15-Mar-2004
Salvation (stand-alone epilogue, written for "Before The Beginning")
Author: CleverYoungThief
Rating: R
Warnings: Duo POV (childhood), death, gore, psychological squick, language, soldier brutality, skewed religious themes
Genre: Angst (how surprising, right?)
Pairings: None so far. That may change as the story goes on.
Spoilers: None.
Feedback: Please?
Disclaimers: Don't own 'em. Don't sue. College brats are like L2 brats, we got nothin'.
Summary - A brief sketch of Duo, Solo, and the other street kids, before Duo became an orphan at the Maxwell Church.
Notes: This stand-alone vignette can kind of be considered a precursor to Requiem, and maybe even as a companion piece to "White Band Prayer." Written for Psyche's "Before The Beginning" Fanfiction Challenge.
They wouldn't ever let me eat, not from the start. When I tried to reach for any food we had, the older ones shoved me in a corner, pushing me away. At first, I let them. I cowered in the corner like a kicked mutt while they glared, swallowing hard as they bolted whatever food we had like starving dogs.
When I looked to Solo, he just shrugged at me.
You want food, kiddo, you're going to have to fight for it.
I did. I was little, but the promise of food-no matter how filthy or how far gone it is-can make you a murderer. And when I couldn't fight, when I fought and got the living shit kicked out of me, he still made sure I had something to eat. He held it to my swollen, bleeding lips and I partook. He was proud of me for becoming a killer, and his approval was my rapture.
When nobody else was left to care about me, when my faith was bullshit and my God was blind and I was wandering in the dark... Solo was my messiah. The tenets of that bloody religion were dark and cold, but we were brothers. And I knew he would die for me.
He would die for all of us.
Food. A place to sleep. A knife, a prayer, but only as long as I followed Solo's rules. Rules to protect us, he said. Rules that would keep us safe and full and strong, rules that would make sure that as long as we were there, as long as L2 still belonged to us, the soldiers would still be afraid to walk alone on the streets at night.
Solo had a lot of rules. And there was only one punishment for breaking them.
You're in my gang now, kid. That makes us family, and you have to trust your family. If I tell you to run, you fucking run.You don't ask why, you don't look up at me, you don't look to see what's coming, you just run and hide. If I tell you to kill somebody, you do it without thinkin' twice. And if you ever lie to me, kid...
You steal, you kill, you make them fear you like they've never feared anything in their lives.
But don't be ashamed of where you come from.
And don't you ever fucking lie.
I couldn't do it. My heart was pounding in my chest like a little bird. I closed my eyes and shook my head mutely. My palms were sweating and my stomach was twisted with terror. I just wasn't made to do it. I was too clumsy, too scared.
It would break a commandment.
I turned and looked over my shoulder plaintively, giving him a look, showing him how I couldn't do it. He read the look on my face.
"You can, Kid. Just try again. Try again. Go on." Solo's voice was like a cool breeze in my ear, soft and calm and comforting, my everpresent litany. He stood behind me, arms crossed over his chest. I could feel his eyes on my back.
I tried again. I crept up behind Jeremiah, walking on the balls of my feet, so I wouldn't make any noise. Noise was being dead.
So I tried to do it right.
Dead was lucky, but you still didn't want it. I didn't want to die, no matter how bad things got. Some little bit of me way down in the bottom of my toes still wanted to live, I guess.
I reached up silently with one shaking hand, grabbing the wallet in his back pocket. I felt it begin to slide out easily, and a rush of relief drowned me.
// got it! //
Jeremiah whirled on me like a dog, hand clamping down on my wrist. I squirmed and cried out, but his hand couldn't be moved for anything. He stared down at me with his icy gray eyes the color of dirty slush, like snow in the gutter.
His hand raised back in a rough callused half-fist and he caught me hard against the cheekbone, making spots fly across my eyes.I accidently bit the inside of my cheek, and I could taste the metallic salty taste where it began to bleed.
"Dammit, kid! You almost had it, but you lost your fuckin' concentration. Pay attention to what you're doing!"
I looked to Solo. His blue eyes were stern and impassive. There wasn't going to be any help there.
"Do it again."
"I can't. I'm sorry," I whispered. I bowed my head. Penance.
"You're going to think sorry if you ever really get caught. Now do it again."
"You should give up on 'em, Solo. Fuckin' waste of time," Jeremiah grumbled.
Maybe I was.
"Do. It. Again."
Jeremiah glared, but he put the wallet back down in his back pocket, turning away again. Solo could make him do anything. He could make any of them do anything he wanted. Even though Jeremiah was bigger, he could do to Jeremiah what Jeremiah had just done to me, and Jeremiah wouldn't even flinch.
I don't know why. Maybe it was because Solo had the gun. Maybe because Solo had the wolf tattoo across his palm and the white band around his arm, like the resistance fighters, and because sometimes he disappeared for days and nobody ever knew where he went.
Maybe it was because Solo killed OZ officers and bragged about it.
I don't know.
But I did do it again.
And I got it right.
I mugged, I killed, I stole, I sold poison on street corners, I ambushed soldiers, I fought like life depended on the outcome of every fight, because it did. Syringes in the gutter, blood mixed with rainwater, broken crosses and charred crack pipes. Used condoms, shattered beer bottles.
Neon was the light of my God. Screams and gunfire were my choir. And the god of death is always hungry.
No matter how you look at it, I was always saved by the blood of others.
But I was never ashamed...
... and I never lied.
~~~ Owari
(:./cyt/salvation)
