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birdsong-goeson · 1 month ago

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Vincere Aut Mori / Conquer or Die (part 1), 2.4k words

Summary: Jacob Seed crosses paths with an old neighbour and her presence starts to unravel the fragile bond between him and John. With visions of the brother's death, Daisy resists the Project any way she can. But once Jacob notices she's in his region, he will stop at nothing to get her to submit.

(This fic pretends the Seeds grew up in Hope County)

I announced a few weeks ago that I'm working on a Jacob Seed fanfic - here is part 1! I've decided to title it 'Vincere Aut Mori,' I was spending way too long trying to find a fitting title. I hope you like it! Let me know if you want to be tagged in updates :)

I'm also sharing this on AO3 - here's the link to this chapter. Warnings: none

Chapter 1:

The Whitetail Mountains of Montana.

It was a landscape consisting of barren fields blood-stained footpaths that led to nowhere. It was a beautiful but deadly terrain, foretold by the bodies of those who were left hanging on the borders. An omen of what would happen to anyone who crossed into this region.

Herald to this place was Jacob Seed, the militant older brother of Joseph Seed. Joseph was the Father of the Project at Eden’s Gate, a God-chosen man with visions of the imminent collapse. He saw a world bathed in fire and smoke, the final cleansing before the true order was restored. Burdened with the mission to set humanity on the right path before the apocalypse, Joseph entrusted his big brother with the Project’s security. Jacob’s speciality was in the production of henchmen, both human and animal.

Jacob’s region was unparalleled for its brutality and abundance of hostile animals, even surpassing his sadistic younger brother, John. Whereas John tortured people for his own pleasure, Jacob ruined his soldiers to set them on the right path. To filter the weak and the unworthy from the chosen few, the people who could be trusted to survive the world’s incoming wave of despair.

At the heart of Jacob’s security are the Judges, animals – mostly wolves – he’d captured and improved with the use of Bliss to be bigger, stronger; to be better. These bliss-infused monstrosities were anointed with red paint on their faces as they prowled the landscape on their mission to cull the herd. Judges attacked anyone and anything that dared so much as to look up. Ever since he released the Judges into the Whitehall mountains, Jacob rested easy knowing the hard work was being done without his supervision.

But one day, the Judges began to vanish.

No longer could Jacob hear the howling of the herd from the distance, those deep sounds from the soul that reverberated across the mountains and made the hair on the back of his neck stand. No longer was he coming across their slightly too large paw marks imprinted in the mud. In fact, he was no longer coming across new wolves to capture. The traps were empty, the bait lying there untasted. Almost overnight, the dogs had vanished.

Jacob pondered on this as he traced the outline of a snare with his hand, quickly reworking the trap with his calloused fingers. The sunlight seemed old as it filtered through the reddening leaves. The changing wind carried the first ripples of cold as autumn slowly befell Montana. Soon enough, a hardening cold would descend, and it would be harder to tend to these traps. Rising from the ground, he held his hunting rifle in position as he moved closer to a wolf trap. Intuitively, knew it’d be empty, again.

This particular trap was unusual because it was set in the middle of a meadow, a rare enough occurrence in this region. Most traps were set at the bottom of hills and mountains, preying on the wolves that rested in dens and caves. Particularly, mother wolves preparing for birth. The younger he got them, the better. But the meadow trap was destined for lone wolves that strayed from the pack, oftentimes a desperate one that would enter the cage without a second thought.

Jacob’s boots stepped into the meadow, a field with tall and dry grass stalks shooting up towards the sun. Clusters of late summer flowers billowed as the wind caught them. Purple shades of clematis spread their petals and bluebells with drooping heads danced slowly from side to side. Wolf’s bane bowed their heads as Jacob walked on, dragged down by an invisible weight. Despite the sounds of gunshots, screaming and explosions that frequented across the hills of Hope County, life still had its gleams of sunshine. Montana was so beautiful and wild, it almost made one forget what its inhabitants were up to. Almost.

Jacob shielded his eyes from the sun as he looked onward for the trap and stopped in his tracks. His stern blue eyes narrowed with contempt as he saw the trap on its side, empty, and someone’s hurried movements making their escape.

His experiences as a huntsman and soldier told him to raise his weapon and shoot the bastard. It was the easy thing to do. But something unexplainable, a sense beyond the five, bade him forward. The rifle was abandoned as he stalked the saboteur through the meadow and into the woodland. The other person seemed quite oblivious about who walked behind them. There was a spring to their step which made their head bob up and down – a stupid, airheaded way to exist in these parts. Their hands were busy carrying the stolen animal; it was almost too easy to attack them. Jacob’s hunting instinct commanded him to reach for the knife and plunge it into their throat until it hit bone. As he got closer, he saw it was a distinctly feminine figure. It changed nothing for him.

It all came to a stop when the animal began writhing restlessly. It reached its paws on the woman’s shoulders and turned to look back at Jacob; it was nothing more than a little wolf pup. It barked and then, meeting Jacob’s eyes, whimpered as it pressed its snout on the woman’s neck.

The woman stopped.

In the natural world, some speak of the strange psychic dance between predator and prey. It is said that if a prey animal grants a subservient look, if it performs a shiver that dances over its skin, that the prey acknowledges its weakness to the predator. It communicates its servility and inferiority and thus agrees to become the predator’s victim. Some explain this as the fawn response; a flutter of the eyelashes, a lowering of the head, the twitch of a lip. A fake laugh at the bar. It was the dance of surrender and death. At that moment, as the woman turned her head, Jacob found himself following the steps to this feverish dance.

She turned and he met a pair of eyes he had seen several times in his life.

Jacob was not a person anybody was glad to see, especially these days. He was one of those people who had lived most moments of life as though they were punishment. Life had run him over with a truck, reversed, and hit him again, and again, and again. This gave him an indestructible look; it showed on the hard lines on his face, and the permanent scowl on his lips. It showed in the angry scars on his cheeks that travelled up to his scalp and as far down as his arms, betraying the secrets of old pain. He still wore his dog tags from his time serving in the military, along with his camo jacket. And he was old, nearing his mid-forties with a pair of eyes that seemed to dispel light despite being a shade of soft blue. It was unsurprising, then, that Daisy flinched upon seeing him.

“Jacob,” was all she said in a very low voice; her eyes widening with recognition.

“Daisy.” He replied. Nobody moved, nobody breathed. Even the forest held its breath for an instant of pure silence.

It had been many years since he’d seen her and she hardly seemed different, thought Jacob. Aside from the faint marks on her face and a length of hair that surpassed her earlier years, she remained the same. Time had waved its ancient hand over her, too, but not in the punishing way that it’d done with Jacob. Her eyes were just as large as he’d remembered, and they silently pleaded for mercy.

“If you wanted a dog, you should’ve just asked,” he said whilst looking at her. Both knew Jacob was being very generous in this moment, perhaps for old time’s sake. It was a miracle she wasn’t dead already, and they both knew it.

“I didn’t think you would mind,” she said in a distinctly Daisy-like manner; even after all this time, she still spoke softly, almost meekly. It was a manner of speaking most women overcame through years of raising their voices over men, children and other women. For whatever reason, Daisy had retained this quality.

“It’s a very small one. Maybe you can have it back when it gets bigger?”

“Daisy,” he said sternly. “You know better than that, don’t you?”

Daisy averted her gaze to a patch of sunlight next to them. It was a strange meeting and not at all what Jacob was expecting to find when he set off on that day. From what he could see, she ventured out into the wilderness with nothing but a water flask and what he presumed to be dog treats. Her strangely long hair gave her an air of savagery, as though it proved she was wild enough to roam these parts alone.

Jacob was right. She did know better; everyone knew better. Before Daisy stood the immense, overwhelming presence of a man. A man well-known for the horrible things he did to people. Locking them in cages, starving them, tormenting them, and breaking their minds with tests of endurance intended only to ruin them further. One only needed to look at the rotting corpses left hanging on his borders to understand the kind of man he was. And here he stood before her. It was hard to imagine him as someone whose soul was not intertwined with cruelty.

Through all this, Daisy’s face remained motionless, a stony imprint of nothingness. But her eyes were glossed over with carefully contained tears. And her hands, he noticed, were shaking.

“Hand it over to me, Daisy.” He said and outstretched his arms, beckoning her to come to him.

Daisy looked at him and, hesitantly, began walking closer. The wolf pup writhed as she approached but was silent as it was transferred from one pair of arms to another. Their hands briefly touched, and the softness of her skin reminded him how hardened his was, how marked his body was by the rough tissue of scars.

Something shifted at that moment. The glide of birds as they sailed through the wind, the ripples of water from the nearby stream, and the hoof of a deer sinking into the ground; they all silenced themselves. It was as if only two entities existed at that moment – the hunter, Jacob. And the prey, Daisy. The weariness in her dark eyes as she looked up at him made him think that she felt this moment too. Felt that something was being taken from both of them, the very air was thick with it.

The animal lay motionless in Jacob’s grasp. To his own surprise, he made no attempt to grab Daisy and she retreated quickly.

Her retreat pulled something from him, like the tug of a string from the ribs; and it hurt. It felt like his whole body was aching and burning all at once and by the time she reached her former position, it was all over.

“They say the Deputy will kill John,” she said suddenly with her eyes towards the sun. Daisy’s dak eyes were illuminated by the bright light and seemed to be on fire. They glowed as though they held embers, and it gave her an illuminated fierceness. Jacob felt he was beholding something unnatural and for a moment, he felt a rare sense of fear low in his stomach. Fire encircled her irises, as though she could burn him with just one look. “Can’t you hear them over the river?”

There was no mockery in her voice, he knew she was being sincere.

“John can handle himself – you remember what he’s like,” he said. Jacob lay his cold eyes on her; the blaze in her eyes met the blizzard within his. “Mm,” he hummed with his lips pursed. “But you never did like him. Is that why you’re here, stealing my stuff? Too scared to return to Hope County?”

The sun hid behind a cloud and whatever burnt in Daisy’s eyes disappeared. She remembered John very well, he was someone who enjoyed agitating and persecuting others from a young age. It wasn’t malicious back then; he was only a child. But his proclivity to torment for fun showed itself early. “She will kill him soon, I can feel it.” She was withdrawing with slow, backward steps. “You should hide, Jacob. The Deputy is coming for all of you.”

Jacob smiled in a way that almost resembled kindness. But it was not kindness, of course. He found her ridiculous and would have been offended by these words had they been spoken by someone else. Daisy was being what Daisy always was; odd but not malicious. Speaking nonsense when you least expected it. She resembled Joseph in this way, rambling about things that didn’t always make sense. But she was no Joseph, her words were no prophecies and she was no seer. Some would call it lunacy, but he remembered what she looked like as a child and could not bring himself to punish her.

“Go home, Daisy. I mean it.” Jacob’s voice gruff voice dripped with authority, and it returned something vital to him. Something he’d curiously lost around her and was glad to reconcile with.

“I don’t have a home anymore,” she said quietly as if speaking to herself, though Jacob heard it. He felt the rare pang of guilt in his stomach but said nothing. He watched as Daisy withdrew into the distance with her eyes set on the ground; she did not look at him again. Hers was a silhouette with long hair that merged with the shadows and trees.

Soon enough she disappeared, and motion was restored. The normal sounds of nature returned, and he could breathe with ease again. As he peeled away from the site, he had the odd feeling that something fatal had transpired.

Jacob returned with the small wolf in his arms with not an ounce of triumph in his body. Instead, there lurked the memories of many years ago, threatening to spill from the abyss within his psyche. Memories from a time he’d vowed long ago to never revisit. A time of hot summers and young siblings, of shouting and things breaking. Of a version of himself restless for an escape, itching for spilt blood. And of a girl at the bottom of a lake, a girl cut by glass.

When he checked on the pup the following morning, it was dead.

#jacob seed #far cry 5 #jacob seed x oc #john seed #far cry fandom #far cry #jacob seed fanfiction #jacob seed fanfic #jacob seed fic #far cry 5 jacob seed #fc5 jacob seed

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birdsong-goeson · 16 days ago

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Vincere Aut Mori / Conquer or Die Chapter 5 (2.1k words)

Chapter summary: Jacob confronts Daisy and forces her to make her sacrifice.

Warnings: threat of violence, intimidation

Fic summary: Jacob Seed crosses paths with an old neighbour and her presence starts to unravel the fragile bond between him and John. With visions of the brother's death, Daisy resists the Project any way she can. But once Jacob notices she's in his region, he will stop at nothing to get her to submit.

Link to A03

Links to all chapters on Tumblr

Chapter 5

Daisy looked up to see Jacob leaning against a large boulder with his arms crossed. Half of his face was hidden by the night’s darkness whilst the other was illuminated by the clear blue moonlight. It created a discomforting effect when combined with the ghostly smile on his lips and the scars on his cheeks, as though a misshapen ghoul stared down at her. Jacob Seed was terrifying to behold; his eyes seemed black as they looked at her. Looking around, Daisy saw they were in a secluded clearing surrounded by boulders. Above them were trails that stretched up to the mountains above and steep drops leading to one’s death. She could hear the sound of water gushing in a nearby stream and the faint hum of crickets. Were it not for the current circumstances, she would have proclaimed this night to be beautiful and basked in the moonlight like one of those feverish girls in old paintings, who danced in a maddening circle alongside other women with their hands interlinked or outreached to the sky. Looking around, she realised the only tune she would dance to now was Jacob’s.

“Must’ve hurt like hell,” he said. A Judge kneeled at his feet with its yellow eyes locked on her.

Daisy shakily rose, feeling every ache and bruise on her body. She’d lost the piece of cloth that held her hair during the fall, so now it all fell loosely down to her hips. The tips of her hair were smeared with dirt. The Judge that hovered over her removed itself and sat by Jacob, mirroring the other one. With the Judges sitting by either side of Jacob, the image reminded Daisy of the chariot tarot card. The card with the sword-wielding rider and the two sphinxes. The card of determination and willpower.

Having realised that Jacob orchestrated all of this, from the radio calls and the attack on her home to luring her out into the woods and having her thrown to the ground, Daisy trembled as she stood before him. She felt like a chastised pup even though she knew she had committed no wrong. From where she stood, she thought she could see a cold satisfaction hovering over his lips. Cruelty was etched on his skin. Deep down she knew that if he truly wanted to hurt her, there was little she could do to stop it. It all stunned her to silence. The moonlight draped over her like a veil, and she hoped it could hide the trepidation in her eyes.

“You’ve nothing to say to me?” He goaded.

“I didn’t like your story,” Daisy said quietly. She thought back to the urban legend he had spoken about on the radio, the one with the man who licked the woman’s hand. It was a common horror story and popular among children. She tried to forget how fearful it’d made her when she heard it. “I thought it was said in bad taste.” She continued and was careful to look at him sparingly, finding the intensity of his eyes too overwhelming.

Jacob raised his eyebrows. “I’m sorry to hear that,” he said sardonically. “Should I have sung you a lullaby instead?” The unkind smile remained on his lips.

Daisy shook her head. She held her hands in front of her and twisted her fingers together as she often did when she felt nervous. The situation demanded that she retorted quickly and smartly at him, but she was uncertain she could meet the challenge. Jacob Seed was not to be toyed with, and she feared provoking his wrath. A tiny voice within her said that, for whatever reason, it seemed she had provoked it already. She tried to shoo the impish voice away.

“Jacob,” she said quietly. Looking at him now, half-concealed by darkness, it was hard to believe she’d ever known him as a young person. There was nothing recognisable about him. Only the blueness of his eyes, which was now lost to the darkness, could bring her back to the teenager he used to be. The angry boy next door with fiery hair and constantly red knuckles. The boy who protected his brothers with shaky fists, who was teased for his freckles. It devastated her to see how scarred the world had made him, how fate decreed that they would meet like this after all these years; as the ruiner and the ruined. It made her shiver to see the rigidity in his eyes, how unreflecting they were of the moonlight.

“I know what this is about,” she continued. “I am truly sorry for taking your animals. Really, I am. I didn’t mean to bother you,” she said whilst putting her arms around her frame, trying to contain the shivers that took hold of her body. Standing before someone like him, someone with so much authority and violence inscribed on his body, someone who was clearly unhappy with her, gripped her body with fear. Daisy couldn’t stop thinking of the dead bodies left to rot on Jacob’s borders, how mangled they were with barbed wire encircling their limbs. “You won’t hear of us or come across us again. I promise-” Her last words failed to leave her mouth as she struggled to get air into her lungs. “I promise,” she repeated with more strength. “We’ll disappear.”

There were people in this world who could ruin you. Truly destroy you; shatter your body and soul. Daisy knew Jacob could bring her so low as to become unrecognisable to her own self. As he had done to the countless people with the misfortune of crossing his path. Looking at his towering figure now, he seemed to gloat at her servile prostration. Daisy knew that against a personality like Jacob’s, it was best to just submit.

He did not respond; an uneasy silence hovered between the two as his eyes raked over her form.

“Ah, Daisy,” he said finally and shook his head like he was chiding her. It was a tone many people took with her over the years, as though they were about to bestow upon her a fundamental secret about how the world operated. As though she was silly for lacking ‘common sense,’ for having miraculously made it this far without knowing something quite basic about the natural order of things. It was patronising and filled her with dread.

“It’s not about that,” he said as his eyes hovered below her neckline and then rose to meet her eyes again. “I couldn’t give less of a shit about your animal rescue work. You really think your efforts made a difference to my operation?” The sound of his scoff made her flinch.

“It’s not your theft that offended me, but your weakness.” Scorn clouded his eyes as he looked into hers, and it made her burn with shame. He removed himself from the boulder he was leaning on and backed into the darkness where she could not see him. “This is about making you strong,” he called out and re-emerged with something heavy dragging behind him. When he stepped into the light again, Daisy saw a large cage. Within it lay Gregor, motionless and with faint scarlet marks staining his fur. Daisy drew a sharp breath upon seeing him.

“A pet is a dangerous thing to have in this world, Daisy. A dependent,” he said. He moved stepped into the moonlight and approached her. She could now see his whole face clearly. The dog tag on his chest glittered as the light fell on it, shimmering like a relic. “A parasite.” He spat the word out with bitter contempt. The hatefulness behind his words made the knot in her stomach harden. “This is about reminding you of your purpose. Looking after the weak is what holds us back. It’s what’s wrong with the modern world, this sickly part of us that needs to be cut out.”

Jacob pulled a large needle from his pocket and circled back to stand next to the cage.

“We are all tested in this life,” Jacob said. “I was, and so were Joseph and John. It’s not something anyone wants to do. It’s something you have to do. We each have to make our sacrifice and it’s been made very clear to me that you have yet to be initiated.” He paused and looked at her in a way that reminded Daisy of a death knell. “I’m doing this for your own good.”

“What are you doing?” Daisy asked and tried approaching the cage. Jacob put up his hand and she stopped. He opened the crate and pierced Gregor’s body roughly around the neck, injecting a green fluid into him. Gregor’s body spasmed as the needle entered and begun convulsing as Jacob closed the crate.

“What’s in that?” Daisy asked helplessly as Jacob suddenly unsheathed a knife from his belt. An air of villainy emanated from him as he held the naked blade in his hand with familiarity. Evidently, this was second nature to him.

“It’s time for your test,” he said simply and threw it at her feet. She flinched away from it instinctively. The blade shimmered beneath the moonlight like a small pool of water. The light was blinding as it shone in her eyes, making her feel like she was enveloped in an orb of holy light. She knew at that moment that there was nothing holy about Jacob, the very moon whispered it.

“Pick it up,” he commanded. “Now, Daisy. Pick it up,” he said with a grave voice and a fierce look in his eyes. The ferocity of his voice reminded her that Jacob was one of the destroyers of this world. She remembered when he was sent off to fight in the First Gulf War and how, upon his return, she could see that a part of his soul had been left behind in the desert. The war had unfurled a cruelty within him, and she realised at that moment that no amount of begging and pleading could soften the blow he was about to deliver. He was one of those people with a predestined path to destruction and chaos.

“Jacob, I don’t understand-” Daisy whimpered as she looked frantically between the knife and the cage, which Jacob kept his hand on. “What do you mean?”

Gregor’s eyes opened at that moment. They were a sickly shade of pale green, rather than their natural shade of honey. The colour of Bliss. A green blankness shrouded his vision, and he seemed alien to Daisy. He let out a deep growl and his body heaved as though he was struggling to breathe.

“Listen to me and pick up the knife.” Jacob snarled at her, looking at her shaking, incompetent hands. Daisy started to hyperventilate as Jacob opened the cage again. Gregor rose slowly, snapping his jaw like he was getting used to a new set of teeth. He looked bigger than usual and seemed to increase in size during the few moments it took him to emerge from the cage. Gregor showed no signs of recognition when he looked at her.

“This is your test. It’s you or him. Pick it up and make your sacrifice.” Jacob said and kicked the empty cage to the side. The crashing sound seemed to reverberate across the mountain planes, returning a deafening echo to Daisy’s ears. Despite Jacob being closer to Gregor, the wolfdog showed no interest in him. The Judges were biologically engineered, perhaps designed to avoid him, she realised.

Gregor and Daisy had spent the last several months in companionship, from morning to night. Together, they had hiked across regions and borders, fled from cultists, and made a home out of the scraps of any dump that was big enough for two. Now, he looked at her like she was nothing more than a piece of meat. Months of memories and love were lost in an instant. All it took was one needle.

“He will want to kill you. Fight him, Daisy.” Jacob said but she could hardly hear anything. All she could think about was Gregor the moment she first came across him. An elderly dog with an injured paw, lying on the ground by a stream, waiting to die. And how glad he was when somebody finally cared enough to reach out to him.

“Buddy, it’s me,” she whispered and reached out with one of her hands. Gregor barked and snarled at her. Daisy had lost a lot since the Project at Eden’s Gate had begun. Perhaps this was the straw that broke the camel’s back for she fell to her knees and was at eye-level with Gregor.

“Change him back,” she pleaded to Jacob, who looked at her with an indescribable expression, something between sternness and concern. “Not him. Take anything else you want. But don’t take him.” She lost sight of her old friend as her vision blurred with hot tears.

“The only thing I want is your weakness. Take the damn knife.” Jacob said and clapped his hands, which caused Gregor to leap at Daisy.

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