#they're available as magnets and pins too! | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

night-garden-fic · 1 year ago

Text

Chapter Eleven: Unwinding in Red

(Read on AO3)

"I can't die here! I need to get home!"

Part Three

⋅•⋅⊰∙∘☽༓☾∘∙⊱⋅•⋅

"I've been looking for the ending my story lacks

A strong enough magnet to pull me back

Oh, you are that

Oh, you are that"

-"74 Willow," Ednaswap

⋅•⋅⊰∙∘☽༓☾∘∙⊱⋅•⋅

Chapter Eleven: Unwinding in Red

The first color to disentangle itself from the stygian black of Russell's mind was a violent, arteric red.

His whole body lit up with a violent flash of it; the searing crimson radiating hotly from a single sharp point between two ribs. The few thoughts that could fight their way to the surface—through all that bright red pain—were sluggish and chaotic from the trip, his body spinning somewhere in uncertain space, vision blurry and distorted.

(Lost.)

But the mental image of a Sechs broadsword, polished to a fierce gleam, was as clear and vicious as the pain itself.

They came back for me.

(I think I'm dead.)

Dead or alive, it surprised him when his body began fighting back of its own accord.

Russell was exhausted, and prepared to let nature take its course, but his hands had other ideas, and he felt one of them land a blow against the swordsman's sturdy body.

"...Lara! We need to hold him down!"

Like hell you do!

His mind, it seemed, was now in league with his body.

(You don't get to decide when you're done!)

(You can't leave her!)

Even working together, his body and mind couldn't quite muster the vigor he'd need to escape. Russell squirmed beneath the four firm hands that held him, but it was like sinking in thick mud. The more he struggled, the stronger the grip seemed to become, and he was tiring quickly.

I can't die here! I need to get home!

Russell summoned the last of his fading strength, but it was to no avail. The exertion and dizziness only made him begin to retch, and the nauseating wave of panic when he felt the hands turning his body and pinning him face down didn't help matters.

Nor did the swordsman's raised voice.

"While we have him on his side, Lara!"

He felt a vile wet heat rising in his throat, and the sudden stabbing pain and hot pressure in his left thigh sent him over the edge. He vomited something thin and caustic into a clanging metal basin, with so much force that he swore he felt his muscles begin to tear.

Then the swordsman spoke again.

"I'm sorry, Russell... That was probably pretty startling, but your lung was collapsed, and I had to let the air out of your chest cavity."

No. They're both collapsed. That's what happened. I remember.

You don't forget something like that.

And why does he know your name?

(Swordsman?)

Suddenly, Russell wasn't sure. He knew the voice, but his mind couldn't quite hold on to it. Or, for that matter, to anything else. Everything was red and slippery; quicksilver, crimson ink, a line drawing of the heart made to beat by a strange trick of the light.

If only the room would stop spinning.

(The room?)

He was, he realized, in a room.

So he wasn't in the trenches, and this couldn't have been a swordsman. Or at least, it was seeming more and more unlikely.

Where am I? What's happening to me?

The not-swordsman's grip relaxed.

"There you go. Easy, now."

With his limbs now freed, and the strange pressure in his chest slowly fading, Russell curled himself into a tight shivering ball, straining to speak. He didn't have much breath, so he would have to carefully choose what he wanted to communicate.

"...Cold in here..."

...Where's "here?" Why didn't you ask?

(I don't think I'm thinking straight.)

That familiar voice again, sounding sympathetic and faintly weary.

"You came in with hypothermia, but you spiked a high fever after we got you warm. I'll get you a blanket when it comes down, but we need to keep you cool for now."

I came in too cold. Now I'm too hot.

I think I know where I am.

Time, it seemed, had unwound.

~*~

Russell was twenty-one when it happened, and he had already been having a bad day.

It had begun as the ordinary sort of bad day; the kind that one could have anywhere, despite the distinct militaristic flavor of his particular complaints. There was a rock in his boot, and no break long enough to get it out. He'd had nothing to eat all day but a chalky ration bar that stuck in his back teeth and left a bad taste in his mouth. The damp chill of the trenches had settled in his lungs and bones, as it often did, and he was fighting a cold; feeling sweaty and clammy under his uniform despite the weather.

And, as if all that wasn't bad enough, his constant unchosen companion—the boy who hung behind him and whispered inane comments—had been particularly chatty that day.

"...Sechs battlemages."

Russell shifted in the cold mud, willing the feeling to return to his numb behind.

"Hmm."

He obviously wasn't interested in this conversation, but the other boy, insistent or merely oblivious, was equally uninterested in letting up.

"No, seriously. I heard from down the way that there's a whole line of them up there on the other side."

Of course, this young man was always hearing things from "down the way." Russell was skeptical.

"What? No. Why would they send battlemages to deal with us?"

The boy shrugged.

"Look, it's just what I heard."

Russell—who was slightly feverish, and more than a little bit cranky—had heard about enough of this.

"Yeah, well, you hear a lot of things."

His companion remained undeterred.

"Fine. I'll go have a look for myself."

Russell thought that sounded like a terrible idea, but he knew this fool wouldn't listen to him anyway, so he said nothing.

To a chorus of whispered protests from the cohort of young soldiers around him, the talkative boy peered above the rim of the trench. Then he sat back down next to Russell and resumed his muttering, voice quivering with a strange mix of terror and self-satisfaction.

"...I told you! Go look if you don't believe me!"

In all the years that followed, Russell could never figure out why he did what he did next.

It was idiotically reckless, and completely out of character. Perhaps he simply wanted the annoying chatterbox to shut up for a few minutes, or perhaps he was just responding to a preexisting need to stand and stretch his aching hips.

Most likely, he was curious.

The only time Russell had ever seen magic up close was a brief flirtation of his own at fifteen; when he'd gotten hold of a spell tome, managed to make a trickle of water glide down his fingers, and wound up needing a three-hour nap afterwards. He decided it probably wasn't for him, but the fascination still remained.

So he went to have a look. And he figured that, while he was taking the risk, he might as well make it a good one. It took all the strength he had in his tired limbs, but Russell managed to hoist himself up into the open air.

The sight that greeted him was almost beautiful. Even the vast horizon itself was heartbreakingly lovely, after several days spent squatting in a muddy ditch.

And then there were the mages themselves; a line of stoic hooded figures like a grim rainbow, each dressed in a robe the color of their chosen element. Their otherworldliness captivated him, and Russell ended up lingering just half a second too long.

Long enough to be sighted by a single mage in black.

The stranger who—though Russell didn't know it yet—was to shatter his world.

It happened before he could react. He'd glimpsed the mages, then realized too late that he was being pursued by what appeared to be a hole in reality itself; gleaming violet around its sucking edges, ready to swallow him whole.

Except, he wasn't swallowed.

This was a void with substance, and it barrelled into Russell at an incredible speed, knocking the wind out of him and sending him flying back into the sticky mud of the trench.

He couldn't move. He couldn't breathe. At first, he assumed the fall must have broken his neck.

No, that's not right. I can feel everything.

And, if he tried, he could move his fingers. He just didn't seem to have the strength to do anything more.

What did...

By now, the whole unit was crowding around him, and the lights in his mind were beginning to burn out. Russell wanted to say that he was okay, that he could clench his hands in loose fists, that nothing was broken. But he lacked the breath for speech, and words were beginning to feel slippery and strange.

"Is he breathing!?"

"He's freezing cold!"

"...Oh Gods oh Gods oh Gods..."

"Rufus, say something!"

"Wrong name, moron!"

"Quit bickering and get him out of here before he drops dead!"

A series of men managed to relay Russell to the field hospital; where a medic tapped both sides of his ribcage with a horrible tool that felt like nothing so much as a rusty icepick, returning air to his deflated lungs in an agonized heaving gasp.

And that was the last thing he remembered for quite a long time.

~*~

When his memories picked up again, Russell had no idea where he was.

It was somewhere pale and blurry, and he seemed to be in bed. He still didn't have enough strength to move much, and felt as though he were drowning. Something dense and semi-solid filled his lungs, and pulling air into them was too great a task for his weakened chest.

(You can give up. It's okay.)

Just as he was about to close his eyes and slip under again, the animal panic of near-suffocation invigorated him just enough to prop himself up slightly and begin to cough. Once he started, it seemed nearly impossible to stop, and it frightened him to realize he was bringing up chunks of something tar-black and glistening.

The memory of the void that took him down came back to level him a second time.

What did they put in me?

He felt sickeningly violated and corrupt, until he gradually realized that the strange black substance was only his own clotted blood.

No sinister magic had put it there.

He had merely bled.

Gods, how much did I bleed?

At first, there seemed to be no end to it; not until the black gave way to a watery, streaky red, and the strain caused the entirety of his body to begin working in reverse. Russell gagged painfully, bringing up what must have been the sour watery ghost of that vile ration bar.

Then, strength spent, he collapsed back on the bed, shivering violently with exhaustion.

Before long, figures in white began to gather at his bedside. They were as blurry as everything else, and he finally realized that he didn't have his glasses. His compromised vision terrified him, almost as much as the near-immobility itself. The figures might have been speaking to him, but his head was still fuzzy, and his heart was beginning to pound in his ears.

Just do whatever you're going to do.

The figures began muttering amongst themselves. They dug Russell out from under layers of muffling white, lifting him off the bed and placing him on the chilly wood floor.

At the touch of the cold, slickly varnished planks, he realized that—save for a gauze wrap around his chest—he was completely naked.

And even that frail layer of gauze, it seemed, was being undone. He gasped as it came painfully unstuck from his skin, recoiling slightly when two of the strangers began going over his body with wet cloths without even asking him, then recoiling further as one of them crept up between his legs. He felt invaded and exposed, wanting nothing more than to curl into a tight ball.

Then Russell's rational mind—ever the bearer of bad news—began to return to him.

You've just been coughing blood and throwing up.

And you can't move.

Russell unclenched, allowing the two strangers to wash him. It was over soon enough, and he was bandaged up again, then dressed in a sharp-smelling white robe and finally placed back on a bed fitted with fresh sheets.

The figures seemingly forgot him after that, moving onto other tasks and leaving him with who must have been their leader.

The doctor, he presumed.

"Do you know where you are?"

Russell shook his head once, managing to find a weak, hoarse voice.

"I don't have my glasses."

He thought the doctor might have nodded. Though, without the aforementioned glasses, it was a bit hard to tell.

"They're pretty badly cracked, but they're with the rest of your things. I'll have a nurse fetch them."

The doctor mumbled something to one of the white-clad strangers, then went on to explain Russell's situation.

Russell was told that the blank white space surrounding him was a Norad military hospital, several miles from the border, and that he was in a ward with twenty other injured men.

Then he was told that a powerful Dark spell had drained a considerable amount of his life energy; leaving a deep wound that resembled a severe burn or minor necrosis, which had needed to be debrided. Additionally, he'd developed a bronchial infection while lying near-comatose, and was still running a low-grade fever.

He was told, almost as an afterthought, that he had been unconscious for nearly a week.

And, finally, he was told that his unit's archers had managed to drive back the mages, but that hardly seemed relevant.

Abruptly, and seemingly without a proper conclusion, the doctor stopped his telling, giving Russell a few minutes to process what he'd learned.

"If the spell drained my energy... That's why I can't move, right?"

Again, he wasn't sure if the doctor had nodded. Except this time, he couldn't fully put the uncertainty down to his bad vision.

"Partially, yes. But it's difficult to tell where the drain ends and ordinary exhaustion begins. When you were brought in, your general condition was... Pretty poor. But either way, your Runes should replenish themselves with time. Even the fact that you're awake now should be a sign you're on the mend."

Russell didn't feel like he was mending. He couldn't so much as lift his head off the pillow. Simply breathing took an onerous amount of effort, and he was increasingly aware of the smoldering crater in his chest.

Everything hurt.

Everything felt irreparably broken.

The nurse-stranger returned with his glasses, gently positioning them on his face. For the first time since his awakening, Russell was able to get a decent look at his surroundings.

The lenses, indeed, were badly cracked, rendering his left eye almost useless. What's more, the prescription was several years out of date; enough that he'd been struggling to read for quite some time. But they worked well enough to show Russell that he was just one in a long line of broken young bodies in sterile white beds.

Though still distressed at his body's weakness, he began to feel grateful that he was relatively intact, surrounded as he was by missing limbs and bandaged faces.

When he healed—if he healed—there would be, he assumed, relatively little to relearn.

Of course, the first thing he would eventually learn was just how wrong he had been.

~*~

Over the course of his lengthy hospital stay; as he went from scarcely able to roll over in bed unassisted, to propping himself up and drinking water from a glass, to sitting up in bed and straining to read what little he could get his hands on through his ancient damaged glasses, Russell began to realize that he wasn't as whole as he'd first thought.

Reading and thinking now seemed to require physical energy, and his injuries were strangely slow to heal. The infection in his lungs reoccurred twice, leaving him fighting for air in a cold sweat through delirious fevered nights. His baseline mood was one of dull, leaden apathy. Milk had never really agreed with him, but it now took only a miniscule amount to double him over with agonizing cramps.

The individual difficulties may have been small, but added together, they all left Russell fighting against a body that simply didn't function as well as it had before.

And, worst of all, the new skin that had begun to form over his flayed chest was paper-thin and translucent, hardly a skin at all. It frightened him to even move too quickly; lest his ribs pierce that friable membrane, spilling his slippery contents all over the white sheets.

I feel like I'm about to fall apart.

(I feel like I already have.)

The doctor told him that all of this would improve with time, but what abated and what lingered, in actuality, seemed completely arbitrary. Russell's fatigue improved, but his digestion never did. His mental state plateaued at "unpredictable," but he eventually regained most of his ability to shake off infections. And that new scar burned and ached like hell.

He began to wish that he had lost a limb, or an eye, or half the skin off his face, just so his obvious brokenness could be seen for what it was.

But, in spite of it all, Russell's mind did begin to quicken somewhat.

And, once it did, it was immediately consumed by a singular, hopeful thought.

Maybe they'll discharge me?

It seemed to make perfect sense. Though he could now imagine going on to live a relatively normal life, there was no way he was still in fighting shape. Even when he had mostly recovered from the worst of the drain, surely the deconditioning alone would disqualify him from a return to combat.

Russell, it seemed, had been wrong again.

First, before he knew what was truly going on, an oculist was brought in to see him; examining him right there as he sat up in bed. Then, a week later, he was presented with his new glasses, told to collect his things, and put on a carriage with several other only-slightly-broken men from the ward.

Russell held the new glasses in his hands for a moment, examining them as well as his under-corrected eyes could manage. They were oval, rimless, and terribly cheap-looking.

I hate them. I want to snap them in half.

Instead, he slipped them on, and suddenly saw everything in brutal, unforgiving clarity. The villages, growing ever more run down as they approached the border. And his fellow soldiers, so painfully young.

Russell decided to fold the glasses into his shirt pocket for the time being, and spent the rest of the ride in an uneasy half-sleep.

Just enjoy these last few sane hours of your life.

(I have such an awful feeling about this.)

Going back to the front was bad enough in itself, but the unit to which he'd been assigned was, to put it bluntly, a nightmare. It seemed to be where Norad's army stuck all its odds and ends, which created a poorly-matched company of deeply miserable men.

There were returnees with barely-healed injuries, like himself. Several recovered prisoners of war; even a few former Sechs soldiers who had defected after being taken prisoner themselves. Men who'd been kicked over their way after a few too many demerits. Fresh recruits who didn't themselves add up to a full unit, terrified teenagers in over their heads.

Easy targets.

(Poor things.)

And Russell, it turned out, was proving something of an easy target himself.

He'd never been particularly physically robust, and had entered the war as a scrawny, languid adolescent who preferred to spend most of his free time sprawled out on his bed or the floor, a book in hand. Even after basic training, he wasn't exactly strong. But—though still awkward and accident-prone—he had grown stringy and deceptively tough, with a surprising amount of endurance and tolerance for pain.

Now, all but the pain tolerance was gone; his body weakened by the energy drain, and what muscle he'd managed to build lost to nearly three months of bedrest. His hands and brain had all but forgotten the rhythms and intricacies of military life. He was no longer a soldier in any meaningful sense, and had no business anywhere near a war.

But somehow, in spite of that, he had found himself in one; with someone always getting on his case for holding things up, or generally not pulling his weight. Surrounded as he was by short fuses—including his own—these altercations often grew heated.

And, if nobody bothered to de-escalate them, they could easily become physical.

Russell, even at his best, had never excelled at hand-to-hand combat. And now, at his worst, he was all but unable to defend himself. That is, until the drizzly restless day when he found himself pinned to the ground by a nineteen-year-old former Sechs crossbowman who thought he'd taken one trip too many to move a pile of gear.

The boy seemed to be, quite bizarrely, trying to dislocate Russell's shoulder.

Instead, he'd managed to snap his mind.

Russell used the slick, yielding mud to his advantage, and rolled his assailant off of him.

How does it feel to be the one getting held down!?

(Put your hands around his throat!)

Russell recoiled at the thought, mostly in shock that it had really come from his own mind.

In the end, he didn't throttle the boy; opting instead to release him after an ineffectual slug in the stomach.

But the next man to step to him, Russell decided, would be the last.

And so, when one of the young men he'd left the hospital with—a particularly nasty creature still nursing his rage at the loss of a left eye—moved to grab Russell by the collar, Russell simply took out his utility knife and held it to the boy's throat.

Luckily, there were witnesses.

And, though the small blade didn't particularly frighten them, the coldness in Russell's eyes certainly did.

Everyone mostly left him alone after that.

Which is to say, they not only stopped picking fights, but stopped engaging him all together. There were no more attempts at conversation, and nobody seemed to want to come within arm's length of the pasty bookworm who might open a man's neck without a second thought. Even eye contact seemed to be regarded as risky.

Russell could never figure out if this was true fear, or mere disgust at something abject and atavistic within him.

Either way, it suited him just fine.

In all honesty, he loathed the entire group. They were petty and violent, and most of them had an irritating tendency towards self-pity; which was often itself sublimated into yet more violence, yet more pettiness. All of them seemed to be missing something inside them. Several not only killed civilians, but openly bragged about this.

And he'd never heard any of them mention a book they'd enjoyed.

Yes, Russell hated these men.

Every last miserable one.

He would live and fight among them for the next two years.

~*~

By the time the last day arrived, Russell had already felt it coming for a good, long while.

What he didn't expect was that he would, when the sun had set and all was said and done, have to go on living.

Until that pivotal point, the working assumption was that he would be dead within the year. He had no concrete reason to believe this, other than it feeling somehow right. The logical conclusion to his situation.

Young men die out here all the time.

There was no end in sight to the war, and it didn't seem like he himself would be discharged any time soon. There would be uncountable close calls in the future. And, if he failed to defend himself only once...

...It will all, finally, be over.

This, to Russell, was not a terribly distressing thought. Rather, he welcomed it; having grown, by now, fully tired of life.

Tired of waiting all day in the mud and muck for something to happen, tired of having to fight when it inevitably did. Tired of the sad, furious men that surrounded him. Tired of the terrible food, a good portion of which he couldn't digest and had to avoid. Tired of feeling perpetually achy and under the weather, no longer sure where the old energy drain ended and seven-hundred-and-thirty additional days of simple wear and tear began.

Just tired, period.

Moreover, he couldn't stand what he'd become.

It was bad enough that he'd taken human life at all, but worse still that he had taken several, and had indeed lost count after five. After that, he felt it no longer mattered. And he hated himself, with all of whatever still remained of his heart, for that lack of feeling. For all his wretched deeds. For having committed them in the name of a cause in which he'd never really believed.

(In instinctive defense of this awful life that I don't even want.)

Russell decided, rather abruptly, that his days of self-defense were over.

Even if his will to live had held out, he knew he never wanted to raise a hand against another human being again. Not hand, nor sword, nor arrow, nor even voice. He would go quietly, and he would let it end.

And then, of course, it finally ended.

But it wouldn't be the ending he'd been counting on.

The last day began like any other. Even if it had, to his mind, begun the day before. No one had slept in 24 hours, having spent the entire night in a particularly violent skirmish. And, when dawn broke, it seemed as though they had won.

At least, Russell assumed they had, seeing as his pitiful company were the only ones left standing. But, in truth, he hadn't paid much attention. He was too busy pretending to do the bare minimum; bringing up the rear while fantasizing about arrows through the temples and swords in the gut.

Of a void that might swallow his life whole, instead of merely taking a big bite and leaving him to stagger around wounded for years.

I probably shouldn't even be here.

(Please, don't leave me unfinished!)

Then, before he knew it, the battle was over, and Russell was one of the men left standing.

What was it he said to you back then?

"You just don't break!"

(The longer I live, the more it sounds like a curse.)

Several weren't so lucky, including the violent young crossbowman. Russell found it difficult to even want to mourn him. They'd never liked each other much. And besides, the young man was at peace. He'd never have to hurt anyone or cry out in anguish in the night again.

He won't have to live with himself.

Russell, it seemed, would.

(For just a little while longer.)

Long enough, at any rate, to help his unit clean up their mess. They would bury their dead, salvage what equipment they could, and then move on, skirting the ever-shifting border.

At the beginning of the end, Russell was digging a grave.

It was backbreaking work, and his own back was ill-used and unstable enough by then. But it was the work he'd chosen, over the less taxing scouting or salvage duties. For he had seen a number of what appeared to be civilian bodies crumpled in the mud, and he didn't feel like accompanying his fellows on what he knew would become, essentially, a graverobbing expedition.

So instead of robbing graves, he dug one instead, with the help of two other men. Their silent fourth companion, the one to be interred, was a new recruit; some poor child of seventeen or eighteen, who had been gutted from hip to hip by—judging from the mess he'd made of things—an incredibly clumsy swordsman.

Someone like me.

Russell had never been able to put a man down cleanly. It was always horrible, and there was always screaming.

(It would be horrible regardless.)

And now, standing over this poor gutted boy, cruelly opened by someone else's sword, he couldn't even think of something to say. None of them could. The kid had been with them for less than a month, and had spent most of that time staying well out of the way, lest his seniors pointlessly torment him for sport.

It really was pointless, wasn't it?.

All that heckling, all that effort to uphold their messy little pecking order, and for what?

It certainly didn't matter now. The boy was lying at the bottom of a dank hole, with three apathetic strangers slowly heaping dirt on top of him. None of them—once it had been obscured by soil—could even properly remember his face.

The grave was halfway full when they heard the wailing.

It was an unmistakably human sound; infantile, terrified, wanting.

Russell decided he would rather be anywhere other than standing at the edge of a gaping hole in the Earth, throwing heaps of black mud onto a man who was too young to be dead, so he volunteered to investigate. He stepped out onto the battlefield; over the bodies and debris, past his graverobbing fellows, following that mournful noise.

As he got closer to the source, the wailing grew louder, and Russell soon began to cry himself.

Perhaps this shouldn't have startled him as much as it did, but he couldn't remember the last time he'd actually cried. A slight watering of the eyes back at the hospital, when a nurse had to remove a dressing that had begun to stick to the open flesh of his chest? He couldn't quite recall.

All he knew was that he had been numb for quite some time, and was now weeping with someone else's incoherent sorrow.

His eyes grew so blurry that, when he finally arrived, he almost missed it.

Almost missed her.

Sunken in the mud was the cold body of a woman; tan skin gone ashen, long golden hair, pointed ears.

Not Human, not exactly. But something close.

And, swaddled and strapped to the dead back of what had to have been their mother, there was an infant.

Who was very much alive.

And with, Russell noted, very strong lungs. It had taken nearly forty minutes of screaming to call him to their side, and they were still going strong. The child had their mother's pointed ears, but was fairer and more pink-skinned, with hair the color and texture of a particularly fuzzy peach.

Russell had no experience with babies or children. Indeed, he'd practically been a child himself when he was jettisoned into this eerily homogenous world of young men. But he couldn't bear to hear this small creature suffer, and wouldn't dream of leaving them to their fate. With careful, shaking hands, he loosened the carrier's straps, then took the small bundle in his arms.

"Hey... Um... It's okay... I'm sorry. I don't know why I said that... Of course it isn't. But I'm going to get you out of here, all right?"

For a while longer, the child went on wailing. But, as Russell held them, they must have realized that he wasn't going to let go. Gradually, the screams slowed and quieted, and the infant drifted into a deep, exhausted sleep in his arms.

"There you are... Get some rest, now. That must have been hard work."

Wet-eyed and stumbling, achingly slow and careful, Russell retraced his steps until he was back at the camp. If anyone looked at him and his new charge strangely, he simply didn't notice.

After a moment of deliberation, Russell decided the sensible thing would be to take the child to the medical tent. There, she was pronounced healthy, physically unharmed, and apparently a girl. The medic told him that she would be looked after, and would soon be shipped off along with several of their injured men. Presumably, the staff at the hospital would know what to do next.

Russell winced at the thought of the hospital, but thanked the doctor anyway, and returned to his duties.

The child was safe, and he wouldn't have to worry about her anymore.

Except, of course, he did.

As he struggled to sleep that night, curled in a ball with his forehead touching the cold wall of the trench, she was all he could think about.

She's sleeping all alone over there.

Why does she have to go to that awful place?

I held her. Does she know me now?

Does she wonder where I went?

As he curled further into himself, Russell felt his hands gripping his upper arms.

Those cold, treacherous hands.

Hands that dug graves, swung cold clattering steel, drew blood, once held a knife to a man's throat.

Hands that, somehow, managed to soothe a child who had lost everything.

Whatever bad blood flowed beneath their sallow skin and calloused palms, she didn't seem to be able to feel it.

Russell wasn't sure if the surge of emotion this invoked in him was disgust at his own unintended deceitfulness, or something that he still, after all these years, recognized as hope.

I have to go to her. I have to make sure she's sleeping okay.

And indeed, that had been his original plan; to check up on her, maybe whisper some soothing nonsense, and then crawl back into what passed for bed, where sleep would never find him.

But when Russell arrived at the child's makeshift bedside, finding her sound asleep in a cargo crate piled with blankets, he realized there would be no crawling back to any of this.

He thought of the hospital, which he remembered well. The horror of white walls, of lonely nights, of being picked over by hurried doctors with a hundred other patients waiting to be prodded.

No place to start a life.

And he thought of his own rootless upbringing; his massive extended family where everyone passed their children from house to house, relation to relation, one huddled border village to another, hoping against hope to keep them safe from the ever-encroaching horrors of war.

It came for me anyway.

(It swallowed me whole.)

Last, he thought of the Elven woman's still body, cut down in the mad dash for a better place, a better start.

I, quite literally, picked up where she left off.

(And then you dropped her child here, in this sad place.)

I don't have to. I can lift her up again.

As if to prove himself, Russell reached into the crate, wrapped one of the blankets around the infant's body, and gently tucked her under his chin.

She fussed slightly upon being lifted. But, as on the battlefield, it didn't take long to soothe her back to sleep. His hands, to his amazement, seemed to know what to do; better than they had ever known a sword or a bow, or the cruel blade of the knife.

And then the pair departed, quiet as moths, into the dark of the night. Away from the border and the trenches; away from the scent of rot and blood that even the heaviest rain never seemed to fully clear.

Russell didn't know how long he walked, but it was dawn when he saw the cart trundling down the road. A humble farmer transporting a small group of Woolies, a sight so ordinary that it almost took on a storybook quality. The first thing he'd seen in ages—excepting the baby herself—that had nothing at all to do with war.

Cautiously, he raised his hand.

Will you take me back to the real world?

The cart slowed to a stop, and the farmer took a minute to size them up. Seeing the filthy, hollow-eyed young man in his rumpled Norad uniform, protectively clutching a sleeping infant to his chest, she must have been able to piece together at least part of what had transpired.

"Hop in the back. I assume you don't mind critters!"

Russell thanked her profusely, then climbed into the cart; where he immediately collapsed with exhaustion in the soft hay, still cradling his tiny companion.

It was the best sleep he'd had in years.

~*~

He called the child Cecilia, a name that he recalled from a childhood book about a fairy child found in the trunk of a hollow tree by a hermit woodsman while gathering firewood. The Cecilia in the story grew up spirited and optimistic, despite the isolation that came with living deep in the woods and knowing no others of her kind. She had the creatures of the forest, the love of her father, and the sense that every day would be an adventure.

He hoped that his own daughter—if that was indeed what she would become to him—would have all of that and more.

Later, of course, he found out that the true origin of her name was a little more complicated, something to do with blindness and fire and tragedy. But the image in his mind remained that of a pair of curious eyes peering out of a dark stump, taking in the enormity of the outside world.

My Cecilia!

(My girl from the rotten hollow.)

The pair traveled together for nearly a year, with Russell doing whatever he could to scrape by and provide for Cecilia; considering his own wellbeing only in the context of his ability to care for her.

To his own surprise, he rarely faltered, even when he felt like he was falling apart.

Russell begged, and occasionally stole. He slept on the cold dirty floors of barns and sheds, and frequently went hungry so his child could eat. He ran fevers, and seemed constantly on the verge of coming down with something nasty. Many nights, he woke up screaming.

And, through it all, Cecilia thrived at his side.

I made sure of that.

Before too long, it began to rub off on him.

Gradually, Russell remembered how to smile. And, eventually, he remembered that he used to want things out of life.

Of course, the last time he had truly wanted anything for himself—beyond escape or a quick death—he had been little more than a child. So his wants were a child's wants; simple, but all-encompassing.

Mostly, he wanted books.

Books, and the time and space to read as many of them as he could. He couldn't remember ever wanting anything else; not since he was four years old, when he got his first set of glasses and began to read.

And so, upon arriving in a small seaside village and immediately noticing its dark, shuttered Library, Russell didn't wait to start asking around.

Are you ready, Cecilia?

We can start our lives over now.

(I really am just like a child.)

#rune factory #rune factory 1 #rf1 #rf1 russell

1 note · View note

freckledoriya · 5 years ago

Note

Can I request a pro hero Bakugou scenario where he goes over to his crush's house, also a hero and sees that his crush has a bunch of really dumb hero merch, even some of his. Crush has a hobby of finding the oddest things that everyone's hero names gets slapped onto like cooking utensils or flower pots (whatever dumb thing, you name it) or maybe a ground zero blanket that's the softest thing ever that they sleep with. Maybe on insta they joke they're sleeping with him--the blanket form

i loved this, anon! huge thanks to @gallickingun for lending me her bakugou writing-expertise (some of this is her writing!); i’d be lost without her 😭

request more HERE

PAIRING: bakugou x reader

WARNINGS: language, mentions of alcohol, a lil steamy but nothing nsfw

WORD COUNT: 1.1k

When it came to collecting hero memorabilia, you’re what your crush Bakugou would call a “damn fuckin’ nerd.”

You couldn’t help it. You loved the rush of finding a vintage All Might themed toaster oven or adding to your collection of Miss Midnight glass perfume bottles. Oh, and of course the thrill of scoring a new addition to your growing bobblehead collection of all of Earth’s best heroes. Even though you were a hero yourself, someone who actually knew a lot of the heroes whose merch you’ve hoarded over the years, you couldn’t deny your cravings. None of your hero friends knew about your collecting hobby. You made it a point to always make sure no one stepped foot in your decked-out apartment. You would never invite anyone over… until tonight.

The words just tumbled out of your mouth. Maybe it was that extra shot of vodka in your drink at the bar, or maybe just the thrill of finally flirting with your crush. Either way, the sentence “wanna come over my place?” flew from your lips and landed onto Bakugou’s ears, where it was met with a devilish grin and a quick nod yes.

Flash forward, the two of you are side by side in a cab as you start to sober up and realize your mistake. His calloused fingertips ghosting up the side of your thigh almost makes you forget about the fact that your secret is about to be exposed.

He’s bound to make fun of you, right? He’ll probably think you’re some kind of obsessed freak and never talk to you again.

You open your mouth to make up a lame excuse about being too tired, but then you make eye contact, his crimson irises staring right through you. You so badly want to be his. His magnetic field keeps pulling you in, and as much as you want to backtrack out of a soon-to-be unfortunate situation, the sliver of hope that he’ll understand keeps you hooked.

But the second you step into your apartment with him and turn on the lights, you regret every action that got you to this point.

There are only mild amounts of paraphernalia scattered throughout your living room and kitchen - nothing too incriminating, but enough to let him know that you’re interested. You place your purse down on the kitchen table, dragging Bakugou’s attention to your salt shakers modeled after Best Jeanist. He plucks them off the tabletop, “Oi, what the fuck?”

If he thinks that’s weird, then he’s in for a treat if he makes it to your bedroom.

“I got them at a thrift shop,” you manage, “I thought they were, uh, funny…?”

Bakugou replaces them where he found them, stepping behind you as you sort through your bag for your phone, your chest pressed into the bar countertop. His hands grope your waist, dipping beneath the thin fabric of your top to feel your skin.

“Wanna show me your room?” he asks, attempting to be sultry as he kisses your shoulder, using his thick fingers to push your hair away from your neck so it’s available to his mouth. “Or do you have matching All Might shakers in there?”

You gulp but he chalks it up to the way his tongue laps against your skin. You chuckle hesitantly, turning so you can face him, “Listen, I-”

“Room, now, yeah?” He phrases it like a question but his tone of voice doesn’t lend it to be one; the alcohol making him much more forward and flirtatious than he would usually be. You lose all control when he starts kissing you, his palms sneaking underneath your top to map out the contours of your back.

He begins to lead you down your hallway to the door he can only presume to be your bedroom. You hesitantly start to open the door, but you’re going far too slow for Bakugou’s liking. He pushes the door open, subsequently slamming you up against the wall and pinning your wrists above your head. He presses his body up against yours, readying to attack your neck with more kisses, but right before he does, his eyes catch a glimpse of the Mt. Lady poster plastered against the wall behind you.

“Uh…” he stutters out, before starting to take in his surroundings and turning on the lights. And suddenly all is revealed: every limited edition action figure, each kitschy ceramic collectible, and of course, your precious bobblehead collection. “Damn...you like heroes a lot, don’t you?”

“It’s just a hobby!” you spit out before the anticipated insults. “It started with only a few things but now I just can’t help collecting stuff when I see it in stores. I promise it’s not something super creepy or anything like that!”

Bakugou just nods before walking over to your action figures, his surprisingly calm and understanding reaction causing you to tilt your head in confusion.

“You think they’re true to size?” he asks, holding up one modeled after his own image. He smirks, brushing his thumb down the plastic abdomen popping with muscle, “I mean, I guess I could let you see for yourself.”

You roll your eyes, crossing your arms over your chest, letting yourself relax now that you see he’s not running away. “I think they made the model for that one while you were gone. You sure Deku didn’t stand in for you?”

“Oi!” He whips around, using the action figure to point in your face like it were a stick, “I’m way fuckin’ better lookin’ than that shitty Deku. Take it back.”

“Careful with that!” you giggle, grabbing the doll out of his hands. “It’s a collectible.”

He’s still preoccupied with the figurines of himself, studying them closely as if they might start talking to him if he watches them long enough. Bakugou licks his lips before turning to you, “What do you think about the winter costume?”

“Oh,” you’re surprised by his question, but it urges you to step forward, closing in on his space, “I think it’s really flattering for you. The black long sleeves really bring out the orange in your costume.”

The prideful swell of his chest makes you wonder if he was just fishing for compliments from the beginning. A gentle pink tinge paints his cheeks and you feel your chest restrict at the sight.

“So… you don’t think I’m weird for all of this stuff?” you ask, still half expecting him to laugh in your face before leaving. “I was kinda thinking you’d make fun of me and call me a nerd.”

He scoffs at this before running his fingers through your hair. Smiling, he leans in and whispers, “Oh, I’m definitely going to make fun of you and call you a nerd, but we have more important things to do right now,” before his lips crash into yours.

#bakugou katsuki x reader #bakugou x reader #katsuki bakugo x reader #bnha x reader #mha x reader

218 notes · View notes