Post by Dingoleap on May 18, 2017 23:36:40 GMT -5
There are moments that the words don’t reach
There is a suffering too terrible to name
You hold you child as tight as you can
And push away the unimaginable
There are moments when you’re in so deep
It seems easier to just swim down
This is not the first of her loved ones to die, but she holds this body closest, because this time, death has arrived with a specific agenda.
She buries her nose in the cooling fur, but no life sparks within the tiny, broken body, no matter how much she wants it, wills it. The scream that tears itself fro her throat is raw. Primal. It echoes the mournful songs of her ancestors, and in that moment, she has never felt more like a wild animal.
She doesn’t know how to deal with the pain. It feels as if her chest has been surgically opened and her heart removed, the wound left to fester. It feels as if all the bones in her body have been ground into dust. Her muscles no longer have anything to attach to.
But she is a soldier, and so she soldiers on.
Fury sparks beneath her skin, eclipsing the hopelessness of pain. A growl rumbles, deep within her chest. Her heart has been removed, but lightning fills the hole.
She climbs slowly to her paws. Anger oozes from every pore on her body and pools at her feet. She had once been told that death was a friend, a relief from life that was to be welcomed with opened arms, but she has dealt in death and retribution long enough to know that death is not kind.
No. Death has never been kind.
Her legs can no longer support her, but she does not give in to the urge to collapse. Sickness claws at her throat. For the first time in her long career, the carnage spread before her is unbearable.
Pawsteps echo through the empty corridors. The lightning sparks to life. She finds that she has it in her to fight one last battle if it means her survival. Death has come looking for her, but she is not yet done with life. Some vague remnant of her violent spirit flickers to life in the empty cavity of her chest.
She has always been dangerous. Volatile.
She will not back down again.
Her pursuers close in. She braces her tired muscles for the spring. She counts down the seconds, teeth bared, and in that moment she knows exactly who has been sent to kill her.
Her pack bursts into the room and skids to a halt, stumbling on their confusion. The fight has left their wiry bodies. Still, she stands guard, her challenge declared.
“Swift…” Her name fall easily from Blade’s mouth, his jaw limp with shock. He stares not at her, but at the destruction spread between them.
“What have you done?” Fear creeps into his voice, because there is no explanation for the havoc she has unleashed. He has been at her side since the very first mission, and has witnessed all she has to give. He is all too familiar with the hurricane concealed within her flesh and bones.
“What I had to do.” Her voice cracks, hoarse from the savagery of her screaming. “Are you here to kill me, Blade?”
What she has done is punishable by death.
Once, her pack meant more than her blood family, but she is not ready to meet death’s gaping jaws. She will kill them all before she surrenders herself to them. The pack watches with new eyes. Something cautions their movements, and for a heartbeat, she wonders exactly what it is they see before them.
In the moments since they have arrived, everything has changed. Everything that has ever given them purpose has been taken, as surely as her daughters’ life has.
They are not soldiers. Not anymore. She is no longer their captain, as equally famous for her level head as she is for her ferocity. She has become something else entirely, and she knows they should no longer trust her state of mind. Something deep within her has broken, and nothing will ever put it back together.
But trust is not freely given. It must be earned, and she long since earned theirs.
Their silence is an answer. She knows that if they had been sent to destroy her, they should have done so by now. Every moment they waste staring is another moment she has to prepare. In moment they waste, their advantage slips away. No, they will not risk attacking her now. She has taught them well, after all.
Slowly, her tired muscles relax. A whine escapes her. Nothing matters – not even the slackjawed wolves standing a few paces away. The world has shrunk until there is nothing but her and the blood on her paws and the bodies of those she has killed.
She has forgotten what it feels like to be a leader, but she has not yet forgotten what it feels like to be a mother.
There is a hesitance to the footsteps that approach. That in itself is unusual – she is fierce, but her packmates have never feared her. Not until tonight.
“Oh, Swiftie…”
The anguished voice is as familiar as her mothers. More so, perhaps. A retort burns on her spitfire tongue. She wants to be alone, yet fears to be so, and so does not turn him away. Blueback settles beside her, his body warm against hers. It is a small mercy.
All she can taste is the blood in her mouth. It is a stark reminder of what she has done. Of what she was made to be. It dawns on her suddenly. She does not regret killing the humans who have wronged her. What is left of sorrow turns slowly to rage. She can feel it, deep within her tired limbs.
The humans have left her behind. Abandoned her. They have broken her and remade her, over and over, in the hope of making her the perfect soldier. The perfect weapon.
And now, they have killed her daughter.
They do not deserve her loyalty.
Blueback sensed the change, sensed the iron in her muscles, the fire in her blood.
“I want to kill them.” The voice does not sound like hers. She is painfully aware of the gaping chasm beneath her paws. She is balancing precariously on the edge of the knife, and it is a long and slow climb back to sanity. It doesn’t matter. She will not fail again.
Her pack moves around her in a precarious dance, unsure of their places now that the structure of their lives has disappeared. The betrayal cuts deep as she realises who is missing.
Alexander, who had vowed to protect her. Alexander, who had kept her warm through the long, cold winters, who had ensured her pack was always fed, who had refused to send them into battle unless there was a change that they would all come out alive.
Alexander, who had failed her, just as he had failed her mother all those years ago.
She couldn’t remember why she had trusted him.
“Swift… We should… stay…” Blade tried to reason with her. They are scared, and they are convinced that the best thing to do is wait.
“So what?” She snaps, finally, she snaps, her voice heavy with the weight of her fury. “So they can find us here? Do you really think they will spare you after this?”
There is a dangerous truth to her words. They had nothing to do with the storm she conceals, but they are hers to command. They are guilty, guilty, guilty by association. Her blood, her crime, has tainted them all. Her body is shaking with the weight of what she has done.
She wants to sink her fangs into something. She wants to bite, to rip and tear and mangle and make them suffer for what they have done.
Once, a long time ago, her handlers had named her for the fire in her blood. They had named her for the obsession they both feared and revered. The lightning that replaced her heart hardens into stone.
“No… they will not spare us,” she whispers. “They will destroy us for this. But… but I swore I would protect my pack. I will! I will! I have lost too much, far, far too much. They will not take the rest of my family from me.” She tries to believe that there is a method buried within her madness.
“They will pay… oh yes, they will pay…” Her reflection stares back, distorted by the tags around her neck. It doesn’t take much to dislodge them. A violent shake, and her identity falls to the floor.
The eyes that meet her gaze aren’t quite her own. She was created to be a hunter, and so a hunter she shall be.
“Blade… are you with me?”
Her second senses that the ice beneath his paws is thin. Something claws at his throat, some desire to speak up, to say that what she has done here is wrong. “Swift-”
“Are you with me?”
“Swift!”
“You are either with me or against me, Blade, and I will kill all those who are not with me.” She doesn’t take her eyes off her reflection. She has half a mind to bend her fury inwards, to obliterate the last marks of her handlers.
The tattoo beneath her eye mocks her.
“They will know…” Her voice is broken. A whisper. “They will know the face of their hunter. I can only hope they suffer as much as I did.”
Her mission is clear, the targets acquired.
She is a soldier, and so she will soldier on.
Her second bows his head in submission, and she is left with nothing but the distinct sense of an ending.
Well, that started really sad and got really angry, really fast. I've wanted to write something for this setting for a really long time, and when I came across Brownie's contest I knew I had to finish this up. This is a rewrite of the original prologue for another story of mine, following a genetically engineered wolf named Swifteyes the Hunter. While it is difficult to say exactly how much is ending here, this marks a pivotal point in the story, where everything that Swift believes in, everything she was built to be, begins to fall apart. Her sense of purpose is ripped away from her, and the secrets her mother died for become hers to keep, but the cost of the truth is high. She must decide, and quickly, how much she is willing to pay for it - her sanity is perhaps the first casualty of the new war she finds herself fighting.
And yes, the lyrics and title are from Hamilton, because that particular song tears me apart every time I hear it, and it fits Swift's moment of tragedy perfectly.
