendor a friendly smile. You open the bottle straight away, take several gulps before starting on the berries, holding them out in the palm of your hand.

“Is this part of your cover?” Din asks. He knows you can’t answer him. “You’re supposed to be blending in.” 

Stop asking me fucking questions and maybe I will, you think to yourself as you drink up half the bottle of juice in ten seconds. 

“The target’s here for limited time,” Din reminds you, sounding impatient and confused as to your sudden interest in snacking in the midst of a hunt. “We have to move.” 

It’s fine, you want to tell him. I’m still headed in the right direction. 

You get the target just fine despite your close brush with a low. Din doesn’t ask you about it later. 

So, it’s never really got in the way.

Except, now it is.

Dank fucking farrik, now it is. 

Despite the fact that you’ve gotten pretty good at sneaking in extra shots or ration bars in the midst of battles, today, you haven’t had chance to stop for even a second. 

And now your vision is blurring, your head is spinning, and your legs are starting to give out beneath you. 

Right when a bunch of syndicate soldiers are closing in on both of you in the middle of a forest clearing. Right when Din needs you to be on your shit, to be there for him; right when he puts the most trust in you. 

The last thing you remember thinking before falling to your knees is that you’ve let him down. 

He calls your name from across the clearing, concern and confusion evident in his voice. There’s a mercenary headed straight for you; you can only just see through the black, blurry tunnel around your vision, can barely focus on anything other than the racing of your heart and the cold sweat beading on your forehead. Din is fighting off his own group of enemies and you can’t lift your arms, can’t reach for your blaster. You can barely hear anything, but you vaguely register the shot of a blaster headed your way, the bright shine of a Beskar-covered man diving in front of you, a blaster bolt hitting the metal with a loud clang. 

Din’s saying your name once all the bodies have dropped. There’s no more threat from enemies, but he sounds more worried than ever, breathing fast through his modulator as he pulls you into his lap. He’s asking what’s wrong, if you can hear him, if you’re hurt. 

You try to pull yourself up, but the weakness is too much. 

“Sugar,” you say breathily, feeling like your throat is shaking with your hands. “I need—food. It’s—blood sugar.” 

“What?” Din questions, sounding more confused. He presses something on his vambrace, then holds it up to scan your body. Something shines red on your vitals. “I don’t—we don’t have any rations. The ship is a few klicks away, can you walk—?” 

You shake your head. “I—I need it faster, if we walk back…”

Din’s concern is only growing as he nods with understanding. He puts his arm under your leg, the other around your back, and lifts you up. “Can you hold on?” 

“I’m—” Lifting your arms around his neck, you manage to grasp your hands together over his back, just barely hanging on with trembling fingers. “So weak, Din…” 

“It’s alright. I’ve got you. I’m gonna fly us back, just hold on as much as you can.” 

You’re too tired and breathless to respond. All you can do is hold on and close your weak eyes as Din’s jetpack activates and the two of you are lifting off the ground and into the sky. 

He gets you back to the ship in a minute. The weakness is going to your very core, down to your bones, and it’s been a long fucking time since you’ve had a low this bad. But, then again, it’s been a long time since you’ve gone without food for this long, too.

“Fast sugar,” Din says as he hands you a bar of chocolate and pours a packet of juice into a glass. You reach out for them, but your hands are shaking so much that it’s hard to hold the glass without the juice just spilling everywhere. “Here,” Din offers, lifting the glass up to your mouth and helping you take a sip. Once you’ve had a little, he puts it down and gets to work breaking the chocolate into little bite-sized pieces. 

“Under my bunk, I’ve got a blood sugar monitor,” you tell him after your fifth piece. “In my medpack.” The symptoms aren’t fading yet, but it’s not usually long until you start to feel the sugar kick in. 

Din hesitates, probably confused as to why you have that, but then he nods and heads off into your bunk, leaving you with the chocolate and juice. 

You manage to finish the rest of it alone. The shaking is subsiding slowly but surely, the sensation of chocolate in your mouth distracting you for a little while. 

He’s back in a few minutes carrying your medpack. It’s got your meds and your monitor; you fish them both out and prick your finger immediately. Sure enough, it’s dangerously low. There’s a timer on the side of it, so you set it for ten minutes, making sure you don’t forget to test it again. 

Din just stands there, watching. You tip your head back against the sofa but you can feel his eyes on you, even though his visor; can picture it in your mind, him just standing there with his hands hanging at his sides, studying you as if just staring will help him to understand what’s happening. 

He’s entirely silent for ten minutes. He checks your vitals with his vambrace a few more times, but doesn’t say a word. 

The timer goes off. When you test your blood again, it’s back to safe levels, and you breathe a sigh of relief. As always after a low, you feel fucking exhausted and washed-out, and definitely need a proper meal as soon as possible. But you don’t feel like you’re about to pass out any second anymore, so there’s that. 

The next sigh that you let out is one of nerves. You breathe in deep, bracing yourself to look back at Din and face the inevitable questions. 

When your eyes meet his visor, your stomach twists a little in guilt. “I can explain,” you say, not needing to see his face to know that he’s probably raising an expectant eyebrow at you. 

“How do you feel?” He asks instead of What the fuck?

You swallow heavily. “Better,” you say. “I’m sorry.” 

“For what?”

“For…making you finish the mission alone. For being a useless partner.” 

“That’s what you’re sorry about?” 

You stare at him, wide-eyed, swallowing yet again in the hopes it will dampen some of the guilt rising up your throat. (It doesn’t). You put the mission in severe jeopardy; you put the both of you in danger. Din trusted you to be his partner, to get the mission done effectively, to not almost die in the middle of it. And you let him down. “Well…yeah,” you answer, like it should be obvious. “I let you down. I was a bad partner.” 

“Yes, you were.” 

“I’m sorry. I’ll be more careful next time, I’ll be more helpful—”

“You weren’t a bad partner because you almost passed out,” Din interrupts you. He doesn’t sound angry, which you make note of and let calm your nerves. “You were a bad partner because you didn’t tell me about…this,” he gestures to your med kit, your machines and your medicines. 

Oh. Right. 

Of course he’s upset you kept this from him. 

He sighs. Stepping closer, he sits beside you on the couch, leaving just inches between you. “Why didn’t you tell me?” His voice is softer than you’d expected; not a trace of accusation or anger. Just…concern. Disappointment.

You can’t look at him. “I didn’t want you to worry. Or…to think that I couldn’t do my job.” 

“I am always going to worry about you, Riduur,” he says. 

“Exactly. I didn’t want to give you another reason to worry.” 

“Is this why you’ve been stopping mid-mission to eat so often?” 

“Yeah,” you laugh nervously. “I’m surprised you didn’t figure it out sooner.” 

“I just thought…” he fades off, then shrugs. “I don’t know what I thought. Maybe I should have asked.” He sounds thoughtful. You shake your head in response. Then, he turns to look at you, and asks, “How long have you…been sick?” 

“I got diagnosed with diabetes when I was nineteen. I’ve had it a long time now. And I’m usually much better at controlling it than this, but I…we’ve been so busy.” 

Din sighs softly and hangs his head. His hands clench into fists on his lap. “I’m sorry.” 

Your eyes snap up to look at him. “Why are you sorry?” 

“I should have noticed. I shouldn’t have let you neglect your health.” 

“You had no idea,” you assure him, putting a hand on the armour over his thigh. “I’m the one who kept this from you. How were you supposed to know?” 

“With or without diabetes, I should be taking better care of you.” 

“No, that’s not the lesson we’re taking away from this.” 

He looks at you again. The black T of his visor is emotionless, but you can imagine the quirk of his eyebrow. “It’s not?” 

“No,” you almost laugh, because how is he suddenly making this his fault? 

“Then what is?”

“That I should’ve told you. That I put us in danger by not letting you know something that could’ve affected the mission. Something that could’ve…hurt us.” 

He stares at you. Unmoving, unreadable. 

“Did you make me say the lesson out loud on purpose by pretending you feel guilty?” You ask him.

“No,” he replies, deadpan, “I’d never.” 

“You would.” 

“I didn’t,” he says, this time with a slight smile in his voice. He reaches out, takes your hand. “I meant it when I said I should have noticed.” 

“I was actively hiding it,” you say. “I don’t blame you. It’s my fault.” 

“You should have told me,” he agrees, albeit reluctantly. “But now that I know, we can make sure this never happens again.” 

“I’ll just be more careful, and always bring a snack, even if I think we’re not going to be out for long.” 

He squeezes your hand, still looking at you through the visor. “Will you tell me about it?” He asks earnestly. 

“What do you want to know?” 

“What you need, what to look out for,” he answers. “How you manage it. I want to make sure you’re safe. That at least one of us can be taking proper care of you.” 

Your heart swells with a sudden bloom of warmth. This isn’t how you expected this to go down: you thought he’d be angry with you for not telling him, and even more angry for almost ruining the mission. 

But, in hindsight, you should’ve known better. Better than to keep this from him, and better than to expect that kind of reaction. 

This is Din. All he’s ever wanted is for you to be safe. Any secret that you’ve told him has always been met with kindness, understanding. Even when you’ve kept it from him for a while. 

“What?” Din asks into the silence that you hadn’t even realised you’d created. You’re just staring at him, warmth in your chest and adoration in your eyes. 

You shake your head. “Nothing,” you say, finding your voice a little choked with tears in your throat, “just. I love you.” 

He softens. Leans in, presses the beskar over his forehead to yours. “I love you too, Cyar’ika.” 

You close your eyes. “I’m sorry I kept it from you.” 

“I know. It’s alright. But please tell me how we can make sure it doesn’t happen again.” 

“I will,” you promise, pushing your nose into his helmet for a second before pulling away, giving him a sheepish smile. “But first, I need a proper meal.” 

notes: finally getting to one of yall's requests! i've been so busy but thank you for your patience, and thank you to this anon for this request. as a fellow diabetic, i can relate, and i would want din there for a low if i had to have one, lmao.

hope you enjoyed! reblogs & comments so so appreciated if you can ❤️

din taglist: @brokenghostgirl1 @astronymity

[freetheshit-outofyou]

@sadrcitysocialclub, In reference to the PTSD post. Folks often say "Man, you left the war 17 years ago, it can't hurt that bad anymore." what they don't understand is it was 17 years ago for them, it was last night for me. "June 26, 2007, 3:51 PM

By Brian Mockenhaupt

I Miss Iraq. I Miss My Gun. I Miss My War.

A year after coming home from a tour in Iraq, a soldier returns home to find out he left something behind.

A few months ago, I found a Web site loaded with pictures and videos from Iraq, the sort that usually aren't seen on the news. I watched insurgent snipers shoot American soldiers and car bombs disintegrate markets, accompanied by tinny music and loud, rhythmic chanting, the soundtrack of the propaganda campaigns. Video cameras focused on empty stretches of road, building anticipation. Humvees rolled into view and the explosions brought mushroom clouds of dirt and smoke and chunks of metal spinning through the air. Other videos and pictures showed insurgents shot dead while planting roadside bombs or killed in firefights and the remains of suicide bombers, people how they're not meant to be seen, no longer whole. The images sickened me, but their familiarity pulled me in, giving comfort, and I couldn't stop. I clicked through more frames, hungry for it. This must be what a shot of dope feels like after a long stretch of sobriety. Soothing and nauseating and colored by everything that has come before. My body tingled and my stomach ached, hollow. I stood on weak legs and walked into the kitchen to make dinner. I sliced half an onion before putting the knife down and watching slight tremors run through my hand. The shakiness lingered. I drank a beer. And as I leaned against this kitchen counter, in this house, in America, my life felt very foreign.

I've been home from Iraq for more than a year, long enough for my time there to become a memory best forgotten for those who worried every day that I was gone. I could see their relief when I returned. Life could continue, with futures not so uncertain. But in quiet moments, their relief brought me guilt. Maybe they assume I was as overjoyed to be home as they were to have me home. Maybe they assume if I could do it over, I never would have gone. And maybe I wouldn't have. But I miss Iraq. I miss the war. I miss war. And I have a very hard time understanding why.

I'm glad to be home, to have put away my uniforms, to wake up next to my wife each morning. I worry about my friends who are in Iraq now, and I wish they weren't. Often I hated being there, when the frustrations and lack of control over my life were complete and mind-bending. I questioned my role in the occupation and whether good could come of it. I wondered if it was worth dying or killing for. The suffering and ugliness I saw disgusted me. But war twists and shifts the landmarks by which we navigate our lives, casting light on darkened areas that for many people remain forever unexplored. And once those darkened spaces are lit, they become part of us. At a party several years ago, long before the Army, I listened to a friend who had served several years in the Marines tell a woman that if she carried a pistol for a day, just tucked in her waistband and out of sight, she would feel different. She would see the world differently, for better or worse. Guns empower. She disagreed and he shrugged. No use arguing the point; he was just offering a little piece of truth. He was right, of course. And that's just the beginning.

I've spent hours taking in the world through a rifle scope, watching life unfold. Women hanging laundry on a rooftop. Men haggling over a hindquarter of lamb in the market. Children walking to school. I've watched this and hoped that someday I would see that my presence had made their lives better, a redemption of sorts. But I also peered through the scope waiting for someone to do something wrong, so I could shoot him. When you pick up a weapon with the intent of killing, you step onto a very strange and serious playing field. Every morning someone wakes wanting to kill you. When you walk down the street, they are waiting, and you want to kill them, too. That's not bloodthirsty; that's just the trade you've learned. And as an American soldier, you have a very impressive toolbox. You can fire your rifle or lob a grenade, and if that's not enough, call in the tanks, or helicopters, or jets. The insurgents have their skill sets, too, turning mornings at the market into chaos, crowds into scattered flesh, Humvees into charred scrap. You're all part of the terrible magic show, both powerful and helpless.

That men are drawn to war is no surprise. How old are boys before they turn a finger and thumb into a pistol? Long before they love girls, they love war, at least everything they imagine war to be: guns and explosions and manliness and courage. When my neighbors and I played war as kids, there was no fear or sorrow or cowardice. Death was temporary, usually as fast as you could count to sixty and jump back into the game. We didn't know yet about the darkness. And young men are just slightly older versions of those boys, still loving the unknown, perhaps pumped up on dreams of duty and heroism and the intoxicating power of weapons. In time, war dispels many such notions, and more than a few men find that being freed from society's professed revulsion to killing is really no freedom at all, but a lonely burden. Yet even at its lowest points, war is like nothing else. Our culture craves experience, and that is war's strong suit. War peels back the skin, and you live with a layer of nerves exposed, overdosing on your surroundings, when everything seems all wrong and just right, in a way that makes perfect sense. And then you almost die but don't, and are born again, stoned on life and mocking death. The explosions and gunfire fry your nerves, but you want to hear them all the same. Something's going down.

For those who know, this is the open secret: War is exciting. Sometimes I was in awe of this, and sometimes I felt low and mean for loving it, but I loved it still. Even in its quiet moments, war is brighter, louder, brasher, more fun, more tragic, more wasteful. More. More of everything. And even then I knew I would someday miss it, this life so strange. Today the war has distilled to moments and feelings, and somewhere in these memories is the reason for the wistfulness.

On one mission we slip away from our trucks and into the night. I lead the patrol through the darkness, along canals and fields and into the town, down narrow, hard-packed dirt streets. Everyone has gone to bed, or is at least inside. We peer through gates and over walls into courtyards and into homes. In a few rooms TVs flicker. A woman washes dishes in a tub. Dogs bark several streets away. No one knows we are in the street, creeping. We stop at intersections, peek around corners, training guns on parked cars, balconies, and storefronts. All empty. We move on. From a small shop up ahead, we hear men's voices and laughter. Maybe they used to sit outside at night, but now they are indoors, where it's safe. Safer. The sheet-metal door opens and a man steps out, cigarette and lighter in hand. He still wears a smile, takes in the cool night air, and then nearly falls backward through the doorway in a panic. I'm a few feet from him now and his eyes are wide. I mutter a greeting and we walk on, back into the darkness.

Another night we're lost in a dust storm. I'm in the passenger seat, trying to guide my driver and the three trucks behind us through this brown maelstrom. The headlights show nothing but swirling dirt. We've driven these roads for months, we know them well, but we see nothing. So we drive slow, trying to stay out of canals and people's kitchens. We curse and we laugh. This is bizarre but a great deal of fun.

Another night my platoon sergeant's truck is swallowed in flames, a terrible, beautiful, boiling bloom of red and orange and yellow, lighting the darkness for a moment. Somehow we don't die, one more time.

Another night, there's McCarthy bitching, the cherry of his cigarette bobbing in the dark, bitching that he won't be on the assault team, that he's stuck as a turret gunner for the night. We'd been out since early that morning, came back for dinner, and are preparing to raid a weapons dealer. Our first real raid. I heave my body armor onto my shoulders, settling its too-familiar weight. Then the helmet and first-aid kit and maps and radio and ammunition and rifle and all the rest. Now I look like everyone else, an arm of this strange and destructive organism, covered in armor and guns. We crowd around a satellite map spread across a Humvee hood and trace our route. Wells, my squad leader, rehearses our movements. Get in quick. Watch the danger zones. If he has a gun, kill him. I look around the group, at these faces I know so well, and feel the collective strength, this ridiculous power. The camaraderie of men in arms plays a part, for sure. The shared misery and euphoria and threat of death. But there is something more: the surrender of self, voluntary or not, to the machine. Do I believe in the war? Not important. Put that away and live in the moment, where little is knowable and even less is controllable, when my world narrows to one street, one house, one room, one door.

We pack into the trucks after midnight, and the convoy snakes out of camp and speeds toward the target house. I sit in a backseat and the fear settles in, a sharp burning in my stomach, same as the knot from hard liquor gulped too fast. I think about the knot. I'll be the first through the door. What if he starts shooting, hits me right in the face before I'm even through the doorway? What if there's two, or three? What if he pitches a grenade at us? And I think about it more and run through the scenarios, planning my movements, imagining myself clearing through the rooms, firing two rounds into the chest, and the knot fades.

The trucks drop us off several blocks from the target house and we slip into the night. As always, the dogs bark. We gather against the high wall outside the house and call in the trucks to block the streets. The action will pass in a flash. But here, before the chaos starts, when we're stacked against the wall, my friends' bodies pressed against me, hearing their quick breaths and my own, there's a moment to appreciate the gravity, the absurdity, the novelty, the joy of the moment. Is this real? Hearts beat strong. Hands grip tight on weapons. Reassurance. The rest of the world falls away. Who knows what's on the other side?

One, two, three, go. We push past the gate and across the courtyard and toward the house, barrels locked on the windows and roof. Wells runs up with the battering ram, a short, heavy pipe with handles, and launches it toward the massive wood door. The lock explodes, the splintered door flies open, and we rush through, just the way we've practiced hundreds of times. No one shoots me in the face. No grenades roll to my feet. I kick open doors. We scan darkened bedrooms with the flashlights on our rifles and move on to the next and the next.

He's gone, of course. We ransack his house, dumping drawers, flipping mattresses, punching holes in the ceiling. We find rifles and grenades and hundreds of pounds of gunpowder. And then, near dawn, we lie down on the thick carpets in his living room and sleep, exhausted and untroubled.

Many, many raids followed. We often raided houses late at night, so people awakened to soldiers bursting through their bedroom doors. Women and children wailed, terrified. Taking this in, I imagined what it would feel like if soldiers kicked down my door at midnight, if I could do nothing to protect my family. I would hate those soldiers. Yet I still reveled in the raids, their intensity and uncertainty. The emotions collided, without resolution.

My wife moved to Iraq partway through my second deployment to live in the north and train Iraqi journalists. She spent her evenings at restaurants and tea shops with her Iraqi friends. We spoke by cell phone, when the spotty network allowed, and she told me about this life I couldn't imagine, celebrating holidays with her colleagues and being invited into their homes. I didn't have any Iraqi friends, save for our few translators, and I'd rarely been invited into anyone's home. I told her of my life, the tedious days and frightful seconds, and she worried that in all of this I would lose my thoughtfulness and might stop questioning and just accept. But she didn't judge the work that I did, and I didn't tell her that I sometimes enjoyed it, that for stretches of time I didn't think about the greater implications, that it sometimes seemed like a game. I didn't tell her that death felt ever present and far away, and that either way, it didn't really seem to matter.

We both came back from Iraq, luckier than many. Two of my wife's students have been killed, among the scores of journalists to die in Iraq, and guys I served with are still dying, too. One came home from the war and shot himself on Thanksgiving. Another was blown up on Christmas in Baghdad.

Thinking of them, I felt disgusted with myself for missing the war and wondered if I was alone in this.

I don't think I am.

After watching the Internet videos, I called some of my friends who are out of the Army now, and they miss the war, too. Wells very nearly died in Iraq. A sniper shot him in the head, surgeons cut out half of his skull—a story told in this magazine last April—and he spent months in therapy, working back to his old self. Now he misses the high. "I don't want to sound like a psychopath, but you're like a god over there," he says. "It might not be the best kind of adrenaline for you, but it's a rush." Before Iraq, he didn't care for horror movies, and now he's drawn to them. He watches them for the little thrill, the rush of being startled, if just for a moment.

McCarthy misses the war just the same. He saved Wells's life, pressing a bandage over the hole in his head. Now he's delivering construction materials to big hotel projects along the beach in South Carolina, waiting for a police department to process his application. "The monotony is killing me," he told me, en route to deliver some rebar. "I want to go on a raid. I want something to blow up. I want something to change today." He wants the unknown. "Anything can happen, and it does happen. And all of the sudden your world is shattered, and everything has changed. It's living dangerously. You're living on the edge. And you're the baddest motherfucker around."

Mortal danger heightens the senses. That is simple animal instinct. We're more aware of how our world smells and sounds and tastes. This distorts and enriches experiences. Now I can have everything, but it's not as good as when I could have none of it. McCarthy and I stood on a rooftop one afternoon in Iraq running through a long list of the food we wanted. We made it to homemade pizza and icy beer when someone loosed a long burst of gunfire that cracked over our heads. We ran to the other side of the rooftop, but the gunman had disappeared down a long alleyway. Today my memory of that pizza and beer is stronger than if McCarthy and I had sat down together with the real thing before us.

And today we even speak with affection of wrestling a dead man into a body bag, because that was then. The bullet had laid his thigh wide open, shattered the femur, and shredded the artery, so he'd bled out fast, pumping much of his blood onto the sidewalk. We unfolded and unzipped the nylon sack and laid it alongside him. And then we stared for a moment, none of us ready to close that distance. I grabbed his forearm and dropped it, maybe instinct, maybe revulsion. He hovered so near this world, having just passed over, that he seemed to be sucking life from me, pulling himself back or taking me with him. He peeked at us through a half-opened eye. I stared down on him, his massive dead body, and again wrapped a hand around his wrist, thick and warm. The man was huge, taller than six feet and close to 250 pounds. We strained with the awkward weight, rolled him into the bag, and zipped him out of sight. My platoon sergeant gave two neighborhood kids five dollars to wash away the congealing puddle of blood. But the red handprint stayed on the wall, where the man had tried to brace himself before he fell. I think about him sometimes, splayed out on the sidewalk, and I think of how lucky I was never to have put a friend in one of those bags. Or be put in one myself.

But the memories, good and bad, are only part of the reason war holds its grip long after soldiers have come home. The war was urgent and intense and the biggest story going, always on the news stations and magazine covers. At home, though, relearning everyday life, the sense of mission can be hard to find. And this is not just about dim prospects and low-paying jobs in small towns. Leaving the war behind can be a letdown, regardless of opportunity or education or the luxuries waiting at home. People I'd never met sent me boxes of cookies and candy throughout my tours. When I left for two weeks of leave, I was cheered at airports and hugged by strangers. At dinner with my family one night, a man from the next table bought me a $400 bottle of wine. I was never quite comfortable with any of this, but they were heady moments nonetheless.For my friends who are going back to Iraq or are there already, there is little enthusiasm. Any fondness for war is tainted by the practicalities of operating and surviving in combat. Wells and McCarthy and I can speak of the war with nostalgia because we belong to a different world now. And yet there is little to say, because we are scattered, far from those who understand.

When I came home, people often asked me about Iraq, and mostly I told them it wasn't so bad. The first few times, my wife asked me why I had been so blithe. Why didn't I tell them what Iraq was really like? I didn't know how to explain myself to them. The war really wasn't so bad. Yes, there were bombs and shootings and nervous times, but that was just the job. In fact, going to war is rather easy. You react to situations around you and try not to die. There are no electric bills or car payments or chores around the house. Just go to work, come home alive, and do it again tomorrow. McCarthy calls it pure and serene. Indeed. Life at home can be much more trying. But I didn't imagine the people asking would understand that. I didn't care much if they did, and often it seemed they just wanted a war story, a bit of grit and gore. If they really want to know, they can always find out for themselves. But they don't, they just want a taste of the thrill. We all do. We covet life outside our bubble. That's why we love tragedy, why we love hearing about war and death on the television, drawn to it in spite of ourselves. We gawk at accident scenes and watch people humiliate themselves on reality shows and can't wait to replay the events for friends, as though in retelling the story we make it our own, if just for a moment.

We live easy third-person lives but want a bit of the darkness. War fascinates because we live so far from its realities. Maybe we'd feel differently about watching bombs blow up on TV if we saw them up close, if we knew how explosions rip the air, throttle your brain, and make your ears ring, if we knew the strain of wondering whether the car next to you at a traffic light would explode or a bomb would land on your house as you sleep. I don't expect Iraqi soldiers would ever miss war. I have that luxury. I came home to peace, to a country that hasn't seen war within its borders for nearly 150 years. Yes, some boys come home dead. But we live here without the other terrors and tragedies of war—cities flattened and riven with chaos and fear, neighbors killing one another, a people made forever weary by the violence.

And so I miss it.

Every day in Iraq, if you have a job that takes you outside the wire, you stop just before the gate and make your final preparation for war. You pull out a magazine stacked with thirty rounds of ammunition, weighing just over a pound. You slide it into the magazine well of your rifle and smack it with the heel of your hand, driving it up. You pull the rifle's charging handle, draw the bolt back, and release. The bolt slides forward with a metallic snap, catching the top round and shoving it into the barrel. Chak-chuk. If I hear that a half century from now, I will know it in an instant. Unmistakable, and pregnant with possibility. On top of a diving board, as the grade-school-science explanation goes, you are potential energy. On the way down, you are kinetic energy. So I leave the gate and step off the diving board, my energy transformed."

[winniethewife]

It's undeniably real (Layla El-Faouly x The Moonknight system x Reader)

Chapter 7: And we kissed, as though nothing could fall

Warning: Angst, Hurt/No Comfort (yet), gun violence, abduction

Last Chapter ~ Next Chapter

Words: 1093

Sometimes I swear that in the silence I can hear everything come crashing down. I can see them, their loving deep brown eyes looking at me, they know I didn’t mean to, I can’t control this. Our life hangs in the balance, I just have to tip the scales…

This was not how I expected my return to Egypt to be. I thought about going through the markets with Marc and Layla, eating snacks and laughing, going on tours of temples with Steven as he told me everything I could ever want to know about everything, andI’m sure Jake would have taken me dancing anywhere music plays, his hands on my body as we moved to the music…But that wasn’t the case. Instead we were here to take out a dangerous cult, “The cult of the Jackal” they seem to barely have a goal or mission stamen besides causing chaos and attempting to assassinate anyone with a decent amount of power. They claim to have some Tie to the God Anubis but Khonshu assured Marc that the god of funeral rites had nothing to do with them. They just have delusions of grandeur.

I lay on top of the building sniper rifle in hand as I watch from a distance as Marc and Layla talk with an informant. Waiting for a signal. I feel the edge of the numbness in my mind. I was learning to ignore it but it wasn’t easy. I watch through the scope of the rifle as they argue. I have no idea what’s happening but Marc is managing to keep his cool, I can tell he’s not pleased with something they said. Layla however is unreadable, her fake plastic smile fools most. I take a second to scan the area for threats again, as I scan I hear something behind me I turn around to see one of the cultist’s gun aimed at me, I move as quickly as I can but as the shot rang out I feel a sharp sting in my shoulder, my hand goes to the spot where I felt the sting feeling the wet gush of blood. As I pull my hand away, I see the blood on my hand. The dark red color burned into my mind as I feel myself start to loose consciousness, in the distance I hear yelling, Layla…Marc…I hear them, but I can’t focus, I feel my body lifted over someone’s shoulder. Everything goes dark.

~

“You said you knew where they were located. And now you’re telling us you have no idea where they are?” Marc was sick and tired of these people and their ever changing information. As the guy starts to speak and make excuses that’s when they hear it, A gunshot. Marc turns towards the sound and watches in horror as the scene unfold. He watches as the cultist lifts her over his shoulder and turns to leave.

“NO!” He shouts as he starts to run to her. The voices of his alters fill the back of his mind with panic but he manages to block them out as he runs at a break neck speed. He hears Layla scream her name behind him as they boths start on the chase following the cultist with their partner over his shoulder. As they move through the city just as they think they are going to catch him, the cultist throws her into a car and they drive away.

“Fuck NO!” Marc stops in his tracks and feels his heart breaking.

“Give me the body amigo, I’ll get us a car, I’ll get her back.” Jake urges and Marc can’t find a reason to argue. He watches as Layla starts to chase the car and he feels the weight of everything.

“Go, Jake go.” He mutters as he feels himself fall back into the headspace letting Jake to the front.

~

Jake followed the car furiously through the streets of Cairo, Layla swears she’s never seen him this mad before and she’s been the one he’s been mad at more than once. She’s has a death grip on the seat underneath her. This was her best friend, the wonderful woman that she had spent her whole life by her side and all she could do was pray that Jake kept on the car in front of him, and that she was still alive.

Layla races to the back seat to find her, pale, eyes rolled back as she breaths shallow fading breaths, Layla pulls her in, not caring about the blood, pulling her down as bullets fly around them. She looks at her wound, Clean shot straight through the shoulder, shattering her collarbone and shoulder blade. She’s gotta get to a hospital as soon as possible. Layla ripping her shirt padding the wound, trying to stop the bleeding as quickly as she can.

“Please…Hold on for me Habibi…Hold on…” She mutters as they speed along the street. To her surprise Jakes hand slipped into hers, He gives him her a quick glance before refocusing on the road, she catches a whisper on his lips.

“Voy por ti mi amor. Haré que esos bastardos paguen.” Jake looked determined like nothing in the world will stop him. However on the inside He was scared as hell, thinking a mile a minute. They wouldn’t take her if she was dead, but they’d been driving around in circles for too long, depending on where she was shot…He couldn’t think like that. He squeezes Layla’s hand before letting go and turning the wheel as they follow the car down an alley before they finally stop. Jake doesn’t think twice, jumping out of the car and summoning the suit in one fluid motoion as he races to the driver’s door.

“I’m here, we’re here, it’s going to be okay…It has to be okay.” Layla softly croons as she tries to not let the situation get to her. “I love y-you, God Damn it I Love you. You can’t leave us like this. We’ve got so much to do habibi, So much life left to live. Damn it live!” She cried as she holds her lover in her arms. Finally the bullets stop flying and Jake appears.

“Let me take her, Let me take…Layla we have to move now! Vamos!” Jake insisted as he takes their lover in his arms and rushes to the car. They only had so much time. He looks at her frail body in his arms. They have to make it, He’ll never forgive himself if they don’t.

~

Translation:

Voy por ti mi amor. Haré que esos bastardos paguen.: I'm coming for you my love. I'll make those bastards pay.

Vamos!: Lets go!

Masterlist

Taglist: @redeyerhaenyra @summonthesoups

[howtofightwrite]

How big would an army of conscripts, armed with Dragunov pattern marksman rifles and iron sights, with between 1 and 3 magazines each, a radio headset that allows them to take orders on a platoon level (50 troops to be specific), and a single platoon artilleryman armed with an RPG-7 with 5 rockets, with assistance from a Mitsubishi Type 89 IFV (35mm autocannon, 7,62mm M240 pattern coaxial machine gun, tracked) and an aerial command/reconnaisance/attack/close air support aircraft, need to be to deal with an army of 1000 heavy pikemen, 50 elite knights, 200 heavy cavalry, 100 light cavalry and 200 longbowmen? The pikemen are armed with a pike and wear breastplates, pauldrons, gauntlets, a helm and chainmail. The heavy cavalry are armed with a heavy lance, a sword, cuirass and helm. Longbowmen use English yew bows and wear gambesons and a chainmail on the head. Light cavalry are armed with a spear, a short bow, and a small sword. The elite knights are armed with a heavy lance and a sword, and armoured in a full body suit of plate and horse barding, and they will move with the heavy cavalry.

Okay, so, for the record, you're not really supposed to use an SVD's iron sights. (SVD is short for “Dragunov Sniper Rifle,” so, these are formally called, “sniper rifles,” rather than just DMRs.) They were (supposed to be) issued with PSO-1 scopes. This can be a little amusing, because once you know what a PSO-1's range finder looks like, it's absolutely unmistakable, and you will see films and TV shows use them on other scopes. I bring this up, because the SVD has an effective range over 600 meters. (Specifications say it's good to almost 1.3km, but, that's very hopeful.)

However, with optics, those SVDs are going to massive out range any archer.

Your infantry have somewhere between 1k-3k packed rounds. So, if they were the only participants, they would need to be a little careful about ammo conservation. But, when you start factoring in the IFV, it doesn't matter.

This scenario isn't extraordinarily different from early battles in WWI. Where cavalry and infantry charged entrenched heavy machine gun fire, and were annihilated.

This is also a moment when the whole, “elite knight,” bit really doesn't matter. You have a minor noble, who spent almost their entire life training to be a better melee combatant. You put them in the best armor you've ever seen. And, then a bullet fired from a mass-produced sniper rifle, designed to be easily fabricated by anyone with a basic machine shop, and simple enough to be maintained by a barely literate conscript will drop them in less time than it takes to read this paragraph, before the knight even knows that someone is aiming at them.

I will say, this is a little bit of a weird combination, the Type 89 IFV, is a Japanese vehicle. The JSDF (to the best of my knowledge) has never used SVDs. These days, I think their DMR is the H&K 417. Until a few years ago, their primary infantry rifle was the Howa Type 89, which is basically a redesigned AR-18. Prior to that, they used the Howa Type 64, which was a 7.62mm battle rifle. (As far as I know, the Type 64 was domestically designed.)

The Russian/Soviet equivalent to the Type 89 IFV would be the BTR-80. As with the SVD, because it's a Romanized translation, BTR stands for, “armored carrier.” Somewhat obviously, these don't work particularly well if they're not maintained, or if the motor pool Sargent is stripping them for spare parts and siphoning gas to sell on the black market, because the government hasn't paid any of you in six months, but it's still going to have a fairly similar effect on those elite knights from the 11thcentury.

The 50 SVD rifles is weird. Full stop. It's a specialist weapon, not a general infantry weapon. In a situation like that, you'd expect to see conscripts armed with AKMs or AK74s, maybe a few SVDs and RPKs.

Now, if you were looking at a contemporary NATO unit from the 60s or 70s, then, yes, you would likely see battle rifles like the M14, FN FAL, or H&K G3. And, when you're describing using an SVD's iron sights, that's more how you have used one of those cold war era battle rifles. Also, while those rifles do have automatic settings, they're intended for semi-automatic fire.

If you're wondering why I'm not even addressing things like the areal support or the RPG, it's because they really don't matter that much. Areal reconnaissance means never having to wonder where the enemy forces are, but basically anything on this list except the RPG, could probably deal with all of the enemy forces on their own. Stacking them together would be absolutely devastating.

I'm not 100% sure, but I think you could use pretty much any modern IFV as a one-size-fits-all siege breaker if they're dealing with medieval forces.

When you're looking at modern military forces time traveling into the past, the biggest logistical issue is long term depletion of supplies. There isn't really a question of, “who's going to win? A guy with a rifle that's effective at a range of over a 1km, or 10 guys with pointy sticks. The issue is what happens in six months, or a year, when there's only three or four rounds left for that rifle on the planet, and, there won't be any more for another six hundred years.

-Starke

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[bagog]

N7 Month, 2023 - Day 10: Rifle

A soft, mshenko thing. All the 'weapon' prompts for this year's N7 Month prompt list will prolly take place in this little museum setting, I'm kind of digging it.

++

The Alliance Military History Museum was fairly quiet in the hour just after it opened, and Kaidan and Shepard had slipped in early with the first few tourists. They were both dressed in sweatshirts, hoods raised, and dark sunglasses. After all, with their pictures hanging up all over an entire wing of the museum, they preferred not to be recognized.

“Here we are, and I’m still surprised you got me to come here,” Shepard said, barely above a whisper in the grand hallway that led into the museum proper. He fit his ear with the earpiece he’d been given at the front desk and loaded the audio tour to his omni-tool.

“John, you’ve been talking about the ‘old days’ non-stop for the past two months! I figured a little history might be right up your alley.” Kaidan likewise synced his audio tour. “Where should we start?”

“Oh let’s just get it over with…”

A few moments later and they stood on the threshold of the Reaper War wing. And yep, there were their pictures: hanging up on a banner with the Normandy crew. A small inset on a display near at hand. All over. The two drifted towards where Shepard’s armor was on display on a mannequin.

“That,” Kaidan leaned in and beckoned Shepard to follow the line his finger made toward a little divot in the breastplate, “Is that from Thessia?” Shepard nodded, reached out to almost touch the dent, then pulled his hand back.

“I… I guess I can’t touch it. It’s… not mine, anymore.”

The two drifted until Shepard stopped in front of a glass case. Kaidan looked at him and waggled his eyebrows beneath the sunglasses as the audio started playing in each of their ears.

“Commander Shepard’s Black Widow rifle, in service in 2185 and part of the Commander’s arsenal during the Reaper War. The field generator and mod slots have been extensively improved over market-grade and even typical military-grade equipment. While some of these mods were illegal in Council Space while they were being fit to this rifle, relaxed laws regarding weapons and lethal mods have made them popular for gun enthusiasts and Shepard hobbyists alike. Non-standard modifications were also made to the grip and stock…”

“’Shepard Hobbyists,’” Kaidan whispered in Shepard’s other ear. Shepard grimaced, eyebrows furrowing under sunglasses.

“It’s weird seeing it behind glass like this,” Shepard whispered. The audio went on about the other modifications, notable battles it was used in, and finally concluded with a light chime. “Huh,” Shepard said when it had finished. “They didn’t mention the little mark.”

Shepard made to scooch in between the glass of the exhibit and a half-wall, trying to peer into the glass from the back. He waved Kaidan over, who looked both ways before awkwardly trying to squeeze behind the case with Shepard. Shepard pointed:

“There, just on the side of the scope…. See it?”

Kaidan squinted, almost put his nose up to the glass. There, etched in spidery, thin scratches beneath the scope were the letters ‘KA’.

“That’s… no? Really?” Kaidan guffawed, caught the attention of some other tourists who stared, upset.

“Need to remind myself what I’m fighting for.” Shepard grinned.

“When did you etch that on?”

“That one boring firefight on Noveria.”

“We’d only been together—”

“—officially—"

“—for, what a week at that point?” Kaidan seemed incredulous, but the warmth behind the dark glasses was still obvious.

“What can I say. I know a good thing when I see it,” Shepard replied haughtily.

“Easy to say  14 years later, about the man who would be your husband,” Kaidan chuckled. The two of them squeezed out from behind the display. “I bet you used to carve every guy you dated into a gun.”

“Only you.”

“Well,” Kaidan’s mouth twisted into a wry, shy smirk. “I’ll be taking a closer look at the rest of your stuff in here, today.” He reached for Shepard’s hand and held it as they strolled on to the next exhibit.

[badbatchposts]

Quiet Corners of the Galaxy, Chapter 11

While on a routine mission for Cid, the Bad Batch encounter a woman fleeing from the Empire. Crosshair suspects her seemingly free-spirited, nomadic existence is actually a cover for something else, but struggles to keep his attraction toward her in check as their personalities and ideals clash.

Relevant tags/content warnings: Slow Burn, Enemies to Lovers, Periodic Smut, Canon-Typical Violence, Alcohol Use

Chapters posted 1-2x weekly!

Read the full fic so far on AO3

Read previous chapters on Tumblr: Ch. 1 l Ch. 2 l Ch. 3 l Ch. 4 l Ch. 5 l Ch. 6 l Ch. 7 l Ch. 8 l Ch. 9 l Ch. 10

Chapter 11 summary: Dara and Crosshair return to town to get more intel, and Crosshair has a creative way of maintaining their cover when a few people get suspicious.

It was late afternoon by the time Dara returned to camp. Tech and Wrecker were stationed near the villa, finishing out their turn on surveillance, while Hunter and Echo rested outside the Marauder. Crosshair, it seemed, had returned before her—she had lost sight of him in the trees almost immediately—but was now sprawled on top of the ship, looking through the scope of his rifle into the distance. She gestured toward him after greeting the others.

“He tell you we’re going back later?”

Echo nodded. “He’s in a bad mood about it.”

“Big surprise.”

Hunter smiled a little. “Hope he didn’t drive you too crazy. What’s all this, then?” he asked, peaking into her basket.

“Dinner. How about you put those knife skills to use. These all need to be rinsed and then chopped.” Dara began unloading her supplies while Hunter and Echo looked at her with surprise. She raised an eyebrow. “What? We needed a reason to be in town, and I don’t like living exclusively on ration bars and dehydrated meals when I can help it.”

“She dug some of those out of the dirt,” Crosshair offered unhelpfully from his nest.

Dara rolled her eyes. “This may shock you, but that’s actually where food comes from.” Hunter gave the tubers a skeptical sniff. “Those need to be cooked before they’re digestible,” she warned. “Come on. I’ll show you.”

She put them to work quickly in the Marauder’s tiny galley, chopping the vegetables and herbs she had purchased at the market as well as the fungi, then mixing seasonings and liquids into the mixture before cooking it down to create a filling. Hunter peeled and chopped the tubers with characteristic ease, vibroblade moving nearly faster than the eye could track it. At Dara’s instructions, Echo boiled and mashed them before they were mixed with a fluffy yellow powder to create a dough. She demonstrated to Hunter how to wet his hands and form the dough around the filling, creating neat little balls that they passed along to Echo to steam in batches. A pleasant smell, equal parts meaty, vegetal, and bready, began to fill the Marauder as they cooked.

At some point Crosshair’s nosiness won out over his aloofness, and he climbed down off the ship to sit in a corner and watch them, occasionally offering his snide commentary on his brothers’ culinary skills. Between rude remarks, he considered Dara carefully, although she resolutely ignored him, sparing him not a single glance. The foraging seemed to support her story of living off-the-grid, although that was also a field survival skill that the batch was reasonably familiar with. She seemed to be at ease cooking, dropping a bit of her guard and the charm that she used to disguise it, and her interactions with Hunter and Echo were amiable more than anything, although Crosshair’s jaw tensed occasionally at the way she had to brush past Hunter when moving about the tight galley.

When everything was prepared, Dara set out the tray of steaming buns on the table. “Alright, that’s it. Dig in,” she instructed, grabbing one in her fingers and taking a generous bite. Echo and Hunter eagerly helped themselves, extolling the virtues of Dara’s foraging skills and cooking lessons as they savored them. Even Crosshair let out a begrudging grunt of approval, which finally drew Dara’s attention to him.

“You didn’t contribute,” Dara pointed out to him critically.

He gave her a smug look. “I provided entertainment and moral support.”

She fixed him with a glare. “I think I should go back alone later. It’s important for us to try to get more information on Prium and the villa, and people find you unpleasant to be around.”

Crosshair raised one eyebrow. “People?”

“Me. I find you unpleasant to be around.” However Dara had managed to hold in her irritation since getting back, it now seemed to be breaking through.  

“Dinner was good, but you still have to take him,” Hunter interrupted, rising from the table. “We’ll make it up to you.”

“Oh? Will you?” Dara instantly shifted moods, smiling up flirtatiously at the Sergeant. He gave her a wink and a chuckle in response.

Echo gathered up the remaining food to take to Tech and Wrecker as they swapped shifts. “Next time we do this, I get to go to town and hang out in a bar with Dara, and Crosshair can go on the boring stake-out all night,” he grumbled.

“I’m sure that can be arranged,” she replied charmingly.

Hunter and Echo departed, leaving the pair alone again. Crosshair looked at her carefully. “You haven’t forgotten about our little conversation the other night, have you?” His voice was quiet, casually venomous.

Dara got up, removing their pistols from the basket, and fitting hers into the concealed holster between her shoulder blades before handing the other to him to hide on his person. “Come on. Let’s get this over with.”

***

The bar was more crowded than Crosshair would have liked, and he had the sneaking suspicion that it was because there was little else to do in the town. The guards that he had noticed outside the lab earlier were there, celebrating the end of their shifts with a green, frothing beverage that reminded Crosshair of swamp water. A few of the other patrons also appeared to be lab workers, judging by their uniforms; they clustered together in small groups, looking nearly as glum as he felt. He would have much preferred surveillance duty. At least it would be quiet.

The lab director had been conversing engagingly with Dara from the moment they had arrived, hardly bothering to feign interest in her fake husband. “So, what sort of projects are you working on now? Anything exciting?” Dara inquired.

Raab tapped the side of his pudgy nose—a little too flirtatiously, for Crosshair’s tastes—in response to her query. “Ah ah, I’m afraid that’s sensitive information. Although I can hint that some of our recent work promises to be quite crucial for the galaxy. Galactic safety and security, even.”

“Of course! We would be nothing without scientific progress. And—forgive me, but is it true what they say about Dr. Prium? I’ve heard he’s quite a visionary.” Crosshair thought he saw a stormy expression momentarily cross Raab’s face at that comment. Dara’s eyes were calculating; it hadn’t escaped her notice, either.

“Yes, yes,” Raab said, a little huffily. “We owe a great deal to our founder. He’s a brilliant man.”

Dara leaned in conspiratorially and rested a hand on Raab’s arm, ready to exploit the employee’s apparent resentment toward his boss. “Without a doubt. But I think we all know that so often the people at the top love to take the credit and pass the blame. So I just wondered if he’s as incredible as they say he is. I’m sure many people at the company are integral to its accomplishments. You direct an entire lab, after all.”

Raab preened a little under the woman’s attentions and chortled. “I must admit, Prium can be something of an eccentric. And very protective of his research. A bit paranoid, if you ask me, hardly trusts anyone.”

“Paranoid? Surely not. He must trust you, after all, you’re his right hand!”

Crosshair thought that she was laying it on a little thick, but sure enough, the Sullustan puffed up proudly and not a little arrogantly.

“Indeed! I daresay I’m the only one in the company who’s ever been to his home lab,” Raab boasted. Perhaps he was even dumber than he looked. 

Dara’s feigned confusion, drawing her eyebrows prettily together. “Home lab? But he has a top-tier facility right here in town, with a full staff.”

“Ah, yes, but he prefers to take on some of our special projects alone. Top secret, you know? He won’t even let his maids clean up after him down there, has to do it all himself! Can you imagine?”

Dara had the conversation well in-hand, and Crosshair allowed his attention to wander. She was good at getting people to talk, and he wondered, yet again, what it was that she was hiding behind all that carefulness. Since their confrontation the other night, she seemed controlled by an iron will; although she had protested against his involvement in her part of the mission, she had mostly just ignored him, not rising to his needling remarks, no rage or frustration peeking out beneath her mask. Irritation, yes, but she seemed dead set on not reacting, especially not in front of the rest of the Batch. She was getting along well with them; the dinner stunt had ingratiated her with Echo and Hunter, and no doubt Wrecker and Tech would be similarly impressed.

He needed to find a more efficient way to break her.

With a malicious smirk, Crosshair took advantage of Raab’s momentary distraction from the conversation as he greeted one of his passing employees and pulled Dara into his lap. She didn’t have time to protest discreetly before Raab’s attention returned.

“Hunter. What’s gotten into you?” Dara scolded lightly. She swatted at his chest, giving him a severe look which she transformed into apologetic before directing it at Raab.

“Young lovers! Can’t keep their hands off one another,” the Sullustan said, directing a sordid look at the both of them which raised Crosshair’s hackles. He didn’t like Raab imagining what the pair of pretend newlyweds might be getting up to in their private time.

Squirming a little, Dara continued the conversation with the scientist as Crosshair idly rubbed one possessive hand along her thigh, relishing her warmth under his palm. For a moment he was even grateful to be out of his armor and in civilian clothes; he could feel every shift she made, every slight shiver and reaction to his touch as her body pressed against his. Glancing around the bar, he noticed the guards from the lab were staring at them and glared back until they looked away uncomfortably. When he traced his fingers up to the nape of Dara’s neck, she finally broke off her chat with Raab.

“Well, I think we had better get going, since Hunter can’t seem to behave any longer. Thank you so much, Doctor, it’s been a lovely time.”

The scientist looked at her seriously, then grasped her outstretched hand, unexpectedly raising it to his lips to brush a kiss across her knuckles. “The pleasure was all mine. How wonderful to meet such an enthusiastic mind.”

Lifting Dara off his lap, Crosshair stood and nodded coolly at the Sullustan, and they exited the bar. The second they were in the moist, open air, Dara reached over and pinched his arm.

“What the hell was that,” she hissed.

He shrugged, mentally resolving to get her back for the pinch as soon as possible. Perhaps with a pinch elsewhere, somewhere it would make her jump. “We got what we needed.”

“I could have gotten more.”

“Yes, I’m sure you could have spent the whole night flirting. Would you have preferred me to leave so you could get on your knees for him and see what else he’d tell you?” That had done it; she was furious, clenching a fist like she was barely keeping herself from hitting him.

“You kriffing—” she began explosively, but Crosshair interrupted her, hauling her into the dark entrance of a closed business and pressing her up against the door. Before she could keep talking, he kissed her hard, memorizing the surprised squeak she made with enormous satisfaction.

“Eyes on us,” he breathed into her ear when she broke away. “Lab guards from the bar.” A shared glance told him that she understood before she pressed her mouth back against his, throwing her arms over his shoulders and running her fingers along the back of his neck and scalp.

Hungrily—there was no reason for him not to enjoy this while he could—he pried his tongue between her lips, deepening the kiss, smirking at how she let him in to explore her mouth with barely any resistance. That wasn’t to say she was hesitant; in fact, her tongue met his eagerly, vying to taste him back with an intensity that shot a pulse like electricity straight to his hardening cock.

Crosshair nibbled her bottom lip, sliding his hands down her waist and along the curves of her hips, then pulled away to suckle at the crook of her neck, grazing his teeth along the delicate skin. Oh, how badly he had wanted this, to have the chance to pick her apart.

“Oh, Hunter,” Dara moaned a little more loudly than necessary. Fury swelled up in him to hear her saying his brother’s name yet again, goading him with it. Baring his teeth, he bit down harshly at her throat. He was hoping to hear another of those little squeaks, but having no such luck, he ran one hand along her ass and thigh before hitching her leg up at the knee to wrap around his waist and press her tightly to his erection.

“You’re going to pay for this,” she murmured. Crosshair exulted in the venom in her voice, enjoying it almost as much as the way she couldn’t resist pushing a little closer to grind his hard length against her center.

“So will you, burk’yc.” He trailed his lips down to her collarbone, tugging the top of her shirt down a few inches to expose more of her flesh to his attentions.

“Not here, darling,” Dara giggled, the malice back under control. “Why don’t we take a walk to somewhere more private?” Smiling wickedly at her, Crosshair let her leg drop to the ground and, keeping one hand controllingly grasped around the nape of her neck, led her through the dark streets in the opposite direction of the Marauder.

“Still watching?” she muttered a few moments later as they entered the forest surrounding town.

“They gave up following a few minutes ago, but we should take a roundabout way back to be sure.” Dara swatted at his hand when he made no move to release her.

He watched her slyly and let her go, inserting a toothpick in his mouth. She was seething, barely keeping her anger in check. Lovely, he thought.

“You couldn’t think of any other way to deal with that situation?” she finally spat out.

“Don’t forget, you’re the one who started all this, burk’yc,” he crowed.  

“Oh, but you’re certainly the only one who enjoyed it.”

With his keen eyesight, Crosshair could tell she was grinding her teeth, but he knew it was too dark for her to detect his smug look in turn. “Just like how I’m going to enjoy how you try to explain that pretty new bitemark on your neck to Hunter,” he replied.  

This time, when Dara pulled her knife, she was threatening him. The darkness was his ally as he deftly disarmed her, catching her by the elbow just as she stumbled over a tree root.

“Kriffing kark. I can’t see shit out here,” she huffed. Shaking out of his grasp, she pulled a flashlight out of her pack and marched off, not once checking to see if he followed.

***

That kriffing asshole. She was going to kill him. As soon as they were back to Ord Mantell, she was going to kill him and leave before his brothers could get their revenge on her. She would have to make it quick—without the element of surprise she doubted she would be able to take him down and then of course she wouldn’t have the time to spend flaying every bit of his skin off or engaging in all the other various and sundry forms of torture he deserved, but still, she was going to kill him.

And before she did that, she was definitely going to fuck Hunter and make sure he knew all about it.

Dara tried to slow her breathing, unclench her fists and jaw. She was laying on the nose of the Marauder, staring up at the stars, trying to recognize the shapes they took on this unfamiliar planet, connect them into new, mysterious geometries, create neat little polygons to shove her thoughts into—one of the many rituals she’d created to help tamp down her emotions when they threatened to burst out of her like a dam breaking. If she couldn’t quiet her mind, she’d never get to sleep, and tomorrow they were supposed to make their plan for infiltrating the villa.

Speaking of which, that smarmy Sullustan had given her a bad feeling. Whatever it was that the lab was working on, she had yet to hear of something considered essential for galactic security under the Empire that wasn’t terrible news.

And she could have found out more, if it weren’t for that kriffing asshole.

That asshole, who had taken every opportunity today to touch her (and she must really be touch-starved from living alone so long, his hands on her had felt so good) then accused her—not for the first time—of planning on sleeping with someone to get something out of them, then the kiss (his mouth was so hungry, he was a better kisser than she’d imagined) and his closeness (kark, when she’d felt that pressed up against her she’d nearly forgotten where they were) and he’d left a bruise on her for anyone to see, the controlling little—

She was going to scream if she kept thinking about this. Which was exactly what he wanted. To drive her insane.

She was going to kill him.

Next chapter

Tag List: @stardusthuntress @skellymom @megmegalodondon

A quick note on my posting schedule! Work is pretty busy right now and, although I have a lot more of the fic written, I've skipped ahead a bit in my drafting so this is the last complete chapter I have in order, which means I need to dedicate some time to filling in the gaps. This means that the posting schedule will likely slow down from twice a week--I'll still try to post once a week or once every two weeks to keep things going at a regular pace!

In the meantime, I really appreciate comments for encouragement and hope you're enjoying it!

[unpopularvivian]

Edward: Okay I brought Toby, This should be better.

Toby: Hey Rosie I heard you made things that kill people?

Rosie: Whaaat? Nooo, I just make things that help observe the deaths you are causing.

Toby: W-why do you make rifle scopes?

Rosie: I started in world war two back in America and you know old habits die hard, you just kinda get into a routine and you keep making scopes.

Toby: What else are you making?

Rosie: Well since then I expanded my business and started making a bunch of other gun accessories like stands for machine guns and smgs, bigger magazines, we even make our own brand of holster!

Toby: I mean you may not be causing the deaths but your equipping people really well for them! Also how did you get the money to start producing scopes?

Rosie: I actually started by making cars as a side hustle.

Toby: Your cars would have dominated the American market of you handed out all these with every car.

Rosie: Yeah I said that in the meeting but they said it wasn't an appropriate way to deal with road rage.

Okay cutting away from it for a sec, if Rosie did having a fighting style I imagine her to be the type to have a pistol and some sort of sniper riffle. Cause ya know, shunting for the pistol, weaving in and out of trucks like weaving in and out of buildings or debris, and the sniper cause a pistol can't do well for long range and it seems like she doesn't have a problem hitting trucks and letting them roll, just like a sniper lets his bullets fly.

Lolololol. We should probably call this au: "Edward Gets Caught With Whiff's War Crimes and Other Bullshit"

Also, totally agree with Rosie having a pistol and a sniper rifle? Fuck with her friends and die.

[baelpenrose]

Project Praetorian 49: Bleeding Edge, Part I

The kids have their second major battle, their first totally unsupported combat engagement. This battle gets a lot rougher. Before it's over, we will see our first praetorian casualty. Imperator has kept a lot of secrets, and a Praetorian will pay the price. Beta-read by @canyouhearthelight

Xavier

Everyone was twitchy as the team grabbed their gear and piled into the dropship. The two newbies looked especially nervous. Mark was already staring at the GPS and the satellite tracking data of where the alien craft was supposedly coming down. Echo and Amyrillis were in the cockpit of the dropship - apparently Amaryllis had been flying the damn thing in simulation for ages, hell, even a few non-combat live flights.

Still, Mark was neurotically looking over the display already, like he was trying to figure out what to do. They’d talked about maneuvers, drilled them, but the newbies didn’t…

“Hey. Xavier. You’re second in command here, right?” Dante asked.

“Yeah?” 

“You guys fought before?”

“Twice. Won both times.”

“Lost anyone?”

“Not yet. Stay close, and do what Mark and I say.” 

Dante nodded. Xavier glanced over to Casey. Mark’s eyes were flicking across the team. Molly looked like she wanted to say something as Kimmy fiddled with her weapon. Jared was busy tightening his rig, checking everyone else’s. 

Micah had stripped the magazine out of his weapon, racked back the bolt, and checked the rounds in the magazine, then reloaded it. He’d done it several times in the last several minutes. Xavier was idly drumming his hand on his leg, wishing that Micah would stop the weapon checks. 

Vergil was checking his scope - he’d been playing with bigger and bigger rifles, with more outrageous recoil compensation. But now he had the most outsized post-market ear protection possible and a truly monstrous muzzle brake, and he was looking at Kimmy. “You nervous?”

“Apparently I can’t die, and you saw how I was scarfing down as we were getting ready.”

Xavier was trying to watch, vaguely annoyed at the way Mark never took a moment to deal with people's issues when he was trying to do tactics, but of course, Curtis had talked to him about this - that wasn’t really Mark’s job. It was his, and to a degree, Casey’s. He was senior NCO, and Casey was moving into being another one. Mark was the officer, Mark’s job was to be actual commander, worried about tactics. 

“If you’re nervous, you don’t have to be. We’ve been practicing for this nonstop. This time we actually have our own, dedicated pilot, our dropship is hardened. Our comms are better. We’re better coordinated. We know what we can do, and we know what they can do. We’ve got support from two platoons of Imperator grunts, and they’re bringing gunships with them.”  He signed as he spoke, and Molly turned and translated for Mia. At some point they’d need to make sure that squad kept together, or find some universal language equivalent…Translating orders in the field would be an ongoing problem…

Mia herself was remarkably calm, and Jonathan was checking the straps on Shiloh’s armor, making sure none of it rubbed, the gentleness of his movements belying the incredible power in his frame. 

Xavier took a breath. They could do this. He tried not to think about the horrors they’d seen last time. “Casey, you have all the ammo you need?”

“More than enough. Everyone should.”

“Yeah. Uh…Mark…any update on?”

“Yeah.” Mark’s face was pale. “There’s a reason this is taking forever. The target of the landing site, this time, is in rural Guatemala. We’re only gonna get lucky with them avoiding major population centers so much longer - and there’s gotta be a reason the early landings are all western hemisphere.”

“On task?”

“Right. I just…want to understand the enemy. Figure them out better.” His eyes took on a far away look. 

Xavier snapped his fingers. “Mark. Tactics. Strategy later.”

Mark nodded. “Right. So it looks like there’s a canyon near where they’re setting down - Semac Champey. The town they’re hitting is called Lanquin, apparently associated with the native Maya people.” 

“On the nose, isn’t it?”

“Yeah, Spain then the aliens. Trajectory says…one sec…Echo, where are they looking like they’re setting down?”

“About two klicks up the canyon from the town, though from the looks of things if we get unlucky they’re gonna be on the walls of the canyon instead of in it.”

“But if they start on the walls they still have to deploy surface-atmo dropships to bring themselves down from the walls, or they have to be willing to rappel down the sides, which pretty much makes them sitting ducks for Jonathan and Vergil - not a pretty prospect.”

Xavier cut in. “Can’t they pretty much rain hate on us if they’re high enough up then rappel down in peace?”

“Not really. If they try they’re relying on being able to see us - and the canopy of trees at the bottom of the canyon is pretty damn thick. One of the advantages of bullets as opposed to plasma bolts - unless we’re running tracers, which we aren’t, they can’t see where the shots are coming from in the daytime.”  Mark started getting nervous. “Echo, we know where in relation to Lanquin the enemy dropship is coming down?”

“Uh…Coming down a bit coastward, actually, like they’re dropping in from orbit on a ballistic arc, it looks like, using thrusters to guide them down. We had that a little from the last dropship, and the signatures are looking scattered.”

“Interesting. Maybe more than one?”

“Maybe but they’re also all coming down three klicks east, and a tiny bit north - some are gonna be inside the canyon, some are gonna be on the ridge. Think an enemy force about half the size of the last one we fought?”

“And against that we have no backup.”

“I think we have like a company of troopers. And they’re gonna arrive late.”

Xavier sucked in his breath. They did have almost twice the Praetorians, but half of them were newbies. He glanced at Amaryllis and Dante - not quite. They were trained, they just weren’t meshed with the rest of the team. Like Echo. With any luck they’d be just as good as she was. Then again, the thing that had made them so devastating wasn’t individual capability, it was their teamwork - yes, they were lethal, but they knew how to work together. Shiloh and Jonathan were far from the most powerful, but they coordinated so well that no one, absolutely no one, beat them in certain exercises for that reason. He couldn’t help but worry that the lack of training time with their newest members was going to be a problem.

Mark was already planning. “Alright. So, I figure we’ll drop and disperse in this section of jungle, about a kilometer outside Lanquin - there’s a ridgeline, here, for Jonathan to set up shop that gives him adequate room to play hell on the walls with the MG if they start crawling down them, and they’re gonna have to walk into the open to try to push the position. Vergil’s gonna set up in the trees and do basically the same thing, but he’s going to hold his fire until he starts seeing Spikes. Myself, Jared, and Molly are going to serve as a mobile reserve, with me and Jared mostly serving to destroy and disable critical enemy deployments while Molly attempts to disable any mobile shielding array. Kimmy, Mia, and Micah are going flanking along the ridge. If things get too hot, they can withdraw. Micah, teleport. Kimmy, do some gymnastic parkour. And Mia…just run. In the meantime, get into position and cut up their attack to the best of your ability. When things get really colorful we’re going to pull back to the chokepoint a little further up the road, and let Casey and Xavier turn everything into crispy bits.”

Xavier had feelings about being kept in reserve to massacre the enemy if they got far enough up, but he saw the sense of the plan. 

Dante spoke first. “Me?”

“You’re doing the same thing as Vergil and Jonathan, but like Vergil, you’re holding fire til we see vehicles, then you’re firing to pop those open. Save your weapon and actually test it. Shiloh, you’re with me, Jared, and Molly. Echo, I want you to go with us too, see if you can’t get a piece of enemy tech and hack their battlenet and get a better idea of what’s happening so we can figure out where to go. Amaryllis. You’ll stay overhead, and come in with rocket pods and chaingun if we need you.”

Everyone let out a whoop. 

Casey looked around alongside Xavier and for a moment their eyes met. Xavier gave her a nod. Mark took her hand and squeezed, and Xavier swapped a look with Shiloh. 

Xavier spoke to everyone. “Alright. We’ve got a lot of work to do. Let’s try to keep everyone alive this time. Any luck we keep all those civvies safe and they find alien corpses and wonder what the hell happened.” He glanced at Molly. “We get lucky, no humans have to die today. We can rout them without them ever touching the village. Send them scrambling back to their dropships.” 

Kimmy

First out of the dropship with her makeshift squad, and holding the carbine in her hands. She was running behind Mia, who was effortlessly running, even as the comms buzzed in their ears.

“Okay. Should be a small group of enemies up ahead - if you can hit it, quick and quiet, before they fire back…”

Kimmy ran ahead, slinging her carbine across her back and pulling her MP5, even as Mia picked up the pace to something obscene. Micah was falling behind them. Kimmy saw something strange - figures, bipedal, moving weird. Like huge frogs. Six of them were even bigger - spiky lizards, moving like apes, with snakey necks. 

She hadn’t seen the aliens, not in person, but she’d seen cadavers, and seen them in film, and she knew what to do. She rushed forward, shoulder rolling into the brush and throwing a grenade ahead of her into their midst. Micah blurred, reappearing with a loud pop and began spraying bullets into their midst from another angle. Kimmy opened fire, and then Mia was in the middle of them. Mia sprinted in, charging back and forth, firing fast, rapid bursts, finally dropping her carbine into the sling, and switched to pistol. When she’d almost cleared, she shot a Spike in both knees before shooting it almost point blank in the head.

Mia reloaded her weapons, and the flanker squad reloaded their magazines before they kept rushing. “Good job, guys.” Kimmy said, quietly, signing to Mia. 

She took a breath, and they kept moving up the ridge. There was a small group of the frog-guys…Croaks, moving up a ways down.  Micah just dropped a grenade down on them - even if he’d taken a few extra seconds to double check where it’d land. A few more shots from the carbine and the last ones went down, tumbling down the ridge, dead.

A band of Spikes were already moving up and she practically cartwheeled behind a boulder as they began spraying plasma in her direction. The armor absorbed the heat, though she winced at the pain - she started shooting back, and managed to drop one of them, though it took far, far too much. They were, unlike the croaks, smart enough to get behind trees and rocks, and then found themselves flanked by Micah, who had taken advantage of the noise to warp himself again - even if he was shaking, he was now at their flank and was steadily picking them off. 

Mia rushed forward, zig-zagging as she came on and taking advantage of her reflexes, even as Kimmy continued to shoot, suddenly taking the Spike’s other flank - and then Kimmy found her rock half melted, and dove away from it, a burn bursting in agony across her back. She scrambled, pain already receding as her body healed, but her armor hung wrong off her body, and Micah rushed over. 

“Shit. Your armor’s ruined. Your jacket’s fucked.”

Kimmy pulled a spare jacket out of her rucksack, and threw it on, then tossed aside the body armor. “No point in body armor, it doesn’t stop the blasts. Maybe the jackets can catch some of the heat. We’ll keep going a little further.” She grabbed an FSR out of the bag and scarfed it, already craving food to make up for what she’d just had to regenerate. The taste was foul, the food was dense, but it didn’t matter. “How are we doing on ammo?”

“Doing well enough, but…Shit!” 

Mia was already sprinting, and Kimmy grabbed a branch and vaulted herself into a clump of brushes. A mixed group, much larger than the previous, was approaching, spotting the destroyed force, and looking around. Kimmy pulled a grenade off her belt, and in only a moment, they all launched their grenades, scattering the attackers - and sprayed the zone down with fire. 

Forcing herself forward, Kimmy realized they’d made a mistake - as they rounded a bend, a huge force of Spikes became visible, and for just an instant, they saw each other. Then she ripped a grenade off her belt, threw it into their midst, and jumped down the slope. As she fell, she grabbed a branch and tumbled, tucked, and flipped. As she felt the adrenaline course through her, she saw a tree come up, and kicked off another overhanging branch with her feet, grabbed another with her hands, flipping round and round to kill her momentum before flinging herself into empty space…

Then she was falling again, then hitting the lower ridgeline and rolling, continuing to run. Micah had teleported down, gasping, and Mia was apparently running the way only she could, hoping to hit a trailhead and rejoin them, even as Kimmy fired frantically up at the enemy, who were now pursuing but now had no real angle to shoot. She fled, backtracking up the trail and hoping to rejoin the line of the team.

“Mark! Get us some backup! Or make sure Vergil is ready to cover us!”

Vergil

His heart caught in his throat when he’d realized that somewhere along the way, the plan had gone wrong for the flankers. He was already seeing Jonathan laugh as the bigger boy scythed down those attempting to climb down the northern side of the canyon, enemy bodies rolling down the sides. Jonathan then shifted his weapon to fire simply down the throat of the canyon as a wave of Croaks began appearing, firing blindly in the general direction of the gunfire. A few plasma bolts had flashed in their direction, but with the cover of the tree canopy to shield their location from sight, the enemy were firing blind - even if now some of the trees were ablaze in ways that he didn’t like. 

He could see, through the scope, and even without it if he concentrated, what looked like a Spike. He didn’t have a great angle on the target, so he took aim and carefully sighted - then fired. He saw the figure drop. 

Then he saw what he’d been dreading. Some large, too-smoothly moving vehicle, with heavy weaponry approaching, attempting to burn through the brush. He pointed it out to Dante, who began powering up his railgun and sighting at the alien tank. He knew the railgun could punch through the armor - Dante had explained that on the dropship. Punching through shields was another question. 

Vergil forced himself not to focus on that when he heard the crackle of screaming through the comms.  “We’re coming up the south ridge! We need cover! Mia’s falling back, she just linked back up with us! Can you see us yet?”

He twisted in his position, even as Jonathan let out another long burst with the MG and scythed down another dozen or so enemy fighters. Vergil saw Kimmy jumping in a way that made his guts twist with worry, then she turned around, and fire off a series of bursts, pursued by enemy troops. Mia was rushing, but she was tired, slightly burned, and Micah was ragged. 

He fired once, twice, and then a third time. Each shot was a dead Spike. He had to reload, and then as he did so, the most spectacular crack he’d ever heard as Dante’s railgun fired. Actinic lightning trailed the tungsten slug as it ripped through the air, stripping electrons off molecules as it went, and slammed into the tank, the force simply too extreme for the shields to deflect and the dumb, straightforward violence of a hypersonic projectile immune to the premature detonation a missile would have suffered. It ripped through the tank’s armor as though it were tissue with such horrific force that the shockwave pulverized muscle and bone of the crew, and Vergil could see a spray of what was definitely biological material leave the exit hole on the far side of the tank. Then the machine’s containment for its power source failed and the tank exploded, sending globules of blue-white starfire into the jungle around it with an even more horrible boom.

His eyes burning, Vergil tore his gaze away slightly faster to escape the pain, even as Jonathan took advantage of the enemy troops now backlit by the burning tank to begin slaughtering them. The enemy on the ridge, shocked by the destruction, fell as Vergil took ten shots in as many seconds, every shot a headshot. Before they could recover, Mia and Kimmy had countercharged, and even as they had gone all the way through their enemy and started to come back around. Micah had teleported into the middle and executed the squad leader. The flankers began picking their way back down the hill. 

Then another dropship - a simpler, surface-atmosphere affair, began pulling from the southern side of the canyon, and Dante’s railgun began crackling as he charged it again.

“Hold that position and do what you can about those dropships. Apparently there’s another force that got dropped in behind us. Shiloh, stay with them, help out the flankers when they get back. Flanking team, disrupt more after you get back and Shiloh looks you over. We’re going to check out another force that got dropped off. Amaryllis, you said there was another point that got enemies dropped in? Yeah, go deal with that, then take Casey and Xavier to the far side of the village, another force got dropped off over there and I want them taking out that choke point. Drop my force off at the south ridge.”

Vergil took another shot, but for a moment, he thought he saw something flickering in the treeline on the ridge, but couldn’t identify it.

He took aim, but before he did, he wrote it off as nerves. 

Then he spotted another Spike who had the decoration he had definitely come to recognize as an officer’s mark and took the shot, sending its brain matter across the dirt.

Amaryllis

The engines whined as she lifted the gunship up and the teams got back in. D&D logic said you weren’t supposed to split the party, but military history said force multipliers were a thing. She thought fantasy rules should apply to this, based on everything, but then again this was definitely sci-fi and even if they got shelved together there were distinctions and everyone said Mark knew what he was doing, so she’d roll with his judgment call. 

She deployed Casey and Xavier where she was so instructed, wondering at the prudence of leaving the two most emotionally stable people in the same spot, then dropping Mark and the rest of that squad on another ridge, where Mark indicated they were going to be flanking a fourth enemy force. 

Then she took off, going to the position where supposedly, the enemy were beginning to unload heavy forces.  

She kept her ears open on the comms, but she was nervous. They were going to be fine. They were going to be fine.

She opened up the targeting and looked down, opening the fire selector for the chainguns. There were a lot of infantry up there and she should probably sweep that as quickly as she could.   The guns, firing a barrage of .50 caliber hate, raked back and forth across the aliens scrambling to deploy, and before they could do anything to get their artillery set up to respond she was firing off her rockets. Then she looked at her counters - she might have had a little too much fun with that. The rockets were unguided, so she could use them a little against shielded targets, but missile use required shields to be down.

Still, that target had pretty well been scraped off, and she was already going wide to see what Mark and his team were up to, trying to recon scan the battlefield. Dante was probably doing fine, he was in a good position. Maybe she should go give that area some support..?

No, she decided. She’d stay high, and pull in with air support when called. That was the responsible thing.

[sednonamoris]

life ain’t fair and the world is mean

Pairing: John Marston x gn!reader

Summary: Arthur’s decision after meeting with Mary Linton again leaves you caught between a rock and a hard place.

Warnings: Angst, so much dialogue, complicated love squares (?), sibling dynamics

Word count: 1,383

A/N: Felt absolutely deranged writing this ily all pls enjoy <3

Series masterlist • AO3

—

Everyone at camp knows Arthur got a letter from that Mary Linton.

As much as he swears up and down that whatever was between them is long over, you can tell the heartache hasn’t faded the moment his eyes land on the familiar cursive. He mouths along like he can taste her on the words she’s written.

You look away to give him his privacy and grimace something close to sympathy. Whatever it is she’s asking for after all this time, he’ll give it to her - at the very least he’ll go to her.

Poor bastard.

Almost-loves last longer and hurt more than real ones. You ought to know.

He rides off when early morning mist still clings to the lowest parts of the land with dewdrop fingerprints. Abigail watches him go with a pinched look on her face. John watches her watch him with a frown. You pretend not to notice any of it. 

Hosea does the opposite, actually seeking John out. John looks over at you helplessly, and you tip your hat with a faint smile just to watch his eyes widen with betrayal. You listen long enough to hear the beginnings of that wheezing cough you’ve worried over for weeks and a far be it from me interfering in your business before snagging an unmanned rifle and heading off on guard duty. Maybe Hosea will have better luck than you and Dutch and Arthur and Abigail and everyone else knocking some sense into him. 

It’s a pleasant spring day, warm with enough of a cool breeze to keep the worst of the heat and the bugs at bay. You find a spot to stand midway up the path and settle in against the bark of one of the taller maples. Sunlight filters through the canopy of leaves above and leaves everything dappled gold. You breathe in deep and sigh out springtime. Almost summer, now. 

Horseshoe Overlook has been good for the gang. Valentine is just big enough and just used enough to seasonal workers that you pass off fine, even despite Arthur’s determination to fight half the town. Strauss has him collecting debts already, and Dutch has asked that he see about Micah’s predicament over in Strawberry. You can’t say you miss having that one around, but loyalty is loyalty. Dutch would surely ask him to rescue any one of you if the situation were reversed.

In the meantime the girls have been sniffing out leads, and the boys have been robbing just about everyone they come across. For your part, you’ve been scoping out local homesteads and farms looking for anyone who seems to be sitting on decent animals or piles of cash. So far it doesn’t look like you’ll be lucky enough to find both. Guthrie Farms was your destination yesterday, and you think you’ll pay them another visit one of these nights to relieve them of some choice cattle. There’s a buyer up near Three Sisters in the market. 

In the back of your mind the concern about Cornwall and those bonds lingers, but so far it seems he’s been content to live and let live. Hopefully that lasts. You let the thought fade and settle in for a morning of boredom and birdsong. 

—

Your watch is almost up when someone rustles through the brush, approaching at a steady trot. 

“Who goes there?” you call out, and stand a little straighter with your gun. 

“Arthur, you dumbass!”

It’s only just afternoon - somehow you expected he’d be gone for the day at least.

“Such manners,” you mock, but pause once he’s close enough for you to see the look on his face.

He’s been crying, those cornflower eyes even sadder than normal. There’s a resigned stoop to his shoulders. A pinch between his brows. You wonder just what exactly Mary had to say after all this time.

He ducks his head and murmurs a halfhearted sorry.

“S’fine,” you dismiss with as kind a look you can manage. You tilt your head up at him when he lingers, looking like a deer caught out in the open.  

“Do you have a minute to talk, actually?” He can’t quite meet your eyes. 

“‘Course. Let me swap with Karen and I’ll meet you.”

He nods gratefully and rides up to the nearest hitching post while you do just that, a quick handoff with a look that begs her not to ask too many questions. Karen glances over to Arthur, then back to you, about as solemn as she gets. She nods you on your way before making her way into the treeline.

He’s waiting for you on the outskirts of camp, just past the chickens and partially hidden by a copse of half-grown saplings. 

“The hell did that Linton woman do to you?” you ask, hands on your hips. 

Arthur huffs a sarcastic laugh. “More what I did to her. She wanted my help - somethin’ to do with her brother. I told her it’s best we never speak again.”

You puff out a breath. “Damn.”

“Yeah.”

Arthur shifts in place, and you can tell there’s more to it. If he doesn’t know how to say it you doubt you’ll know how to answer, but you guess friends aren’t always for saying the right thing.

“Before I left she gave me back the ring I proposed with. I want, well,” he fumbles, “I been thinkin’ someone ought to do right by Jack and Abigail for a while now. Make sure they’re taken care of, since Marston won’t.”

Of all the things he might’ve said, you can’t decide if you should be more or less shocked that it’s this. Longing looks and stolen dances are one thing, but everyone knows Abigail and John are together, even when they’re not - especially when they’re not. 

“Jesus, is that why you told Mary you won’t see her anymore?”

“No! I don’t know. Maybe.”

“Why are you telling me?” The question is desperate, even to your ears. 

“Dutch an’ Hosea are too close to this, and everyone else is too far off. Guess I was hoping you’d be able to make more sense of it all than me.”

You laugh a terse, bitter laugh. “I ain’t too close? Really? All these years, Arthur, you been like a brother to me, but John— You know this ain’t fair.”

“Most things ain’t.” His eyes are pleading. Sad. Sorry. Damn him. “Just tell me if you think I’m bein’ a fool and I’ll leave it alone.”

And there you have to pause. Because is it really so foolish to want to give Abigail the partner she needs, and Jack the father figure he deserves? The way he looks at them is not lost on you. When he lost that young woman and little boy all those years ago he was inconsolable. In a lot of ways you think he still is, though he hides it everywhere but his eyes. More than anything you want him to be happy. You know that if Abigail will have him, he will be.

But you need John to be happy, too. 

And you feel like the worst person alive, because he isn’t happy with Abigail and he’s not happy without her, either. Mostly he just seems determined to be miserable and make it everyone else’s fault but his own. How the hell are you supposed to help Arthur without hurting John when every choice feels either selfish or spiteful or wrong. The love harbored deep in your bones marks you a traitor.

Because if you were any kind of friend you wouldn't say: “You’re always a fool, Arthur Morgan, but not ‘cause of this.”

But you do.

“Really?” he asks.

“Really.”

He smiles, a little bit of heartbreak and a little bit of hope. 

“After— Well, you know,” he cuts himself off, unable to say their names even after so long. “Feels like it could be a second chance, is all.”

“You believe in those?”

He sighs. “Not really.”

You try to smile, to reassure him, but it doesn’t reach your eyes. He clasps your shoulder in unspoken thanks before leaving you alone on the edge of camp with nothing but your thoughts and a sick feeling in your stomach.

—

When John comes around later that evening you can’t look him in the eye. 

[darkness-and-lavender]

Cycle 2- Run on the Banks

 Between the bush in the shadow of two towering oaks, an Imperial soldier clad in a ghillie bides his time. The soldier positions himself flat upon his stomach against the edge of the dark forest’s floor, his rifle readied and his focused eye staring down its scope. Through the scope he sees the wide banks of the great river Semroc where sand and grass shake hands. The river’s agile current plays a song of calmness, but the soldier is here not for that, nor for the great forest that surrounds the banks.

  The soldier’s shoulder bound radio crackles.

“Are you in position, Private?” Sounded his superior.

“Affirmative Sir,”    

“Our interceptors relayed that the target shall arrive at your location in the next half of the hour. Keep your focus clear, Private and may Aethra’s light be with you. Over and out.”

  The soldier clicked his radio off, his focus back to the river bank before him. The late morning’s foreign sun trickled through the trees that shrouded him and he could feel himself grow warmer under the suit. It would not deter him.     

 His breath quieted, his eye locked down his camouflaged mana rifle’s scope. A hunger now grew inside of him with his anticipation for his prey to emerge into his crosshair.

-

“Going out, tìoraidh ma!” boomed Suvi, a smile within her voice.

 She stepped out of her home and stretched her bare arms towards the late morning’s sunny sky, the chill breeze against her skin quite the refreshment.

 Suvi was in a good mood this day, well, as much as she could be due to the current circumstances. She had been texted with Sean; her partner in “alternative marketing” throughout the morning and he had a surprise for her.

Her gaze towards the skies interrupted, the sound of a paper crunched under her knee high, buckled goth boots took her attention. She snatched up the paper and frowned at what it read.

 It was an article from the Harrowish times; a news outlet that was once respected across the Isle, but now simply existed as a tool for spewing out Imperialist propaganda.

 Today’s edition differed not from the regularly scheduled propaganda. It featured storylines such as “evidence” that the Bronzewing Republic to the north; The Aethren Empire’s greatest rival, had actually planned for an invasion of Harrow.

 Suvi didn’t have to read it to know the story could not be more of a falsehood. 

“What a heap of pure, unfiltered Turducken shite!” She exclaimed with an eyeroll.

 From underneath the paper, her hand crackled with minute bolts of dark lightning that in seconds set the paper ablaze, its ashes quickly caught in the cool breeze.

 Her cell’s vibration in her sleeveless, black dress pocket drew her out of her disgust. With haste, she fished it out and flipped it open.

Sent 4 seconds ago

Sean: U comin’? lol

Suvi swiftly texted back, though her long black fingernails made it problematic.

Suvi: yea gonna be a feww good minutes, hhold on laddie

Sean: Kk, see ya by the bridge

 She shut her cell with a snap, returned it to her pocket and withdrew her walkman walklady as she preferred to call it.

 Now with her headphones in and totally legally obtained cassette on play, she curved left until she was greeted by the wrought iron fence and gate they led into her backyard.

-

 Deep green vines and their early season blooms of brilliant oranges, yellows and blues, constricted around the fence. White and black striped bumblebees, various sizes of butterflies and even a few black pygmy forest bats up too late in the day took full advantage of these flowers. Suvi greatly envied their carefree nature and ignorance to the world’s problems.

 The backyard of her home always brought Suvi to relaxation even if she refused to admit the mundane made her feel so. Though the cold season of Unheis had recently turned to Ekhtus, her mother had wasted not a second to replant her gardens that with the kiss of time will soon grow to awing flowers, shrubs of strawberries, raspberries, crowberries and elderberries alike and crops of potatoes, cabbage, beets, carrots and the native delectable neeproot that once grew undomesticated and abundantly before the war.

 To the left of the black stone path Suvi took, across from the gardens and on the border of the dark forest, the pocket of an orchid had budded again. By the height if Chaull, the assortment of trees shall bare their fruit of golden pears, wolf citrus and apples of brilliant greens. The few sugar maples that stood by the orchid Suvi and Kuunya had tapped after the last frost. The syrups collected would be used for an array of meals and desserts that Kuunya excelled at preparing.

 Kuunya, always too humble to admit they had great skill in cooking, but they had to not as the food spoke for itself. Suvi, their mother and anyone that had ever eaten their food knew well they were a damn good cook.

 Needless to say, the self- sufficiency of Suvi’s family garden was a privilege to have in these times. Her family’s noble status their saving grace. Many crops and the meals they provided were given without cost to the locals that had little to nothing thanks to the war and occupation’s tyrannical restrictions.

 The end of the garden path Suvi walked broke off towards a shrine to Her Darkness before the woods. A meter tall statue of Undrel carved of onyx many generations ago, stood at its center. 

 Her magnificent, broad raven wings upon her back spread in pride, the curved ram like horns on the sides of her forehead still sharp at the points and her flowing black braids reached down to her ankles. She was clad not, her bosom, curves and genitals exposed to show her full beauty, something the occupation despised as what she bared they referred to as “unlike a lady”. To say this, was to say Suvi was unlike a lady as well which bothered Suvi all the more.

 Around the statue’s base there were offerings left by Suvi, Kuunya, her mother and the Chief’s wife, Eubha. An arrangement of raven feathers and teeth from a wolf, both collected without harm in the forest. An unopened miniature bottle of Uisge Beatha; life water or whiskey in commontongue, Suvi had found in nearby rubble and placed it before her Goddess yester. A few dried pieces of crow garlic, tobacco and parsley also placed as offerings before Her Darkness.

 After a quick prayer at the shrine, Suvi ventured off into the wood.

-

 Suvi’s treks through the dark forest were of second nature to her, any Harrowish worth their name were required to hold great knowledge of the forest that coated their Isle home. Not just for cultural reasons, but for survival.

 The shrouded, natural roof of deep green dimmed the sun’s rays which set the forest in forever dusk. The limited light did not deter life of all kind from calling the forest home, nor did it impair Suvi’s vision. One thousand years of residence within the Coille Dorcha did give her people that advantage.

 Suvi’s heavy boots weren’t the best choice for forest navigation. Fashion over function was always what she favoured. Her steps were calculated to not stir a sound in the quiet wood. To alert and be charged by a Harrowish Elk with antlers each the length of a meter was not an experience she’d ever fancy again.

 Her grasp upon the trees equally as careful, to grab what appeared to be a vine could end in a fatal mistake if it turned out to be a well camouflaged tree cobra. The Coille Dorcha was as great a source of life and protection as it was a source of death and pain.

 Suvi saw the light grow before her when the forest thinned to meet the bank of the River Semroc. Her trek followed the wide river upstream. A few grey herons that fished for their dinners took flight at Suvi’s presence. Across the river an adolescent fox drank with caution, the sun’s rays highlighted the blackness of its coat and silver tips upon its ears and end of its bushy tail. The fox distracted Suvi well. She had always wished to have a fox like it but her mother taught her wild animals are meant for the wild, but that deterred her wishes not. Her best friend Clyde had a pet wolf once! It really wasn’t fair! Suvi had her own Badb Sith however which to her, was like a pet.

 At last, her comrade Sean came into view, casually he leaned against the wall of an historic stone bridge that arched the river, one of the few left intact.

 Sean’s earthy green eyes caught her approach and a smug smile manifested upon his face.

 He leaned off the bridge to greet her.

 “It’s about time yer arse showed up”

 Suvi couldn’t help but grin herself, she pocketed her walklady.

 “’ad to take the forest route, roads leave us too vulnerable.”

 He gave a quick nod in response.

 Sean stood a good quarter meter taller than Suvi despite being four years younger at sixteen. He wore a well-weathered, leather jacket unzipped and a just as beat up blue shirt below. The bottoms of his faded leather pants and black boots heavy with water, if it already wasn’t obvious enough from his wooden rowboat tied to the bridge that he arrived by river.

 “The current a bitch to row through today?” Suvi now close enough to catch the scent of seawater in his dirty blonde hair and once pale face.

 “Aye, sailed inland from the coast I did! Real bitch was getting the cargo ‘ere without capsizin’.” He pointed his thumb back towards the boat where a green tarp lay over a few crates and barrels.

 Sean continued,

 “Anywhoo, I wanted ta meet with ya because by the Dark Goddess do me and the crew got a big fuckin gift comin’ for yas!”

 “Oi?” The idea of what it could be caused Suvi’s grin to widen still. Some of his passed surprises he and his Uziamian pirate crewmates happened upon included an ancient Elvish dagger found on the neighbouring island of Aivol and a black necklace with an onyx triskelion; the symbol of Her Darkness, Sean claimed to have taken off a once pillaging, Imperial soldier’s body. Either way however, it made her mother overjoyed when Suvi handed it to her on her previous birthday.                  

“Ya see, we may have gotten frisky and plundered a little Imperial transport ship and to our grand surprise it contained enough guns, blades, mana and explosions for a small army. And I do think ya know what we both wanna do with our spoils, don’t ya?”

 Suvi’s excitement warmed her heart to the point of jitters. Getting arms back on Harrow after the Empire forcefully disbanded the Isle’s forces and collected its arms would be the embers that the inevitable uprising needed to grow aflame.

 A well suited pride filled Sean’s expression.

 “Ya see Suvi, rumour has it that on mainland Eun, the Imperial population isn’t too supportive of ta occupation. It, among other issues that plague ta Aethren Empire has made those on both sides believe ta Empire could be at its breakin’ point. As fer us, I believe we can be tat final push it needs.”

 Sean clasped his hands together and turned back to his boat.

 “Now, I got ya a few ‘tings ta hold ya over in ta meanwhile!”

 Suvi approached him as he dug through his smuggled goods, a joyful hum escaped him. The sound would be abruptly cut off, his head snapped violently right.  

 “So watcha got for me, Sean- S-Sean!?”

 Suvi’s eyes widened in terrific horror, her body refused further movement. Blood trickled down Sean’s head from below his temples, his dirty blonde locks fell to scarlet. Sean’s body ragdolled against his boat before it rolled into the river, the current held it against the bridge and the water faded to red.

 The delayed, muffled sound of “Thoup” sent Suvi’s mind to its deepest recesses, back to recent years when warjets obstructed the day’s sun and fires from their payloads the night’s moon. Death and war filled her vision, it infested her very core.

 Bodies of those she knew by name, by voice and by song surrounded her, they still radiated their warmth before even flies set upon them. To witness those she loved murdered had become commonplace but desensitized to it, she shall never be.  

 Hands upon hers pulled them behind her back and reality formed back around her. Her eyes wetted with tears.

 “Y-You fucking Imperial bastards!” she sobbed in rage, though she couldn’t liberate her hands from the metal chain she felt around them.

 “Watch your tongue, thief!” spewed the soldier who tied her hands. He roughly spun her to face him.

 Between her and the path of the river bank, three terraves stood. Terraves were the mount of choice of the occupation especially for forest based scouts. Flightless, predatory birds that stood taller than six feet, ran like a horse and with golden beaks and talons sharp as any greatsword. Saddled upon two of the night blue and grey birds were soldiers, both in forest camo, rifles strapped to their backsides and in dark blue helmets with wings on either side.

“Insurrection tip number one! Never use trackable devices for communication you idiot!” snarked one mounted soldier. 

 “But that’s one less smuggler in His Majesty’s waters!” Chuckled the other soldier on birdback.

 Suvi readied a tirade of insults but the soldier that chained her drew his words first.

 “That chain is magic proof and don’t be trying to run off either unless you wish to join your little friend. We know who you are and your status matters not.”

  With that, he remounted. Suvi was forced to follow her captors into the dark forest.

-

 Suvi’s body battled between fatigue from the pace she was forced to keep up with, sickness from the image of Sean’s murder fresh in her mind and the bloodthirsty rage that had only grown ever severe. Sweat clung her clothes to her figure and hair before her eyes. The cries of corvids and of the soldiers’ meaningless bickering filled her ears.

 “These dark vision goggles suck!”

 “You’re telling me, dude! I bet those soldiers stationed in Datheo are getting all the good shit like always!” Complained two of the soldiers, the third gestured them to shut it. He would turn his gaze back to Suvi. 

 “Keep up, boy!”

 Suvi chose to ignore the insult.

 It was obvious to her that from the length of the journey, that the soldiers were unaccustomed to the forest’s layout and she hadn’t the slightest of intention to guide them back to Dal-Innis.

 Her attention shifted, the soldiers in front came to a halt.

 “What in the Light Goddess is that?” One soldier questioned, fear laced his voice.

 The soldier to his right pounded on his goggles in hopes to process what his comrade spoke of.

 Suvi stood tall and raised her neck to peer between the soldiers. A rumour of a smile returned to her face.

 Between two great oaks, a darkness that absorbed what little light in the forest’s shroud had manifested. They took form of a silhouette whose only notable feature was the raven skull mask they wore.

Petrified in fear were the soldiers, their terrave mounts however were not. One soldier’s terrave bucked him off to the forest floor where he found himself immediately under the powerful legs of another terrave whose rider yelped and clung for dear life upon it. The terrave’s bladed talons left the trampled soldier a mangled, disembowelled mess. The third terrave’s rider lost his balance and knocked off his mount when his head smashed into the broad trunk of a great oak. His helmet failed its only job and he too was left in a lifeless, bloodied twist under the oak. His terrave followed the other two, fearful bellows escaped its beak.

The terraves disappeared into the dark. Silence again fell upon the forest.

The shrouded pitch darkness around Kuunya subsided. They removed their mask, with haste freed their sister from her bindings.

Suvi flung her arms around her older, yet shorter sibling in tight embrace. Streams of tears returned to her eyes.

Caught off guard by the hug, Kuunya simply patted her back in silence. Their expression remained monotone.

“They fucking killed him! Sean’s dead. He was just a kid!”

She felt Kuunya grow tense.

“I sent Oighrig for you, I… just wish I had done so earlier. For that I am sorry” It was Kuunya’s attempt to comfort her.

Suvi sniffled. “It wasn’t yer fault.”

Kuunya’s amethyst eyes met her own.

“However, why did you not at the least inform Limbo of your meeting?”

She had completely forgotten about her Badb Sith companion. Greater guilt formed within her.

Kuunya took her hand in their own.

“You need not speak now if you are unable, Sister. For now, we must return home. Mother and Eubha shall be sure to see the occupation punished for this. If not them, than I.”

Hand in hand, the siblings ventured forth through the dark wood towards their home.

End Cycle 2

[scrumpledorph-writes]

Koben’s Requisition (Shopping Trip)

I

My wounds have had long enough to heal. Left arm is still a little tender, but I don’t think I can bear sitting around doing nothing all day again. Already deviated from my sleeping schedule by fifteen minutes last night. I should go scope out the landscape around here, pick up a few essentials while I do it: a change of clothes, a spare blaster, maybe some thermal weave if I can manage that discreetly. Date night tomorrow too; so I should get a second change of clothes. A nice one.

No getting around wearing the armor into town again. As much as it draws attention, it at least gives people the proper impression. Not much difference between a body glove and a cat suit to a civilian eye, and just the thought of being propositioned has me recalling all the practice I had on how to snap a wrist. I don’t think the blood would wash out if someone tried to perform an unannounced physical inspection. The blaster rifle should probably stay home though.

Only twenty minutes across the flats to town, this speeder performs exceptionally far above the standard set by all the taxi speeders I’ve been calling. Could be made with illegal parts, or stolen Imperial tech. If that’s the case, somebody will come looking for it. They likely wouldn’t be expecting anyone to put up a fight, and their body wouldn’t last more than a few days on the sands – scouring winds for the flesh, scavengers for the bones, but that would leave a loose thread for whoever sent them. They’d send a bigger force to follow up, one of them might report back, and I’d be left looking for another little nothing planet to start all over on, alone.

I should have this thing inspected. Brayli’s a speeder mechanic, but I don’t know if it would offend her to blend her work and private life, even if I offer to pay. She probably wants to get away from work when we’re together. I could find another mechanic, but then she’d wonder why I didn’t bring it to her; if I don’t think she’s a good enough mechanic to do the job. Maybe I should bring it in now, while we’re not on a date and she’s a speeder mechanic first. Just bring in the speeder I stole off a bounty target, I’m sure that won’t cause any problems. Stupid; bad idea.

Think about it later, stick to the plan for the day so I can at least get something important done. Blaster first, it’s the easiest to carry around. Should just assume anything I can find around here is illegal, so who looks like the most credible illegal dealer? Is that a squadron of Jawas running a stall out of a speeder truck? Never seen that before. They at least probably stole it first hand, so I’d be getting it second hand, which beats third or fourth from any of the rest of these shops. They’re looking at me expectantly—too bad I don’t speak Jawa.

‘Hey miss! You in the suit! Were you hoping to do business with my fine companions?’ Long loose coat, loping posture, smile too wide for his head, voice like a tread on gravel. Shifty, probably a conman. Unfortunately my best bet. ‘I was.’ ‘Ah, but you don’t speak Jawa do you?’ ‘No.’ ‘Ah that’s alright my friend, few people do.’ He’s trying to put his arm around me. Too friendly. Firm hand on the wrist, firmer shake of the head. ‘Ah, straight to business with you, I can respect that.’ He’d better. ‘So, what is it you’re in the market for?’

‘Blaster pistol. Highest power you have. Discretion is no concern.’ ‘Highest power you say? I hope you have your papers.’ He’s laughing, slapping two of his four spindly hands against two of his twig like knees. Trying to draw me in, establish a connection he can exploit. ‘I don’t.’

He’s standing up straight now, but with how crooked everything else about him is it makes him look off balance. ‘Ah ha, well, that’s no matter. Only a joke. Please, feel free to browse. We keep the batteries stored separately, so by all means inspect the merchandise, give the triggers a test squeeze or two.’

Surplus, worn out, stripped, knockoff. I should have expected none of these would meet any official standards. Good thing I carry a pocket tool. There might be one good blaster spread across this entire inventory. ���Hey hey, whoa lady, what do you think you’re doing?!’ He’s spineless, maybe literally; push a little harder and he’ll fold.

‘You claim to sell blasters. These aren’t blasters, they’re piles of scrap. Most of your customers won’t know the difference until it kills them, but if you cared about that you wouldn’t be selling them.’ Guilt. Not the guilt of knowing his shoddy goods have killed his customers, but of knowing he’s been caught. ‘Let me pull a few of these apart, put together a complete, functional blaster, pay you for the parts since I’ll be handling all the work – then you can put the rest back together and get back to scamming people.’ His face looks more red than an imperial saber and pressurized as a grenade.

‘Two thousand credits for the privilege of picking and choosing.’ ‘A good heavy blaster is worth seven hundred new; five hundred and fifty for your secondhand wares.’ ‘That’s in the core worlds where you can get one made easily, fifteen hundred for the import fee.’ ‘Your Jawa partners stole these off corpses, I can see the kill tallies carved into some of them. Seven hundred and fifty.’ ‘And they risked their lives getting to them before the Tuscan raiders! Twelve fifty.’ ‘Nine hundred and I’ll put the ones I have to take apart back together myself.’ ‘One thousand for insulting the quality of my wares!’ ‘Done.’ Emperor that was exhausting. Used to be able to just serve up a writ of requisition to commandeer things like this. Or arrest the vendor.

I can’t believe it took two hours of sifting through and comparing their whole stock, but I finally have an acceptable blaster. Thick grip, long barrel, wide firing chambers, compact sight. Imperial steel through and through, none of those ornamental engraved wood or softer metal inlays that are popular with civilians. Just a needless point of failure. Reminds me of my academy days, stripping and reassembling a blaster over and over until I could do it with my eyes closed and an alarm siren wailing. Now I just need a holster and some practice shots to get used to the weight.

‘Finished. I’ll take five batteries for it. I’m done haggling for the day, and I know how much a battery costs. Twenty five credits per unit.’ He seems as fed up with me as I am with him, he’s not even feeding me excuses any more.

‘Say, not bad work you did putting these back together. One connoisseur of fine weapons to another, perhaps my wares may not be of the highest quality on the maintenance side of things. That’s why I have to sell them on the street. How would you be interested in a business proposition?’ Oh, he stopped haggling so he could get on my good side. How shrewd. Still, bounty work is inconsistent even under the best conditions. A fallback option wouldn’t hurt.

‘I have other avenues of employment, and I only work freelance. Whatever you’re suggesting would likely be bottom priority. If you’re still interested, keep talking.’ ‘I’m sure you noticed a lot of the problem with these blasters is wear and tear. Jawas are great at finding things and taking them apart, but not quite so good at putting them back together in good working order. How would you like to be my refurbishing specialist? Your blaster’s looking great, and all you had was a pocket tool and a folding table on the street. With a proper workbench and suite of tools, like the ones I’ve got at my workshop, you could probably get these good enough for the Troops!’ Delusions of grandeur. I don’t have time to get wrapped up in some small time scheme.

‘So you can peddle them to passersby? Sounds like wasted effort. The Empire has industrial grade contracts.’ ‘Ah that may be true my friend-’ ‘We aren’t friends.’ ‘-My potential business partner; but the local gangs are always looking to expand, and that means they always need new blasters.’ High quality blasters in the hands of the local gangs means higher quality blasters being pointed at me on the job.

‘Do you think I wear this armor because it’s comfortable?-’ It actually is, the body glove was vacuum contoured perfectly to my body, with all the plates machined to match. I used to sleep in it on long operations, just to be safe. But that would undermine my argument. ‘-My primary earner is bounty work. Being shot at by military grade blasters already sounds like a losing proposition, knowing I’m the reason they have them would just be insulting.’ ‘Mm. I understand. Take my comm number. If you ever change your mind, let me know.’ Doubt I’d ever make enough off of this to be able to stop doing bounty work, but fine.

II

That ate up too much of the morning. I was hoping to take a shuttle to the system capital early so I could beat the commute, no way I’d find anything approaching fancy on this planet, but at this time of morning there might as well be a blockade on intra-system traffic. Guess I can pick up those civilian clothes now.

I’m a little surprised to see she has an actual building to operate out of, but the desert winds aren’t kind to lighter fabrics so she must get a lot of repeat customers. Half filled racks of disparate pieces of clothing. A lot more variety than I’m used to. Could branch out from imperial black on imperial black. Not a lot in my size though.

That coat looks reliable, nerf leather lasts almost as long as plastoid. Still has most of its color, looks about my size. ‘Do you have anywhere I could try things on?’ A single disinterested finger from the other side of a holovid. Fine by me, I’ve been marketed to enough today. Over the shoulder and keep looking. Slim pickings for pants, and cloaks aren’t much my thing. Always get worried that there’s nothing under them whenever I see someone wearing one, or worse: that they’re hiding a lightsaber.

One pair of denym pants that looks like it could fit around my thighs. Another durable bit of civilian wear – no reason to compromise on that principle just because I’m stepping out of my armor. A shame it looks like it just came in from a few years sitting out in the suns, but it should do.

Those are some nice boots. Sturdy, reinforced worker’s wear. Maybe I can keep a little black in my wardrobe. The Empire puts everyone in it for a reason, right? Slimming, obscures your silhouette, muffles features. They have a nice clack when I tap the toes, could probably stop a blade if it really came down to it. Vibro-blade would probably still go through them like paper, but normal people take that risk every day and most of them make it out okay.

A nice looking holster. It looks new—brand new; too new. Imperial black, with a belt loop to fit any size and shape of blaster pistol. This is an officer’s holster. What would an officer be doing this far out? Hopefully not looking for me, and if so, hopefully this was picked off their corpse. Doubt the girl behind the counter verifies her sources. I’d have no choice but to buy it just to destroy it; the fact that it fits my blaster well is just a bonus.

This shirt might have been imperial black at some point; another casualty of the triplicate suns. Really need to consider moving to a system with fewer of those. A softer retirement than most imperial uniforms get though; no cuts or burns. It’s also the only shirt here that can fit over my shoulders, so I don’t have a choice.

I’m not sure I like civilian clothes. Even in the regular Storm Corps the glove was vacuum fitted despite the plates being mass produced, but after ten years of custom machined Purge Corps plates contoured to my musculature, these generically cut fabrics feel like they’re strangling me. I can feel the stitches on the jacket strain if I deviate too far from rest, not to mention the cuffs hanging up on my elbows. The pants would probably rip wide open if I had to sprint or lunge at something, even a crouch feels like I’m pushing my luck. The shirt has the opposite problem – loose fitted to the point of bunching and folding under the jacket so badly I’m constantly pulling on the collar to keep it facing straight. Boots and holster fit well though.

Fifty credits for it all, not a single word from the shopkeeper. One of the better interactions I’ve ever had with one. Easier to carry it around than my armor, so I guess I’ll have to head back home and change into it before I head off world. Less likely to get stolen if I leave it in my speeder too. Surely the people around here aren’t that desperate.

I doubt the morning rush has finished yet. The less time I can spend on a crowded ship the better. Maybe I can ask Vranki to order me in that sheet of thermal weave, a crime boss is sure to understand the value of discretion. If she’s halfway competent it should be no problem to source, and if not I should probably start looking for another employer.

‘Hey Trooper. Wish you chose a different code name, kind of confusing when I have to call out regular troopers.’ Good to see he remembers me, I think it’s a faux pas to disarm someone two times. ‘I’ve spent so long being called that I couldn’t think of anything else.’ Not a lot behind the eyes in that nod he’s giving me. ‘Nice blaster by the way! Where’d you get it—I’ve been thinking of upgrading. Just in case a fire fight ever breaks out, y’know? Can barely hit a bottle past ten feet with this thing.’

‘I had to splice together six blasters to make this one.’ ‘Oh no way, that’s crazy. Could you take a look at mine? Maybe it’s just rusty or something.’ Hard to picture this guy ever being a serious threat no matter how good a blaster he has. No rattling, no visible wear and tear. Likely doesn’t get fired often enough for that. Even a pretty good scope, but it’s completely warped. ‘Everything’s fine but the sight, what happened? Did it get run over, dropped off a roof?’ ‘That’s the bit I use to crack open beers when a shift is dragging on.’ Glad I’m wearing my helmet so the disgust on my face can’t sour our working relationship. ‘Don’t do that.’

Nothing seems to change much around here. Still dark, loud, and smoky: all problems my helmet solves. Surprised Vranki has time to see me, I figured there would be a lot more overhead on running a gang. A lot of it must handle itself now that I give it a second thought though: addicts just need some space to dissociate, and I’ve never seen someone paying for sex unhappily. The problem solving flow chart is probably a lot more linear without having to worry about court reprimands or public scandals—just use violence until the problem is gone.

‘Ah, Trooper! Glad to see you up back up and walking without that nasty limp. You here for work, or did you need a little help unwinding?’ ‘Neither ma’am. I would like to make use of your front companies if possible.’ ‘This isn’t Coruscant, why would I need to bother with those? Everybody in town knows who I am and what I do, and the only people who’ve given me trouble over it so far are people trying to compete.’ That’s a worryingly lax attitude, but the sooner I restore my armor’s integrity the better.

‘I need a sheet of thermal weave, but I don’t want my name on the purchase. Could I proxy it through you?’ ‘Of course! Normally that sort of business would start running into exorbitant fees, extortion if I’m being honest with you—woman to woman; but since we’re professional associates I’ll let you off with just a ten percent surcharge. I’m still running a business after all.’ ‘Fine. Give me the price as soon as you have it. If it’s too much, give me a target to make up the difference.’ ‘Oh don’t worry, I have no shortage of work for you if it comes to that. I should have a quote for you by the end of the day, not like it’s illegal or anything. Has anyone ever told you you’re paranoid, dear?’ I doubt it would be worth explaining how criminal activity looks from the enforcing side of the law. The Empire has a loose grip out here, but it tightens every day.

Suns are out in earnest now, traffic should have broken up. Just need to stow the armor at home and head to the spaceport. Things have been happening fast enough lately that I’ll likely be home by the time I’ve parsed them all in a sitrep. Vranki raises a lot of red flags – she makes half the rookie mistakes I spent seven years busting people on, and seems proud of it. She’s only gotten big because there’s no law out here to crack down on her, but once there is her operation is done. I need to not be a part of it by then. There’s no such thing as an honorable discharge from a crime boss’ service, so I might need to ingratiate myself to someone else more discreet and help with a hostile takeover. Should take my next contract from someone else too, better not to establish a pattern before breaking it.

Situation at home is appreciably unchanged. Looks like the wind rustled the shutters though, wish those stayed shut. Better not to invite any prying eyes or opportunistic scavengers in, even this far from town. Armor’s safely tucked in the alcove, casual clothes are on, time to go.

III

Honestly glad there’s no good tailors on Doobinth, I could use an afternoon away from this planet. Waterproofing is easy, but sand infiltrates every crevice in a piece of gear better than any assassin I’ve ever worked with. Maybe I can take Brayli off world for a date some time. I hear the capital is interesting. Not nice, considering it’s a hyper dense ball of iron that cooks you alive if you leave the arcologies—with rivers of mercury flowing across a lot of the surface, but apparently there are some breath taking views. I can’t even imagine how it got chosen to be the capital though.

Hang on a second: why does it smell like exhaust inside the ship, and why does it make me feel...nice? Better look around, just to be sure there’s no leak. It seems to be coming from that woman over there. That Nautolan with pink skin and tight coveralls who needs two seats. What’s Brayli doing on this shuttle? Should I talk to her? If she sees me I have to, it’s not nearly loud enough to pretend I didn’t notice her. We aren’t scheduled for a date until tomorrow though, she probably wants to be alone. Likely left the planet to get a break from me, I shouldn’t be too pushy. Just leave her alone.

‘Hey Koben, is that you?’ Oh, okay, never mind, impromptu short date. Public transportation through the void of space is romantic, right? It doesn’t matter, you need to get up and use your legs to walk over to her so you aren’t shouting across the cabin. ‘Oh, hey Brayli, it’s good to see you! I just happened to be heading to Saraz myself for some-’ Don’t ruin the surprise by telling her you’re going to spend a sizable chunk of your blood money on a dress from a tailor you’ve only heard about on the HoloNet; that would look stupid for two reasons. ‘-sightseeing.’ ‘Lucky you. Some oil baron who only drops by for the winter wants me to supe up his speeder so he can blast across the dunes, and the folks who make the parts for it don’t deliver. Just my luck, huh sugar?’

A pet name. A friendly elbow. That soft, warm laugh she does. How do I respond. Do I put my arm around her? Kiss her? Not in public, surely that’s too far too fast. I’ve been in situations like this before. This is a tightrope, she’s testing you. Fall and it all ends once we land. I recognized it, that’s the first part of the test, now all I have to do is figure out the answer.

‘You alright? You look a little pale, the shuttle making you sick?’ ‘No! I’m fine! I’m sorry. You’re very unlucky. I hope those parts are easy to transport.’ Feels like I just got hit by a speeder. ‘It’s just a few little nuts and bolts. The kind that are just a tiny bit off from industry standard so they can sell you replacements.’ A second part of the test, breadth of knowledge review, I can handle this.

‘Oh! I know what you mean, blasters have that problem all the time. The Empire published standard dimensions for chamber dimensions, seal sizes, firing power outputs, every characteristic that could possibly be regulated, because practically every culture had their own informal standards. Steep fines for intentional propagation of non-regulation part dimensions. The reason they do it is because they need to be able to requisition replacement parts from as many potential sources as possible, for when troopers are on long field operations and left cut off from official support lines. Of course, with how many blasters are rarely used, and passed down from father to son for generations in particularly egregious cases, there’s still quite a sizable market for unlicensed blaster parts. This one here I actually spent an hour just this morning putting together because of how many parts felt like they fit, but started to squeak or jostle upon further inspection. A lot of people think that they can get by with a fit that’s close enough, but with how much stress is placed on a blaster during use, the best result is that your blaster falls apart on you, and the worst is that it explodes in your hand.’ That should be sufficient.

She’s laughing again, and now our thighs are touching. There’s ample space for them not to be if she wanted, which must mean I passed. No other place for it now, so it’s safe to put my arm around her. This is nice. I hope the transport stalls out.

‘Wow, and here I thought troopers just fired blasters. I’m starting to think you’re secretly an engineer just trying to impress me with all that trooper talk.’ Teasing. Lighthearted teasing, I remember this from my academy days. ‘How do you think I got the armor?’ ‘Made it yourself in a workshop. It only looks real; the plates are rusty sheet metal you pulled off a speeder and painted up pretty. I could probably snap chunks off of ‘em!’ She’s grinning, and so am I. I hadn’t realized.

‘No way to prove that now, since I left the suit at home. Can’t risk depressurization with some sharpshooting, and there’s no floor space to spar a few rounds.’ She’s trying to lean in close, but her head barely reaches up past my chest. ‘Oh don’t worry, I’ve got the perfect spot to spar a few rounds at home.’ Now would be a good time to cross my legs, just to be safe while that image runs through my head. ‘Haha, yeah, well—I guess you’ll just have to take my word for it until we get around to that.’

Transport just arrived. I don’t want to get up yet, and neither does she. ‘See you tomorrow night?’ ‘Of course. Oh, nice new duds by the way – I’d been meaning to say. You finally get tired of catching heat stroke in that suit?’ No time to explain how sophisticated the temperature regulation is, only time to smile and laugh. All the time in the galaxy for that. ‘I got tired of having to wipe the sand out of the cracks every night.’ ‘Maybe you’ll get used to desert living yet. Shuttle’s just about empty, should probably head out, catch a taxi before they’re all snapped up. Bye sugar.’

IV

Hard to believe this place is in the same system as Doobinth. Everything’s bright, clean, crowded, and loud. It has its charms, but I’ve been out of big cities long enough I think I’m starting to prefer wide open stretches of nothing. This place looks surprisingly barren for a clothing shop. Figured there would be a lot more on display, but all they have is fabric samples. ‘Good afternoon madame, welcome to my humble boutique. How can I assist you on this fine day?’ His voice is coming out fast and nasal, wonder if it has to do with how much neck it has to traverse. Not used to looking up at people.

‘I have a date tomorrow and need a nice dress.’ ‘But of course, a trifling matter.’ ‘I don’t see any to try on.’ ‘Oh no my dear, you do not -try on- art! Everything we Kaminoans create is art, and art must be made bespoke, one of a kind, by and for those whose ambition wills it into being. Please remove your jacket; my droids will take your measurements and then we may begin holo-projecting potential designs over you.’

All of these designs look awful. My shoulders keep jutting out, my waist is a straight vertical line, and all these silky smooth fabrics just draw attention to how cracked and worn my skin is. I’m stupid, this is stupid. Dresses are for women with the luxury of sitting in a temperature controlled office all shift and taking monthly salon trips. Ones who’ve never had to practice knife fighting or crawl through suppressive fire. Real women.

I’m crying. Haven’t cried once since the Empire took me in, and now I’m crying because I don’t look good in a dress I could never have imagined affording until now anyway. What a joke. ‘Oh please do not cry madame. What troubles you?’ ‘I don’t think a dress is for me. I’ll be on my way.’ I guess she’ll have to be satisfied with these clothes.

‘Oh you must not go! In all my years I have never had the pleasure of working with one such as yourself!’ ‘Someone built like a slab of wrought iron?’ He looks offended. Don’t know how he has the gall to be the one offended here, but that’s self proclaimed “artists” I suppose. ‘That is how you think of yourself madame? Do not say such things!’ I’ve spent the better part of my life taking orders, but a scrawny seamster is a step too far.

‘And why shouldn’t I?! I could go to Coruscant with more credits than I’ll ever see and still not find a tailor who can make me look pretty!’ ‘You would not, that is true, but that is because you would be looking on Coruscant. That is a planet of high society, a world where there is no need for one to hone one’s body. Within those confines of course there would be nobody who would know what to do with a specimen of your caliber.’ That makes a nonzero amount of sense.

‘What is my caliber then, how would you dress me?’ ‘Dry your tears madame—whilst I tell you all I could see from the moment you walked into my shop. Your physique is sublime: a sculpted, chiselled testament to the endurance of the natural form. This could be the result of costly bodily sculpting technology, that is perhaps true, but such technology is unheard of by anyone living this far from the core worlds. An employer of such methods would have no reason to visit my establishment, and thus you must possess a physically demanding employment to maintain it naturally.’ I never figured it was that noticeable. It must be easier to make out through normal clothes than under armor.

‘Compounding this, your posture: the proud and yet restrained bearing of a soldier! Your eyes scanned uniformly across my shop, shoulders level, gait even. Such is not the behavior of a mere athlete or physical laborer. Even in so safe an environment as a shopping district you stay alert – vigilant for threats. Had I a blaster pistol in my hand when you walked in, no doubt you would have taken it from me.’ That is a difficult habit to unlearn.

‘You sound like a detective, but none of that makes me look any prettier in a dress.’ ‘Of course; nothing would make you look pretty in a dress. I knew that from the moment I saw you.’ ‘Then why put me through that?’ ‘Though I gleaned much from your bearing, I am no Jedi: I had no way to see inside your mind.’ Really need to learn not to tense up just from hearing that word some day. ‘I apologize for the distress, but more important than showing you what would work was showing you what would not. Now that you’ve realized a dress does not suit you, I would be happy to tell you what will.’ ‘Go on then.’

‘To accentuate and flatter your powerful form is the purview of a suit, madame.’ Oh, he’s right, these look amazing! ‘From your smile I see you begin to understand, but I will elucidate: there are as many forms of beauty as there are cultures in this galaxy. While you are a human, you are also a soldier – you come from a culture of power, strength, discipline; it would be foolish to force the beauty standards of the cosmopolitan worlds upon you.’

High shouldered, sleek limbed, and just a little imperial black for the under layer. I can see why this place has such a high recommendation, if the real thing looks half as good as this holo-projection it should be the second fanciest set of clothing I ever wear. ‘It’s perfect. I never knew how good red looked on me. I have one request though.’ ‘But of course, it is only fair that the canvas be comfortable with the art placed upon it.’ ‘Do you have any blaster resistant materials?’

That laugh is a lot deeper than his usual speaking voice. Hearty, makes him sound strong. ‘Oh, a daunting task, but you are in luck. Many of the people who care to buy tailored clothing in this system are members of the less savory side of society, and as such would prefer not having to compromise protection for style. I cannot guarantee it will prove immune to high power weaponry, but most common blaster pistols should take no fewer than two shots to damage this mesh. If you find yourself utilizing this property, fear not, because all my works come with a lifetime warranty.’

‘You’ve really surpassed all my expectations, I have to say. When will it be ready, and how much will it cost?’ ‘No more than two hours, and five thousand credits will suffice.’ The credits are easy, but I have no idea how to spend the next two hours. I never appreciated the utility of long patrols until now.

‘Can I ask you a non-work related question?’ ‘But of course madame.’ ‘I don’t know a good way to pass two hours around here. Do you have any recommendations?’ ‘Oh it would be my pleasure. If you are in such a mood as to spend more credits, I would recommend that you purchase a pair of boots to match the suit. Yours are passable, but red leather would certainly complete the ensemble. As for yourself, and please do not misunderstand me – the rugged, down to earth look has a charm all its own – you may want to seek out a salon, if for no more than a manicure.’

‘A salon? That sounds like an excessive measure.’ ‘Consider it a part of the ensemble. Just as one would not expect to see a full face of makeup underneath a trooper’s helmet, so too does one expect not to see a woman in a five thousand credit suit have dirt under her nails.’ For how much he talks, I have to give him credit: it makes a lot of sense. Definitely not just talking to hear the sound of his own voice. ‘I failed to consider that before, thank you.’

V

The boots were easy, managed to find the exact same shade as the suit to avoid any dissonance. Not usually impressed by civilian craftsmanship, but these are almost as comfortable as my old ones. Good flex, breathable, spacious. I’ve never owned clothes that weren’t made for fighting in before; I feel protective of them already.

I’ve never been to a salon before. No that’s not true, I raided an illegal one once, but I’ve never been a customer. ‘Hi there, welcome, can I get your name?’ Oh hell, should probably not leave too much of a paper trail. Been getting too comfortable lately, think of a fake name. Nothing’s coming to mind. Just Hers. Can I use it? It’s not like she’s around to be upset, and it’s the least she can do to make up for everything else. ‘Tessa Revilane.’

‘Well Mrs. Revilane, I don’t see you on the list, but you’re in luck: we just had a cancellation so I can squeeze you in.’ Her smile is fake, but polite. Wouldn’t look out of place placating an officer. ‘What was it you were looking for today?’ ‘I have a date tomorrow and I want to look pretty.’

Just relax. It’s okay to close my eyes around these unfamiliar women with scissors. They’re just civilians, if they were Imperial assassins I would have recognized their body language. The chair is adjusted for my height, and I’m being washed with water instead of sonic vibrations for the first time in years. I should enjoy it.

‘Goodness, you really needed this cleanup. How do you even get your fingernails into this state?’ ‘I wear gloves most of the day. Trim them with a knife when they get too long.’ Wow. These women must take this deathly seriously, I’ve never heard such an affronted gasp from so many people at once. ‘Well, you’ve come to the right place dear. I’ll have them fixed up for you in no time at all.’

The warm water is nice, but being detailed like this by three different people makes me feel like a droid in a repair bay. ‘Not often I work with hair this tangled. This might take a few brushes, and there’s a strong possibility of pulling, is that alright? I can skip it if it would be too painful.’ ‘That sounds fine.’ I’ve taken serrated vibro-blades between the ribs, I’m sure this will be triv-ow. Easy to forget how sensitive the scalp is wearing a helmet all the time.

‘Please don’t be offended by my saying this ma’am, but these callouses are so thick I don’t think a foot soak will be sufficient. We have a micro-vibrational cleaner that detects changes in tissue density in order-’ ‘Will it make them pretty?’ ‘Yes ma’am, very pretty.’ ‘Go ahead.’ Never worn an open toed shoe in my life, but I’m here, no use taking a half measure. It tickles. That feels nice.

I’m starting to see why the officers made such a big deal about their grooming, it’s really relaxing once you get used to being touched. The prices weren’t that steep either, for a bounty killing salary. Maybe I should make this a regular routine. Come here once a month, get to know them by name, make small talk. Then they all recognize me when an imperial detachment comes looking. Better keep it to just this once, and put effort into savoring it.

‘Well, we’ve done all we can out here, and if I may say so myself we’ve done quite a great deal. There is an optional full body massage we can have done for you in the back, a masseuse droid handles it to reduce any feelings of awkwardness. If not, we can get to painting your nails and styling your hair and you can be on your way.’ A massage. Never had one of those either, usually just been injected with a relaxant whenever a medical droid’s scalpel was having trouble penetrating. Why not? ‘I’ll take the massage.’

Now this is luxury. Most luxuries serve a practical purpose: they’re a status symbol to separate the wealthy from their servants at a glance. Investments in psychological domination. Jewellery, clothes, fancy speeders, large apartments; things to be seen, not enjoyed. This is different. Nobody will ever notice this but me. I have so many credits I can afford to throw them away just for my own pleasure.

Each manipulator digit feels like it’s giving me a stim injection. I never realized how much tension impairs physical capacity. My physical conditioning regimen has largely compensated for it and kept me effective, but right now I feel like I could do a standing jump over a speeder. The oil feels nice too. Like the cool tingle of hypoxia settling in, but I can lie here and enjoy it without dying. It might not be a good idea to come to this salon again, but surely the Empire would never track someone buying a masseuse bot, right?

Even my clothes feel different putting them back on, everything is so sensitive and providing me so much feedback. I thought with bacta eliminating scarring that there would be no difference, but this must be how molting species’ feel.

‘That was amazing. I’ve never felt anything like it.’ ‘That’s great to hear! Just sit back down and we can handle your hair and nail polish.’ A holodisplay of potential colors, but I don’t need to look. ‘Imperial black please.’ Applied in under a minute. They look pretty. My fingers look...pretty. I look pretty.

‘Is everything alright miss? Are you allergic to the nail polish?’ Crying again. A different sort of crying, not one I’m familiar with. ‘No ma’am. I’m not sure why I’m crying. Just ignore it, and give me the same hairstyle I came in with please. I’m happy with it.’ Not much room for a fashionable haircut under a helmet. Even in the same style, it looks completely different now.

VI

Six thousand credits. Four month’s salary for a set of clothes and a deep clean. I’d have scoffed at that last week, but thinking of how Brayli’s going to react when she sees it is invigorating. It’s going to be great. ‘Hey lady, hand over your credstick!’

Wow, I even look rich enough to get mugged. A back alley is a back alley no matter what planet you’re on I suppose. It only ever makes the situation worse, but I can’t stop myself from laughing at this guy. I’ve had some desperate people rush me with a knife, but this is just ridiculous: he’s grip is loose, his stance is terrible, and that blade looks like it would struggle to cut bread, never mind skin. Oh well, what can you do?

Grab his wrist, angle the blade away, pull him in, punch him in the throat, let him down gently so he doesn’t get concussed by the ground. Over and done, simple as that. Nails are intact, suit is still clean. He’s reeling pretty hard, I should call him an ambulance. Done. What a way to cap off my trip.

I could go for a walk back to the spaceport. Get used to the way these new clothes fit, break in the boots. How to pass the time? Already got everything done today, no topics for a mental evaluation. Maybe a marching tune. It must have been ten years since I’ve whistled one of those. The imperial March is always a classic.

VII

Back home. Probably shouldn’t wear this suit out too much, I can leave it off for the night. It’s still a bit too early to go to bed though. Maybe I can get my workout in early, then spend the rest of the evening practicing with this new pistol. That sounds like a good way to cap off the day. I can’t wait for tomorrow.

[blog-of-a-multitude-of-fandoms]

Rifle- Wade Wilson

Pairing: Wade Wilson x Reader

Characters: Wade Wilson

Warnings: N/A

Request: N/A

Word Count: 488

Author: Aaron

“Black hair, white shirt, right?” Wade smirked as he brought his eye to the rifle scope. “I swear these jobs get easier and easier, but I guess they’re right. Really, it’s all about marketing you know?” He tracked the target through the thick windows of the penthouse nightclub and waited for a clear shot. “It’s such a beautiful night for a contract kill.” You gazed up at the moon as you lay on the cold concrete of the damp New York rooftop. “I’m glad you wanted to come with me, sometimes between just me and the reader things can get a little boring you know?”

“I don’t know, I’m sure the docket said white hair and black shirt.” He pulled his gaze from the scope and stared at you with a raised brow and an aura of confusion. “Everyone asshole in there is wearing a white shirt and has black hair, it would be a poor description because I think most of them are employees. It said something about dazzling eyes as well… Wade did you write that contract by any chance.”

“You do raise a valid point; white hair is always a bit more bad guy chic. Lucky you said something, I was just about to take that guy’s stupid head clean off his shoulders. It would have been an ass to get blood out of that shirt as well, trust me, It’s a nightmare. And yes, they are a lovely jade green, don’t be jealous.” He started to scan the crowded, drug fuelled rampage for his target. “Well, here we are. Aren’t you a handsome guy? Y/n, are you ready to earn yourself fifteen thousand?”

“I just came here to keep you company, I still haven’t spent the last gift you gave me.”

“That wasn’t a gift, it was a bribe, and you know it.” He shuffled over and ushered you towards the rifle. “Well, the job itself is about two-fifty but I want you to take the shot. Now I know what you’re thinking what if I miss? I can’t take a human life. Does anybody really know how magnets work!? But you won’t, it’s not so bad and everybody knows it’s just magic. You’ve been coming with me for ages now and really I think it’s just time for you to actually start doing something and helping because really you’re just dead weight so get your ass over here and kill that man.”

“Finally.” You rolled over and sat the butt sharply into your shoulder. “I’ve been waiting for my turn I thought you would never ask.” Wade’s smile was so bright it almost gave your position away.

“They grow up so fast, I’m so proud of you. But please don’t kill the wrong person, it is way more paperwork than I can be bothered to fill out and I don’t want to have to change my identity again, I’m running out of ideas.”

[reversemoon255]

GAT-X105B/EG Build Strike Exceed Galaxy

While I think Metaverse was a perfectly harmless, cute series, that doesn't mean it couldn't be better. I watched the Gridman movie shortly afterward, and that did way more of the crossover stuff you want to see in the same amount of time. As every main character got a new Gunpla, I'd like to take a second to talk about how I'd rather they'd have handled each season's representation in those reviews.

A big misstep with the Fighters cast is their ages. Sei is the same age as Sekai, and considering he wasn't revealed until EP3, finally revealing the version of him teased in Try would have been a great payoff. It's also a bummer how every Fighters universe character besides Fumina doesn't have an Avatar, and they had a bunch of already existing outfits that would be both perfect and great marketing. You give Sei his EP1 Amuro costume, Ral his original series outfit, and you give China, Rinko, and even Gyanko their MS Girl outfits, because there're kits of them and that'd be good marketing.

Also, not making the characters their proper ages mean they had to omit Reiji's daughter. And how perfect would her inclusion have been? Seeing one of the original characters getting their kid into Gunpla? Maybe when Reiji comes in on the Star Burning Gundam, he's wearing the Beargguy F backpack and she's along with him? It would have been an amazing end cap to Fighters, Try, and Metaverse. Fighters was probably the season that was handled the worst of the four, which is disappointing since it was the first.

The Kit: Onto the kit, it is the EG Strike Gundam with new armor parts and backpack, but you'd think it was a new mold considering how it has no leftover parts. It has some nice accessories and a lot of hard points for customization. I do worry about longevity, considering my original EG RX-78-2, but other than that I have little issue.

The Details: Quite a bit of black panel lining, as well as some black paint to fill a few small areas. Metallic blue on the peripheral cameras and rifle scope. I also filled in the clear red parts with metallic red where I could to hide the plastic underneath.

Overall, a simple but neat kit with some cool gimmicks. I'd almost recommend getting two just to mess with the customization stuff.