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He wasn’t unfamiliar with the goings on of war. He knew exactly what a well placed punch felt like, what an arrow felt like piercing his shoulder, what a blade felt like slashing along his side. He knew what torture felt like and was all too familiar with the sensations caused by all the different tools they liked to hide in the deep dark holes of war camps. He knew what it felt like to have his arm separated from his body as he watched, as he fought for his life, as he watched his country massacred in front of him. He knew what it felt like to be held up on a podium of bodies, hasty tourniquet tied over the stump of what used to be an arm, he knew what it felt like to be a trophy and absolutely nothing more. He remembered the feeling of Sendak’s knife, slicing through his face, inch by inch, the sound of cheering a dull roar, pierced by his own incoherent screams and Sendak’s soft whisper, filling his ears, his mind, and his memory.
“You’re no champion now. You’re garbage, just like the rest of them.”
Long in short, he knew what it felt like to get hit.
Nonetheless, the kick stunned him. Maybe because his stump was still bleeding and his entire body was pain, leftover from that final battle; maybe because it was supposed to be over.
He knew why; some part of him thought he deserved it. The soldiers surrounding him were all too happy to remind him. One of them almost tripped over his prone form on his next kick.
The man slurred his words. “Bet ya’ wish ya’ hadn’t came in on your fuckin’ white horse at Sheenahet, eh, Champion.” He spit the title down at the bleeding form.
Shiro had never liked the name, but in the mouth of the people who used to fear it, it felt like poison. He wasn’t the Champion, not anymore, not now, not huddled in the fetal position on the way to meet his new master and his new life, if it could even be called that.
One of the drunks gave another swift kick and Shiro could swear he could hear his ribs crack before they stumbled off into the night, cackling about how they had just destroyed the great Champion of Sheenahet, of Tourali, of almost every battle the Alteans had eked out in the last few years of the war. It didn’t matter that he was chained at the wrist, the ankles, a collar around his neck attached to the side of his cage.
He wished that this feeling was unfamiliar, but as he fell out of consciousness he could only remember that this is just how the Galra were and bleeding on the dirt was the least he could do after failing his entire nation.
The Galran prince knew that they had won, finally, but couldn’t bring himself to grasp how much it meant. The war had always been a distant thing; he knew, some time in the past, long before he’d been born, the Alteans had been a more present threat, but they hadn’t breached the border of the kingdom since Zarkon’s time. As legend told it, ever since Zarkon had defeated the traitorous Alfor, the Alteans had never been able to pull themselves back together.
The only way his life would change, as far as he could tell, was that he’d be receiving a new slave. He wouldn’t have to spend hours slaving over battle strategies anymore; he would miss that part. He may have never seen war but that didn’t mean he didn’t have a part in it. His plans were instrumental in winning the last few battles, he knew. He’d seen the numbers and he understood what they meant. Those plans, those numbers, they had been his purpose. They were his friends in the dark days when no one dared to knock on his door.
It was over and he was still alone.
The journey shouldn’t have taken weeks. Shiro had been this way before, and on horseback it should have taken six days. He didn’t know how long it had been; the days melted into night melted into days and back again, the lines blurred by his fever. He watched the shadows cast by the bars of his cage slide across the rough wood he was bound to, he counted the bumps in the road by the ache in his ribs every time the cart hit one.
They didn’t move him often, but sometimes they’d drag him off the safety of his cart and shove him into some open air cell, forcing him to sleep on the dirt by their campfire while they had free reign to enter, kick him, cut him as they pleased, and leave.
None of their little blows felt like anything anymore. They might as well have been beating on a drum. His whole focus was on his arm and the heat that radiated from it. It wasn’t just the stump, the leftover, but his entire right arm, clenching all the way up to his neck. It came in waves, but whatever he did, he couldn’t get the tension to release. The blows were a kind of relief compared to the pain his mind made up.
He wondered if he’d even make it to the capital, if he’d even meet his master. He wondered if he would be killed, if he did make it. He was useless now. He wasn’t worth the space it took to hold him.
But that was a problem for someone else. Shiro never lifted his eyes from a speck of dirt, slightly darker than the rest of it, right in front of his nose. If he had, he would have caught the silhouette of spires, outlined by the dying light of the sun, the capital.
The change in scenery was not a slow one. The Galran were nothing if not paranoid and every time the city extended past the walls they just put up another one around the new suburbs. His view was filled with nothing but stone and darkness for a moment as they passed through the gate in the outer wall and suddenly, his world was alive.
The procession must have been quite a sight: hundreds of thousands of soldiers returning from war, from ending a thousand year war, thousands of horses, cart after cart carrying back the spoils of victory, and right in the front, exposed to the sunlight and the hundreds of gaping faces of the citizens, was Shiro.
He expected violent yelling, roaring crowds, being hit with whatever they could throw at him; instead, he was greeted by stunned silence.
Just whispers, passed through the crowd. He was sure they were talking about him, saying he’s so weak and that used to be the Champion? and there’s no point in him. He heard the whispers from where he was even though there was no way the sound waves could have made it to him. He just knew what they were saying, could hear it in his head, could feel it.
He almost wished they’d throw stuff at him. He was used to that; he knew how to deal with that. He didn’t know how to deal with anything, with these new voices in his head; he didn’t know how to deal with this new him, armless, in the fetal position in the center of a cage, sobbing mindlessly as the fever wracked his body, each wretched movement sending a flare of pain through his nerves, constantly on fire; he didn’t know if the pain had just consumed him, if the fever was actually that bad, or if he was actually literally on fire.
They didn’t bother to throw anything. They knew he was already completely and utterly broken.
The procession made its way through gate after gate and by the second, Shiro had covered his ear and shut his eyes. As ridiculous as it was, some part of him kept chanting if you can’t see them, they can’t see you. he knew it was stupid, he knew that they could see the cowering mess, but it helped him. He could just breathe and pretend he was anywhere else. The fact that one ear remained open to the sound due to his lack of a hand made it difficult, but he made do.
The light flickered through his eyelids more and more as they mode their way out of the public markets, into the tenement, the merchant’s houses, the noble quarter, and eventually faded away altogether.
Something in the air changed. It wasn’t the hot sticky scent of summer and people anymore. It was still, clean, and cold.
He kept his eyes closed.
He heard his cage open and flinched.
A gasp, some yelling.
The sounds were getting harder and harder to focus on, fading in and out as he struggled to stay awake.
He knew he screamed when someone touched him but he couldn’t hear it. The hand retreated. More yelling. Shiro knew his breathing was erratic, he was panicking, grasping onto the thin threads of lucidity that had become so fleeting.
He almost tried to fight back when something tried to pick him up but quickly gave up.
Someone put him on something soft and he almost thought he was safe.
He blacked out, breathing clean air, almost thinking he was safe.