[redox-kun]

STORIES

stefan learned not to object to orders, not anymore, but even he had reservations about journeying this far out into titan territory in order to recover a bit of carrion feed. well, he did. until he saw the figures for how much the noble families were willing to pay for the bodies of their sons. grain prices were rising, and he's not about to complain when sina's families were willing to foot the bill. stefan lowers the clipboard at his side and surveys the grasslands, their colors burnt by the setting sun. he identifies the princelings by the glimmer of gold in their teeth. "do not scavenge" he snarls to a soldier whose gaze had darted a little too quickly between the trinkets. when half of the corpses' faces were mauled, the trinkets were the most valuable things that they had for identification. consider it done, he had told his supervisor. six years of membership in the legion, and he didn't even have a single squad captain to serve. it doesn't bother him as much as it used to, but it certainly would have been easier to keep up on a particular squad. they had heavy carts to protect. moreso than usual. that was the only reason why he was here, really. he had allowed himself a few seconds of hopeful content. perhaps they had feared the wilderness more than they had feared him. they had sent sophia rosenburg to lead the party. that's when stefan had allowed his hopes to die quietly. he had served under her before. everything about her was sharp, from her cheekbones to her blade and the way that she would look at each and one of the soldiers before her. the way that she would never look at titans. the crunch of the grass underneath her shoes punctuate the shuffling of the legion. she gives a careless glance at the corpses. identifying them was somebody else's job. her footsteps stop, only to be replaced by the sound of her voice. "keep your signal flares at the ready in case of sightings, and make haste" darth vader

LAIKA OF GS!

[darth vader]

everything i crave i become everything  I left i've forgotten everything i love i become

There is none of the glory her mother promised her on this corpse-ridden field. If Zeyn allows herself to think about all her mother said and all her mother told her was true, she will begin to realize that there will never be that glory. There's only death here. Even those of them hauling the bodies away are only waiting for their death to approach them in time. There's nothing else here. 

So Zeyn doesn't think of it. She stands motionless beside the body she is supposed to lift and wonders why Thalia sent her on this mission when they asked for someone from her squad. Because Lucia is too young, Because Mina still believes. Because she wouldn't send Kain beyond the Wall if he wasn't accompanied by her squad. Because Zeyn is the one she trusts. 

She shouldn't, Zeyn whispers fiercely in her head. She shouldn't have this faith in me.

(And another true thought she cannot allow herself to recognize: Thalia doesn't have that faith in her. Thalia does not believe in Zeyn. She only wants to believe in Zeyn.) 

She looks at the body. It's no one she knows. A familiar face, with a shock of red-gold hair, a narrow chin, but not a face she can put a name to. Maybe someone she passed in a barracks hall once, or swung past on a mission, and each of them continued on their assigned velocity and now one of them is dead and the other isn't and Zeyn isn't sure which is which. 

She clenches her fist. She un-clenches her fist. She looks at the hole, ragged and punched straight through bone and muscle, in the body's throat. She cannot look away.

LAIKA OF GS!

[redox-kun]

STORIES

some lives were worth more than others. more than simple sina doctrine, it was an idea that had kept sophia afloat for all these years. she was an excellent trainee, but that didn't mean that she could protect everyone as a soldier. a rapier's strength cannot be compared to the strength of a shield. some soldiers were bound to slip through the cracks. sophia will not mourn them all, and it is no responsibility of hers. sophia mounts her horse and checks their operations again. her responsibility is to make sure that their deaths are not wasted. the remembrance, she leaves to their wives and their sisters and their mothers and their daughters. (she mourns for hugues. she does not think about him. not here) sophia surveys the landscape, where the ground was flat enough to see every living thing for miles. the other soldiers had the perimeter secured, allowing sophia a little more freedom in checking the legion's progress. it's a gruesome sight, but it's not much that most of them haven't seen before. the greenhorns didn't tend to survive. which is why she is a little surprised when some of the soldiers are transfixed upon a half-rotten corpse. the reddish hair and the left mole are dead giveaways to sophia, but not to all of them, it seems. she rides her horse over to the group and tells them, "veronica quinn, yaiche squad. these are not remains of importance. move on." not a single person wanted to be here for longer than was absolutely necessary.  darth vader

LAIKA OF GS!

[darth vader]

everything i crave i become everything  I left i've forgotten everything i love i become

Zeyn watches as the corpse jerks itself into an upright sitting position on the ground. Its movement is stilted, and the force of the motion sends a chunk of dead white flesh from its forehead to the ground, where it sticks in the mud with a wet thump.

It smiles at her. There are black bugs crawling among its teeth, still white and straight even in death.

"You know that she's wrong," it says. "You know that they both are. No matter how you want to believe their lies about the world, about you, none of them are true. There's no goodness, and there's certainly no glory. I am not a corpse of particular significance. None of these corpses are. None of the living here are either. You're all rotted meat walking, lives that are already erasing themselves quietly from the previous page."

"I know," Zeyn answers. "I already know."

LAIKA OF GS!

[redox-kun]

STORIES

nobody wants to be here, recovering the bacteria-infested remains of the fallen. even the veterans are fighting the urge to look away. this woman is the same (everyone was), and sophia manages to dredge up some pity for her. the corpse has always been worse than the moment of death, which can always be reconstrued in a many number of ways. there is no room for doubt, no room for any hope that might bubble to the surface. sophia shows her the same pity that she had shown ceres bowen all those years ago. if the urge to flee is dishonorable, then all of humanity is guilty. the squad captain dismounts from her horse. she carefully removes her cloak and tosses it over veronica's corpse. the worst parts of it, at least. "...if you have a job to do" sophia turns back to her horse. "...then it is not a crime to look away" darth vader

LAIKA OF GS!